2 Literary Essays

In his essay "The Occasion for Speaking," George Lamming provides his explanation for why the establishment of a West Indian literature in the 1940s and 1950s by Caribbean writers exiled in London is of significant cultural and political importance. This analysis will provide a critique of Lamming's theory for the migration of West Caribbean writers and its significance.

Lamming begins his essay with an explanation of the African American writer, also an exile. However, Lamming (33) maintains that the experience of the African American is quite different than that of the black West Indian, "No black West Indian, in his own native environment, would have this highly oppressive sense of being Negro." The experience is different because the West Indian, definitely black and dispossessed, never experienced the condition of being a minority because of numerical superiority to whites and expatriate whites.

Why then, Lamming questions, did the West Indian writer migrate to London or the West? The reasons stem from the particular social and cultural forces at hand in the West Indies. These forces include a number of different factors. One is that the West Indies have been run by natives for many decades and they occupy a strategic position between North and South America that has made them an outpost of democracy. This and other events, such as Columbus' discovery of the West Indies, the abolition of slavery in the West Indies, and "the discovery of the novel by West I

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r efforts at education to raise literacy among West Indians to overcome such political malaise. Conclusion In conclusion, because of the social and political conditions of their native lands, West Indian writers cannot feel "secure in returning to a society whose values were largely responsible for expelling them" (Lamming 49). However, in choosing exile such writers were able to find their own identity despite their geographical location. As Lamming (50) ends his essay, "The pleasure and paradox of my own exile is that I belong wherever I am." ESSAY TWO Introduction In ChrTtien de Troyes' Perceval: The Story of the Grail, the author provides us with the making of a knight in both worldly and spiritual terms. In the story we are treated primarily to the adventures of Perceval, a young man whose mother is reluctant to have him become a knight, and Gawain. The story is one of romance, adventure, vengeance and family relationships. This analysis will offer a critique of Perceval through a discussion of the characters of Perceval and Gawain. Body ChrTtien's story opens with a depiction of Perceval and his mother. Perceval's mother does not want him to become a knight because her husband and her two older sons were knights a

Category: Literature - 2