House for Mr. Biswas: Naipaul

The Nobel Laureate of 2001, Naipaul’s view of art reminds one of Carlyle’s perception o the writer as a kind of secular-clergy as Ian Baruma suggests. A House for Mr. Biswas, “The marked signature of failure” of hero is the story of Naipaul’s father Seeparsed, leads one to the disquieting realization:

When everybody wants to fight, there’s nothing to fight for. Everybody wants to fight his own little war, everybody is a guerrilla.

The hero was born at he inauspicious midnight hour, like Salim Sinai in The Midnight’s Children, as the narrator describes Mr. Biswas:

Malnutrition gave him the shallowest of chests, the thinnest of limbs; it stunned his growth and gave him a soft rising belley. And thus, perceptibly, he grew.

Mr. Biswas “the barking puppy dog” was a hero lacking in heroism but has been talked about as if he were heroic, and has been described passing “his tongue above his upper lip to make it tough the knobby tip of his nose,” then he is shown, “spitting carefully, trying to let his spittle hand down to the floor without breaking it.”

The theme of individual fulfillment and of the crumbling of the society comes together. The novel is set against the background of the socio-political changes in Trinidad during the Second World War when England had leased to the American forces its military based in Carribbean. The search for self on the part of Mr. Biswas began as early as he developed a consciousness of the world around him. At Pegotes, living in a one-room tenement with his mother, Bipti, at Bhandat’s sharing a room with his rowdy sons—Rabidat and Jagdat, at Pandit Jairam’s—wherever he is “before the Tulsis,” he has been shown greatly concerned with his identity and his role in life. For him

It is far more difficult to sever relationship between the old and new or the past and the present, than a simple desire to do so may imply.

The most significant trait of Mr. Biswas is his rebelliousness at the moment he realizes that he is trapped into Hanuman House “a blasrws zoo” by Tulsi Family “this blasted fowl run”. He called Shama’s, his wife, brother are called “the little gods,” Seth as “the big Boss”, Mrs. Tulsi as “Old Queen,” “The Old Hen”, “A she-fox” and son on.

Mr. Bsiwas is so firmly ensconced in Tulsidom that it is only Deu ex Machina, i.e., divine intervention or the role of chance that finally succeeds in wearing him away from it. It was chance that he revealed to him his gift for painting letters in Mr. Lal’s classroom. It was chance which made him write a note of love to Shama under the provocation of Jagdat and Rabidat, which ultimately landed him in Hanuman House. All in all, Mr. Biswas, the failed Pandit, is not a wholly admirable character.

Mr. Biswas “was struck again and again by the wonder of being in his own house, the audacity of it” but he failed to make it. He wanted to forget “The memories of Hanuman House, The Chase, Green Vale, Shorthills, the Tulsi in Port of Spain would become jumbled, blurred; events would be telescoped, many forgotten.” At the end, he found himself in his own house, even though he has had a heart attack and he is on rather frail health, he would not mind dying in his own house:

How terrible it would have been …. To have died among the Tulsis …. Worse to have lived without even attempting to lay claim to one’s portion of the earth.”

The impression left is undeniably of the futility of the whole endeavor. Shelly’s Ozymandias like, Mr. Biswas fretted and fumed all his life for something which could not outlast. The last sentence of the novel runs:

“Afterwards the sisters returned to their respective homes and Shama and the children went back in the perfect to the Empty house.”

Here the house rendered “empty” after Mr. Biswas’s death at the age of 46.

One can perhaps conclude by suggesting that as regards the portrayal of the lives and activities of the immigrant Hindus in Trinidad, it can be averred that A House for Mr. Biswas anticipates Naipaul’s triology on India—India: A Wounded Civilization (1964); India” An Area of Darkness (1977) and India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990).

A House for Mr Biswas: Naipaul

A House for Mr Biswas is a 1961 novel by V. S. Naipaul, significant as Naipaul's first work to achieve acclaim worldwide. It is the story of Mr Mohun Biswas, an Indo-Trinidadian who continually strives for success and mostly fails, who marries into the Tulsi family only to find himself dominated by it, and who finally sets the goal of owning his own house. Drawing some elements from the life of Naipaul's father, the work is primarily a sharply-drawn look at life that uses postcolonial perspectives to view a vanished colonial world. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked A House for Mr Biswas #72 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time magazine included the novel in its "TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005"

Mohun Biswas (Mr Biswas) is born in rural Trinidad to parents of Indian origin. His birth is considered inauspicious as he is born "in the wrong way" and with an extra finger. A pundit prophesies that the newly born Mr Biswas "will be a lecher and a spendthrift. Possibly a liar as well", and that he will "eat up his mother and father." The pundit further advises that the boy be kept "away from trees and water. Particularly water". A few years later, Mohun leads a neighbour's calf, which he is tending, to a stream. The boy, who has never seen water "in its natural form", becomes distracted watching the fish and allows the calf to wander off. Mohun hides in fear of punishment. His father, believing his son to be in the water, drowns in an attempt to save him, thus in part fulfilling the pundit's prophecy. This leads to the dissolution of Mr Biswas's family. His sister is sent to live with a wealthy aunt and uncle, Tara and Ajodha, while Mr Biswas, his mother, and two older brothers go to live with other relatives.

Mr Biswas is withdrawn prematurely from school and apprenticed to a pundit, but is cast out on bad terms. Ajodha then puts him in the care of his alcoholic and abusive brother Bhandat which also comes to a bad result. Finally, Mr Biswas now becoming a young man decides to set out to make his own fortune. He encounters a friend from his days of attending school who helps him get into the business of sign-writing. While on the job, Mr Biswas attempts to romance a client's daughter and his advances are misinterpreted as a wedding proposal. He is drawn into a marriage which he does not have the nerve to stop and becomes a member of the Tulsi household.

With the Tulsis, Mr Biswas becomes very unhappy with his wife Shama and her overbearing family, which bears a slight resemblance to the Capildeo family into which Naipaul's father married. He is usually at odds with the Tulsis and his struggle for economic independence from the oppressive household drives the plot. The Tulsi family (and the big decaying house they live in) represents the traditional communal world, the way life is lived, not only among the Hindu immigrants of Trinidad but throughout Africa and Asia as well. Mr Biswas is offered a place in it, a subordinate place to be sure, but a place that's guaranteed and from which advancement is possible.

But Mr Biswas rejects that. He is, without realizing it or thinking it through but through deep and indelible instinct, a modern man. He wants to BE, to exist as something in his own right, to build something he can call his own. That is something the Tulsis cannot deal with, and that is why their world—though that traditional world, like the old Tulsi house which is its synecdoche, is collapsing—conspires to drag him down.[3] Nevertheless, despite his poor education, Mr Biswas becomes a journalist, has four children with Shama, and attempts (more than once, with varying levels of success) to build a house that he can call his own. He becomes obsessed with the notion of owning his own house and it becomes a symbol of his independence and merit.

Thus, A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS (1961) is often regarded as Naipaul's masterpiece. It tells the tragicomic story of the search for independence and identity of a Brahmin Indian living in Trinidad. The protagonist, Mohun Biswas, was partly modelled after the author's father. Naipaul has said about this character and his father: "My father was a profounder man in every way. And his wounds are deeper than the other man can say. It's based on him, but it couldn't be the real man." Biswas has been unlucky from his birth, but all he wants is a house of his own – it is the solid basis of his existence. The story, which fuses social comedy and pathos, follows his struggle in variety of jobs, from sign painter to journalist, to his final triumph. Later Naipaul returned to his father in BETWEEN FATHER AND SON (1999), a record of their correspondence in the early 1950s.