Reading Melancholia in Abdulrazak Gurnah's Pilgrims Way

• Published in: English studies in Africa 2013-05, Vol.56 (1), p.4-16
• Main Author: Nyman, Jopi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Abdulrazak Gurnah; Africa; black British literature; Freud; melancholia; migration; Pilgrims Way; postcolonialism; trauma
• ISSN: 0013-8398; 1943-8117
• DOI: 10.1080/00138398.2013.780677

This article examines the representation of melancholia in Abdulrazak Gurnah's second novel Pilgrims Way (1988), a story of the hospital orderly, Daud, a disillusioned Zanzibari migrant living a melancholic and marginal life in Britain in the 1970s. The theoretical framework consists of the analysis of the condition of melancholia presented by Sigmund Freud in his Mourning and Melancholia and its later postcolonial applications by such theorists as Anne Cheng, David Eng, and David Kazanjian who examine the concept in the context of race and migration. The essay discusses the representation of melancholia in the novel and addresses its protagonist's attempts to negotiate his position in conditions of migration and race. These include the creation of alternative colonial pasts for the people whom he encounters, his act of writing (imaginary) letters to various real and fictional characters, and the gradual reconstruction of his identity through his attachment to Catherine. The essay suggests that at the core of the protagonist's melancholia are the historical traumas generated by the legacy of colonialism in East Africa, the related loss of family and community, and the disillusion generated by his migration to a racist Britain.