Frantz Fanon’s Manichean Binary In Wilbur Smith’s The Triumph of the Sun

Abstract

Frantz Fanon’s observations in postcolonial theory posits that the colonial world is strictly organized according to a set of moral, social, and material opposites, where the colonial side is put in a superior stance, and the colonized placed in the inferior stance. A clear Manichean binary separation is established, which is named Manichean Delirium, relying on the absolute dualism that the ancient Manichean philosophy adopted, dividing between good and evil. The research applies Fanon’s Manichean binary on Wilbur Smith’s The Triumph of the Sun and examines how it stretches from spatial spheres, to narrative, interiorized depiction, reaching the very agency of the colonized subjects upon themselves and their own lives. Through close reading and analysis, the research finds that Smith’s imperial fiction consistently depicts the colonized Sudanese subjects as inferior in all respective areas, which confirms the Manichean structure within the literary context of imperial fiction.