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<p>In his debut novel The Final Passage, first published in 1985, Caryl Phillips (dis)connects the English and the Caribbean spaces simultaneously imposing this inbetweenness onto his continuously misplaced characters. This paper explores the novel through the lens of disrupted parenthood, demonstrating that the ties between the family members mirror the inability of the protagonists to belong or to sustain relationships. By applying a postcolonial framework and including both canonical and recent texts produced in the field, this paper analyses how racial labels and assumptions weaken fragile bonds and further displace the characters as it also attempts to fill a gap since aspects of distress and breakdown are often neglected in literary criticism. Finally, given the background of the West Indies, the paper incorporates social and anthropological works dedicated to the region and connects Phillips’s narrative to the stories of migrants in contemporary Britain.</p>
</abstract>

In his debut novel The Final Passage, first published in 1985, Caryl Phillips (dis)connects the English and the Caribbean spaces simultaneously imposing this inbetweenness onto his continuously misplaced characters. This paper explores the novel through the lens of disrupted parenthood, demonstrating that the ties between the family members mirror the inability of the protagonists to belong or to sustain relationships. By applying a postcolonial framework and including both canonical and recent texts produced in the field, this paper analyses how racial labels and assumptions weaken fragile bonds and further displace the characters as it also attempts to fill a gap since aspects of distress and breakdown are often neglected in literary criticism. Finally, given the background of the West Indies, the paper incorporates social and anthropological works dedicated to the region and connects Phillips’s narrative to the stories of migrants in contemporary Britain.

Disrupted Parenthood in Caryl Phillips’s <italic>The Final Passage</italic>

Prague Journal of English Studies

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Disrupted Parenthood in Caryl Phillips’s 

In his debut novel The Final Passage, first published in 1985, Caryl Phillips (dis)connects the English and the Caribbean spaces simultaneously imposing this...

Disrupted Parenthood in Caryl Phillips’s The Final Passage

Published Online: Oct 05, 2021

Page range: 43 - 58

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/pjes-2021-0003

Keywords
Caribbean literature, West Indian families, Caryl Phillips, mother-daughter relationship, colony and metropole, dysfunctional parenthood

© 2021 Anastasiia Fediakova, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Disrupted Parenthood in Caryl Phillips’s The Final Passage

Published Online: Oct 05, 2021

Page range: 43 - 58

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/pjes-2021-0003

KeywordsCaribbean literature, West Indian families, Caryl Phillips, mother-daughter relationship, colony and metropole, dysfunctional parenthood

© 2021 Anastasiia Fediakova, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
Caribbean literature, West Indian families, Caryl Phillips, mother-daughter relationship, colony and metropole, dysfunctional parenthood