Mimic Men

Healing the Wounds of Imperialism

The Mimic Men presents the constraints of a recently decolonized country in the Caribbean island of Isabella. The previous protectorate has now become independent but the formerly colonized people of the island are unable to establish order and govern their country. Since they are far away from their original native soil, their own original traditions and religions have become meaningless to them and they can not even associate with the colonizer because of the difference in terms of culture, tradition, race and religion. As a result, they replicate and echo the colonizer's life styles, values, and views. The novel considers the relationship between the socio-political and the psychological consequences of imperialism.
A forty-year-old colonial minister, Ralph Singh, is the narrator of "The Mimic Men", who lives in exile in Private Hotel in Kensington High Street area, London. He writes about his childhood and adulthood, his life in Isabella and in England, his political career and marriage, and his education to give shape to the past and his experiences, and to understand himself.
By writing his memoirs, Singh tries to reconstruct his identity and impose order on his life as the place in which he is born is associated with disarray. Thus, writing becomes an approach of releasing himself from the pain of being a displaced colonial citizen; ultimately, through the presentation of the events, he is able to take control of the wreckage of his past and shape them into a spiritual and emotional autobiography, by writing.
However, the irony is that in search of order, Singh is incapable of following a sequence in imposing order on his writing. The constant shifts between the past, the present, and the future may also reflect Singh’s mental disturbances.
The novel apparently outlays Singh’s desire to find out the worth of a colonial subject in a postcolonial society. We learn how colonial experiences have affected and shaped his life and personality.
He reads books on Asiatic and Persian Aryans and dreams of horsemen who look for their leader. He creates an ideal and heroic past which is in conflict with the real-life condition in Isabella. Like Singh, his Chinese friend, Hok, reads book on his own origin and discovers that he has black ancestors. Singh’s black revolutionary friend, Browne also fantasizes his origin and his room is full of pictures of black leaders. Thus, people the boys are preoccupied with their own racial origin and the ethnic group to which they belong and the novel, therefore, implies that the emotional security and a real sense of identity are inaccessible in assorted Caribbean societies.
As a result of his psychological need for identity and fulfillment, he tries to achieve order, meaning, and success as a politician. He takes politics as a drama and examines its effects on himself but he does not concentrate on his people or the institutions that are established on the island with his assistance.
Singh’s obsession with naming clearly shows his psychosomatic need for power and ownership; by naming roads and buildings, he reinforces the reality of his power and political career, and by renaming himself, he redefines his own reality.
He feels incomplete because he is aware of the meaninglessness of his role as a colonial politician.
Singh is very well mindful that the “drama” has not brought serenity and order to the isle; rather it still suffers from social turbulence and economic setback. Under such conditions the government finalizes to take over of the sugar estate, owned by Lord Stockwell, an upper class Englishman as the only way of solving the economic constraints and bringing the people together. Accordingly, Singh is impelled to go to England to accomplish the negotiations. However, he fails to persuade the English to help his government; Lord Stockwell refuses to talk seriously about the problems and the sugar estate. Instead, the Lord, the Ministers and the Representatives of the Colonial Power reduce Singh to a child and impose their supremacy on him. Without any help from the Authorities concerned, Singh is incapable of finding any solution to his country’s tribulations, and consequently, Singh faces personal loss.
“My sense of drama failed. This to me was the true loss. For four years drama had supported me; now, abruptly, drama failed. It was a private loss” (pg.221)
Due to lack of a real political goodwill of their own, colonial politicians are looked upon as ‘political jesters’ by the authorities.
Singh also suffers from dislocation and alienation because of his educational background. As a prey of the colonial education curriculum, Singh has always been persuaded to become a mimic man.
When he lessons English culture and history, he feels that his original culture is substandard to that of the colonizer. Endeavoring to find his identity and the ideal landscape, Singh goes to London merely to realize that the metropolis does not assure anything to an East Indian colonial dweller. Singh realizes that he can never be an Englishman despite his education, and that one can be English only if he is born in England.
Estranged from his own society, Singh voyages to different places so as to overcome his feeling of isolation. Although Singh cannot completely solve his psychological problems, he ultimately draws a conclusion in the course of the inscription of his memoirs that his experiences and his feeling of desertion cannot be separated from his imperial backgrounds.
Contradicting points are such that Singh’s final state is a real ultimate emptiness because he loses everything at the age of forty. Conversely the very emptiness refers to his indifference from the proceedings and attests that he is currently ready to start a fresh existence, but he is afraid because he does not want to reengage into the barren cycle from which he has freed himself.
Eventually, Singh takes control of his sense of displacement as he comprehends that he does not have an ultimate place with which he can make out himself.
In a nutshell, Singh scrutinizes and analyses the colonial and postcolonial era, historical, cultural and political milieu, economic tribulations and psychosomatic conflicts and finally concludes that writing can be exultation and can be an extension of the bygone years.
Thus, from my standpoint, the novel is masterful in evoking a colonial man’s experience in a newly decolonized society. Also, it is astounding to find out that a psychosomatically disturbed colonial subject derives contentment from the inscription of his memoirs.
The novel is suitable for the historians as it talks about how the colonization affected the culture, tradition, race and religion of the imperialized nations in the times of yore. The novel is also for the colonizers as it talks about colonial shame and fantasy.
The weakness of this novel is that it is not written in a sequential order which makes the readers
En bloc, The Mimic Men is an insightful novel that talks about cultural displacement


Bibliography:

Naipaul, VS (2001). “The Mimic Men”. United States of America