Analysis of themes

2. A HOUSE FOR
MR BISWAS
BY
V S NAIPAUL
Presented By
Sadiqa
Naqvi

3. THE POST COLONIAL
PERSPECTIVE

4. POST COLONIAL LITERATURE DEFINED
In a broad sense, postcolonial literature
is writing which has been “affected by the
imperial process from the moment of
colonization to the present day”
(Ashcroft et al, 2)
Revising history to tell things from the
perspective of those colonized is thus a
major preoccupation of postcolonial
writing

5. Analysis Of Themes

6. Analysis Of Themes

7. Naipaul is a pioneer in the post-colonial
literature of the Caribbean particularly in
Trinidad.
 He grapples with issues of alienation, loss
of identity and longing for a sense of
belonging in an environment that depicts
black people and the offspring of Indian
indentured labourers as belonging to the
lower crest of the evolutionary ladder.
Analysis Of Themes

8. The themes in “A House
for Mr Biswas” are
essentially drawn from the
social and racial or political
environment of the West
Indies in a state of
transition from colonial to
dominion status, and they
tend to reflect the problems
arising from this
transitional phase.
Analysis Of Themes

9. Diaspora

10. The chief characteristic features
of the diasporic writings are the
quest for identity, uprooting and
re-rooting, nostalgia, nagging
sense of alienation etc.
 The diasporic writers turn to
their homeland for various
reasons. Naipaul who is in a
perpetual quest for his roots turns
to India for the same

11. Though Naipaul never
uses the word ‘diaspora’ it
is clear from his novel that
the diasporic experience-
that of displacement and
migrancy along with a
yearning for an imagined
homeland which they
cannot go back , gives his
writing the peculiar tinge
of the diasporic literature.

12. Alienation
Alienation

13. Analyzing the sense of alienation and the
agony of exile experienced by the characters, A
House For Mr. Biswas delineates the problems
of a distorted and troubled past and tries to find
a purpose in life.
While reading the novel, one can easily
observe that the sense of alienation
experienced by Mr. Biswas in his own family
and later on at Hanuman House symbolizes the
rootless existence of millions of those who
search for an identity in a foreign culture.

15. Unhomeliness
The state of one’s feeling of having been deracinated
and displaced is called “unhomeliness”,a term coined by
Homi Bhabha.It is the sense of being in between of two
cultures.Here “unhomed” doesn’t mean being homeless.

16. The search for a home or a house is supposed
to offer some redemption of freedom and a
source of belonging to the former colonized as in
the case of Biswas whose lifetime spent as a
fantasy man, an escapist seems to be settled as
he heroically finds a home and in turn acquires
some form of identity.
Unhomeliness

17. It is ,“…to feel not at home even in one’s own
home because you are not at home in yourself;
that is your cultural identity crisis has made you
a psychological refugee”
Mr Biswas’s passion for making a house for
himself is basically the suppressed cry of all those
who feel homeless and displaced in a foreign
land.

18. Identity Crisis

19. In fact, the character of Mr. Biswas is
carved out of alienated experience as he
tries to find his own roots in the socio-
cultural environment around him.
 In the search of his own identity, Mohun
Biswas shifts from village to town and from
joint family to nuclear family but fails to
find his own roots amidst socio-cultural
change.
Identity Crisis

20. While countless other
novelists have depicted
identity crises in established
societies, Naipaul has
depicted a protagonist in a
society that is pandemonic
and lacking in ideas and
creativity.

21. From the very beginning,
Mohun Biswas is depicted as
a marginalized individual
who is constantly on the
move to identify his place in
the limited world of Trinidad.
 The vivid portrait of a
man who fights to free
himself from the
entanglements of family,
custom, and religion.
Identity Crisis

22. Inferiority Complex

23. Inferiority Complex
Mr Biswas’s complex, rude and
ungrateful behaviour towards Tulsi and
other inhabitants of Hanuman House is
basically the reaction of the colonized
against the colonizer.
 Though dependent upon them for
“food and shelter”, he abuses them and
feels satisfaction by this activity.
 It is the inferiority complex of the
subjugated subaltern which distorts
itself into rudeness.

24. Autobiographical Aspect

25. Naipaul is regarded as a mouthpiece of displacement
and rootlessness. Speaking in an interview ,confirmed
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”.
It is said about Naipaul,
“An Indian in the west Indies, a west Indian in
England, and a nomadic intellectual in a post colonial
world.”
Autobiographical Aspect

26. Based on his own experience in Trinidad ,Mr Biswas is
the prototype of Naipaul’s father; Seepersad and Anand is
that of Naipaul himself.
The feeling of deracination and displacement and lack
of national community in Trinidad are the fundamentals
themes in this novel, as they were for Naipaul personally.
 Both Mr Biswas and Naipaul are in search for a house
by which they will be able to find their identities.
Autobiographical Aspect

28. The image of the house is a central, unifying and
integrating metaphor around which the life of Mr
Biswas revolves.
For Mr. Biswas, as well as for all the ‘suppressed
subalterns’ the house represents a search for
emancipation from subjugation and servile
dependence.
It represents the ‘unheard cry’ of those individuals
who struggle to preserve their own identity in an alien
environment and try to forge an authentic selfhood.