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Disrupted Parenthood in Caryl Phillips’s The Final Passage

Disrupted Parenthood in Caryl Phillips’s The Final Passage AbstractIn his debut novel The Final Passage, first published in 1985, Caryl Phillips (dis)connects the English and the Caribbean spaces simultaneously imposing this inbetweenness onto his continuously misplaced characters. This paper explores the novel through the lens of disrupted parenthood, demonstrating that the ties between the family members mirror the inability of the protagonists to belong or to sustain relationships. By applying a postcolonial framework and including both canonical and recent texts produced in the field, this paper analyses how racial labels and assumptions weaken fragile bonds and further displace the characters as it also attempts to fill a gap since aspects of distress and breakdown are often neglected in literary criticism. Finally, given the background of the West Indies, the paper incorporates social and anthropological works dedicated to the region and connects Phillips’s narrative to the stories of migrants in contemporary Britain. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Prague Journal of English Studies de Gruyter

Disrupted Parenthood in Caryl Phillips’s The Final Passage

Prague Journal of English Studies , Volume 10 (1): 16 – Jul 1, 2021

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References (14)

Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
© 2021 Anastasiia Fediakova, published by Sciendo
eISSN
2336-2685
DOI
10.2478/pjes-2021-0003
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

AbstractIn his debut novel The Final Passage, first published in 1985, Caryl Phillips (dis)connects the English and the Caribbean spaces simultaneously imposing this inbetweenness onto his continuously misplaced characters. This paper explores the novel through the lens of disrupted parenthood, demonstrating that the ties between the family members mirror the inability of the protagonists to belong or to sustain relationships. By applying a postcolonial framework and including both canonical and recent texts produced in the field, this paper analyses how racial labels and assumptions weaken fragile bonds and further displace the characters as it also attempts to fill a gap since aspects of distress and breakdown are often neglected in literary criticism. Finally, given the background of the West Indies, the paper incorporates social and anthropological works dedicated to the region and connects Phillips’s narrative to the stories of migrants in contemporary Britain.

Journal

Prague Journal of English Studiesde Gruyter

Published: Jul 1, 2021

Keywords: Caribbean literature; West Indian families; Caryl Phillips; mother-daughter relationship; colony and metropole; dysfunctional parenthood

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