Term Paper on
Language in "The Lonely Londoners" by Selvon
The
Trinidadian Sam Selvon's Lonely Londoners revisits the grand historical sites of
London (Trafalgar Square, Westminster Bridge, Piccadilly Circus) and describes
them from the viewpoint of the naive foreigner and small-islander. In so doing,
Selvon revives and adapts the 18th-cent. English literary type of fictionalized
travel writing, in which the character of a foreigner is used to comment
sarcastically, on British life and manners. Selvon's immigrants connect not only
with the everyday realities of racist violence and bias, but also with the grand
narratives’ of British history.
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Selvon's novel was an early on attempt to use West Indian creolized English as a
narrational mode. West Indian Creole developed from the language of slaves, who
were obligatory to learn English but who did so while keeping some of the
grammatical structures of their own African languages. Though derided by many
British people as broken English, or as commendable only of comic look,
creolized English continues to be the literary language of option amongst many
Black British writers. Selvon's reason in using such language was to provide a
naturalistic flavor to his account of immigrant life.
Reading the opening paragraph of Samuel Selvon's archetypal the Lonely Londoners
always brings a smile. No matter how often a person read it. By reading the
opening paragraph it will create a feeling that a person will unavoidably going
to end up roaring with laughter one moment, then being moved to great sadness,
the next. (Nazareth, 1988)
Samuel Selvon has luminously captured the mood and passionate experience of the
Windrush Generation who arrived in Britain after the Second World War. Set in
early 1950s London, it records the lives of Moses Aloetta, one of the first to
come, and the group of male friends who enclose him. In a series of persuasive
episodes involving the search for distinguished work, sensible housing, amidst
the evils of finding their footing in the great city of London, and establishing
significant relationships, we see some of the sparkling characters like the
antics of men of the 'Big City', Captain, Sir Galahad, Tolroy, Daniel, Five, and
Harris.
These characters are mainly drawn, with broad brush strokes but yet there is
reality, a humanity to them which is rather amazing, given their rather
cartoonish quality. But they work because they are real epitomes. Each character
exemplifies a number of general qualities.
London had fixed a place in their imagination. It was a place from which many of
their ambitions sprung, a place where they could evaluate themselves against the
best in the world, and if they lived, gain a sense of achievement and wholeness.
Habitual to it now, the novel evokes how they gave this dreamscape London, a
touching sturdiness and reality. On another level, the Lonely Londoners is about
this alteration. As these men arrive in Britain they take for granted a new
persona. They become bigger than when they left. Like the classic heroes of old,
the escapade to London will turn them into giants, investing their quest with
heroic size. A day after inward from Trinidad and meeting Moses at the train
station, Henry is distorted into the fearless 'Sir Galahad'. And this is the
attitude with which he will overcome the new country, having shed his old
identity.
Selvon develops a hybridized Lyrical song-like patois which his characters
speak, and beyond the voices of the characters, spills over into the language
describing the city itself. There are also long passages of stylistic creation.
For a whole section, almost ten pages, there isn't a full-stop. Selvon simply
wants the readers to experience in a great reminiscent rush of smells, noises
and feeling, the sense of being alive in this astonishing city in the middle of
summer. It is like a ballad to the hypnotizing magic of London.
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It is really the first black imaginary book that is entirely set in Britain.
Before the Lonely Londoners there had been many books written by black
Londoners, but all had been works of non fiction, mainly biographies that
provided detailed representations of great persons from the earliest. The Lonely
Londoners opens in the great city itself. This is important since the realm of
fiction allows the reader another measurement, a hyper realism. He/she can
imagine other potential; fall down the existing world with the world of our
dreams. Selvon's the Lonely Londoners is thus the beginning of a new kind of
appointment, another sort of narrative and dialogue about blackness and
Britishness.
The novel is also unavoidably about the bond between men, the depth and the
limits of such male unity. Selvon wrote the novel at a time when there were very
few black women in Britain. Like all customary emigrants, the men had set out on
their own, to open up and set up themselves before sending for their wives,
girlfriends, children and other dependants. Outside of work, and the time they
were alone, assiduously saving the essential money to send for their dependants,
one of the main leisure activities was chasing women.
The major breakdown of the Lonely Londoners is that it does not actually
discover these two levels of operation. It does convey the hopefulness that
people had for the future, and why they continued to consider, as one summer
slipped into the next, that their luck would turn, that things would get better.
But it doesn't talk about the penalty of their actions as real.
In a hundred years time, when those who in fact made the way are long dead and
no longer able to tell their stories, people will still be able to remember the
time and the place. Selvon will remind those in the future of the hopefulness
and romance for Britain with which the Windrush pioneers set out. His London of
the 1950s will be as evocative as the London of Dickens.
Works Cited
Nazareth, Peter. "Interview with Sam Selvon." Ed. Nasta, Susheila. Critical
perspectives on Sam Selvon. Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1988, page
34.
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