A recurring theme in Selvon's character development addresses upward social mobility. This mobility is clouded by the character's designation as the "other". Selvon's characters are offered the worst jobs, they are exploited by housing landlords, and their romantic ventures oftentimes only includes sex. Their accents and race mark them as outsiders and force them to form a group identity based on the principle of congregation via segregation. Though they have various coping mechanisms: sex, lavish spending, drinking, hard work, appeasing white women, etc., the novel ultimately conveys unity in their experiences and the self-hatred, disappointment, and struggle that haunt them. The protagonist, Moses, describes London as a lonely city that "divide[s] up in little worlds, and you stay in the world where you belong to and you don't know anything about what is happening in the other ones except what you read in the papers."[3] Against a backdrop of invisibility, many of the characters struggle with a sense of failed promise. Regardless of their actions, a certain sense of stagnancy prevails. Moses says: "...I just lay there on the bed thinking about my life, how after all these years I ain't get no place at all, I still the same way, neither forward nor backward."[4]
Helon Habila has noted: "One imagines immediately the loneliness that must have gnawed at these immigrants whose memory of their sunny, convivial island communities was their only refuge at such moments. But although this is a book about exile and alienation, it is not a sad book. Even when his characters are under-going the direst of tribulations, Selvon has a way of capturing the humour in the situation.... The message of The Lonely Londoners is even more vital today than in 50s Britain: that, although we live in societies increasingly divided along racial, ideological and religious lines, we must remember what we still have in common – our humanity."[5]
