A brighter sun door Samuel Selvon

A Brighter Sun by Samuel Selvon [Caribbean Literature]

1987 Longman Hong Kong

Summary

The story how Tiger gropes his way to maturity, cast into adulthood through marriage at age 16 to an equally immature girl, is customary among Hindustanis throughout the Caribbean in the 1950s. Tiger’s name shows the aggressiveness of the animal from which it is lent and is proof of his eagerness to advance in life. He has an insatiable appetite for progress, one not understood by the illiterate but streetwise Joe. Tiger’s approach to life is much more far reaching than Joe’s. However, Tiger could not escape answering the dictates of his culture: in his attempt to prove himself a man, he drinks and smokes, beats his wife into submission and wishes for a male heir. Yet life is not easy on him: he never gets the boy child, and he must endure the agonizing truth that the boy child is withheld from him by God when Urmilla delivers a stillborn. Still he rises, ending his life of trial just like the war (a period of trial for the entire world) ended and understanding fully that his responsibility lies with his family. He not only builds a house, but eventually builds a home, content with what he has achieved.

Explanation of the title

A Brighter Sun suggests the hope for a world at war that good and hard work will prevail; that darkness will be defeated by the life giving sun. It is the bright prospect for Tiger’s life when he conquers ignorance and immaturity and emerges a man with family, knowing his role in life.

Characterization

Tiger Baboolal.  His first name serves only to show how aggressive this young man takes on the challenges life throws at him to finally conquer ignorance and immaturity. Tiger is gifted with the right sense, looking past ethnic differences and desiring equal opportunities for Hindustanis and Negroes alike in a Trinidad ruled by the British.

Tiger is round.

Urmilla is as ignorant as Tiger, not knowing her role when thrown into marriage, but slowly learning that pleasing her husband is a duty common to east-Indian wives. She considers the failure to produce a boy her failure, forgetting that the fact the her second child came dead into the world was completely her husband’s doing when he beat her during her pregnancy. Still she advances in life, taking her place besides her husband. Urmilla is round.

Rita, the Negro neighbor, is an understanding and helpful person, although she does not accept neither Tiger’s nor her partner Joe’s whims. She is more experienced in life than the two kids living next to her and she helps especially Urmilla to become a woman. Her efforts are not fully understood and appreciated by Tiger and Joe. Tiger does not wish a negro woman to tutor his wife, for he thinks it unbecoming. Joe, who also thinks along the lines of ethnicity, does not want to be mixed up in his neighbor’s affairs. Still Rita persists, despite the ignorance she faces.

Rita is flat.

Joe is an uneducated, yet streetwise Negro, who knows only the pleasures of life, He acts the man, but cannot overpower his equally bossy partner Rita. He does not understand Tiger’s eagerness to learn and is satisfied with a woman, a full belly and rum.

Joe is flat.

Other characters worth mentioning are:

Tall Boy, the Chinese shop owner, Sookdeo, a rum-loving, literate native of Barataria, who spent most of his time in the rum shop, yet had the best agricultural produce. Boysie, Tiger’s friend, who eventually left for the US to pursue a better future. These characters are all flat.

Themes

Desire for progress and advancement, maturity

Tiger did not wish to remain an ordinary, ignorant coolie, married at a young age and producing boy heirs for his bab and mai’s pleasure. He wanted to learn. Sex, his first real contact with the opposite sex, is an experience which he has to master, love and understand. Tiger is trying to defeat ignorance and inspired by the ever rum drinking sponge Sookdeo, he taught himself to read and write. At times he talked kind of funny, beyond dictionaries, confusing his wife, but he was nevertheless learning.

His above average knowledge earns him a good job with the American in charge of building a road, although they too get tired of his indecisiveness. He grows towards real maturity when he learns to accept his family as the people he has to care for. When the world was at war during WWII, so was Tiger, fighting off his boyhood to become a man.

Setting

The story starts in 1939 and runs through the entire course of WWII in Trinidad, especially in Barataria where Tiger lived.