Isolated Everywhere But Home

Industrialization and colonialism have its consequences. The growth of the modern urban metropolis, of the world’s largest cities in their current incarnation has its roots on plantations in the rural agricultural land of the United States, South America, and the West Indies, as well as other countries all over the world. The materials, minerals, and food that come from these countries, these extracted resources, go to build these cities, bastions of materialism and arbiters of the new global economy. These lands, although being perpetually exploited, have plentiful resources but when those resources are extracted then rationed it leaves those nations impoverished, a necessary condition that is a consequence of capitalistic industrialization. Another consequence of industrialization is not just the movement of resources but also the movement of people that attempt to follow the resources to these economic commerce centers. Once on the shores of this new land they are subject to understandable concern about the reasons and conditions for this mass migration from honest worry to racism and xenophobia, which explicitly isolates the migrant group not only from access to any valuable amount of what was built from those resources but from the populous of the new culture they are entering.

The isolation from the dominant society can be greatly offset by the connections you build with the migrants who have similar cultural roots and a similar experience when attempting to integrate into the new society. Despite, the individual motives and influences of the people they necessarily rely upon each other for survival, this group is isolated together. In Samuel Selvon’s novel The Lonely Londoners, the author uses the title as well as the cultural differences of the characters, specifically the language they speak, not only to relate the isolation of the migrant group from the society in which they are contextualized but also the necessity of the language’s use and understanding for the migrant groups collective survival.

First it must be established that the migrants are in fact Londoners. The novel establishes this by first relaying to the reader that migrants from the West Indies were considered subjects of the crown and also, that they are able to vote and participate in the political processes in London; “We had better chances when the Socialists was in power, you know. You ever vote?’ […] ‘I suspect Harris, you know. He tell me Labour, but I have a mind he is a Tory at heart’” (133, 134). The fact that the characters can be involved in politics and influence the politics of London and of Britain are huge indicators of them being apart of London society. The migrants actually being knowledgeable and caring about politics in London establishes that they do care about the possible ways in which their community or their lives can be changed.

Despite, experiences that were initially very isolating like when Galahad first arrives in London and his first morning on his own in the big city “[...] he look up, the colour of the sky so desolate it make him more frighten. It have a kind of melancholy aspect about the morning that making him shiver” (42). He conquers those initial jitters he eventually realizes “I had a feeling to go back too, nut I forget about it. It ain’t have no prospects back home, boy” (130). London is Galahad’s new home and where he chooses to survive. Furthermore, despite also, thoughts by fellow migrant Bart who “Many nights he think about how so many West Indians coming, and it give him more fear than it give the Englishman, (he) frighten if they make things hard in Brit’n” and still “door slam in Bart face and Bart boil down and come like one of the boys” (61, 63). The characters cannot leave their culture behind because they are constantly being reminded of their differences by the dominant society, no matter how hard they try. The characters, like Bart’s troubling thoughts about his people, do not completely warm up to each other and they recognize each other’s faults but they still have community. They are around each other constantly and absolve the isolating experiences by retreating back to the community that they are necessarily forming. The characters are attempting in their own individual way to make a life in London separate from each other but what they have really done is build a community.

The community being built is not just an immigrant community of aliens but they are members of London society not simply because of political status or location. The characters have their own stories and their own lives that are apart of the fabric of London society. The long sentence in the middle of the novel expresses how sometimes they get so wrapped up in life that they barely get to think about or appreciate home. Towards the beginning of the sentence is an expression of how London is not just a city isolating them but it also a city where they are making a life, “to tell truth winter don’t make much difference to some of the boys they blazing left and right as usual all the year round” (102). The migrants were still working as usual with no time to acknowledge or admire the city around them because they are in the throes of surviving within it. But despite all commotion and all the situations that make each individual life unique and busy like when “the Jamaican fellar get vex and he stop and say why the hell you call me a black bastard and he thump the woman and went away all these things happen in the blazing summer under the trees in the park on the grass […] and everybody hustling that is life in London” (109). Life goes back to normal. Those individual instances though jarring and upsetting do not exile them from society. They just push them closer together. The society may be harsh to them but the migrants still have their place in the city and appreciate the beauty in the city. It is not just simply comparing London to whatever homeland in the West Indies, it is about maneuvering and finding a valuable space in society. It is about living a life and finding the best ways to survive in a society that is having a hard time accepting them.

Furthermore, Moses expresses “This is a lonely miserable city, if it was that we didn’t get together now and then to talk about things back home, we would suffer life Hell. Here is not like home where you have friends all about” (130). Ensuring that they get together, and relate to each other about home and their everyday life in London ensures some connection to their culture. Moses says that the city is miserable but complains that his home is always filled with people who are seemingly taking advantage of him but they are really the family that he longs for. The life and general cultural differences that the work is constantly divulging are present in the individuals who make up this newly forming community.

The migrant group from the West Indies are certainly Londoners and the dominant society has forced them to accept their place in the society even if it is as a culture in which they truly do not identify; “English people believe that everybody who come from the West Indies come from Jamaica” (28).  This is greatly juxtaposed with the relationships the migrant men build with women who the reader knows is from some distinct European culture and is not just lumped in under one category like the West Indians. The migrants must maneuver within that newly forming space. That also gives the migrants a tool to isolate themselves from society. The isolation is working on two fronts. The dominant society is segregating the community and the new community of Londoners, no matter from what part of the West Indies, is using language; language that is not only connecting the individual West Indian cultures and allowing them to communicate with each other but also it conceals them from the dominate society.

Galahad goes on a date with a white English woman and she admits, “What did you say? You know it will take me some time to understand everything you say. The way you West Indians speak!” Galahad replies, “What wrong with it? […] Is English we speaking” (93). Galahad is oblivious to his own knowledge of the language he is speaking because of how he is culturally isolated from the greater society. He believes that because he is using English words to communicate that he is speaking the English as a native Londoner and not a dialect created by the group he inhabits.

 The character Big City personifies this with the way he speaks as the narrator who it is safe to say eventually absorbs all of the language he uses is apart of the community because he speaks the same language as the migrant group. Cap says, “Listen to that sharp piece of fusic by Mantovanee, Moses,” Moses responds, “Man Big City, the word is ‘music’ not ‘fusic, Big City retorts, “Ah, you only trying to tie me up. You think I don’t know English?” Moses chastises Big City for his troubling grasp of the English language but the narrator reinforces Big City’s understanding of the language when the narrator integrates Big City’s vernacular into the description of events (94). The narrator follows Moses chastisement, “When Big City get big he left the norphanage and he went in the army in Trinidad” (94). This does not only include the narrator into the newly forming community it furthers the evolution of the language they are creating. It does not matter if the native English understand them it matters that the people in their community understand them.

The migrants do not really have access to the resources that they are following from the West Indies to Britain. They essentially are travelling to another land for the hope of an opportunity to gain access to capital that will better their conditions in the world. What the migrants do have is a newly forming community with their own culture and language that is unique to the community that they are entering. It may matter economically and socially that most of London finds their presence in the city at the very least disconcerting and decides to keep them out of certain spaces. It does not matter culturally. The book is not titled “The Lonely Londoners” simply to separate the migrant groups from London society, but to connect the migrant groups to each other.

Bibliography:

Selvon, Samuel. The Lonely Londoners. Out of Print.