Focus on a Specific Aspect

¶ … lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.

"It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling..."

"The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it."

Naipaul

Nobel Prize-winning author Naipaul published the story "One Out of Many in 2001." This story was published the same year as the terrorist attacks upon the World Trade Center in New York City. It is no coincidence that he published the story with the protagonist of South Asian, and stereotypically, terrorist descent during this year. The story is a somewhat familiar one, of a man, Santosh, from a foreign (to Americans) country when his life changes. The man he serves and works for receives a transfer to Washington D.C. What is familiar about Santosh's plight is that he is one of millions of immigrants from countries far from the United States that have an intense American dream. Santosh, like many other immigrants, believe the hype about America from afar, and for some reason or another, ending up coming to the country to follow and experience the American dream they have heard so much about and seen so much in the media. What is also familiar about Santosh's story is that upon his arrival, even while in the process of arriving, he is put face-to-face with the extremely harsh, yet very accurate, prejudiced, and difficult reality facing immigrants to America, especially those who fit the most popular racial profile at the time: middle eastern, religious extremist, terrorist. Over the course of the story, Santosh encounters obstacles trying to fulfill his dream and become acculturated. Ultimately, the tone of the story is one that is bittersweet, with some triumphs that sometimes come at the cost of sacrifice of bits of his former self.

One of the points that Naipaul makes with the use of this story with respect to colonialization is that the those who are colonized have a responsibility to rebuild their indigenous culture, as with the example of Indians and the British. Naipaul is Indian and Caribbean, specifically from Trinidad & Tobago. There is an ample population of Indians in the West Indies and South American. There are Indians in places such as Trinidad as well as Guyana. At some points subtlely and at some points more directly, Naipaul communicates to readers through this story that those who are colonized do have some kind of cultural responsibility. Furthermore, he communicates that it is the business or job of those who were colonized to construct their own identities, which will now reflect aspects of the indigenous culture as well as aspects of the colonizing culture. This is a story with a theme that includes self-cultivation, self knowledge, and identity formation.

Naipaul overtly communicates the how overwhelming one may feel when pursuing a dream. He shows that dreams can be a sort of positive ache or yearning, but dreamers must be flexible and be available to the possibility that dreams need to change. Dreamers must also be available to the possibility that something that was once considered a dream is something altogether different in reality and outside of our imaginations or unconscious. Perhaps this is yet another message regarding the East's responsibility in the aftermath of colonization. That there is a responsibility, first of all, and that responsibility is to the people who were colonized. We also have a responsibility to ourselves and to our dreams to follow them and see them through. We further have a responsibility to face the consequences or reality of our dreams, especially when they do not align with our original conceptions of the dreams themselves. The East is represented in the figure of Santosh. What Santosh experiences and the personal journey he has, is a microcosm of the plight of many Asians, and Indians or specifically those cultures who may be misjudged as a terrorist from the western perspective. Therefore, Naipaul puts some of his expectations and/or hopes within Santosh as he has hopes and relative expectations for the East in the aftermath of colonization.

There is a great tension within the protagonist, Santosh as well as an overall tension that pervades the story. This is a reference to the tension of the experience as an immigrant in America. Santosh's emotions often oscillate, but ultimately swing toward the cynical and the negative. He is an anxious man that worries and philosophizes often. He is full of secrets and feels overwhelmingly alone. He often feels imprisoned and like a prisoner within the United States, as symbolized mainly by his apartment. His apartment reinforces his feelings of isolation, loneliness, and paralysis within American culture.

"I understood I was a prisoner. I accepted this and adjusted. I learned to live within the apartment, and I was even calm…I felt a hole in my stomach…I had to go up to my room again…I hadn't escaped; I had never been free. I couldn't turn back." (Naipaul, 2729, 2742)

Santosh feels fixed and stuck within a miserable fate once in the states. Though the country and even the city is large, he perceives himself as imprisoned. He does not make ardent attempts to break free from the prison he feels, but rather, he is complacent and accepts imprisonment. He is capable of passion because he has dreams, but his submissive nature and self policing tendencies couples with his excessive anxiety help keep him frozen in his mental and emotional prisons, as well as his physical prison, the apartment, that symbolizes the aforementioned intangible prisons.

Out of many, one, is the slogan on the back of the American $1 bill. It is written in Latin as "E pluribus unum." On the American currency, it is meant to imply that out of the many countries in the world, America is one and one that is powerful, one that stands above and/or beyond the rest of the world. It may also mean that out of many forms of currency, the dollar is one. With respect to Santosh, he is one out of many people who move to America from their native countries. He is one out of many immigrants who come to American with high hopes and many dreams. He is moreover one of many, many immigrants who come to American and experience that the dreams they held so dear are in very sharp contrast with the often austerely harsh reality that comes with living in America as a foreigner.