Modern Age - Winter 2016 - 57

V. S. NAIPAUL'S A BEND IN THE RIVER

plete with Mao-like forced marches of children holding up the
president's "little book" of Maximes and shouting the leader's
full "African" name, a reference to the real-life Mobutu's adoption of "Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu wa Za Banga" as his
formal appellation. Like so many Western academics with unrealistic theories based on ideology rather than fact, Raymond is so
blinded by his commitment that he finds it impossible to see the
disturbing quality of this turn of events.
Although he recognizes the fraudulence of Raymond's life,
Salim nevertheless is attracted to the romantic charade that "we
all lived beautifully and bravely with injustice and imminent death
and consoled ourselves with love" (129). That romantic conception may appeal to Salim's youthful spirit, but soon enough it is
undercut by the brutal reality around him as he watches dozens
of fellow prisoners executed in the prison courtyard where he is
being held. Imprisoned for a short time before being released
as a privileged foreigner, Salim observes the "unreachable"
faces of doomed African prisoners, and he realizes that he "had
never seen them so clearly before." These doomed victims of the
regime "had prepared themselves for death not because they
were martyrs; but because what they were and what they know
they were was all they had" (269). Separated by a single white
wall from the busy, uncomprehending world of the town's marketplace, in which life passes by almost with a sense of normalcy,
these doomed souls are proof of the terrible fragility of life and of
the necessity of a redemptive civilization that offers opportunity,
protection, and order.
Once Salim has been arrested and carried past this wall, he can
never recover the illusion that security is the natural condition of
mankind. As the men around him await a specially orchestrated
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Modern Age - Winter 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Winter 2016

Contents
Modern Age - Winter 2016 - Cover1
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Modern Age - Winter 2016 - Contents
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