Let’s write everything we can see!

- What is it about? (Brief summary)

An account of hustling London in an outsider’s point of view, completely new to the place
Unwelcoming, intimidating,
Point of realization, naivete banished
Galadhad, as namesake, was very rosy and hopeful, valiant
Meanwhile Moses is more weathered down – the previous conversation

- Most evident in style : “Creolian dialect” / eye dialect / Trinidadian

Is English nonetheless
- Repetition of standing up or walking “stupid”, and being frightened : three times
- Listing all the things he lack whereas he just arrived with a toothbrush and light
garments
- The excerpt solely consists of Galahad looking, feeling and assessing, a minimum of
movement, Trying to make sense of his surroundings
- Juxtaposition to everybody moving with a clear goal, “doing something or going
somewhere”, stark contrast with “only” – ostracized
- Especially evident in the brief account of the lady – Galahad bounces “up”, unmoving
while the lady passes him “like a full trolley”, much movement
- Inner monologue? Need specific terms but Galahad’s thoughts presented without any
quotation marks, throws off the reader with a sudden “You”
- Even his inner thoughts, but also obviously, are presented in the “dialect” consistent
throughout the work

- Second paragraph moves on to the description of the Sun – again an account about
the new and uncanny with “never” – and the Sun is supposedly something that is
 universal and consistent

- The simile to a force-ripe orange

Summing up, I could probably write about…

- Some background information
- The dialect
- Location and movement
 This extract successfully captures two elements – language and movement – that shape the
entirety of Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners, a carefully written novel depicting the arrival and
adaptation of Trinidadian migrants to the British Empire. The characters fit into the main
culture in various degrees and manners including Galahad, a new arrival who is surprisingly
naïve much to Moses’s concern - a more weathered down individual that somewhat
begrudgingly takes on the role of a mentor for his people. In this particular excerpt, the focus
is on Galahad’s first real glimpse of London and serves as the point of realization that his new
surroundings isn’t as welcoming as he initially thought, rather revealing itself to be
intimidating and intelligible. Backed up by the Galahad’s confusion is made clear by

As immigration, a form of movement itself is the central theme of the work,