Modern Age - Winter 2016 - 49

V. S. NAIPAUL'S A BEND IN THE RIVER

civil unrest, and though he arrives with buoyant hopes and enjoys
success for a time, his business is increasingly undermined by
events beyond his control. Eventually, as the country's president
consolidates power, Salim's business is confiscated and his very
life is threatened by the ever more chaotic and violent course of
events. Though the president is unnamed in the novel, he would
seem to be based largely on Mobutu Sese Seko, the longtime
ruler of the Congo whose creation of a personality cult portraying his mother as the "African Madonna" and himself as the savior
of African culture helped secure his rule. The personality cult was
bad enough, but worse followed. As conditions degenerated, the
result of mismanagement and corruption, Mobutu ordered the
Zairianization of the economy, including the nationalization of
foreign businesses.
In the novel Salim finds himself caught up in just such a course
of events. With his shop seized and its title transferred to Théotime, the overbearing new owner for whom he is forced to work,
Salim attempts to raise funds to flee the country by trading in
illegal ivory. This effort at self-preservation only leads to greater
danger, however, as Salim is betrayed by his house servant, is
jailed, and faces the possibility of execution. He escapes but only
as a result of the fortuitous intervention of Ferdinand, the son of
a river trader whom he has assisted in the past.
To understand the author's intentions in A Bend in the River, it is
necessary to delve beyond the details of the plot and to appreciate the connotations of Naipaul's use of the word "civilization,"
the word that grounds every aspect of the novel. In his essay "The
Universal Civilization," the 1990 Wriston Lecture presented at the
Manhattan Institute, Naipaul singled out the right to "the pursuit
of happiness" from the American Declaration of Independence
49



Modern Age - Winter 2016

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