African Melting Pot
All through out the novel, A Bend In the River, VS Naipaul gives way to people being stuck between two cultures and without permanent residence. The majority of characters in the novel are found to be either of mixed race, culture, or part of a culture foreign to the region, each character playing an integral role and helping sculpt A Bend In the River. It is through characters such as Salim, Metty, Ferdinand, Shoba, and Mahesh that Naipaul expresses the racial feelings of Africa at the time. Salim is a man of Indian heritage living in a coastal African town where his people have prospered fro generations. An opportunity arises to own a shop inland and he jumps on it and begins the next period of his life. The novel is based around Salim's world. Through him Naipaul displays the feelings of race and of Africa. Salim's experience comes from his adulterous affair with a white woman, Yvette. His attraction is based somewhat upon the quest for the forbidden fruit.She was barefooted, feet white and beautiful and finely made. I looked at her feet before I considered her face and her blouse, black silk, embroidered round the low cut collar (126)The two of them met while listening to the civil rights music of Joan Bayez thus catal
Young Ferdinand struggles to find his place in the world tracing back from his bush mother and father from the south. Metty, too, was like a man with preoccupations. Here he had gained an idea of himself as a man to be measured against other men. And Metty would match him; Metty had absorbed many intonations of the local language, and the mannerisms that went with the language. (38) Salim is the center of the novel and all of the relations stem from him, but each of the surrounding characters contributes to the overall display of mixture of cultures. Until that point Salim was unaware if Ferdinand's existence and did not know quite what to make of the responsibility laid upon him. Mahesh and Shoba are a local Indian couple and friends of Salim's. He didn't know what was expected of him. (46-47)Ferdinand attends the lycee where he is given many different facades to try on for size. Mahesh and Shoba's love for each other is so blind that they are oblivious to the surrounding danger and disregard what their family's feelings of discontent. The travesty they encounter stems from Shoba's family and there dislike for Mahesh and his ways. He would appear to undergo a character change, rattling away in a high-pitched voice, his laughter sounding like part of his speech.
Common topics in this essay:
Ferdinand Salim,
Ferdinand Metty,
Metty French,
Africa Salim's,
Mahesh Shoba's,
Salim Indian,
VS Naipaul,
Mahesh Shoba,
Metty Ferdinand,
Joan Bayez,
bend river,
metty ferdinand,
struggles world,
indian couple,
ferdinand metty,
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Acceptance Essays
