Theme of Racism in Samuel Selvons The Lonely Londoners - Book Report/Review Example

The Theme of Racism in Samuel Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners: A Review Samuel Selvon, a Trinidadian by birth, grew up in a multiracial, multiculturist society. Born to an Indian father and a half Indian mother he considered himself a creolized West Indian. (Nasta, 1988:3) His powerful sense of displacement and feelings has found its way in a subtle form into his fiction. The Lonely Londoners, the first novel of his Moses trilogy has been given recognition as a landmark in literature for a couple of reasons: It deals with the lives of new migrants in Britain and the reality of racism that hit them hard; it has been treated successfully with a narrative in Caribbean English. To understand Samuel Selvon’s novel The Lonely Londoners we have to go back to a period of history when the Caribbeans were brought to the UK by the open arm policy of the Government to join the army forces and later on to reconstruct war ravaged England. But the actual influx began in 1950s with the arrival of the troop ship Empire Windrush with the first batch of post war Caribbean emigrants who left their sunny land with the belief that the streets of London were paved with gold. We will find a short sketch of the history of Caribbean immigrants in the article ‘Settling’ found in the site www.movinghere.org.u.k The British Government initiated an effort to import labours from around the world. The Caribbeans were welcomed because of their familiarity with the English language and their working practices. The jobless Caribbeans, including the war veterans rejected their sunny land and started pouring in large numbers, considering the soil in England their utopia. In the 50s they were welcomed by both the Government and the British press. More than 40,000 Caribbeans joined the bandwagon. However, as their numbers increased the first flush of welcome waned. They were now seen more as a social problem. The landlords would put up a notice board announcing ‘no blacks’, ‘no coloureds’. Few were there to challenge them as England was still coping with the ravages of war. The late 1950s saw unrest and discontentment brewing among the local people. The right wing politicians who openly propagated racism fanned the air of hostility by organizing street corner meetings. It was in this overwhelming socio political set up that Selvon’s lonely Londoners were adjusting them and making the most of it. The story tells about the ‘concerns and difficulties of adjusting to life in London, finding housing jobs and social comfort in a hostile city’ (Harney, 1996: 123) and the disappointment, disillusionment and intense loneliness these expatriates face. The story unfolds with a number of anecdotes loosely woven without any integrated plot. The protagonist of the book is Moses Aloetta, an expatriate from Trinidad who has been living in London for many years. Apart from earning his wages he takes upon himself the task of hosting the new Caribbean arrivals. He goes to meet Sir Galahad at the Waterloo station. At the station a reporter asks him why the Jamaicans are crowding England. The white people have a name for all black people, i.e., Jamaican. The term disturbs Moses. He then asks Moses to go back to Jamaica because the English do not like black people. In London the immigrants experience malice, hatred, or disgust, sometimes sympathy too. It is hard to detect who is your friend, or who is your enemy. A job is the only possible way for survival, but wages are poor for the blacks. They do not tell you that you are unwanted but they will say that there is no vacancy Moses provides shelter to the new expatriates before they move on with their new jobs or lodge. The immigrants and new arrivals get together on Sunday mornings to exchange information about the people they know in The Caribbean islands. Their lives run between finding jobs and dating white women who find novelty in black men. The lonely Londoners bear the highs and lows like Sir Galahad who has had rosy visions about London but in course of time realizes that life is tough, things are expensive and the ghettoes are their destination. The rain, fog and cold make them feel nostalgic about the sunshine they left. They wonder whether they could ever make it back home. The pang of isolation is strong in the immigrants who arrive at the Waterloo station with a dream in their heart. Dave Wulf restates in his essay an extract from The Lonely Londoners, ‘For this city powerfully lonely when you on your own’ (Selvon 47). Wulf suggests that money power is the most relevant aspect in modern times, and the other Londoners lack money, they lack any real power in the social constuct (sic)’ (Wulf, 2006, p2). There is a sense of uneasiness pervading the air among all the lighthearted ramblings and good natured humour. The native Londoners show intolerance towards the immigrants. The Caribbean immigrants too have a hostile attitude towards other immigrants as they face competition for the jobs. Most of the immigrants are from Trinidad and Jamaica and a few are from Africa, such as Cap. Some of the remarkable characters are Tolroy, Big City, Tanty or Harris. There is hardly a storyline but anecdotes after anecdotes take you along. The unanswered questions will tug the reader’s mind. Why are these Londoners who came from the Caribbean Islands lonely? Do they have a way out of the sense of dislocation and disintegration? They struggle to understand the racial hostility from the natives of England and their economic deprivation. Sir Galahad says, ‘The Pole who have that restaurant, he ain’t have no more right in this country than we. In fact we is British subjects, and he is a foreigner’. (Stewart, 2006: 1). It is, as if, a British chill is working into the novel, which comes both from the weather and non acceptance of the white people. Sir Galahad questions further when he challenges the colour of his skin, ‘Why the hell you can’t be blue, or red or green if you can’t be white? You know is you that cause a lot of misery in the world. Is not me, you know, is you! Look at you, so black and innocent and this time you causing misery all over the world.’ This is an example of the pain and isolation these immigrants had to bear- they felt alone, scared and burdensome. According to Ashley Dawson (2007:30), Selvon’s work has been acclaimed for its depiction of West Indian resiliency within an urban metropolitan culture. Selvon’s work is also remarkable for its confident treatment of the Creolized form of Caribbean vernacular culture, including Calypso. (Dawson, 2007:30). Dawson, however, points out, ‘…Yet celebratory readings of Selvon’s work in particular and the impact of early waves of migration in general tend to underemphasize the forms of institutional racism and structural exclusion faced by the migrants to Britain.’ Dawson further says that The Lonely Londoners is not simply a story about racism in housing and workplace. It is also a depiction of racial perversion in the sexual circus. Selvon has emphatically sent out the message that racism has a damaging effect on immigrants materially, culturally and psychologically. But why does Selvon have an overwhelming number of British readerships? Perhaps Selvon’s humorous treatment of the escapades of ‘the boys’ despite a sense of alienation in their new found land made it an extremely readable novel. ‘To stress the hybridizing impact of migration alone is therefore to miss the role of Selvon’s novel as an intervention in an increasingly racist public sphere in Britain during the mid 1950s’ (Dawson, 2007:31) Although The Lonely Londoners has taken into account issues like racism, isolation and objectifying the problems of immigrants, its tone does not present a dark world, but rather one of optimism and warmth (Cairnduff, 2009). Selvon’s use of Trinidadian dialect made this possible to a great extent. The Creolized form of language just adds to the lilt and music of the Calypso world of these immigrants. By Selvon’s own admission he was never comfortable with the standard English. He then wondered if he could use the dialect form in both dialogue and narrative. Thereby his story moved rapidly (Nazareth, 1988:77) bringing in a new genre and a new multiculturist flavour in literature. Let us examine a dialogue which comes from Moses, ‘I don’t know these people at all’, says he, ‘yet they come to me as if I is some liaison officer , and I catching my arse as it is….’ . With the use of his language ‘Selvon was able to explore fully the nature of a West Indian or Caribbean sensibility and consciousness ( Nasta, 1988: 4). He was bold enough to write a narrative style without punctuation and seemingly disconnected sentences, a style difficult enough for the average reader with a ‘straight’ English. Some literary critics of England have praised the language Selvon used in the novel, specially his treatment of it. It is, as if, Selvon has injected new blood into the language. Selvon says, it is the Caribbean contribution to the world (Nazareth, 1988:86) Pages: 6 Word limit: 1520 Works cited: Nasta, S. (1988) Introduction, Critical perspectives on Sam Selvon (online) Available at http://books.google.com (Accessed to 15 November 2009) Selvon, S(1988) “A Note on Dialect”, Nasta, S.(ed) Critical perspectives on Sam Selvon (online) Available at http://books.google.com (Accessed to 15 November 2009) Nazareth, P. (1988) “Interview with Sam Selvon”, Nasta, S. (ed) Critical Perspectives on Sam Selvon (online) Available at http://books.google.com (Accessed to 14 November2009) Dawson, A. (2007) “In the Big City the Sex Life Gone Wild”, Mongrel Nation: diasporic culture and the making of post-colonial Britain(online) Available at http://books.google.com (Accessed 12 November) Cairnduff, M. (2009), “Moses Ascending, Sam Selvon”, Pechorin’s Journal (online) Available at http://pechorinsjournal.wordpress.com (Accessed 12 November 15, 2009) Courtman, S. ed. (2000) the Society for Caribbean Studies Annual Conference Papers pp6 (online) Available at http://caribbeanstudies.org/u.k./papers/2000/olv1 p6.pdf Harney, S. (1996), Nationality and Identity: culture and the imagination in a Caribbean Diaspora (online) Available at http://books.google.com Read More