Critical Analysis of A House for Mr Biswas by V S Naipaul - Part 1

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    V S Naipaul is a Trinidadian writer of Indian Origin.  He is a prolific writer and his novels are based on the lives  of Indian migrants in Trinidad. He portrays the complexities of the life of people in the Caribbean Islands, which are settlement colonies. In these countries, bulk of the population are immigrants from different parts of the world; for example, there are people from France,Africa, England, America, China, India etc... The Caribbeans do not share a common language, culture, nationality, race and religion, though they are part of a single nation. In other words, the people of Trinidad and other countries in the Caribbean are strangers to themselves. This absence of a collective identity intensifies the search for cultural roots and this is a recurrent theme in the writings of Naipaul. His novels record  the predicament of postcolonial subjects who have lost their country of origin and failed to build a cultural home in the countries they live in. It is reported that Naipaul’s great grandmother  migrated from India to Trinidad at the end of the nineteenth century.

Naipaul and India/ Indians at Trinidad 

        In the 19th century, Indians migrated to countries like Trinidad, Fiji, Mauritius etc...for survival. There were two types of migration; Indentured labourers and free migration. The first group were unskilled labourers from Indian villages who were reduced to penury by the exploits of the colonial government and the later were usually traders from Sindh and Gujarat who left the country to improve their social standing. The indentured labourers signed an agreement with a specific employer to work with him/her for five years at a fixed wage. 

These labourers are free once they complete their five year term and most of them desire to go home. This is never materialised and they continue to live in the colony. They try to reproduce Indian cultural, religious life in the new country; thus becoming a new social group. Naipaul traces his cultural roots in India and is often disappointed by the vast geography and hybridity of India. He desires to have pure ancestral roots in the country but India baffles him with its heterogeneous multitudes of languages, races,cultures and geography. This leads to his ambiguous relation with the home country. He maintains an ironic detachment from his Indian characters

Plot Outline of the Novel

The novel begins with a prologue and ends with an epilogue. In the prologue, the narrator portrays the last days of the protagonist Mr. Biswas. He buys a house in Sikkim Street and is returning home from hospital. Though the house is defective, he is happy to own a home and tries his best to make the house more hospitable. His family also feels anchored in the house.

Part One

The novel is divided into two parts: Part One and Part Two. In part one, the narrator records the life of Mr. Mohun Biswas from childhood to his journey to Port of Spain. Part two begins with his life in the port city and concludes with his life in the Sikkim Street. In the epilogue that follows, the narrator ties the loose ends and offers a glimpse at the future life of his major characters including the death of the protagonist.

In the first chapter of part one titled The Pastoral, readers are taken to the hut of a plantation labourer named Raghu (Mr. Biswas’ father) and his family. His wife Bipti and two sons-Pratap and Prasad- and daughter Dehuti and the youngest Biswas live in the hut. They lead a miserable life; limited resources, quarreling parents,and an alienated life in rural Trinidad. The birth of Mr. Biswas adds to the misery of the family as Pundit Sitaram predicts that the child may harm the life of its father. Raghu, the miser, is restricted from visiting the child before 21 days of its birth. The prediction turns true and Raghu drowns and the family, after offering him a ceremonial burial as per Indian traditions, leaves the hut in the plantation. They seek refuge in the household of Bipti’s sister Tara at Pagotes and they are given a tenement. His brothers work in the plantation and sister Dehuti elopes with Ramchand, a lower caste hindu worker, and Biswas is sent to Canadian Missionary School where people are hostile and a teacher named Lal, a lower caste christian convert, ridicules him for not having a birth certificate. At school, he befriends with Alec who teaches him to write letters exquisitely and later they take up the job of painting signs.

Later, Mr. Biswas lands in Arwacas and Seth, a prominent member of the Tulsi family, hires him to paint the sign board of Tulsi store. During his work in the store, Mr. Biswas falls in love with one of the Tulsi daughters named Shama and writes a love letter to her. The next day, Mrs Tulsi, the matriarch of the house, asks him to come to the magnificent Hanuman House. He is quizzed on his love letter and to his surprise, she offers him Shama’s hand in marriage. He consents, marries and regrets. Nevertheless, he is given a room in the Hanuman House with so many other sons-in-law. He resents the house and the huge crowd in it and describes it as ‘monkey house’ and the two privileged sons as ‘gods’. He insults Owad by spitting and throwing food onto him. He is beaten and is asked to leave the house.

In the next phase, Biswas lives in a remote village named The Chase. The Tulsis offer him a shop they have purchased and a house with two rooms and a kitchen. He feels insecure and lonely at The Chase and develops symptoms of hysteria. Though Shama’s presence provides security and stability to his existence, he fights with his wife and she leaves for Hanuman House. He is left with meager resources and hostility of other shopkeepers. The Chase episode comes to an end when a local thug Mungroo appears at the shop and he buys provisions on credit and never pays him. Mungroo is a self proclaimed guardian of the village who has assembled a group of young people from the locality and they practice stick fighting. They organise a yearly ritual mounting sticks and this is a reproduction of a north Indian village ritual. Mungroo refuses to pay and files a suit against Biswas on damaging his credit and his business turns sour. Meanwhile, Biswas symptoms of hysteria become more evident. He returns to Hanuman House and Seth proposes to insure and burn the shop so that he may be credited with an insurance amount. Biswas agrees to this.

Next, Biswas moves to Green Vale as a driver cum supervisor of the Tulsis. He is provided with a room in the barracks where the plantation labourers are living. Barracks are constructed in a long line to offer only shelter to its occupants; it lacks basic facilities like toilet, kitchen.He finds life tedious and miserable and plans to build a home behind a grove of trees nearby. He gifts Savi with a doll's house, which was broken by Shama to please the Tulsi households. His attempt to claim Savi fails as she refuses to leave Hanuman House and then his attention turns to his son Anand who sticks to him. Using the money he gets from the insuraburn, he builds a house. He lives in the new house with Anand and on a stormy night, the house collapses and they are taken to Hanuman House. He falls unconscious and  rests in the Blue Room and gradually recovers. The Tulsis do their best to improve his condition.

        
Part Two

The Part Two of the novel presents Mr. Biswas walking along the road holding a suitcase. He is determined to start life afresh and has left the family with the Tulsis. He gets into a bus to Port of Spain and lands at the house of Ramchand, his brother in law. He ran into the editor of The Sentinel, Mr. Burnett, who is impressed by Biswas’ story and he is appointed as a reporter of the newspaper with a salary of fifteen dollars per fortnight. He visits his family at Hanuman House and he is warmly welcomed by the members. His wife Shama also respects him and his new role as a popular reporter of the Sentinel. He takes his family to Port of  Spain and they occupy a vacant room rented to them by Mrs. Tulsi. They enjoy life in the port city. Meanwhile Owad leaves for England to study medicine and the family assembles and celebrates; thus initiating new rituals.

A shift in power at The Sentinel leads to fading the glory of Mr. Bisawas. Mr. Burnett is fired and Biswas is directed to factual, dull, and tedious reporting. Later, he is asked to enquire and prepare the list of ‘Deserving Destitutes,’an initiative by the Sentinel to attract public attention by funding welfare schemes. During this period, a conflict of interest leads to the breaking up of the Tulsis; Seth on one side and the rest of the Tulsis under Mrs Tulsi leave for an estate in Shorthills. Mr Biswas joins the Tulsis at Shorthills and builds a house for his family in the estate. This house catches fire and they leave for Port of Spain.

Back at Port of Spain, Biswas shares the house with Shuttles, Govind and Besdai, the widow. As the urge to get educated gains momentum, the widows send their children to the house and the house gets crowded. Biswas’ desire to have a house fades as he is suffering from illness and the overcrowded house suffocated him. His long service as special investigator of Deserving Destitutes helps him to get a new job as Community Welfare Officer. This government  job offers him money and power to pursue his dream. He buys a car, new suits and goes for a holiday to Balandra.

Owad’s return to Port of Spain diminishes the prospects of Biswas’ dreams. He is kicked out of the house and later restored to a single room in the house. An altercation between Mr. Biswas and Owad lead to the ousting of Biswas from the home and hastily he buys a defective home in Sikkim Street. He is late to realise the flaws of the house and later he accepts the flaws and makes it habitable for him.

Critical Analysis of A House for Mr Biswas by V S Naipaul - Part 2