White whales, bedbugs, and the quest for truth: Demystifying the role of Julius in Teju Cole’s Open City through comparison with Herman Melville’s Moby Dick

Abstract

Narrators from Moby Dick and Open City both search for truth by looking beyond conventional geographical, political, and social boundaries. They critically examine the external world, leading to postcolonial truths concerning malevolence of American or Western imperialism. Despite key similarities in perspective, narrators differ in how the external world reflects individual identity. In Open City, evil is not just an external concept. It is subconsciously embedded within the mind of the narrator himself. Julius denies committing a brutal rape, which reveals that he is creating his own reality, just as colonial powers “whitewash” acts of exploitation. Creation of an immoral narrator ultimately reveals that external evils are the manifestation of internal processes, which are deeply embedded in the psyche of all human beings. Ultimately, the narrator of Open City reveals modern views of global identity development, where interpretation and validation of the external world is an internal and subjective psychological process.

Keywords

• open city
• teju cole
• moby dick
• herman melville
• identity
• globalization
• nationalism