| Summary: | 碩士 === 東吳大學 === 英文學系 === 96 === The perspective of metonymy is used to examine the
postcolonial problems and the difficulties of protagonist
in Naipaul’s The Mimic Men. Metonymic presence is the
main point for discussion. Metonymic presences are
illusions. In this novel, the people of Isabella, and in
particular the protagonist Singh, are “mimic men” who
are short on vision. They take metonymic presences as
truth. Naipaul’s depicts the predicament of the people
of Isabella in this novel.
The thesis is divided into six chapters. The first
chapter elucidates the importance of metonymic presences
and introduces the background of this novel. It also
outlines Bbabha’s mimicry theory and summarizes the other chapters. The second chapter applies Bhabha’s mimicry
theory to analyze this novel and explains all the
metonymies in detail. Foucault’s power theory is applied in the third chapter and the power metonymies in this
novel are illustrated via his theory. In this chapter,
the subtle ways of the power exercise of the colonizer is
emphasized. In the fourth chapter, Lacan’s desire theory is applied and the novel’s psychological metonymies are
presented. Lacan’s desire theory will be further applied to discuss the desire of the people of Isabella. In the
fifth chapter, Derrida’s differance theory is utilized.
The differantial metonymies in this novel are identified
and explained. In the conclusion, the perspective of
metonymy is further applied to analyze Naipaul's novel—Half a Life. Both the protagonists suffer from a sense of an incomplete self.
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