1. Introduction to George Lamming and In the Castle of My Skin

2. Postcolonialism
In Always Running, Luis J. Rodriguez wrote, “It takes a scientific approach to uncover the source of exploitation, to unravel society’s delicate and intricate tapestry, stitched with the skin of our mothers, the bones of our ancestors, the blood of all who toil” (Rodriguez 184).

3. Postcolonialism
Postcolonialism addresses questions that arise in, “the aftermath of imperialism.”
“By 1914…Europe held a grand total of roughly 85 percent of the earth as colonies, protectorates, dependencies, dominions, and commonwealths” (Said 8).
Sources: “Postcolonialism” in the Encyclopedia Britannica and Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism

4. Postcolonialism
“Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate,” the Los Angeles Times quoted Edward Said in 2003
Source: Los Angeles Times, July 20, 2003

5. The Enlightenment
The Enlightenment…was “a European intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries in which ideas concerning God, reason, nature, and humanity were synthesized into a worldview” according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

6. Postcolonialism
“The notion of ‘unmasking’ the Enlightenment became a powerful theme in postcolonial writing.”
Source: “Postcolonialism” in the Encyclopedia Britannica
Edward Said

7. Postcolonial Retellings of “the Classics”
Original: William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611)
Retellings: Aime Cesaire’s A Tempest (1969) and George Lamming’s Water with Berries (1971)
Original: Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (1847)
Retelling: Maryse Conde’s Windward Heights (1998)

8. Postcolonialism
“The English language is nobody’s special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself”— Derek Walcott

9. Seminal Works of Postcolonial Theory
The Wretched of the Earth (1961) and Black Skin, White Masks (1952) by Franz Fanon
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975) by Michel Foucault
Orientalism (1978) and Culture and Imperialism (1993) by Edward Said
Michel Foucault

10. West Indian Literature
“The Caribbean endured a different kind of subjugation. It was a terror of the mind; a daily exercise in self-mutilation. This was the breeding ground for every uncertainty of self” (xxxix).
Source: Introduction of In the Castle of My Skin
A Caribbean Sugar Plantation

11. The Theme of Identity
Author Sherman Alexie states that “being colonized automatically makes you bipolar.”

12. The Theme of Identity
“This notion of the double, or divided, or fluid identity…is a characteristic of the postcolonial writer” (Barry 196).

13. First Wave of Great West Indian Authors
Jean Rhys ( )
Frank Collymore ( )
Claude McKay ( )
C.L.R. James ( )
C.L.R. James

14. Second Wave of Great West Indian Authors
Sam Selvon ( )
George Lamming (1927- present)
Derek Walcott ( )
Kamau Brathwaite (1930- present)
V.S. Naipaul (1932-present)
Jamaica Kincaid (1949- present)
Jamaica Kincaid

15. Some Classic Postcolonial Novels
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899)
Derek Walcott’s Collected Poems ( )
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958)
Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)
Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place (1988)
Barbara’s Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible (1998)

16. Novels in the 1950s
“Novelists in the 1950s primarily ‘reflected’ an existing peasant ethos”
1950s Novels: On the Road by Jack Kerouac, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, and In the Castle of my Skin by George Lamming
Source: DeGuzman’s” The Pleasures of Excerpts: George Lamming, New
World Quarterly, and the Novel” (2014)
The Chrysalids is a Dystopian novel

17. In the Castle of My Skin (1953)

18. George Lamming

19. George Lamming Biography
Barbadian Author George Lamming (1927-present)
Mentored by another famous Barbadian artist Frank Collymore
First novel In the Castle of my Skin was published in and won the Somerset Maugham Award
Author of seven books and winner of ten literary awards

20. Introduction to In the Castle of my Skin
Lamming’s novel In the Castle of my Skin is a bildungsroman, or a coming of age story, that parallels the development of the main character G, his friends, their village, and their island home of Barbados. As the boys strive for self-awareness, the island around them engages in a strike and increased desire for independence

21. Introduction to In the Castle of my Skin
Lamming writes, “politically charged art”
The fictional village of Creighton, “is based on Barbados’s Carrington Village”
Source: DeGuzman’s” The Pleasures of Excerpts: George Lamming, New
World Quarterly, and the Novel” (2014)

22. Introduction to In the Castle of my Skin
“Edmondson contends, ‘For the Caribbean writer the dilemma is to occupy both sides of the equation: to be the owner and the owned, the writer and the land, the masculine and the feminine’” (1999, 61).
Source: DeGuzman’s” The Pleasures of Excerpts: George Lamming, New
World Quarterly, and the Novel” (2014)
Frank Collymore and George Lamming

23. Introduction to In the Castle of my Skin
Lamming’s In the Castle of My Skin includes, “references to the great flood, the strike and riots of 1937, and World War II” (xxii).
Source: Foreword of In the Castle of My Skin
World War II

24. Introduction to In the Castle of my Skin
In Lamming’s Pleasures of Exile (1960), he writes, “the Novel has a particular function in the Caribbean. The writer’s preoccupation has been mainly with the poor; and has served as a way of restoring these lives…to a proper order of attention” (xxxvii).
Source: Foreword of In the Castle of My Skin

25. Introduction to In the Castle of my Skin
Postcolonial Critic Sandra Paquet claims that In the Castle of My Skin, “is a modern classic. Not only does it contain valuable insights about childhood and society in the colonial Caribbean at mid- century (xxx).
Source: Foreword of In the Castle of My Skin

26. In the Castle of my Skin: Themes
Race
Class
Gender
Colonialism
Exile
Independence
Community v Individual Consciousness

27. In the Castle of my Skin: Point of View
1. 3rd Person Limited as “G”
2. 3rd Person Limited as “Old Man” and “Old Woman”
3. Omniscient

28. Relevant Postcolonial Terms

29. Carnivalesque
An idea coined by philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, carnivalesque is a literary mode that subverts the dominant style through humor and chaos. It is a form of Menippean satire. One of its main characteristics is the familiar and free interaction between all people in society.

30. “The Gaze”
The gaze is an idea derived from Psychologist Jacques Lacan, who discussed this idea of the subject (or the object or person being seen) being viewed losing a degree of autonomist and power, especially when they realize they are a visible object.

31. Panopticon
The concept of the panopticon comes from an institutional building designed by Jeremy Bentham in the late 18 century. This panoptical institution allows all inmates (pan-) to be observed (-opticon) constantly by a single watchman. This derives from the Greek myth of Panotes, a giant with 100 eyes. Philosopher Michel Foucault also expands on this concept. Author George Orwell uses this concept in his Dystopian novel

32. Works Cited
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Print.
DeGuzman’s” The Pleasures of Excerpts: George Lamming, New World Quarterly, and the Novel” (2014).
“Enlightenment.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Web. July 2017.
Lamming, George. In the Castle of My Skin
Los Angeles Times
“Postcolonialism.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Web. July 2017.
Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism.