A Distinct Literary Personality

If one looks at the biographical details of Sir V.S Naipaul , One is just

stunned, Apart from being Noble Laureate , Booker prize winner , holding

knighthood, how many awards he has won, how many honorary degrees he

has received from universities all over , this all can make one feel so over

whelmed that one is likely to loose one's habit of critical reading of the text

and one may just start focusing on all the literacy achievements of the

author.

Background of Naipaul's interest in India

Despite being overwhelmed by the literacy achievements of Naipaul , one

needs to look at the author's search for Indian roots, which he tried in his

many trips to India between 1960 to 1990 and come out with a trilogy of

travel writing "An Area of Darkness." (1964) " India A million Mutinies

Now " _1990).

Fiction and Non Fiction

V.S Naipaul has by now 34 books to his credit, out of which 16 are fiction

writing and 28 are in the non fiction category. Author's search for Indian

roots is reflected in many of his fiction works as well, particularly in 'A

House for Mr. Biswas ', first published in 1961, his fourth fictional work ,

which brought him much fame and still one of his major work or a

1
masterpiece. Naipaul's travel trilogy about India was probably inspired by

this novel.

A House for Mr. Biswas

This is the book , which Naipaul has himself acknowledged as

'breakthrough ' in an interview to Patrick Markham , published in April,

2011 issue of 'literary Review' .

This novel is interesting apart from other things , about Trinidadian Indians

transition from their mother tongues Hindu/ others to colonial language

English , which was forced not by colonial regime , but by the Indian

parents themselves under the cultural hegemony of regime and in

ignorance about the children's capacity for language acquition that they

could be as much competent in English , even in more languages , without

ditching their mother tongues Hindi, African or others.

First trip to India :

After the success of 'A House for Mr. Biswas', in, a long narrative

depicting the transitory life of Indian, who stayed back in Trinida and were

struggling to became part of Trinidad Society, Naipaul decided to visit

India, which he did in 1962; through sea route and spent few months in

journey. Naipaul was 30 at that time, but he got established as a writer in

1957, at the age of only 25 years, with the publication of his first book a

novel.

2
 'The mystic Masseur'

An Area of Darkness :

Incidentally his first book of non fiction 'An Area of Darkness' was based

on his Indian trip, was published in 1964. This is a travelogue, which is

always an autobiographical.

An Area of Darkness :

The very title of Naipaul's first trip to India shows how much he felt

disappointed about India. Naipaul's perception of India was based upon

some of his reading of books about India in Innedad a and he was wrious

to know and feel India, which made him take this long trip. He spent a

pretty long time in different peaces in India, which included visit to his

ancestral village in Uttar Pradesh (U.P.)

Bombay, Delhi, Madras, Kashmir, Goa and Dube's village in Eastern

U.P.

Wherever Naipaul went to India, he felt a sense of annoyance and irritation

and his irritation makes him gine graphic details of ugliness; he observed'

Indians defecate everywhere. The defecate mostly, besides the railway

tracks; But they also defecate on the beaches; they defecate on the hills;

they defecate on river banks; they defecate on the streets; they never look

for a cower ' (Penguin edition 1968, page 70)

3
Utted Cynicism :

No peace in India makes Naipaul cheerful. His whole year is a journey

through 'darkness', ever visit to his ancestral village, called Dube's village

Eastern U.P. is full of irritation. This village, almost wholly of Brahmins-

Tiwaris and Dubes. seems to be near kushinagar, a Buddhist historic site.

Naipaul's grandfather seemed to a Dube, but Naipaul has became

irreligious, he has no interest in 19 acre and of his ancestors.

Darkness' to 'Wounded Civilization'

After 1962 visit to 'Dark' area called India, Naipaul returns in 1975-76, to

look the land as 'A wounded civilization'

In 1962 visit, he saw the atmosphere of Indo-China war and related

Emergency. This time he saw Indra Gandhi's 1975; emergency. He starts

with a description of 'Hindu' kingdom of vijayanagar, found in 1336 iln

south India, and destroyed in 1565. He moue's on to jai Prakash Narayan's

resistance to Indra Gandhi regime.

He travels through Rajasthan and refers to R.K Narayan's novel and film

'Mr. Sampath' and quotes him- 'India will go on'. Naipaul refers to jaipur

Maharani Gayatri Devi's imprisonment during emergency. Second part of

trilogy has better narration of Bombay's skyscrapers and chaws and rise of

Hindu fascist Shiv Sena, but Naipaul describes Shiv Sena as a 'positive'

4
Movement. This time he transls to ;Calculta and gives details of 'Nexalite'

movement also.

Naipaul Declares many times that 'Naxalite' monement is 'now dead' yet

he returns to greater details of the movement in third and last part of his

trilogy. In second part of trilogy, Naipaul's refers to many important

literary text of India of different Indian languages. He refeus to vijay

Iendulkars Marathe play 'Sakharam Binder' and 'Vulture's, U.R.

Ananthamurthi's kannada novel 'Samskara' , he ever lakes recourse to

sudhir kakad's phychoanalysis

Contnd.

In last part of 'wounded civilization' Naipaul focuses upon Fandhi and

quotes Gandhi's mentor Tolstoy, who said in 1910 , while Gandhi was in

South Africa yet'- His Hindu Nationalism speils everything 1 (Page 154,

Penguin Books 1979 edition) . Naikpaul's cittle appreciative of Gandhi, he

has this bete- ' Vinoba Bhaue, Gandhi's successor , is more a mascot than a

mahatma ; 2 (page 159)

Towards third visit to India

After a gap of 10-12 years. V.S Naipaul again returns to India for another

long visit in 1988. This time he makes better preparation for the visit and

acknowledges the helpful role of three emenent Indian journalists Nikhil

Lakshman, Vinod Mehta and Rahul singh son of Khushwant singh , who

5
accomparied him in his journey pastly,b apart from few more personalities

dosing his stay in Bombay, Banglore, Madras, Calcutta, Delhi and

Chandigarh.

Thesis

Preface :

Vidiadhar Surajpersad Naipaul is one of the greatest write us in English.

Like other modern writing, his works are the real presentation of society.

where the individual is seen as culturally or sometimes Linguistically

estranged, so the whole question of social , cultural and individual ideal.

The sense of sootlessness and lock of belongingness has already been the

subject matter of modern writings. Literature of the Third world is no

exception to this general tendency Naipauls fictional work is concerned

with the complex density of the individual societies and culture.

V.S. Naipaul is a great writer in his studies of societies and culture of

Indian Diaspora. Among non-western of English, Naipaul has gained a

wide and raised readership. Few writers have been as prolific. Few writers

have been as prolific as he has been as in the genre of both function and

non-finction. Generally considered the leading novelists of the English

speaking Caribbean, Naipaul is the winner of the Nobel prize in 200/-

6
Naipaul's writing dealt with the cultural confusion of the third world and

the problem of an outsider, a feature of his own experience as an Indian in

the West-Indies, a West Indian in England, and a romandic intellectual in a

post-colonial world.

The problem that he projects in his work is how an individual resists

to overcomes the conditions in which he is placed and eventually succeeds

or fails to survive and problems with which a major part of the world i.e.

the so called third world is confronted.

The 'Thesis' intends to explore some modern novels or writings

which fall under the category of the concept of 'Nation' regarding the

longing or the feelings of reminiscence while living abroad and searching

identity. Though this study the researcher aims at exploring the scope of

literary research on V.N. Naipaur focusing on the issue of Identity in the

most comprehensive sense. Identity can be classified in different ways at it

is a broad field. It may be social, individual, social sociological,

anthropological, philosophical, cultural, ethnical, national and

interpersonal identity. Though the theme is one but the scope of this theme

is unlimited.

Naipaul is a living university he is the greatest living writer in

English language. He has written many fictional and trowel writings out of

7
which. I have taken up 13 works for my study the mimic men, migvel

street, A House for Mr. Biswas, Guerrillas

Background Information about Naipoul's life work.

Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born in changnanar , Ttinidad in

a family descended from immigrants from north India in 1932 . His

grandfather was brought from India to Trinidad in 1880's and he "carried

his village with him . In Trinidad he worked on a sugarcane plantation .

Naipaul said in his novel lecture;

"Half of us (Indians) on this land of the Chaguanas (in Trinidad) were

pretending perhaps not perhaps only feeling : never formulating it as an

idea that we brought a kind of India with us , which me could as it were,

unroll like a carpet on the flat land ."

Naipaul thus grew up in an extended Hindu of Indian origin bound by

customer and conventions, rites and rituals and always trying to jealously

guard the Indian ness against the possible contamination of an alien

culture. It was a ritualized life. But with every generation, India because

more an imagined country than a real one. His father Supersede Naipaul

was a journalist and writer. He contributed occasional articles to the

'Trinidadian Guardian'. It was from his father that Naipaul imbibed the

ambition to because a writer. His mother Dropatia Capiledo Naipaul was

8
also Indian extraction. His uncle Rudranath Capildeo was a noted scientist

and politician .

Naipaul is a British novelist of heritage and East Indian Ethnicity from

chaguanas, Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean, which was then a

British colony. He was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 2001 and

was also knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. He is married to lady nadira. A

scion of the politically powerfully Capital family, Sir Vidia is the son

,older brother and uncle of published authors (Seepersad) Naipaul , Shiva

Naipaul and Neil Bissonnath respectvely.

Naipaul is a gigantic giant has numerous fiction and non-fiction works in

his credit which made him famous overnight, V.S. Naipaul more then

twenty five of fiction and non-fiction works have won him virtually every

conceivable literary award including coreted the nobel prize in the year

2001. He is undoubtedly are of the most distinguished novelists of the

present century. As an author of finction and non finction his works have a

special identity of their own and it would be proper to regard him as

novelists of ideas, In the special sense of the term it would not be

exaggerating to comment that today at 80 with more than half a centuary

demoted to literature, V.S. Naipaur has reached that stage when the focus

shift from the story to the story Teller. From the very beginning he wanted

to relate literature of life. This does not mean that he has a political axe to

9
grind. He remains primarily a great novelist on the sheer strength of his

breathy imagination and mature sense of organisation.

Naipaul themes revolves around the loss of identity in postcolnial

Britain, the loss of past that is the consequence of hegemony and the void

that always remains behind.

As his writing matured, Naipaul extended the geographical and

social perspective of his writing to the travel genre with an increasing

pessimism about the deleterious imact/impact of colonialism and the

spread of nationalism in the third world. Considered to be one of

Englands's best writers over the last fifty years, he has mapped out, over a

series of controversial book, a formidable and damning critique of the third

world or post-imperial societies.

He believes that the older civilizations in India and Africa, or the

new constructs like the plantation economies of the West Indies, have not

adapted to the modern world very well. Many of their revolts were simply

gestures against humiliation and beyond that they constructed fantasies

that confused excitement with liberation. Despite the controversy that his

work generates, he is possibly the most successful of the generation of the

writers who left the Caribbean in 1950s.

Naipaul, of Indian heritage was born and raised in Trinidad, but ghe

recognized the fact that it was his ancestral evlture that governed his

10
identity and his thought. In this passionate portrait of a culture, a society

and a country, he returns to India, a nation in turmoil.

He is a master of English prose style and known for his penetrating

analysis of alienation in finction and essays marked by psychological

insight, he focuses on his childhood and his travels beyond Trinidad.

Writing with increasing irony and pessimism, he ofted details the

difficulties facing the third world.

From the perspective of sense of place and postcolonial theory V.S.

Naipaul's literary output is of great literary value and is highly appreciate.

In his fiction there is realistic description of colonial society as well as

crisis and ups and downs of post colonial era. V.S. Haipaul's novels

represents of postcolonial identity and attempts to relate how his works are

replete with the theme of identity as the chief protagonists of all his novels

hanker after to find a place for them in the world to assert their identities.

Naipaul is regarded as a mouthpiece of displacement and

rootlessness by the critics and scholars of the field. speaking in an

interview, Naipaul confirms the above idea saying :

"When I speak about being an exile or a refugee, I am not just using

a metaphor, I am speaking literally" (Events 1972 : 62)

It is clear that even after having lived in England for many years, he still

has not had the sense of belonging as he says :

11
 "I still had that nervousness in a new place, that rawness of

response, still felt myself to be in the other man's strangeness, my solitude"

(EOA 1987 : 7)

He is, as Mohit K. Ray articulates, "an Indian in the West Indies; a

West Indian in England, and a nomadic intellectual in postcolonial world."

Naipaul's work has been described as an examination of "the clash

between belief and unbelief, the unraveling of the British Empire, and the

migration of peoples" (Donadio 2005)

An author of a large number of functional and non-fictional work,

Naipaul continues to surprise, excite, provoke and move readers at every

turn if his literary woyage He writes in English, was educated at oxford

University and currently resides in Wiltshire, England. Yet Naipaul does

not generally wriles about Britain, England a Europe. His novels, stories,

years and essays address the volatile, violent and often despairing aspects

of life in the developing world from India to Africa to the Caribbean.

Naipaul has referred to himself as "rootless" despite having settled in

British countryside.

He sees himself as a man without a part and without ancestors, all of

these having been erased by that formidable colonial power, England-that

Motherland. Naipaul's prose style is a elegant as often explore the enduring

tensions between the colorizer and the colonized, the rich and the poor, in a

12
rapidly changing world. V.S. Naipul has claimed that all his work is really

one and he has been writing one big books all these years; also considering

the world he has stepped into and the old sense. In early youth Naipaul

took up the vocation of a writer as his religion and, since the beginning

five decades ago has drawn on his. intensly personal experience that

imparts the authentic voice to his works both non-fiction and fiction

enriched by a distinct autobiographical flavour.

Naipaul is also one of the great travelers in the literary tradition, and

his absorptation into the experience of rootlessness, the alienating effects

of colonical past on today's postcolonial people has him to Africa, South

America past on today's postcolonial people has taken him to Africa, South

America, India and all over the world not in search of roots but in search of

rootlessness, and has yield a rich laruest of tramelogues which are about

much more than chronicles of his travel experiences When V.S. Naipaul a

trinidadian-born British novelist of Indo-Trinidadian ethnicity and

Bhumihar Brahim patrimony from Gorakhpur in Eastern Uttar Pradesh,

India; won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001. The government of

Trinidal and Tobaco senta letter of congratulation on heavy writing paper

in Iran he was deeply sautinized or denounced for spreading rancour and

hatred; in India he was addressed

13
as 'Lord V.s. Naipaul; The bollywood superstar Amitab Bachchan sent a

fax of congratulation from has Angeles; The New York times wrote an

editorial in Praise of "an independent voice, skeptical and observant" but

over all he has been hailed as on of the greatest living writers English

language.

V.S. Naipure, a racialist, imperialist, and colonialist is perhaps one of the

most compelling literary figures of the last fifty years. He states.

I said earlier that everything of value about in my books. I will go

further now. I will say I am the sum of my books. Each book intuitively

worked out, stands on what has gone before, and groues out of it. I feel that

at any stage of my literary career it could have been said that the last book

contained all the others.

It's been like this because of my background, my background is at

one exceedingly simple and exceedingly confused. It was born in Trinidad.

It was a small island in the mouth of great Orinoco river of Venezuela. So

Trinidad is not strictly of South America, and not strictly of the Caribbean.

It was developed as a New World plantation colony, and when I was

born in 1932 it had a population of about 400,000 of this, about 150,000

were Indians, Hindus and Muslims, nearly all of peasant origin, and nearly

all from the Gangetic plain.

("Two Worlds : Nobel Lecture on December" 7 200/ 2-3)

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 Infact, V.S. Naipaul as a writer is the sum of his works. All his

works have a close contact with his personal life and undoubtedly the

result of the circumstances of his surroundings. It is also to be noted that

Naipaul is of the opinion that, "A man must write to report his whole

response to the world" (V.S. Naipaul, An Interview with Adrian Rowe-

Evans" Transaction 40 (1971) : 58). This particular thought directly attacks

over the voice and the method that characterize the body of his work. It

included very acute picture of the tropical island of Trinidad with its sandy

beaches, bursting coconuts, leaping howler monkey and freshwater

mangrove swamps timing with scarlet ibis. It also exposes fundamental

social, cultural values and the ultimate and immediate reactions of an

individual of this third world area. I also deals with his travels throughout

the west Indies, South-America, India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia Zaire

and Iran etc. In all his works, he explores the intricate relationship between

the individual and its forces that-determine its directions. According to

Patrick French.

'My background is at once exceedingly simply and exceedingly

confused.' he suggested in his Nobel lecture, When slavery was abolished

across the British empire, workers were still needed for the sugar

plantations, and in India his destitute forebears were sent to the Caribbean

as bonded laborers; it was slavery by another name, slavery with an expiry

15
date India Naipaul, born in rural poverty in colonial Trinidad in 1932,

would rise from this unpromising setting to become one of the great

writers of the twentieth century.

(The World in What it is XI)

It is very short glimpse of Naipaul and his surrounding that may

very easily focus his literary personality. His subsequent works examine

the forgo hen historical circumstances that illustrate his background. They

are the true representation of his devotion to the ideal as expressed in his

works, his struggles, doubts, triumphs, and his thrilling message to his

race.

Throughout the entire modern third world literature, Naipaul stands

at the summet using simple scitences, he looks at complex modern subject

like extremism global migration, political and religious identity, ethnic

difference, the implosion of Africa, the resurgence of Asia and the

remaking of the old European dispensation in the aftermath of empire. His

subjects represent high civilization, individual rights and rule of law. As a

descendant of immigrant workers from India he is from such a milieu

where people and cultures from four continents get mixed infect, unlike in

most other islands in the West Indies, the people of Trinidad came from

many different places.

According to Patrick French :

16
There were Africans who spoke French crede or yorube, sailor and

indentured labourers from china, heighbouring Venezuelands, German and

French labourers, Syrian and Lebanese basiness families, roanderers from

Grenada and Barbados, residual Amerindians, visitors from Madesia,

demobbed black British army veterans, Portuguese and spanish- spealcing

farmers of uncertain ethnicity and tree slaves from the united states. Most

Caribbean islands were homogenous by comparison, with white planters

and black slaves, but Trinidad was uniquely and enduringly ethnically

complex. Even its place names were various : Amerindian (Chagranas),

Spanish (San Fernando), French (Sans Souci) and British (Poole).

(The world is what it is 5)

Like Tennyson's Ulysses, Naipaul become an explorer, not of the

wilderness but the societies. His name means 'bearer of knowledge Like

the chandela king, also known as Vidyadhar, V.S. Naipaul made a

splendorous temple of knowledge in the forthcoming days of his life.

Naipaul also accepted the grandness of his name. To him it was a very

special name which cherished him for the above mentioned reason.

He was expected to do great things.

Seepersad Naipaul, his father was intelligent and ambitious. His family

tradition suggests that his grandmother had brought his father to Trinidad

in the 1870s as a child. She said she come from a Brahmin family with the

17
name of Parain, Parray of Pandey, V.S. Naipaul was born in the Lion

House of chaguanas in central Trinidad on 17 August 1932. Here the

remarkable point is about the title "Naipaul" which is Hindi transliteration

of "Naipaul" or "Nypal" of Pandey clan in Brahmins, In 1929, the year of

his marriage, seepersad began work as a freelance reporter after being

encouraged by its new editor, Goult Macgrowan on the Trinidad Guardian

one of the two principal newspapers in port of Spain, on a salary of $4 a

week. It was an unusual job for an Indian where the heads of the

department were while and the rest of the staff was black or mixed. This

has been closely fictionalized in 'XI House for Mr. Biswas' in the episode

of Mr. Burnelt, editor of the Trinidad Guardian whatever seepersad wrote,

drew on his knowledge of Indian life in Trinidad and reflected the

influence of "the reforming movement known as the Arya Samaj, which

sought o make of Hinduism a pure Philosophical faith (Finding the Cenre

66-72). Here the Hinduism and its struggle for re-existence its feuds,

fights, festivals and private quirks of its community being revealed to a

public beyond coagulants was a new and disturbing notion. In his Nobel

Award ceremony lecture, delivered at December 7, 2001, Nailpaul

comments about this disturbing atmosphere.

What was past was past. I suppose that was the general attitude and

we Indian, immigrants form India, had that attitude to the island.

18
We lived for the most part ritualized lives, and were not yet capable of self

assessment, which is where leaning begins. Half of us on this land of the

coagulants were pretending perhaps not pretending perhaps only felling

never formulating it as an India with us which we would, as it were unroll

like a carpet on the flat land.

("Two Words: Nobel Lecture on December" 720017)

Mr. Sleepersad Naipaul became the rationalist the reformer, the Arya

Samajist, the dapper journalist, the modern man. He succumbed to a Hindu

tradition linked to sacrifice that even India was associated with the more

extreme Tantric parishioners, But on the Whole the position of a reporter

which he held during this time, offered him little satisfaction, humiliated

Subsequently the stopped reporting from Chaguans. In late 1935, he was

sent to be an overseer on a coca estate in nearby Cunupia, where he has

mental collapse. Infact, all of his life long challenges left a very great

impact on his son V.S. Naipaul. We began to read stories his father had

written for the Guardian in the past. During this turbulent period, when

seepersad Naipaul found relief from his anger, hopelessness and frustration

by once again writing fiction, he engaged his son in the process. Naipaul

used to listen the stories and Observed his father Seepersad Naipaul's

efforts to delineate the Hindu Village life of his childhood. Listening to

these stories, V.S. Naipaul was learning a great deal about the writer's craft.

19
They became perennial source of encouragement and suggestions and self-

induction.

Infact, it was the period when Naipaul developed a desire to know

the world outside, the idea of civilization and the idea of antiquity. He

developed the idea about the themes that they had become very important

in the second half of the twentieth century. The issue of financial means

revealed more subtle changes in his feelings about his background. so the

father seepersad suggested his son to select him and his atmosphere as a

subject for his writing.

According to Lillian Feder :

"Seepersad Nauipaul's stories are a vital portion of his heritage to his son,

who considers them "a unique record of the life of the Indian or Hindu

community in Trinidad in the first fifty years of the century." He refers to

the "knowledge" and "sympathy" that made it possible for seepersad

Naipaul to comprehend the changing course of this community hited in

"old India" as it gradually blended into its setting in colonial Trinidad. It

seems likely that one of the offshoots of the evocation in the stories of

ancestral beliefs and rituals was V.S. Naipauls early and lasting attraction

to the ancient world.

(Naipaul's Truth 31)

About the Trinidad in culture Patrick French States :

20
'The most important single feature of Trinidadian culture is the extent to

which masks are indispensable, because there are so many different

cultures and ethnicities in this country that people have to play a vast

multiplicity of roles, each of which has got its own mask depending on

where they are. It's true of the whole caribbean, and Trinidad is the

extreme case in my view ....... Almost nobody knew their real personal

history. They might come from West Africa, or Venezuela, or Maderia, or

South India, or Iron some complicated intermingling of ancestry ..... Each

community was divided and subdivided.

Among Indians ...... Trinidad was a borrowed island; only after

independence was there an active attempt to create and shape a shred

'Trini' identity.

(The world is What it is 53-54)

In the above mentioned atmosphere and circumstances, the son Vidiadhar

Suraj Persad Naipaul began to establish a sturdy link between exile as a

literary theme and his personal history. Naipaul drew on material from his

personal and childhood life in Miquel street and set other early fiction. The

mystic masser and the suffrage of Elveira in Trinidad, but he has to said

that it was the writing of Ahouse for Mr. Biswas, his most personal book,

that changed him.

21
 In the above mentioned atmosphere and circumstances, the son

Vidiadher Susapessad Naipaul began to establish a sturdy link between

exile as literacy theme and his personal history. Naipaul drew on material

from his personal and childhood life in Miquel Street and set other early

fiction. The mystic masseur and the suffrage of Eluira in Trinidad, but he

has to said that it was the writing of a house for Mr. Biswas his most

personal book, that changed him.

V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in the West Indies but is today a

British Citizen. He writes in English, was educated at Oxford University

and currently resides in Whiltshire, England. The colonial set-up had done

a lot in the making of Naipaul as a writer. His travel writing has this

notable features of an outsider whose sense of 'home' is complex. When a

writer writes about a foreign place, he writes with a clear sense of where

he himself is coming from. But Naipaul is unique in the sense that he has a

romadic attitude toward his inhabitance. This seems to the reason for his

unfriendly over sarcastic angle when he writes about a peace. He was not

feel tied to any place or race. Naipaul very accurately states the poverty

ignorance, deceit and cruelty of his surrounding as well as his repression of

his own pain and anger at the deprivations of his past. Here the son of Mr.

Biswas, Anand endures domestic strife and poverty, his father's illness and

absense frequent moves from Hanuman House, the home of his grand

22
mother in Arwacas (the fictional Cherguanes) to green vale, to fort of

Spain. From there to short hills and then back to the city, all of which are

fictional various of experiences Naipaul has recalled in later

autobiographical surveys.

All my life, V.S. Naipaul writes in the introduction to "A writer's

people" his dense dry, frustrating new memoir, "I have had to think about

ways of working and how they alter the configuration of the world". Why

this point is so crucial to Naipaul indeed, why he seems to construe it as

one of the greatest challenges of his long and distinguished career is

anything but evident. Surely almost every serious writer would make an

identical claim. On what other basis can a novelist invent convincing

characters, or a nonfiction writer fairly represents divergent opinions and

points of view?

Then again, Naipaul does not consider himself as a writer, but

something grander and ambitious. His stated project is fitting one

civilization to another. And he ranges for. The subjects in his new book

include Flaubert's relation to antiquity in his historical novel "Salammbo,"

the classical Roamn historians, Buddhism, and the history of the British

empire, as well as memoirs of writers who influenced him, like one who

lived and worked in Trinidad, his fellow Nobel Prize winner Derek

Walcott; the British novelist Anthony Powell, who befriended Naipaul a

23
few years after what he sardonically refers to as "my bright boy's

scholarship" got him to Oxford, and whom Naipaul repays with an

extremely unflattering portrait; and the great Indian memoirist Nirad

Chaudhuri. The result is a bracing, erudite ride, but also a bumpy one.

Grandiloquence has always been the Achilles heel of Naipauls

writing, his fiction and nonfiction alike, for all its myriad strength. But

despite Naipuls rather grandiose daims about his books purpose, "A

writer's People" is actually better understood as the chronicle of the young

Naipauls arriving in London and discovering as he puts it that "romantic

and beautiful though the idea is, there is no such thing as a republic of

letters where ..... all bring their work and all are equal."

His surprises at this, all these years later, is well, surprising.

Although Naipaul does not often confront the topic directly, he says

enough to give the impression tat the lack of interest that greeted his early

work in Britain still rankles in his letting, the main English writers did not

understand him, and he had little appreciation for them (the book is

crammed with dismissve comments about Grahm Greene. Evelyn wavghs

Philip Larkin and many others). "It is amazing to me," he writes, "how

after I was baffled by famous novels of the fime." His estrangement was all

but comlete. "I was trying to make my ways." he notes, "as a writer in a

24
place which really had no room for me, which had its own idea of what

writing was."

This is wonderfully written, and no doubt Naipul felt this way. But is

what he's saying true? It there really an essentially English way of seeing

and an altogether different Indian way of seeing, as Naipaul assert way."

the first of the books two chapters on Indian, part reminiscence about his

family's roots, part partract of Gandhi ? and are these also, as Naipaul

suggests in pages on his native Trinidad, still other ways, one black, the

other immigrant Indian ?

One may question Naipaul's premise, but it in no way negates that he is a

very great writer. And even if, in this book, his oddly skewed and morwe

than a little self-referential views take up too much space, his work over

the past half-century entitles him to those views, especially since they may

have been the fertile mistake from which his best writing has emerged.

Still, "A writer's People" is a much an argument at it is memoir. And

the argument seems extremely dubious. To being with, British Literary life

in the 1950s was for richer and more varied than the closed establishment

world Naipaul describes. Greene, Waugh, Anthony Powell and others

situated along the narrow band that stretched from realistic social

commentary to realistic social satire were one element in this Literary.

"conversation," but by no means the only or even the most interesting

25
element. One looks in vain for any mention in Naipul's account of the

angry working class pays of John observe and Arnold wesker and

theatrical experimentation of printer and N.F. Simpson. And he says

nothing about the avant-grage finction of Flann O'Brien, B.S. Johnson or

the young J.G. Ballard.

It's a reminder that Naipaul has always been an "essentialist." the

salient facts of his life leaving Trinidad for Britain, exchanging a

provincial life for a metropolitan one and, subsequently, becoming on

inveterate traveler made him something of a professional outsider, with

the result that he is more rather then less convinced of the existence affixed

identities, he remains cenpesvaded by the idea that cultural and national

identity might be contingencies.

This, in turn, leads him to sweeping generalizations that, again, may

serve him well as an artist (though probably less well as a travel writer.)

but are difficult to take seriously. Thus the basis of meaning in modern

literature is that "its assessment of the world brings all the sense into play

and does so within a frame of reason."

(Really ? what about Beckett ?) A poet like Walcott, with black

Trinidad "deep in his head and heart, will look, at the rest of the world in

his own way," Naipaul asserts "He will not (to give an extreme example)

be interested in Tony Powell's England, or feel sufficiently connected to it,

26
to be able to judge the writing that comes out of it." (But why ? Walcott's

interests range from Broadway musicals to the poetry of Josph Brodsky.)

In sum, there is far too much of Naipaul the lawgiver in "A writer's

people."

But what remains impressive, even in this disappointing book, is

Naipauls sense of wonder at the world he has discovered for all his

haughtiness, something fresh and innocent infuses his easly memories and

his recollections of the alienation and loveliness he felt in his early years in

London. Few writers have traveled as for from their origins as Naipaul has

and done it so willingly and with such single mindedness, and few have

regretted that estrangement quite so much.

Correction : June 29, 2008

A review on June 8 about "A writer's people ways of looking and feeling :

An essay in Five Parts." by V.S. Naipaul misstated the nationality of

Derek, Walcott, whose work Naipaul considers. While walcott has lived

and worked in Trinidad over the years, he is St. Lucian, not Trinidadian.

(A writers People)

ways of working and feeling : An essay in five parts.)

By V.S. Naipaul

189pp. Alfred A. Knof.

27
 Gradually V.S. Naipaul emerged as a rare individual writer with a

self autonomy as measure of his ostracism. During this time Naipaul left

Trinidad for England in 1950 to do English Honours at Oxford University

after coming the chance to have a free education. Infact he wanted to

change his own and his family's future. This was a golden chance for an

individual like Nailpaul of a colonial society were so restricted.

He graduated in 1953 and settled in England thereafter. He married

patricia ann Hale in 1955 and decided to launch his professional career

only as a writer. Though it was difficult but he began to work as a literary

editor of the B.B.C. programme "Caribbean Voices" between 1954 and

1956 and reviewed constantly for the New statesman between 1956 and

1960.

Naipaul claims to posses a unique opportunity to have lived in three

of four continents and developed a sense of cultural attachment with those

races. Here we may quite the words from the essay written by Nanda

Kishore mishra :

Though he studied and lived in London, his pundit origin, his

extended Indian heritage and lineage did not permit him to merge with

London life. The account of his expatriate experience, his self portraiture

reveals the pain of his displacement," at the same time mates him cynical

about other races and culture including that of India. But as an expatriate

28
his life is less traumatic than Gao Xingjian, the hoted Chinese author who

won the most prestigious Nobelprize for literature in 2000. For Naulpaul, it

is very difficult to break with his past. At the same time his disavowal of

any national identity enables him to become and detached natural writer.

("Trajectory of Sensibility of V.S. Nailpaul" 147)

PDF construction of identity in V.S. Naipaul's the journal of international

social research

www.sosyalarastirmalar.com

Naipaull's sense of belongingness, displacement and above all his Third

world consciousness are the direct result of the circumstances of his life.

Infact, he found no scope for his social, mental and financial development

of Trinidadian. He was totally acquainted with the failure of his father as a

pundit. As a writer is self-exile, Nailpaul became harshly critical of the

colonial and neo-colonial societies of Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, but

unfortunately he has news succeeded in finding the centre in the developed

and so-called civilized society of England; his world view seems to be

Eurocentric throughout but he also feels constantly ill at ease with several

norms and modes of living in contemporary Europe.

It is only because of the above mentioned reason that the work of

Naipaul from a particular pattern around a central theme, Naipaul in all

work tries to establish on ever-growing vision of rootless and displaced

29
individual in search of home and a congenial central milieu to drive their

toots in. According to lakhmi kumari Sharma, "Naipaul's systematic

exploration into the moral urges and drives characteristic of Trinidadian

Hindus and others receives an added poignancy from the fact that Naipaul,

himself a Trinidadian, is engaged in urgent search for home from which he

feels to have been displaced" ("A literary..... laureate" 2017). But ultimatelt

he gets the hopelessness, disappointment and frustration in his attempts to

recover and restore to himself the lost original home. He suffers badlt from

the tension between identification and alienation, bwtween belonging and

not belonging. His sense of alienation is a contempensatory measure for

Naipauls cynicism and emotional adjustment. In all of his works he tells us

about the individual's return to his roots. Here Naipaul passesses all the

advantages of portraying the cross cultural relations in the post-colonial era

i.e. the post.

modern period. To Subhas Sarkar, Naipul's position as a writer is quite

unmatched as he and his characters of the novels attempt to show and

make:

a desperate bid to arrive at the meaning and purpose of life, as rootless

individuals, who years for way of life, a kind of experience, both sexual

and emotional, for which they have not been physically and mentally

developed or prepared, since there is hiatus between their yearnings and

30
their native disposition which is very much conditioned by their colonial

moorings that generate a sense of vacuum and helpless....... The colonial st

set-up had a great deal to do with his making as a novelist. Though he

looked backed back for inspiration to the great nineteenth century novelist

and early twentieth century writers of European fiction, the disorganized or

less organised societies of the colonial composition could hardly provide

him with world or society with which the great novelists dealt. Hence,

Naipaul says "It came to me that the great novelists wrote about highly

organised society. I couldn't share the assumptions of the writers; I didn't

see my world reflected in theirs. My colonial world was more mixed and

second hand and more restricted."

("V.S. Naipaul ...... Society" 185)

Naipauls reminiscences of his early life in Trinidad and his efforts as youth

in London to establish himself as a writer secure throughout his work. His

relations with people he meets in the course of his travels affect the very

nature of his memories and enlarge his perspective on his heritage : the

religion and customs of immigrants from colonial India who settled in

colonial Trinidad.

"In every country he, Naipaul was concerned with the relation of the

historical past even in its seeming absence to the present the most intense

personal reaction he record is empathy with the heirs of a history of

31
slavery and colonialism : the economic, cultural and psychological

oppression, and especially the assaults an individual identity with which

they still contend." (Feder, Lillian Naipaul's Truth, P.B.)

Naipaul grew up in the West Indies after slavery had been abolished,

but the memories of colonialism and slavery still haunted the islands in

which he grew up. The British British governed the colony and the people

of the island were encouraged to think of Trinidad as 'little England'. His

early childhood was spent in the reconstructed India. The Indians who

came to Trinidad as immigrant laborers were mostly from the villages.

They formed transference by rigid observance of ritual.

"As soon as he had left his village" the immigrant Indian "refused to

see". He carried his village with him. Having been cut from India, most of

these Indians refused to acknowledge Trinidad as their home. Naipaul is

the product of distinct combination of circumstances. A Brahmin Hindu

born in Trinidad he is an Indian by ancestry, Trinidadian by activity and

British by residence. He found the squalor of Trinidad sifting to his spirit.

The childhood and youth spend in Trinidad, the bond between father and

son and the Hindu Background these three strands of his personal life were

conspicuous shaping factor of Naipaul's sensibility. "A dot on the map of

the world", says Naipaul of this small Caribbean island off the coast of

Venezuela. This recurring phrase reflects the sense of the insignificance of

32
a political and cultural backwater like Trinidad that personal all naipaul's

writings and all his stated views about the land of his birth. This was a

society Naipaul grew up in and a society, which he rejected, in unequivocal

terms.

The Brahminic way of thinking is so purulent in him that he is out

raged to hear that in Bombay people used candles and electric bulbs for

Diwali and not the rustic clay lamps, which his family still used in

Trinidad. The infact continuation of the Hindu base of the childhood and

youth in the diversified culture of Trinidad had annoyed him Naipaul never

cared for the land of his own birth and his people.

He admits it was a mistake to have been born there and that he always

wishes to forget it. Trinidad was for him a destitute society without history,

without achievement. The colonial past of the island had bored only self-

contempt in the non-while population. In 1979 Naipaul said, "Trinidad was

incomplete in every way. Everything loas imported Every book, every

machine, every idea came abroad. I felt I had lost very for away."

(Times, may 21, 1979)

The years of childhood and early youth that he spent in Trinidad, his

antagonism built up as an undefined rejection of the society he saw around

him. But it is also the society Which he known best, the society which

feeds his imagination. Derek Walcott said in The Sunday Guardian,

33
Trinidad in 1965 that Naipaul did find Trinidad frightening and called it

sinister place but owed a lot to it. He himself said, "I have grown out of

Trinidad and in a way I am grateful to the Trinidad I new as a boy for

making me what I am " (Ray, vol. 2, 234)

According to Kasl Miller, "V:S. Naipaul's fiction describes the

fortunes of an emergent country. His novels an be said to define the

transition from colonialism to independence. The emergent country is

based on Trinidad, where he grew up, but 'The same thing has happened in

twenty countries. Despite all this, despite his services as a chronicler, or

connoisseur, of political change, his subject matter can often seem like a

kind of pre-politics. He is certainly far from enthusiastic about the kind of

politics that enfranchisements and elections have accustomed usto.

Naipaul is not an anant grade writer, and he has not received the

indulgence, and the long inspecting essays, that anant-grade writers

frequently attract. There could be no cutt-of Naipaul. Me famous

picaresque narratives or swift comic treatments, But, if his books are not

difficult, they are not simple either. Here, for example, is someone with

conservative leanings who nonetheless writers movingly about the poor

and aspiring, a companionate man who is also fastidicious and severe. To

regard him as one of those commonwealth writers who specialize in local

colour and stories of exploitation is therefore a mistake. He is very

34
passibly one of the best of the younger British novelists, and his translation

from the caribbean to the metropolish is among the posthumous benefits

conferred by the old principle of Imperial Preference".

The Mystic masseur : The rise of a Charlatan

V.S. Naipauls first novel, the mystics masseur, was published in 1957, and

its little itself announces his preoccupation with the career of a charlatan

who lends himself to revolutionary situations, Not that this particular

mystic, Ganesh Ramsumair, exactly sets the sugarcane on fire but that he

rises from rags riches by manipulating the credulity of his community in a

clever manner. He grows up semi-ophaned in a small village of Trinidad

called Four-ways and is briskly married to a cantankerous Hindu girld

named leela Ramlogan. He potters about on a nest egg left him by his

father, is mistaken for a man of learning on account of his habit of reading

books, and decides to be a mystic masseur. He pronounces on the world

and the flesh, cures the slick, works miracles, and pockets the window's

mite. He launches taxis to bring client-converts to his place and opens

restaurants to feed them. His fame spreads over the whole of Trinidad, in

1946, When the first elections are held on this island, Ganesh cashes in on

his popularity and gets elected as a member of the Legislative Council. In

his new, role, he first, as a defender of the people, refusing to participate in

the rituals of the British governors. He even supports a strike of Sugar

35
workers, on a platform vaguely Marxist, but-when, but-when he is roughly

handled by the crowd, his sympathies turn quite the other way, he adopts

the clothes and attitude of the British governors, becomes on appointed, no

longer elected, member is awarded the M.B.E. and finally appears in

England as G. Ramsay Muir, In each step of his career Naipaul paradies,

quite lightheartedly, the rise of to power and prosperity of a representative

representative of the people in a newly independent state.

Through the main protagonist named Pandit Ganesh Ramsumai, Naipaul's

eminent purpose seems to exploit the comic absurdity in the lives of the

transplanted Indian in the West Indies. Ganesh's story in premarily the

story of the rise of Ganesh, from a failed primary school teacher and

struggling masseur to author, revered mystic and M.B.E., His journey is

equally memorable for the its hilarity and its bewildering success. Here we

observes the immense sensitively, humour and endlessly inventive

imagination that have become the hallmarks of Naipaul's genius. Ganesh,

the, professional mystic has successfully resolved the dilemmas of hybrid

colonial existence, without soul-serching or anguish practicing a

philosophy of convenience rather than principles, he is amongst the strong

protagonists in Naipaul's works, exloiting rather than being exploited, I{n

his professional capacity, Ganesh is consulted by people of many faiths,

and with license of the mystic he has exploited the commodiousness of

36
Hinduism and made room for all beliefs. In this way, he has many clients.

It is to be mentioned that one can very easily laugh at Ganesh while

scorning his adoption of various roles and professions only to discard them

when a new opportunity arises, infect, Ganesh while scorning his adoption

of various roles and professions only to discard them when a anew

opportunity arises. Infact, Ganesh is the true representation of Third world

individual.

Undoubtedly, in his early career as a writer, Naipaul published four novels

set in Trinidad : The mystic masseur (1957), the suffrage of Elvira (1958),

Miguel street (1959), and A house for Mr. Biswas (1961). The first three

fictions represents Naipaul's vision of life in contemporary Trinidad in the

mixed styles of comedy, tragedy and paths. The interlaced stories of

Miguel street (1959) is Naipaul's first written but third published, fiction, It

is a collection of character sketches of the inhabitants of port of spain's

Miguel street during the 1930s and 1940s. Many of the characters are

based upon people Nailpoul knew as a body growing up in Trinidad,

depecting the colourful inhabitan of Miguel Street, However, it also

constitutes a disturbing picture of Le Creole society : the bearing of

women and Children and Verbal abuse are frequent, as is a longing for a

Western model of success that is never achieved. Despite this, characters

bounce back with eccentricity and laughter. Their separate aspirations and

37
disappointments are carefully revealed the people in Muguel Steet have

invented their own means of negotiating with adversity. According to

purabi panwar, this book very accurately.

constructs the stifling setting of the Third World area in which even

the modest hopes to be mechanic, or a teacher, or a doctor or just the

desire to fall in love are pretty difficult to realize, while higher but

legitimate aspirations are nearly throttled. It is a portaiture of what Gupta

calls "not of personal failure but of entrapment in a condition of cultural

vacuum and dexterously combines a cultural critique, a sense of the

closure of the book and certain distantiating techniques."

(V.S. Naipaul : An Anthology of Recent Criticism 14-15)

Miguel street depicts a world in microcosm, embodying a

cacophony of sights, sounds and smells. Thought down and out, the

inhabitants of Meguel Street have a tremendous rest for life. For these two

books Naipaul writes in Preface to the book named The Mystic Masseur.

The mystic Masseur together with miguel street the two books are

close enough in time and mood to be considered one-belongs infact to my

first year. I have thought much about that beginning, if only because at the

time it seemed possible that I{ might never get started, with the

accompanying anxiety that all the writing ambition that had sustained me

for years might become bottled up and turn sour. I have written in various

38
pl[aces, most recently in my preface to the Everyman editor of my shorter

fiction, about the pain and the luck of getting started. I feel I have said all

that I have to say about that I have to say about that and it would not be

easy for me now to say something new about the process.

(The Mystic Masseur V)

The next book in Naipaul's literary output the suffrage of Elvira

(1958), deals extensively with the politics of Trinidad's second election

held under universal suffrage, Naipaul views The Suffrage of Elvira

reflects this view and caricature the political confusion in the fictional

district of Eluira in Trinidad. The protagonist Harbans runs for election to

the Legislative Council of Elvira, and eventually wins. Nailpaul ironically

depicts the election business as carried out without the constituents, having

a proper understanding of democracy the novel depicts of corrupt electoral

practices in Third world milieu. The mystic Masseur and the suffrage of

Eluira shift attention to the go-getters and turn coals and petty pragmatists

of the land who successfully sail with the winds of the turbulent Caribbean

transition, and make it big with no-holds-barred in political brokering, in

hardening ethic polarization and rhetorical maneuver of votes. V.S. Naipaul

status :

I have done this little survey of the early part of my carrier to try to

show the stages by which, in just ten years, my birthplace had altered or

39
developed in my writing. from the comedy of street life to a study of a kind

of widespread schizophrenia. What was simple had become complicated

("Two worlds : Nobel lecture on De" 7 200/13)

When A House fro Mr. Buswas was first published in 1961, few readers

could have known of the intimate connection between the writer and his

book. Now the well known fact about his world famous Literary outpur is

its autobiographical nature. The little of the book points symbol around

which it has been structured A house for Mr. Biswas is an imaginative

reconstruction of the life of seepersad Naipaul, V.S. Naipaul's father. It tells

the story of a Trinidad-born Indian, Mohun Biswas, from birth to death.

Here the house represents Biswas's search for freedom from dependence as

an inhabitant of the third world miliev. It also signifies Biswas's desire to

transcend the squalor and makeshift quality of life in the third world

society in which he kinds himself. The novel is a wonderful portrayal of

the relationship between father and son- Mr. Biswas and Anand Mr.

Biswas is the representative of the immigrant Community of Indians in

Terinidad. The acquisition of the house denotes a break from the self-

defeating hankering for the past and a realistic acknowledge of and

commitment to the present.

A house for Mr. Biswas tells the story of a Trinidad-born Indian,

Hohun Biswas, from birth to death, It depicts Mr. Biswas' growth from a

40
homeless child to a journalist and father of four, established in house of his

own. Mr. Biswas search for domestic independence is one of the themes :

Mr. Biswas has to lead a nomadic life and inhabited various domestic

environments from childhood onwards. Through marriage he moves to the

Tulsi household in Hanuman House, an extended family governed by Mrs.

Tulasi and her son-in-law Seth, Mr. Biswas association with the Tul[si

household occupies the larger part of the book. One the whole, Mr. Biswas'

life and his milieu convey the social[ history of the Indian community and

by extension that of the West Indies.

The critics opinions on these four works vary. West Indian critics

sometimes criticize the detached view employed in Naipaul's first three

works as contemptuous. On the other hand, Western critics tend to

appreciate Naipaul's use of irony as his narrative technique. The varied

reviews are party due to Naipaul's use of irony as his narrative technique.

The varied reviews are party due to Naipaul's exploitation of the ambiguity

created by the exile's duality, which contains a combination of compassion

and detachment. This chapter well consider the double view point as a

source of Naipaul's significance and uniqueness. Distance enables Naipul

to understand his home. Furthermore, it creates a sense of nostalgia that

makes him recreate an imaginary home in his fiction. It also creates the

unique spatial depiction of his home, which will be analysed in this

41
section. On the whole Naipaul's ambiguous relationship with Trinidad as

an exile gives forth a uniqueness that consists of the mixed sentiments of

detachment and compassion.

The first two sections will discuss the double viewpoint that

dominates Naipaul's fictional depiction of Trinidad. It reveals the intricate

mixture of Naipaul's compassion, detachment, aniciety and criticism that

makes his depiction of home unique. The fourth section will defined

Naipaul from the criticism that his distanced view is contemptuous of his

birth place. The last section will establish the significance of Naipaul's

writing of home for West Indian Literary history. It will argue the benefits

to Caribbean Literature of Naipaul's imaging and writing of home.

A House for Mr. Biswas is a prose epic of Trinidad and depicts the

civilization and journey of the islands from the colonial feudalism to

twentieth centaury capitalism by narrating the story of three generation of

Hindu immigrants settled where Hinduism exists in a fossilized form. Mrs.

Tulsi is own of Hanuman House and a strict follower of Hindu code of

conducts but when Mohan Biswas being a son-in-law setels the whole

family destructs under the cross culturalism. The collapse of Tulsi

household symbolizes the ultimate breakdown of the East in West. House

marks the third worl'd Universal crisis of homelessness

42
 "And so Mr. Biswas came to leave the only house to which he had

some right. For the next thirty he had some right. For the next thirty five

years he was to be a wonderer with no place he could call his own, with no

family except that which he was to attempt to create out of the engulfing

world of the Tulsis." (P.40)

In this relation , Mohan Champo Rao, a scholar observes this novel as:

"House is epic in scope and tells the story of Mohan Biswas from Birth to

Death... While cultural clash and the gradual disintegration of the East

Indian community still forms the major preoccupation in the novel ,

Naipaul, at the same time focuses on related problems of the East Indian's

finding a foothold in the new world.:

(Champo, Raw. Mohan (2004). The postcolonial situations in the novels of

V.S Naipaul's Novels, New Delhi; Atlantic Publishers, P. 57

He also rightly expresses.

"Deeply involved in the colonized people's quest for order and identify,

Naipaul makes these aspects central to his novel.

(Champa, Raw. Mohan (2004). The Postcolonial situations in the novels of

V.S. Naipaul's Novels, New Delhi; Atlantic publishers, P.48)

About his The Mimic Men (1967), Naipaul himself states:

43
This new fiction was about colonial shame and fantasy, a book in fact,

about how the powerless lie about themselves, and lie to themselves, since

it is their only resource. The book was called the Mimic Men. And it was

not about mimics. In was about colonial men mimicking the condition of

manhood, men who had grown to distrust everything about themselves.

some pages of this book were read to me the other day I hadn't looked at

it for more than thirty years and it occurred to me that I had been writing

about colonial schizophrenia. But I hadn't thought of it like that. I had

never used abstract words to describe any writing purpose of mine. If I

had, I would never have been able to do the book. The book was done

intutively, and only out of close observation .

("Two world: Nobel lecture on December" 7200113)

Naipaul's sixth novel The mimic men (1967), presents a coherent view of

human predicament inits paradoxes and contradictions. Once again his

subject is the third world society; he examines its social, hostorical and

political reality. At the same time, he concerns himself with the psychic

damage caused by historical upheaval. The emptiness and hollowness of

colonial set up compel the individuals to pose as the mimic men. The

individual line in the memory of the past or in the fantasies of the further,

and activate one ambivalent personality.

44
The novel, directly portrays the new order and completes the model of an

emergent country. Its narrator-hero, Relph kripal Sing, examines personal

nullity in relation to post-independence politics in the island of isbella. The

novel narrates its protagonist Ralph Singh's fears of the haphazard,

disordered and mixed society of his island.

The next fiction in our sequence In a Free State which is one of Naipaul's

greatest novels. It won the Bookwer Prize in 1971. The title of Naipaul's In

a Free State (1971)[1] is a fertile and suggestive one that has set many

critical puzzles. Immediately it seems to refer to a state which is politically

free, such as the independent, postcolonial nation-states from which the

characters in the stories come and in which the little novella is set :

respectively, India and Trinidad, and a conglomerate of Africa nations.

This freedom however, turns out to be largely theoretical and ironic since

most of the countries featured in the book are perceived, in or even two

decades on from independence, as still being the playthings of colonial

powers. More commonly, the little has been taken to refer to freedom as a

psychological state, a state of mind and being which causes anguish,

abandonment, and the loss of personal attachments. [2] Alternativelt, it has

been suggested that in his choice of title Naipaul is drawing upon a

scientific metaphor namely, the idea of the free floating movement of

subatomic particles around a nucleus [3]-and there is ground for this view

45
in the books structure. Here like the earlier novels, the theme is

displacement, the yearning for the good place in someone else's land, the

attendant heartache. The Indian servant named Santosh in Washington

becomes on American Citizen but feels that he has ceased to be a part of

the flow. The disturbed Asian. West Indian in London, in jail for murder,

has never really known where he is, The next part of the book is set in

Africa, in a place like Uganda or Revandan and its two chief characters are

English. They have once found liberation in Africa but now Africa is going

sour on them.

Notes :

1. V.S. Naipaul, In a free state, 1971 (Harmonds worth : Penguin,

1973) Page reference are given in parentheses in the text.

2. John themes The Web of Tradition : use of Allusion in V.S. Naipaul's

Fiction (Hert ford : Hansib, 1987) 151; and Anthony Boxhill, V.S.

Naipaul's Fiction : In Quest of the enemy (Fredericton : York

Press, : 1983) 58-59

The other novel, Gurrillas (1975) is about the place which :

was less about farming than about the island's racial politics. The idea here

(though the architect was politically innocent) was that local black people

should suppress the liveties aspects of themselves and come more like

Indians or Asians : buy land, work it as families, live dull lives, keep shoes,

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make and save money, hot fritter it away on clothes and parties : in this

way would go ahead and give Indians and others a run for their money.

(Guerrials V)

Guerrillas deals with the politics of Black power movement in Trinidad.

the writer tries to suggest as it civil war and bloodshed epitomize these

societies of the Third world milieu and typify the archetypal and

irremediable features of the black people. "Partly true though, these subtle

and not so subtle implications are not merely in the nature of partisan

exaggerations : they falsify sociological facts and grossly distort the

broader and saner perspective on these communities and countries" (V.S.

Naipaul : An Anthology of Recent Criticism 21). It depicts the continuity

of cruelty and strife in a setting of Third world area.

It is also remarkable for its complexity as well as an apprehension of the

magnetite of its mission.

Resemblance between In a free State and Guerrilas could be multiplied, for

the central situations as well as the central characters, are similar : heat,

sweet, colonial relics, abandoned industrial estates and ugly corrugated

buildings are the background to the explosion of volatile political

situations which is obliquely glimpsed by the white couples who exist 'in a

free state' of non-alignment but are nevertheless tested by events, In each

work, the political upheaval follows the same pattern : racial strike among

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the principal non-while factions demagogy, incidental persecution and

exploitation of non-white minority groups; and evidence of American

intervention. But while the subject matter is similar the theme is different.

In a free state has the resonant sparseness, the single emotional key (the

sustained sense of mounting fear and horror) and the parabolic dimension

(too overtly hinted at in its opening sentence the work's one false step)

which are characteristics of the novel form.

Another resemblance between In a Free State and Guerrillas is that

the main characters are in search of something, struggling to attain it, every

trying to leave behind modesty of their gender. Though Bobby has hatred

towards Hindu he leaves behind the modesty in trying to search in her

some character to make her comfortable Jane in search of sexual

satisfaction shifts the partner easily leaving behind the modesty that has to

be in woman hooted as set by the society, the basic rules for a woman.

In both the novels the characters in the end are failures. Not having what

they wanted and some have to leave the country while some are mudered

brutally. Thus the search in the characters are not fulfilled and they turn to

be failure models.

Recognition of differences in the theme facilitates an understanding

of Guerrillas, for all the fine things in it, is a less successful fiction than In

a free state. In the first place, Naipaul has unsuccessfully attempted to get

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into his novel the parabolic drift and the cumulative force of his novel. The

novel's title and its epigraph Jimmy's statement that "when everybody

wants to fight there's nothing to fight for. Everybody wants to flight his

own little war, everybody is a guerrilla" (p. 83) indicate the intended

parabolic dimension. But this is never more than notionally realized

because while guerrilla activity is often talked about bu non-participants is

insufficiently concretized. 'Guerrilla' remains a symbolic conception

unrooted in the realistic surface of the novel. Similarly while Naipaul tries

very hard to have the landscapes of Guerrillas convey the heightened

intensity of the landscapes of 'In a Free State' he is unable is to so

successfully because the greater length of the novel from dissipates effects

that can be concentrated in a shorter form.

It is hard to imagine a more unpleasant or a more negative ending. Let

when one looks back over the novel it is seen to be neither unprepared for

nor inappropriate. For the dominant subjects of Guerrillas are the repellent

unwholesomeness of Jane and Jimmy, and the weakness of Roche, to

which the political and public dimensions of the novel are not made as

quantitatively ancillary as they are quantitatively so. Both the fictions have

all mixed sexual and political concerns. In 'In a Free State the two concerns

were given equal weight and held in a mutually minifying tension. In

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Guerrillas, perhaps in spite of Naipaul's intension, remission with sexually

has become dominant.

Naipaul's writing is something essentially different from the self-

conspicuous "psychological man" who dominates current American fiction

and, so far occupies much of the wisdom. The novels is a form of social

inquiry something he has lived as well as written. He recognizes himself as

a historical effect and that he has used this in his writing with something

like the British power that one awed poor Indians in Trinidad.

Bibliography :

MS Sweeney kerry, "V.S. Naipaul : Sensibility and Schemata," uin Critical

Quarterly (Manchester University Press Autumn, 1976, PP 73-9.

Kazin Alfred, "V.S. Naipaul, Novelist as Thinker," in the New York Times

Book Review (1977 by the Newyork Times Company : reprinted by

permission), may 1, 1977, pp 20, 22 http://www.mytimes.com/books/98/06

/07/specials/Naipaul-guerrillas.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wikiGuerillas-

(novel) http:dictionary.sensagent.com/guerrillas%20novel/en-en/

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