Comparing Characterization Between Two Postcolonial Protagonists: “Half-A-Life” and “Season of Migration To The North” Batrishia Rakhim College

V.S. Naipaul’s Half-A-Life and Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration To The North are two popular and successful postcolonial works of fiction. Both novels include, in some form, the story of a young man from a non-European continent living and growing in a country that is not his own. Both of the main characters – Willie Chandran and Mustafa Saeed – are non-white, young, smart boys with an outstanding proficiency in the English Language. They had both come from impoverished backgrounds, from families that lacked warmth and affection with individual issues regarding their relationships with their mothers. Most importantly, both Willie and Mustafa had both come to rely on mimicry and orientalism as mechanisms to not only survive in a predominantly white society, but to also exploit in order to construct new, more appealing, fake identities and personas of themselves.

Willie Chandran is an Indian who spent his young-adult years in England as a student before moving to an unnamed African country with his girlfriend, Ana, where he then resided for another eighteen years before finally leaving. Mustafa Saeed is a Sudanese who was granted a scholarship to study in England where he stayed until he made quite a reputation for himself as a...