Identity
Cliff offers a complex rendering of identity in the novel. The character of Clare Savage is in some sense the embodiment of various conflicting identities involving race and class. From her father she has inherited a “white,” upper-class, distinctly metropolitan identity, while her mother and maternal grandmother represent almost the opposite—a rural working-class Afro-Creole identity. Clare is not so much the product of these familial histories as she is the representation of their collision inside one mind and body. She is all of them at once, not a mixture of the various constituent parts, as she recounts during her interrogation by the leader of the revolutionaries. Clare ultimately chooses to forge an identity counter to that of her father by recognizing and embracing her Jamaican heritage.[2] Many other characters have conflicting or contradictory identities as well. Christopher's loyalty to and hatred for his employers is another example; he is caught between the need to occupy a subservient identity to keep his job and the need to take care of his grandmother, to play the role of grandson. The two identities, which could be read as conflicting class identities, collide and create a disastrous outcome. Harry/Harriet is another example of a character with multiple identities. Like Clare, Harry/Harriet does not attempt to become a woman or to be fully a man; she/he is "not just sun, but sun and moon".[3] Instead, she/he[4] recognizes the existence of both genders within him/herself and it is this dual existence that he/she expresses outwardly to the world with his/her appearance. It seems then that Cliff conceptualizes identity as an innately plural, as opposed to singular, phenomenon.
History
The history of British colonialism in Jamaica is an important part of the novel. It is sometimes raised explicitly—as in Clare and Harry/Harriet's discussions—but it is always in the background of the novel, forming the texture of the ground over which the characters travel. The dominant historical narrative of Jamaica and Jamaican identity is told from a Eurocentric and colonial perspective. Clare's experiences and internal conflicts become a way of recovering Caribbean history, a "history erased by colonial fables."[5] At the end of Abeng, Clare begins to reconsider her place in Jamaican society, the relation between her personal and familial history and the history of colonial class and racial class oppression in Jamaica. The narrative of No Telephone to Heaven can be seen to carry that process through to a sort of conclusion. Whereas in Abeng, Clare tries to figure out a way of knowing and understanding history that is not exclusive or oppressive, in No Telephone to Heaven she is trying to figure out a way to act on her knowledge of history—particularly the sequences of Jamaica's colonial history, in which slavery, colonization, and subsequently a Third World, underdeveloped status determine the position of Jamaica today, as Belinda Edmondson notes (185-186). The problem of historical action is perhaps articulated most powerfully in the terrorists' doomed attack on the civilian film crew who are making a movie about the Maroons (featuring Cudjoe and Nanny Granny, two important figures from Jamaican history and Afro-Creole folklore). When the terrorists attack the crew, they are metaphorically attacking Jamaica's mainstream narrative and trying to impose their alternative historical narrative at any cost.
Migration
Clare travels often in the novel. First with her family she immigrates to the United States, and then studies in London before returning to Jamaica. As Clare moves between countries she in some sense rehearses the movements of slavery and colonialism. Just as goods and people moved from the Caribbean to the US and then on to England during slavery's heyday, Clare travels between the three countries in an effort to discover more about herself and her family. Instead of staying in England and Europe, however, she eventually returns to Jamaica. No matter where Clare is, when she is not in Jamaica she feels she is never really at “home.” When she is in England she realizes that the version of London that she learned about in school is far from accurate, and this only increases her sense of isolation—a fact highlighted by her friendship with Liz in England, who cannot understand why Clare is so angry about a National Front march (138-140). Clare's movements, and the historical echoes of her trajectory, determine her search for identity. It is only after she realizes that England is not the paradise that it seemed when she was in school that she can return to Jamaica—only after the myth of England as the center of the world is shattered is she able to realize that Jamaica is in fact the center of her world.
Cliff does not seem to approach any of these themes as distinct. Instead they are all presented as related, although at times in a contradictory manner (O’Driscoll 57). Even the three major foci of the novel are not as distinct as they may initially appear; Cliff goes to great lengths to highlight how history and identity are connected, and how migration is an historical phenomenon with far-reaching effects on contemporary identity. All the concerns of the novel can be read as linked to colonialism and post-colonialism, for both colonization and decolonization have had far-reaching impacts on every aspect of Jamaican history. The novel assesses the relationship between colonial and post-colonial Jamaica by exploring the various ways in which colonization and decolonization have shaped what it means to be Jamaican.
