Identity Crisis in Christopher Hampton Play "white Chameleon"

...

Similarly, in his school in England, Chris was bullied again but this time for being quasi-Egyptian. The boys suspected his identity because he “can’t drink [his] milk” and because he is “not even white”. To the English boys Chris is an outsider because he doesn’t behave like them and behave more like the Egyptians. To them, because he lived among the Egyptians he has lost his British identity. He is beaten out to a racist stereotyping of the English boys to his physical appearance although he is of their own identity. In the Egyptian boy’s case Chris was an outsider because of a political hatred but in the English boy’s case it’s out of a belief that the Egyptians are inferior to them. Hence, in his own country and among his own people Chris still cannot find his identity a place where he can feel fit.

In the British Boy’s School, and as tension mounted in 1950 and after Nasser’s turning point speech of the nationalization of the Suze Canal, Chris was cornered in the school lavatories by an Egyptian boy, also out of political reasons, but didn't tell his parents. Also in England, when, he was sent to prep school in Surrey, he was beaten by the English boys for siding with the Egyptians on the nationalization of the canal saying “if they [meaning the British] go to war over the Suez Canal, they need their heads examining”. He was not only beaten by the English boys but also summoned to the headmaster's office to explain his "unpatriotic" views about the country that he is originally from. And instead of punishing him, the headmaster sets his “tarboosh” which is Chris’s last memory of Egypt on fire saying that he can’t risk having this “provocative item” in his school.

In a nut shell, searching for won identity was one of the most important issues that post-colonial literature. To the newly freed nations from colonization and the multi-cultural imagens there was an identity crisis. This crisis is related one way or another to the fact that individuals are confused to find their real identity. They find themselves between a country that they belong to only from the cultural aspect but still counted as an outsider, and a country that is their original inhabitant, the one they belong to but still are casted away by its nation. This is what Hampton clearly showed through his play “white chameleon”. Chris have always struggled to balance between two countries but has “been as thoroughly attacked for being anti-British as [he] was one was for being British” these symmetrical assaults made him realize that politically he has nowhere to belong .