IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS)

Volume 19, Issue 12, Ver. III (Dec. 2014), PP 95-97

e-ISSN: 2279-0837, p-ISSN: 2279-0845.
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Diasporic Dilemma: A Quest for Identity and Security in

Naipauls A House for Mr. Biswas
Dr. Nitesh Kumar Baunthiyal,
Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities, DIT University Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India
In A House for Mr. Biswas, Naipaul describes the search for identity and security of a protagonist
who lives in an unstructured social milieu. The novel describes the experience of an expatriate of Trinidad via
various places and to the Port of Spain. The life of the protagonist Mohan Biswas reflects the dilemma of a
detached immigrant whose entire life passes in a desire to find his roots and to attain an authentic identity in the
society. The life of Mr. Biswas also replicates the life of Naipaul, whose experience of exile reflects the
unquenched need of identity. In the name of Mr. Biswas, author gets a way to trace his experiences of nonidentity. The prologue of novel reflects the truth of Mr. Biswass life:
How terrible it would have been, at this time, to be without it: to have died among the Tulsis,
amid the squalor of that large, disintegrating and different family; to have left Shama and
children among them, in one room; worse, to have lived without even attempting to lay claim
to ones portion of the earth; to have lived and died as one had been born, unnecessary and
unaccomodated (HMB 8).
The words clearly suggest that the text is about to prove an individuals self that maters in the society
within life and after death. In Mr. Biswas, this quest to prove himself among family and Tulsi-estate remains
continue from birth to death. The novel begins with the description of the unlucky birth of Mr. Biswas, who
unusually born with six fingers in one hand and becomes a victim of traditional beliefs. Unlike a child, he does
not receive affection of family but his childlike activities are restricted at home as pundit predicts his unlucky
charm for the family and mainly for father. Thus, an ominous child becomes his first identity that made him a
confined self within a family. This is the fate that the prediction by the pundit proves when in searching of Mr.
Biswas, his father Raghu dives into the pool and died. His second identity comes in the society as a boy who, . .
. has eaten up his own father (28). This stigma becomes the identity of Mr. Biswas that drives his mind in
different directions and shapes his despairing sensibility which, . . . carry about them the mark in their attitudes
sensibilities, and convictions of the slave, the unnecessary man (Walsh VSN 71). After being sold the house to
the neighbor, Dhari under compulsions, the family moves to his mothers sister Taras muddy hut in where,
For the next thirty-five years he was to be a wanderer with no place he could call his own, with no family . . .
(38).
In the childhood, Mr. Biswas lives in his mothers sister Tara house and later moves to Tulsi house in
Arwacas as a sign painter. There he meets Shama, falls in love, and marries to her. This is the first real phase in
Biswass life from where his actual search for identity and security begins. He has to live in Tulsi-dom with
others sons in laws, where he, felt trapped (92). This perpetual feeling of aloof arouses a sense of quest
for identity, while this trap compels his soul to find way to emancipate from Tulsis estate. He becomes an
unwanted insider in Tulsi family and confined by its powerful social and economic strata, in the High Street at
Arwacas, Hanuman House stood like an alien White fortress (81). In Hanuman House, he finds himself, . . .
indifference rather than hostility (195). Tulsi family is rich and powerful which provides Mr. Biswas jobs and
opportunities but his un-belongingness makes him unable to normalize with them as he is an unwanted outsider
for Tulsi family; his living style and family condition was quite differing than that of Tulsis. This is the
constant dilemma in Mr. Biswass life, that a world, where he enters, . . . everything beyond its gate was
foreign and unimportant (195). He feels inferior among family members and, . . . when everyone worked with
energy and joy enthusiasm reacting upon enthusiasm in him he remains aloof (195).
In the life of Mr. Biswas, House is the entrenched wish and symbol of identity as it is in Naipauls
life too. The search of protagonist to get a house is the chief motif in the novel that reflects the primal wish of
every individual for a safe haven in form of a house. This search of Mr. Biswas for house also symbolizes the
fulfillment of belongingness and a prerequisite for a social identity. This is why, The House in this novel is a
symbol not for rootedness but for freedom from slavery and oppression (Das 102). From birth Biswas lacks his
own house and other houses where he moved on, were, . . . bare,spacious,unpainted wooden house . . . (49).
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Diasporic Dilemma: A Quest for Identity and Security in Naipauls A House for Mr. Biswas
Tulsi first provides Mr. Biswas a village, Chase for managing a shop and a house. Alike displaced
person, Biswas entire life struck with a question of this house, . . . was it his own? (156). On the opening
ceremony of shop at Chase, Mr.Biswas, . . . found himself a stranger in his own yard (156). His feeling of
belongingness to the shop is shattered when he noticed that family members, . . . called the shop the Tulsi shop
even after he had painted a sign and hung it above the door (156). Mr. Biswas is a victim of homelessness and
non-identity who efforts for settlement, but his insecure self becomes the causes of recurrent failure. His every
return to his mother at Pagotes during living at Chase reminds the suffering of mud hut, as he is the only child
who had spent most of the times with her. Seeing her condition, Dutifully he put his arm around her. The
gesture caused him pain, making him feel his own worthlessness (199). Similarly the house at Chase seems to
him disordered, cold, and abandoned. Mr. Biswass next misadventure begins, when Tulsi sends him to the
barracks of Green Vale as a driver at the minimum salary and compelled to live among workers in shared
rooms. This is the second time when the fear of social -insecurity generates as the place, . . . dump and
shadowed and close (214). This experience propels him to feel like every individuals in the world, . . .
decided that time had come for him to build his house (214).
Biswass earlier experience of mud hut infuses hatred feeling for imperfect house, He didnt want
mud for walls earth for floor tree branches for rafters and grass for roof (219) and the list is long of contempt
for muddy house because he dreams, . . . a real house made with real materials (219). The wish of perfection
can be seen when he presents a dolls house to his daughter Savi in which he visualizes, Every room of the
dolls house was daintily furnished (224). The dolls house also symbolizes Biswass extreme wish for freedom
and security as well as fulfillment of a dream for a perfect abode. He strives to face the challenges to build
house at Green Vale which starts with continual delays and finally burnt by workers. Every failure in the outer
world propels him to return back to rich Tulsi, but it could not solve his problems of security and identity. The
quest of Mr. Biswass journey towards attaining identity, and security as Robert Hamner observes:
After Green Vale all the evasive reaction here to fore signs of his inadequacy and weakness,
undergoes marked change. He continues to rage and throw impotent pamper tantrums, but
upon his recovery at Hanuman House he has gained valuable confidence in the resilience of
the spirit (CS 228).
Recovering himself from the trauma of Green Vale, Mr. Biswas moves to Port of Spain to prove
himself. He gets a job of reporter in the Sentinel. Thus, the city Port of Spain becomes the place of Mr. Biswass
to attain a professional identity. His earlier life at Hanuman Houses passes without asserting his identity and
security because he was lost among stranger group of people, but in Port of Spain, . . . he saw the city as made
up of individual, each of whom had his place in it(332). There, he emerges as a famous creative writer whose
photograph appears frequently in news papers and magazines; this achieving status helps him to, . . . recover
his family (345) from Mrs. Tulsi. But his new job of writing does not lessen the feeling of alienation in him.
The protagonists of his stories undergo same experiences as he had in past, The hero trapped into marriage,
burdened with a family (363). The appetite, hopes and desires of his protagonists reflect Mr. Biswass past
dilemma and indirectly experienced by Naipaul himself. He begins stories with interest and joy, but, . . . left
him dissatisfied and feeling unclean (363). His stories highlight the plight of lost identity and his writing
represents the ways of self-realization to fulfill the quest of identity. Thus, the insecurity faced by Mr. Biswas is
a natural conformity with all human being faced in general in an alien land dominated by colonized society.
Mr. Biswass quest for security also related with the relations he manages in the family. Shama and
childrenss recurrent displeasure to live with him has always been a cause of deep depression. Shamas constant
returning habit to Hanuman House signifies her fear of identity and insecurity, at Chase, Shama shouts at Mr.
Biswas, . . . give up the shop and return to Hanuman House (199). She always calls Hanuman House home
and happy to live with Tulsi. His two children Anand and Savi both make him feel worthlessness and insecurity
as his stay in Hanuman House deprives him attaining an authentic image in childrens eyes as they know, . . .
Mr. Biswas, like all the fathers at Hanuman House, had come from nothing, and the only people who had a
proper family were the Tulsis (367). The wish to become a perfect father instills in Mr. Biswas to continue his
search for identify that pushes him towards various displacements. Thus, Naipaul creates a world of, Homeless
nomadic migrants making middle passages from Africa or India to the West Indies thence to England and back
again, for, after three hundred years there is no society and no system of values in which they can take root
(Oremerod162).
Mr. Biswass fear of identity also related to the wish to escape from inherited class identity as a
labourer, . . . he became once more only a labourers child-fathers occupation: labourer was the entry in the
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Diasporic Dilemma: A Quest for Identity and Security in Naipauls A House for Mr. Biswas
birth certificate. . . (48). The constant social pressures through various working experience under Tulsi in
Chase and Green Vale make him insecure and he thought of estate-driver, exalted it overseer, rejected it, and
rejected shopkeeper, rejected unemployed (338). The continuous dependency on Tulsi reminds inferiority of
his lowest class, while his attempt to achieve high class status end in failure and self imprisonment, at the
end he returned to his crowded, shabby room (48). The role of adjustment in the adverse situations does not
free him from alienation as Gorden Rohlehr finds his actual condition in an alien land:
Biswas is everyman wavering between identity and non-entity, he is fully presented as a
person whose very quick and idiosyncrasy we know in the world where every sight sound and
smell recorded with fidelity and precision (IA 137-38).
Living at Shorthill, Mr. Biswas buys an isolated piece of land and constructs a house, but, The new
house imprisoned them in silence and bush. They had no pleasures . . . (448). Though Mr. Biswas takes this
new house as a personal achievement, but this attempt ends in futility as the house destroys one night in a fire
and the episode of failure repeats, as A.C. Derrick observes, . . . the recurring images of darkness decay and
death makes . . . failure appear throughout as the inheritable outcome of Biswas struggle (NTN 201). Biswass
last time spends in despair as his total saving is less to buy a house. He finally borrows money and buys a house
at Sikkim Street and achieves his goal. Though, this symbolic goal of search for independence, identity and
security fulfilled, but at cost of lost energies both physical and mental. After entering in the house, he falls ill.
He is cheated by the solicitors clerk who sells fragile house, The staircase was dangerous; the upper floor
sagged; there was no Black door; most of the windows didnt close; one door could not open . . . (6). Though it
is in bad shape but symbolizes Mr. Biswass, . . . a new, readymade world (7).However this house fulfills his
life-long struggles and it represents, . . . the story of a mans struggle to make something valuable out of
circumscribed and mediocre existence. It is a struggle symbolized by the heros effort to own his house, which
in a way, is to own his own life (Ramadevi 52). His life spends in achieving two things in life; first a house
through which he fulfills the desires of Savis dolls house and second is a Car which is asked by Anand in
earlier time as a gift. Both things symbolize social name fame and security.
The concluding part of the novel continues with the inheriting wish of identity and insecurity that shifts
from one generation to next. The search for same cause continues in Mr. Biswass son, Anand who goes abroad
and becomes the victim of same socio-cultural disparities and mental depression as his fathers had in past. He
does not live with Mr. Biswas in the last time, and his struggle becomes replica of his fathers past. With the
identical end of past and present, author draws readers attention to the autobiographical aspects of his life in
Trinidad and out of Trinidad. The life of Biswas and Anand reminds readers the heritage of the author that he
receives from the traumatic experience of his fathers life; and it shapes his vision, What Naipaul has done . . .
has been to abstract from his fathers life not a sequence of events but a quality of experience which he has
shaped in such a way as to project his own vision its significance (White 96).
Alike Naipaul, Mr Biswass alienation deprives him attaining stable identity thus, always keeps his
journey to find a secure place in a Creole world. It symbolizes an individuals search in post- colonial society. In
this way, the text focuses on the dilemma of the rootless person whose quest reflects expatriates suffering from
basic necessities in colonial world. Biswass house in Sikkim Street provides him self-realization of confirmed
security and identity but with ironical ends. Fawzia Mustafa describes, Biswass career as a journalist and his
acquisition of the house on Sikkim Street signify with a mixture of poignancy and dramatic irony the depleted
potentialities of post colonial independence complete with its self delusions (VSN 62).

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Three Continent, 1977.
Mustafa, Fawzia. V.S. Naipaul. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
Naipaul V.S. A House for Mr. Biswas. 1961. Rpt.London: Picador, 2005.
Ormerod, David. In a Derelict Land: The Novels of V.S. Naipaul. Critical Perspectives on V.S. Naipaul. Winter.1968.
Ramadevi, N. The Novels of V.S. Naipaul: Quest for Order and Identity, New Delhi: Mehta Offset Press, 1996.
Hamner, Robert. Character and Setting. Critical Perspectives on V.S. Naipaul. Washington D.C: Three Continent, 1979.
Rohlehr, Gorden. Ironic Approach: The Novel of V.S. Naipaul. The Island in Between. Ed.Louis James. London: Oxford
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Walsh, William. A Manifold Voice: Studies in Commonwealth Literature .London: Chatto and Indus, 1970.
White, Landeg. V.S. Naipaul: A Critical Introduction. London: Macmillan, 1975.

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