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John Wesley Mosonik E35/3652/2022

African Prose CLT 3302

Dr. Joseph Kwanya, PhD 5th April, 2025

Understanding postcolonial identity in the novel Season of Migration to the North

Colonized people often exist between two cultures: their indigenous one and the

imposed colonial one. A postcolonial subject is thus considered to be caught in

between two worlds and at the crossroads, his or her identity is in a state of flux.

Therefore, as a result, a hybrid identity that defines them politically, culturally and

psychologically emerges. In this essay, I will analyze the experiences that lead to

identity crisis in a postcolonial subject. I aim to deconstruct the very experiences

faced by characters like Mustafa Sa’eed, the unnamed narrator, Hosna Bint

Mahmoud and others so as to construct and shape our overall understanding of

identity.

Mustafa Sa’eed is a major character considered to have suffered from profound

alienation. Right from his childhood, his identity is shaped by the conflict between his

Sudanese roots and European culture. This led to the creation of a divided self.

During one’s lifetime, fathers are key figures of authority tasked by the community to

offer guidance. For Mustafa, the lack of a father and the presence of an emotionally

distant mother is considered to be a huge setback. In psychoanalysis, such a case

is proven to disrupt the process of identity formation. It is clear that male children, at

an early point, relinquish their pre-Oedipal desires and identify with their fathers.

Mustafa had none to identify with. According to Sigmund Freud, the father’s absence
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might prevent him from resolving the Oedipus complex before his adulthood. For

sure, he remained emotional detached and struggled to integrate to any community

till he resorted to suicide. Furthermore, his lack of family relatives and siblings also

impacted the forging of his identity during his childhood.

In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon explains a postcolonial subject like Mustafa

suffers psychologically. The colonized people were in a similar predicament.

Colonized subjects are forced to see themselves through the eyes of the colonizer.

Because colonial subjects are taught that their culture is backward, they internalize

self-hatred. Due to this, the colonized end up being self-alienated. This alienation is

vividly illustrated when he describes himself to the narrator, stating, ‘‘I was like

something rounded made of rubber; you throw it in water and it doesn’t get wet; you

throw it on the ground and it bounces back’’ (Salih 24). By incorporating this

metaphor, Tayeb Salih captures Mustafa’s feelings of being detached and

unabsorbed by his surroundings. Young Mustafa was self-alienated and could not

identify with fellow African children. He desired to go to school when the community

viewed education as an evil tool of occupation. To Sa’eed, European education does

not function solely as a tool for liberation. Education drew him apart psychologically.

In school, he never sought any friends. Equally, Mustafa never felt any gratitude to

people who helped him. From a Fanonian perspective, we can clearly see that young

Mustafa had internalized his otherness.

Mustafa is also a victim of dislocation and as a result he loses his cultural

authenticity. This is because a room that appropriates both Sudanese and European

culture is created in his identity. In England, he had to adapt to European norms.

Mustafa Sa’eed manipulated the European expectations that typically viewed

colonized people as inferior and uncivilized. He lived successfully in England for

thirty years before his imprisonment. In this sense, Salih, in Season of Migration to

the North, is responding to the master’s discourse of colonialism that portrayed

Africans as inferior. This is because Mustafa is depicted as bright and successful.

Tayeb Salih subverts the dominant colonial narrative and shifts the gaze by not

painting the unnamed narrator and Sa’eed as primitive. On the other hand, while

challenging the stereotypes, Sa’eed is seen to pull away from his indigenous

Sudanese identity. This leads to his cultural dislocation.

As a Muslim, Sa’eed is expected to adhere to Islamic marital values, but his lifestyle

is a form of rebellion. He defied conventional Islamic expectations by engaging in

immorality. In England, he lives with multiple European women simultaneously.

Nevertheless, he fulfils the Western ideology in Edward Said’s Orientalism that

rendered Africans as hypersexual. He exerted his hyper sexuality on a culture that

labelled him in that manner. Edward Said explains how the colonizer distorts the

identity of the colonized, characterizing them as irrational, uncivilized and

hypersexual. Through this, the Europeans were able to justify their colonial rule,

superiority and oppression. Sa’eed gained European knowledge at the expense of

his Sudanese roots. The result is that he gets caught between two cultures and his

identity crisis causes the death of the five women. Out of the five women, four

committed suicide, and Mustafa killed the fifth. The four committed suicide as a

result of despair and guilt after having been manipulated by Mustafa. This heightens

his internal conflict. His battle from within prompted him to later end his life. Mustafa

was indeed an outsider in both spaces. He had merely worn a metaphorical white
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mask, as Fanon highlights in Black Skin, White Masks so as to fit into colonial

culture. However, the mask does not fully integrate one into that world. Sa’eed

remained nothing more but an educated intellectual.

In line with Edward Said’s Orientalism, Sa’eed was both a victim and a manipulator.

According to Mustafa, he was “liberating Africa with his penis” (86). In England, he

had weaponized his sexuality. Conversely, he could not forget about the women

whose lives he destroyed: Anna Hammond, Sheila Greenwood, Isabella Seymour

and Jean Morris. All of them were dead, and he had cold-heartedly betrayed them.

Jean Morris, whom he had married, was unlike other women. She had refused to

submit fully to Mustafa Sa’eed. Her lack of submission led to her death. This

highlights to us the destructive nature of the internalized colonial identity. The

colonial identity asserts control no matter the circumstances. On the other hand, his

cold heart represents the symbolic nature of dehumanization. In the end, Mustafa’s

attempt to reconcile his past and present ended in suicide. His death also proved to

be calamitous. His widow tragically ended her life after killing Wad Rayyes, a

husband she never wanted to marry. Relating this to postcolonial nations, their past

still haunt them. Why? This is because postcolonial nations remain dependent on

former colonial masters for economic aid among many other things. Like Mustafa

Sa’eed, we cannot easily escape our past.

The unnamed narrator also grapples with experiences that affect his feelings of

being in postcolonial Sudan. As a first-person narrator, all events are perceived

through his perspective. His scholarship to England creates a sense of detachment

from his people. In England, he acquired a hybrid identity, which becomes evident
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upon his return. The vision of the “fog” he perceives between himself and his people

symbolizes his alienation. The fog acted as a psychological barrier between his two

identities. The European identity and Sudanese identity. In England, his original

identity had been displaced. This displacement draws him toward European culture

while distancing him from his Sudanese origins. This cultural displacement becomes

apparent when he, alongside Hosna Bint Mahmoud, opposes her forced marriage to

Wad Rayyes, an old man notorious for frequently changing wives. Wad Rayyes’

assertion, “This nonsense you learn in school won’t wash with us here” (73), to the

narrator served as a reminder of his cultural displacement. His opposition to wife

inheritance reflects the Western ideals he adopted while studying abroad, placing

him at odds with his community’s traditional customs.

We can deduce that his European education is perceived as foreign to their way of

life, marking him as an outsider. He is considered the “other” because of his foreign

education. Foreign education is known to cause cultural disparity as Ngugi wa

Thiong’o comments in Decolonising the Mind. Decolonising the Mind highlights on

the place of colonial education in a contemporary African society. Ngugi wa Thiong’o

argues that European education is tool of mental colonization in that it alienates

individuals from their indigenous cultures and identities. Characters like the unnamed

narrator after coming from abroad, they carry with them a Eurocentric view. Most of

them, see no value in their traditions. The European education also prioritizes

European literature. The unnamed narrator and Mustafa Sa’eed ventured in the field

of poetry and English. This causes fear to the community in Sudan. The greatest fear

is loosing her sons to a foreign culture. This fear is illustrated when the unnamed

narrator had returned from England.

Bint Majzoub worries that he might have returned with an uncircumcised infidel for a

wife (13), while Wad Rayyes suspects that he has lived sinfully with multiple women.

Indeed, when one is abroad, there is a possibility of picking up colonial identities.

The villagers were afraid of the looming cultural contamination because his exposure

would be a threat to Sudanese traditional values and order. Despite his Western

education, the narrator does not fully integrate into European culture either. His

struggles mirror those of Mustafa Sa’eed, who was once told he represented the

failure of European civilization in Africa. One of the consequences of studying

abroad is his detachment from Sudanese life. He had the opportunity to forget his

village, yet he longed for his people, unlike Mustafa, who severed ties even with his

mother. Wherever he travelled, he cherished his village, revealing his indigenous

culture was still anchoring him. His nostalgia and psychological suffering are also

evident, particularly in his fear of his grandfather dying during his absence. He

wished to be with his people at times.

Upon returning to Sudan, the need for renewal of the relationships highlights his

desire to reinvent his original cultural identity within his inner self and the

environment at large. The narrator’s goal was to reconcile the past and the present.

The eventual outcome would obviously be the formation of a new hybrid identity.

However, there was a significant difference. The narrator’s European education was

the new point of divergence. The narrator’s decision to venture into the field of poetry

indicates a loss of identity. He had rejected the traditional roles after having been

influenced by the Eurocentric identity. In his village, they were a family of farmers, as

Majhoub claimed. He should have ventured into the field of agriculture to help his

community after his studies. Additionally, in the village, he is attracted to the

stranger, Mustafa Sa’eed. His attraction can be seen as a sign of his intuition,

suggesting they shared a cultural connection. For instance, the villagers had never

bothered with expressions of courtesy while Mustafa was polite. Mustafa politeness

was interested the narrator. This further suggests that they were naturally bonded by

a common factor. European education was indeed an eye-opener, even though it

distanced them from their villagers.

The narrator’s internal conflict is magnified after Mustafa’s suicide. To him, Mustafa

was a lie, a phantom, and a nightmare that came to the village one night and

disappeared (Salih 40). He acknowledges that everyone else, including himself is

living a lie. This is because after the Europeans leave, all would adopt to their culture

without guilt. According to Homi Bhabha in The Location of Culture, he terms this as

mimicry, where the colonized try as much as possible to imitate the colonizer’s

culture. Bhabha developed on Fanon and Edward Said’s ideas since he delved into

how colonized subjects adopt their hybrid identities in postcolonial societies.

Colonized people imitate the colonizer, adopting European culture, language and

even modes of dressing. However, they are never fully accepted they are always

seen as “almost” civilized but “not quite” equal. For instance, the narrator is educated

in the West, speaks English and is influenced by European thought, just as Mustafa

was. However, his return to Sudan reveals his displacement; he does not fully belong

to the West or to Sudanese traditions. This is because the result is not perfect.

Mustafa had chosen suicide as an escape route from his fractured identity.

Even though the narrator chooses the same path, he hesitates. He says, “I found I

was halfway between north and south. I was unable to continue, unable to return. I
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turned over onto my back and stayed motionless . . . now I am making a decision. I

chose life” (Salih 116). This indicated his moment of awareness. He recognized the

possibility of existing between cultures. He reconciled his two cultures when he

chose life. These two cultures were reconciled in what Homi Bhabha called the

“third space.” The third space is technically the gap between the culture of the

colonizer and that of the colonized.

Notably, he named his daughter Hope. Hope is an English name in a Sudanese

environment. This suggests he is accepting his dual identity rather than being

trapped between them. Indeed, this marks the advent of his hybridity. His internal

struggles further heightened after he fell in love with Hosna, Mustafa’s widow. After

her suicide, we see their confrontation with Majhoub. In their confrontation, Majhoub

represents the Sudanese roots, while the narrator represents the new postcolonial

identity. This shows us that the struggle for identity is never-ending between two

different cultures. It is indeed difficult to balance these influences because one is

always trying to outsmart the other.

Hosna Bint Mahmoud is another character considered to have suffered from

experiences of alienation. This is because she is a woman in a patriarchal Sudanese

society. Gayatri Spivak, in her essay “Can the Subaltern Speak,” criticizes the

patriarchal postcolonial society that oppresses women like Hosna Bint Mahmoud.

Spivak examines how marginalized groups especially women are silenced in colonial

and postcolonial societies. The subaltern who are the oppressed and colonized

individuals are denied the platform to air out their voices. If they speak, their voices

are channelled through the perspectives of the colonizers or men. Many women in
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our societies are suppressed and marginalized. For example; leadership of the

country is considered a masculine role.

The West is well known for projecting women as figures whose primary attribute is

beauty. In other words, their role is often to be admired. Their society conditions

women to accept inferiority. In the West, men control institutions, decision-making

and the writing of history. The arrival of the colonizers did not improve the place of

women in the African society; rather, it cemented patriarchy. In the narrator’s village,

we see patriarchy materialize, especially after Mustafa’s death. Mustafa’s widow is

forced to marry Wad Rayyes, who was forty years her senior. This prompted Hosna

Bint Mahmoud to commit suicide. Before ending her life, she killed Wad Rayyes.

Subsequently, she was seen as the evil one, despite being the sane one. In

postcolonial Africa, at times, women lack the agency to air out their grievances due

to patriarchy that is adopted from the Western people. Basically, they lack their own

identities.

Having deconstructed the life of Mustafa Sa’eed and other characters I acknowledge

that the identity of a postcolonial subject is in a state of flux. In my analysis I have

also theorized Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of hybridity. For Mustafa, his poor

upbringing and further studies in England created a room for European culture where

it merged with his indigenous Sudanese culture to form a hybrid identity. In

postcolonial Africa, there are many Mustafa Sa’eeds who struggle to balance their

identities which in turn leads to inner battles within the subconscious mind. However,

for such, a different approach of acceptance as employed by the unnamed narrator

should be put into consideration. In this case, the two cultures would be appropriated
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as one. Last but not least, as much as we loath the manner in which European

culture infiltrates our indigenous culture, we should use it to our advantage.

Illustrations can be drawn from the lives of Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Chinua Achebe

who are known to be great ambassadors of Pan Africanism for instance used their

European education to critic European colonization. In a similar manner, we

postcolonial subjects should use the European culture to our advantage.

Works Cited

Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994.

Campbell, Kirsten. Jacques Lacan and Feminist Epistemology. Routledge, 2004.

Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Charles Lam Markmann,

Pluto Press, 1986.

https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Season-of-Migration-to-the-North/

Pennington, Eric. Review of Literary Theory: An Anthology by Julie Rivkin and

Michael Ryan. CLA Journal, vol. 43, no. 4, June 2000, pp. 517-519.

Riach, Graham R. An Analysis of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s Can the Subaltern

Speak? Macat Library, 2017.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Penguin Books India, 2001.

Salih, Tayeb. Season of Migration to the North. Heinemann, 1969.

Thiong’o, Ngũgĩ wa. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African

Literature. East African Educational Publishers, 1986.