A House for Mr Biswas

- A 1961 classic

VS Naipaul
A House For Mr
Biswas
- VS Naipaul • Subject – English
Declaration: • Class MA Sem-IV
This PPT, prepared by me,
is without plagiarism. Paper-XIII
• Name of the paper –
Name of the teacher –
Dr Kavita Arya,
African and Caribbean
Designation - - Assistant Literatrue
Professor, • Topic-A House For Mr
Department of English, MG
Kashi Vidyapith, Varanasi. Biswas
E mail – • Key words –
[email protected]
V S Naipaul
A House for Mr Biswas is "a work of
great comic power qualified with
firm and unsentimental
compassion."

- Anthony Burgess
 VS Naipaul

Born in Trinidad V. S. Naipaul (1932) was one of

the greatest novelists in English.
Naipaul is an Indian by blood, a Trinidadian by
birth and a Briton by citizenship.
 Life and Achievements
• He studied at University College, Oxford, and
afterwards settled in London.
• Author of more than twenty works of fiction
and nonfiction, Naipaul lived as a full time
writer.
• Besides the Nobel, Naipaul won several
awards including the Somerset Maugham
Award, the Booker Prize, the David Cohen
British Literature Award etc.
 Disporic novel
• A House for Mr. Biswas is often referred as a
novel from the diasporic angle.
• When colonialism started, Indians were
transported from their homelands to different
countries in order to serve as laborers.
• They settled in those countries but the
memory of their homeland kept on haunting
them.
 Homelessness
• A sense of homelessness and not belonging to
nowhere is a facet of their nostalgia and
longing for a home.
• This complex sentiment is one of the basic
features of the diasporic novels.
 Search for a Home

• A House for Mr Biswas is product of a

distinctive period in the development of
Naipaul as a writer.
• In this novel he is driven by the consciousness
of homelessness and search for a home.
• He is affectionate towards the homeland of his
birth.
 Revolt against Colonialism.
• Migration and displacement mark the basic
texture of a colonized society. And he paints it
raw.
• Homelessness is another word for rootless
existence.
• The novel is an expression of his revolt against
colonialism.
 Autographical Novel
• A House for Mr. Biswas is largely an
autobiographical novel about V.S. Naipaul’s own
family.
• He describes the life of Mr. Mohun Biswas who
represents Naipaul’s father and his struggle to
find freedom from entanglements of family,
tradition and economic condition.
• Coming from a poor laborer family in Trinidad,
Mohun Biswas dreams of having a house of his
own.
 The story
• Mohun Biswas lives in an overcrowded and
inhospitable surrounding where his status is that
of an unwelcome guest.
• The house belongs to his mother’s sister, Tara.
• Mohun is always humiliated by Tara’s brother-in-
law Bhandat.
• He has no escape. Then he decides to have his
own house,
• "I am going to get a job on my own. And I am
going to get my own house too. I am finished
with this" [p. 64].
 The story
• Mohun starts working as a sign-painter with
Tulsi family and enters into a clandestine
relationship with one girl of the family.
• When his love letter is discovered Mr. Biswas
is forced to marry Shama.
• It is not a happy marriage and he feels
trapped but four children are born from this
wedlock.
 The story
• Family life is torn between unending
strugglefor income, and bitterness at home.
• He attempts to run an independent shop but
is again forced to return to Tulisi’s house
where he feels suffocated.
• He dislikes the Hanuman House as it
represents imperialism.
 The story
• Mohun is constrained to move to Hanuman
house, but he hates the dictatorship of
Mrs.Tulsi.
• So he tries to buy his own House.
• His desire for a House becomes unattainable
due to poverty.
• He shifts to various places feels suffocated
everywhere.
 The story
• Finally Mohun starts working as a Journalist
for the tabloid Sentinel in Port of Spain. In this
job he gets some satisfaction and achieves
recognition.
• It is only after a life long struggle that Mr.
Biswas is able to buy a house. But he finds
that his experience after having a house is
entirely different from what he had hoped.
 The story
• Life in the colonial Trinidad is portrayed in this
novel through the character of Mr.Biswas.
• The life of Mr.Biswas resembles the life of Naipaul
himself.
• Mohun faces many obstacles in achieving
happiness because of a restrictive and suffocating
conventional society.
• Through the story of a man who fights to free
himself, Naipaul portrays the predicament of the
people entrapped in a colonial world.
 The story
• His individuality as a human being is
suppressed and he fails to achieve his dreams
not only because the society outside is
suppressive but because the family too is not
supportive.
• He is unable to provide properly for his family.
• The novel describes a rural society in the
beginning of the twentieth century.
 Search for Identity
• The entire environment corrodes his
individuality. The struggle against his
circumstances continues throughout his life.
• “At first I looked for this release in humor, but
as the horizon of my writing expandedI sought
to reconstruct my disintegrated society to
impose order on the world”(33).
 Identity Crisis
• He spends all his savings to get a new house but
the house is not suitable.
• He shifts again when Mrs. Tulsi offers him two
rooms. Here he realizes his responsibility as a
father and husband. Mr.Biswas looses his
freshness.
• Mohun feels he does not belong to anywhere
because of his up-rootedness. This results in an
identity crisis. He struggles to overcome his
traumatic life and is a product of his time and
place.
 Melancholy and loneliness
• Melancholy and loneliness mark the
atmosphere of the novel.
• Poverty and frustration, anger against racism
and ultimate realization of failure haunt the
consciousness of the protagonist. (Meyers
1948:27).
 Twin Frustrations
• His frustration begins at home and
overshadows his career and social life as well.
• This results in helpless anger and ineffective
rebellion.
• Internal frustration arises from inability in
fulfilling personal goals and lack of confidence.
External frustration is symbolized through
blocked road and difficult task.
 Unlucky
• The external frustration is caused by many
reasons including the feeling of being seen as
an unlucky person.
• He has six fingers and the feature is seen as a
sign of bad luck.
• The feature makes him an alien in his own
world.
 Conflict
• He experiences an unending conflict within
himself and also in his outside world.
• Hindu way of life, its superstitions and its
traditions multiply his frustrations.
• The novel is replete with the theme of identity
and trauma under a colonial rule.
 Predicament
• He tries his best to realize his individuality but
fails to achieve it.
• An individual’s inability to escape from his
predicament is a recurring note in the story
but no less important is his fight against it.
 Critical view
• “Everything he now saw become sullied by his
fear, every field, every house, every tree,
every turn in the road …so that by merely,
looking at the world, he was progressively
destroying his present and past”(66). Volume
4 Issue 4 September 2016 ISSN: 2320 – 2645
Shanlax International Journal of English.
 Struggle
• Naipaul’s characters strive hard to reconstruct
themselves according to changing situations.
• Naipaul shows their unending struggles and
failure.
• Freedom and emancipation elude them.
• The house of Mr Biswas is a symbol for
freedom from humiliation.
• Mohun grapples with obstacles but does not
give up.
 Critical views
• Naipaul presents a circular notion of history.
• Things like plot, setting, characterization, etc
become unimportant under his craftsmanship.
• Past, present and future mingle up and create
a whole.
 Critical views
• Some critics accept A House for Mr Biswas as
a great novel but many of them do not
recognize it as a representative work in post
colonialism.
• According to Cudjoe “Naipaul's writing is
locked in a colonial timewarp, fixed on the
figure of the mimic man who has no
subversive or redemptive characteristics.”
 Critical views
• A House for Mr. Biswas is the masterpiece of
V. S. Naipaul.
• The problem that he projects in his work is
how an individual resists or overcomes the
frustration and condition in migrations.
• This novel has three significant aspects.
Historical, Social and Psychological.
 Critical views
• The New York Review of Books about Naipaul
in 1980, Joan Didion described Naipaul in the
following words:
• The world Naipaul sees is a world dense with
physical and social phenomena, brutally alive
with complications and contradictions of
actual human endeavor.
 Critical views
• International Journal of English, Literature and
Social Science (IJELS) Vol-4, Issue-5, Sep – Oct
2019 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.45.27
ISSN: 2456-7620 www.ijels.com Page | 1417
….This world of Naipaul’s is in fact charged with
what can only be described as a romantic view of
reality, an almost unbearable tension between
the idea and the physical fact ... Naipaul has been
read widely because he had so many gifts as a
writer - suppleness, wit and most importantly an
unsparing eye for detail- that he could seemingly
do whatever he wanted.
 Critical views
• Another book is “V.S. Naipaul: A Writer of Indian
Diaspora”, edited by Manjeet Inder Singh. It
evaluates Naipaul’s novels from various points of
views.
• One another full length study is, “The Novels of V.
S. Naipaul: Quest for Order and Identity” by Rama
Devi. A book entitled “The Novels of V.S. Naipaul:
A Study in Theme and Form” by Shashi Kamra
also highlights the major themes of Naipaul.
 Questions and Topics

• 1. What experiences lead Anand to become a

writer?
• 2. What conclusions can you draw about
Naipaul’s life based on the book?
• 3. What are the immediate consequences of
Mohun’s love letter to Shama? What are its long-
term effects?
• 4. Does Mr. Biswas’ death, discussed in the
prologue and therefore known throughout the
novel, give a poignancy to his struggles?
 Questions and Topics
• 5. The characters in A House for Mr.
Biswas switch between Hindi and broken English.
What does this symbolize?
• 6. Why does Mohun find living with Tulsi family
so distasteful? Why do the Tulsis, find Mr. Biswas
unbearable?
• 7. Why does Mr. Biswas feel trapped by his wife
and family?
• 8. How does the success of Mr Biswas as a
Journalist change his status within the Tulsi
family?
 Questions and Topics
• 10. In what ways is Mr. Biswas a rebel? On what
occasions does he defy others and stand up for
himself?
• 11. What does the novel say about the role of religion
in Trinidadian society? How does religion affect the
characters in the novel?
• 12. Discuss some comic situations in A House for Mr.
Biswas or the importance of comic element in the
narrative style of VS Naipaul.
• 13. How does Mr. Biswas’s longing for a house
symbolize the struggle for independence of Trinidad.
 Some other books by VS Naipaul
• The Mystic Masseur,
• Miguel Street,
• Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion,
• Guerrillas,
• A Bend in the River,
• Among the Believers,
• A Turn in the South,
• Between Father and Son.
 REFERENCES

• 1. Clemens, Walter C. Third World in V. S.

Naipaul, 1982.Print.
• 2. Adams, Robert Martin. V.S.Naipaul. Hudson
Review, 1989. Print.
• 3. Dr. Pandian I. B. Life and Works of V. S.
aipaul: A Critical Study. Kanpur: Bhaskar
Publications, 2009. Print.
 REFERENCES

• 4. ASCHCROFT, B. et al (1990).The Empire Writes

Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial
Literatures.London and New York: Routledge.
• 5. CHILDS, P. and WILLIAMS, P. (1997).An
Introduction to Post-Colonial Theory.London:
Prentice Hall. [3] DIDION, J. (June 12, 1980
Issue).Without Regret or Hope. The New York
Review of Books.
 REFERENCES
• 6. HAMNER, R.D. (1979). Critical Perspectives
on V.S. Naipaul. London: Heinmann.
• 7. KAMRA, S. (1997). The Novels of V.S.
Naipaul: A Study in Theme and Form. New
Delhi: Prestige Books. International Journal of
English, Literature and Social Science (IJELS)
Vol-4, Issue-5, Sep – Oct 2019
https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.45.27 ISSN:
2456-7620 www.ijels.com Page | 1419
 REFERENCES
• 8. KING, B.A. (1993). V.S. Naipaul ( Modern Novelists).
London: Macmillan.
• 9. MOHAN,C.R. (2004). Postcolonial Situation in the
Novels of V.S. Naipaul. Delhi: Atlantic.
• 10. NAIPAUL, V.S. (1961). A House for Mr Biswas.
London: Picador, Print.
• 11. NANDAN, K{Kavita}. ( 2008).V.S. Naipaul: A
Diasporic Vision. Journal of Caribbean Literatures.Vol.
5, No. 2. pp. 75-88
• 12. RAMADEVI, N. (1996). The Novels of V. S. Naipaul:
Quest for Order and Identity. New Delhi: Prestige
Books.
 Declaration
• This PPT is for the use of students of MA final, 4th
semester (English) students.
• The matter has been prepared by me and I
hereby declare that it is without plagiarism.
• The PPT also contains the list of reference
material.
• - Dr Kavita Arya,
• Assistant Professor, Department of English,
• MG Kashi Vidyapith, Varanasi.
Thank you

Dr Kavita Arya