Nirmal Gurung
The paper presents a neo-Marxist reading of George Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin (1953). The novel concerns a young boy coming of age in colonial Barbados. In Lamming's novel, I argue, colonialism operates not just through force but through ideas, through education, religion and culture that make colonial rule natural. The "castle of my skin" is a prison constructed by colonial ideology, a space where the colonized learn to see themselves through the eyes of their oppressors. The novel also reveals that resistance is always difficult because the colonized are shaped by the very system they are fighting against. Finally, the novel describes the collapse of the colonial world, a rupture that leaves people suspended between two worlds, belonging to none. In this analysis, I argue that Lamming's novel is a painful story as well as a critique of colonialism and colonial legacy. ________________________________________