The Colorful Character of V.S. Naipaul

V.S. Naipaul’s writing is unique due to the fact that the majority of his characters are just normal everyday people, whose fictional lives hold deep meaning. One example is his book, A House for Mr. Biswas, which was inspired by the life of Naipaul’s father, many of whose traits were expressed through the fictional character Mohun Biswas. In A House for Mr. Biswas Biswas forgoes the typical literary model of a rags to riches story and gives an honest and realistic story of a man who begins and ends life searching simply for a house. As the story progresses, the reader becomes more aware of Naipaul’s pessimistic tone. Mohun’s life is one driven by a seemingly unattainable goal of finding a home of his own; however, even as the end of the book nears Mohun’s life take no extreme turn for the better. Unlike most books written by other authors, V.S. Naipaul refuses to allow his characters to find complete happiness. The following passage gives an example of Naipaul’s dismal tone, “ In all Mr. Biswas lived for six years in at The Chase, years so squashed by their own boredom and futility that at the end they could be comprehended in one glance” (Naipaul 174). This tone follows the story to the very end, and even when Biswas has finally found a house that pleasure rapidly diminishes, “The very day the house was bought they began to see flaws in it. The stair case was dangerous…” (Naipaul 9). This melancholy nature of this tale continues to the very end. The story finishes with Mr. Biswas’s death, which is described as simply another death. The cremation of Mr. Biswas is “conducted on the muddy banks of a muddy stream” and “afterwards, the sisters returned to their respective homes and Shama and the children went back in the Prefect to...

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...ur flag, planted coconut trees and our hedges. You asked a man what he did…he simply said he worked for the Americans” (Naipaul 258). This passage seems to display the opinions of Naipaul towards the colonialism of foreign nations in third world countries; the narrator states that it was the Americans who recovered the unpleasant lands that once were Trinidad and created from them a beautiful beach. It is for this reason that Naipaul faces the criticism of writers such as Walcott, whose writing praises the history of Trinidad as rich and beautiful while Naipaul tends to focus on the dark side of third world development and foreign imperialism. In conclusion, over V.S. Naipaul’s career he has proven his aptitude in the wielding of the English language and introduced to the literary world his own unique style while also attracting the animosity and criticism of many.