 Discuss ‘A house for mr. biswas’by v.s.naipaul as one of the twentieth century’s finest novels.

Name                             :         Bhaliya Uma H.

Roll No                          :         01.

SEM                               :         04. M.A. part -2.

Paper No                        :         E-C-401.

Paper Name                   :         New Literature.

Date                               :         26/03/2012.

Topic Name                   :         Assignment on.

“Discuss ‘A house for Mr.   Biswas’ by v.s.naipaul as one of the twentieth

Century’s finest novels.”

Dept                               :         Department of English.

Submitted To                 :         Dr. Dilip Sir Barad.

                                                Department of English.

                                                Bhavnagar University Bhavnagar.

v  Discuss ‘A house for mr. biswas’by v.s.naipaul as one of the twentieth century’s finest novels.

‘A house for mr. biswas’ is a finest work of v.s.naipaul. this novel is very comic and lighter in tone. And this novel for the complexity of a house for mr biswas is its narrative point of view. A house for mr. biswas is an unforgettable story inspired by naipaul’s father that has been hailed as one of the twentieth century’s finest novels. In this novel mr. mohun biswas has been fighting against destiny to achieve some semblance of independence, only to face a lifetime of calamity. Shuttled from one residence to another after the droening death of his father, for which he is inadvertently responsible, mr. biswas yearns for a place he can call home. But when he marries into the domineering tulsi family, on whom he indignantly becomes dependent, mr. biswas embarks on an arduous and endless and struggle to weaken their hold over him and purchase a house of his own. Thus, a house for mr. biswas masterfully evokes a man’s quest for autonomy against an emblematic postcolonial canvas. So this work of great comic power qualified with firm and unsentimental compassion.

Ø  Introduction of the author.

‘A house for mr.biswas by v.s.naipaul’s masterpiece. Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born in 1932 at Chaguanas in central Trinidad. V. S. Naipaul grew up in Trinidad as part of a large family which included one brother, Shiva, five sisters, and fifty cousins. The family were Brahmins, Hindus of the highest caste and strictly orthodox, and his childhood was spent in a quasi-Indian environment. they went to schools where they mixed with negroes and Europeans, and spoke English, rather than Hindi, as their first language. Naipaul describes himself as having been ‘born an unbeliever’. In 1938 the family moved to the capital city of Trinidad, Port of Spain, and the Hindu rituals became rarer. He describes this period in the opening chapter of his novel An Area of Darkness and comments: ‘The family life that I have been describing began to dissolve when I was six or seven; when I was fourteen it had ceased to exist’. This dissolution is described also in A House for Mr Biswas through the Tulsi family. Naipaul’s father was a journalist; he felt very close to him, though he described him as a ‘defeated man’, and he is the prototype for Mr Biswas. Like Anand, the son of Mr Biswas. He was in England  when his father died. After graduating with an Honours degree in English, he worked as a reviewer and in 1955 married an Englishwoman.

His early fiction is that the mystic masseur (1957), the suffrage of elvira (1958), migvel street (1959) and his novel a house for mr biswas, which he finished writing in 1960, and it shows a fuller involvement with life in Trinidad, and transcends any limitations imposed by cultural barriers. And his next work, the middle passage (1962). Thus, v.s.naipaul is the author of more than twenty books of fiction and non-fiction and the recipient of numerous honovrs, including the nobel prize in 2001, the booker prize in 1971, and this novel is best work of him.

Ø  ‘A house for mr. biswas.’

A House for Mr. Biswas is the story about a Trinidad native of Indian ancestry. In this novel is approximately the forty-six years of mr. biswas’s life between about 1905 and 1951. And Mohun Biswas is nominally Hindu, and he questions much of traditional Hindu Indian culture. but The novel has been called tragicomic. Mr. Biswas is ultimately portrayed as a man of quiet dignity, who meets the challenges of his times with grace. And The novel is tragic because life itself is tragic. And also funny. And other thing is that Mohun Biswas is born to a poor but high caste family in an agrarian setting. And The family suffers a reversal when Mohun is around seven years old, leaving them to rely on the benevolence of wealthy relatives. And Mr. Biswas works a variety of jobs and experiences a series of setbacks. And after all of this while end of the novel. The end of the novel a whole history has passed before our eyes chronicles the stages in the loss of india, and also it’s shift from country to town, from hindi to English, from a preoccupation with fate to a preoccupation with ambition. So that as we move from the world of raghu to the world of anand, we are dealing not only with the life of a man but also with the history of a culture. So through this novel ‘A house for mr. biswas v.s.naipaul’s present reality of mr biswas own frustration and an unforgettable story and one of the twentieth century’s finest novels.

Ø  Themes, Style and structure.

A house for mr.biswas is written in third person past of view of an omniscient third party narrator. Who knows everything incliding the thoughts and feeling of many charecters. The point of view style relatively close to mr.biswas, the protagonist. The novel is divided into two parts, enclosed by a Prologue and an Epilogue. The novel also traces the rise and fall of the Tulsi family, and the changes in society over a period of fifty years. In this novel including the two major world wars – the second of which does impinge on the novel with its economic effects and the growing American influence. Naipaul does not wholly conform to the model defined above. The hero’s death, for instance, is reported in the Prologue, and throughout the novel there is a subtle series of cross-references and recurring images. And also that the most striking characteristic of Naipaul’s style is his power of observation. He tries to shows precision and clarity, as well as a close attention to detail and an ability to create mood and atmosphere in a realistic and evocative way. Thus, in this novel the sufferings of Mr Biswas more intensely because of this careful and delicate contrast between the awfulness of a particular event and the contained way in which it is described.for  example of the doll’s house which Mr Biswas has given his daughter, one of the most traumatic experiences which he has in the novel. And the event is described in a simple style which allows the reader to imagine the emotions involved vividly.and  Mr Biswas discovers the doll’s house thrown against a fence in the yard at Hanuman House: ‘A broken door, a ruined window, a staved-in wall or even roof – he had expected that. But not this. The doll’s house did not exist. He saw only a bundle of firewood. None of its parts was whole. Its delicate joints were exposed and useless’.

A House for Mr Biswas is much humor novel and also tragedy. And also that the dominant tone of the novel is melodramatic. In this novel, The novel presents the struggle for identity for an Indian in Trinidad whose agrarian values are challenged by Western cultural influences when he moves to the city. And Mohun Biswas must reconcile the apparently contradictory values and traditions of East and West, and forge an authentic self in relation to both family and society. Novel is present reality but This quest is not simply a recognition of some inner traits, but rather the gradual unfolding of choices made within the context of new situations, restraints, and sources of fulfillment. Mohun's journey is from an agrarian village ruled by the whimsies of a Hindu pundit to the towns of Trinidad and finally to Port of Spain. So that are the social concerns themes of a house for mr biswas. But A House for Mr Biswas Techniques and Literary Precedents present Two radically different novelistic traditions have influenced A House for Mr Biswas: the twentith-century English social novel, with its focus on an individual life story amid a large cast of characters, and the existential novels of Camus, particularly The Stranger. In this novel Naipaul present Indian in Trinidad, and a dispossessed colonial in England, experienced a similar difficulty charting a life among traditions that seem alien to him. In this novel monun to build a home that challenges his life's absurdity. The house is less important as a structure than as an idea and symbol of emotional commitment.

An underlying theme in A House for Mr. Biswas, and in Naipaul's early work in general, is anti-colonialism. Trinidad, and by extension all thirdworld countries, are not depicted as merely shabby imitations of British orAmerican culture. And also they have a varied, vibrant, colorful culture oftheir own, which is at least as interesting as that of the wealthier nations. And While Mr. Biswas is studying writing from a correspondence school, and his son Anand is studying English composition for his exams, they are repeatedly instructed to compose essays that relate to upper class British life. Thus, in this novel v.s.naipaul’s present reality and a house for mr.biswas is more mature and assured work than naipaul’s earlier novels. This novel is best work of him.

Ø  The character of Mr Biswas

Mohun Biswas (who is referred to as Mr Biswas even when still a small baby) is a person who is subject to misfortune, as the ill omens present at his birth suggest. He is marked, however, by his continual resilience and optimism. Despite his feeling of being trapped by the Tulsis, he fights to maintain his independence and feels confident that life will eventually yield to him its sweetness and romance. A sense of despair and disillusionment troubles him later in life, but he fights against that too, and retains faith in the future both through his children and through achieving the status of a house-owner. At Hanuman House he conducts his campaign against the Tulsis with humour and inventiveness which show his wit and sense of absurdity. The complex relationship between freedom and commitment. Freedom is shown as something which is desired, but feared at the same time, as it can cause feelings of emptiness and of not belonging or being necessary to another person or to society as a whole. These feelings are frequently at war in Mr Biswas, and this conflict is shown in his changing attitudes to Hanuman House

Mr Biswas displays also a certain naïvety or innocence in the judgements he forms of other people. It seems that he can be easily misled by people who can take advantage of his fears and ambitions. This deception happens with Moti and the lawyer Seebaran at The Chase; with the carpenter, Maclean, at Green Vale; and with the solicitor’s clerk. At Hanuman House also he is deceived into thinking that he is marrying into a wealthy family and will receive a large dowry, but this hope proves hollow. A further concept that Naipaul is illustrating in the novel is the difference that can exist between appearance and reality, and this contrast is often a source of humour. The walls of Hanuman House appear to be concrete, but are in fact, as Mrs Tulsi proudly tells him, made of clay bricks. This disparity is shown most clearly in the house in Sikkim Street which again looks deceptively solid and deceives Mr Biswas, and then, comically, the Tuttles. Mr Biswas himself is not all that he appears to be. As he says sadly to Shama: ‘That is the whole blasted trouble. I don’t look like anything at all. Shopkeeper, lawyer, doctor, labourer, overseer – I don’t look like any of them.’ As one of the Tulsi sons-in-law and as a journalist he can achieve a kind of status, but has always to return to his ‘crowded, shabby room’. During his job as investigator of Deserving Destitutes, he reflects that the conditions he is living in are as bad as the people about whom he is writing. This element of vulnerability and lack of certainty help to make Mr Biswas into a human and sympathetic person, as well as a kind of Everyman with whom we can identify. This also explains his words to his son during his breakdown at Green Vale when Anand asks him in a bewildered way ‘Who are you?’ Mr Biswas replies: ‘I am just somebody. Nobody at all. I am just a man you know’. Thus he resents, as we all do, the attempts of other people to categorise him and so reduce his individuality. He even alters his daughter’s birth certificate where he is described by Seth as a labourer, and signs himself ‘proprietor’. His attempts at self-definition, then, constitute the main body of the novel. By finally owning his own house away from the Tulsis, who are described at the end of the prologue as ‘that large, disintegrating and indifferent family’, he has succeeded in laying claim to his portion of the earth and escaped the fate of having ‘lived and died as one had been born, unnecessary and unaccommodated’.

Ø  ‘A House for Mr Biswas is a novel about the relationship between father and son’.

 A House for Mr Biswas can be described as a novel about the father-son relationship, and it is concerned with other themes also, such as Mr Biswas’s struggle for independence and his search for identity. The relationship between father and son is intensified by the many traits they have in common. Mr Biswas shares his discovery of Dickens’s novels with Anand and makes him write out and learn the meanings of difficult words. We are told that he does this not out of strictness or ‘as part of Anand’s training’ but because he does not wish his son to be like him. His desires for his son centre on the idea that he should receive a good education and so be able to earn his living by following a profession which does not involve humiliation and dependence. He takes a close interest in his son’s education, criticising his text-books, paying for private lessons, and for the diet of milk and prunes so valued by Mrs Tulsi. He even helps him to write an essay which he uses in the exhibition examination. Anand seems to accept his father’s interest and guidance, although resenting it at times as, for instance, when elaborate preparations are made for the examination and he has to take his father’s wrist-watch and pen in case his own do not work. He understands his father’s ambitions for him since, as Naipaul tells us in a revealing comment: ‘Father and son, each saw the other as weak and vulnerable, and each felt a responsibility for the other, a responsibility which, in times of particular pain, was disguised by exaggerated authority on the one side, exaggerated respect on the other’. This protectiveness is perhaps the dominant note of their relationship. It is seen when Mr Biswas tells Anand about his disgrace at Pundit Jairam’s in order to comfort his son when he was in trouble for soiling his trousers at school; and again, on Anand’s side, when he asserts that he will stay at Green Vale with his father because ‘they was going to leave you alone’. He begins to take a close interest in his father; this is shown in a minor incident which again draws parallels between them. The closeness between father and son is revealed in several episodes. A striking example occurs after Anand nearly drowns at the dockside where Mr Biswas was clowning with Owad and Shekhar and trying to get his son to join in. Anand is incensed and humiliated, and, as with his father’s prose poem about his mother, uses writing to exorcise some of these emotions.  Anand is also concerned about his father’s status, despite his claim that he does not want to be like him. He is reassured when his father tells him that his schoolfriend’s father is not his boss at the Sentinel, nor is he treated like an office boy. We see here the traditional idea of a son defining his identity against that of his father, but there is also the fear that his father is being badly treated. They are concerned about each other’s successes and failures. When Anand is dejected after the examination, thinking he has failed, Mr Biswas tries to cheer him up by saying that ‘No true effort is ever wasted’, to which his son replies moodily ‘What about you?’ and though they sleep on the same bed ‘neither spoke to the other for the rest of the evening’. Mr Biswas is then cheered by receiving a letter inviting him to join a literary group, and he repeats his adage about the value of true effort. Anand, however, recognises the extravagance of his father’s elation ‘but he was in no mood to give comfort, to associate himself with weakness’ and ‘he handed back the letter to Mr Biswas without a word’. In the final section of the novel, where Mr Biswas is dismissed from the Sentinel, we are told that he ‘needed his son’s interest and anger’ since ‘In all the world there was no one else to whom he could complain’. Although he had earlier replied to his son’s gloomy, self-pitying letters with long humorous ones, he now forgets Anand’s own pain and sends him ‘a hysterical, complaining, despairing letter’ which elicits only a brief reply. Anand then goes back on his promise to return home, and is still in England when his father dies. This refusal to return can be interpreted as Anand’s reluctance to associate himself with pain and weakness. A passage which occurs shortly before the Epilogue tells us, however, that Anand is not untouched by memories of his home and family. There is a detailed catalogue of memories which is seen through Anand’s eyes and refers to ‘a time of new separations and yearnings, in a library grown suddenly dark’ when an association will trigger off thoughts of ‘the hot noisy week before Christmas in the Tulsi Store’. It is clear that A House for Mr Biswas is, to a large extent, a novel about the relationship between father and son, and the growing closeness and identification between them adds greatly to the richness and psychological realism of the novel.