The vulnerability of characters in Miguel Street of V.S. Naipaul: A Study

R Prabhakar

The vulnerability of characters in Miguel Street of V.S. Naipaul: A Study

Authors
R Prabhakar

Abstract
V.S. Naipaul, as a historian, short story and fiction writer, is a very distinguished writer among the postcolonial writers. His place as a writer is unforgettable that influenced the Caribbean readers and the readers all over the world with his splendid themes of social relevance and new way of narration. His transformation from a son of an unsuccessful Trinidadian to the heights of winning the Nobel Prize for literature is a virtual pilgrimage of post-colonial success. V.S. Naipaul, in his writings, quests his own position in the world. Miguel Street is considered to be the contribution of a young Naipaul to the Trinidad where he is brought up lift behind in 1950. The tone of the Miguel Street is apparently nostalgic. As a precocious and enthusiastic observer of his colonial Trinidad, he narrates seventeen stories in Miguel Street with a naked innocence accepting the values and vulnerability of the street. All the stories in Miguel Street explore and expose gullibility of the West Indian society and its inhabitants who escape from reality to fantasy and who are carried out by eccentricity, ambition, and romanticism. Naipaul asserts that Miguel Street is the first serious writing in which he tries to discover ‘the trick of writing. The inhabitants of the Miguel Street form the ‘rubbish heap’ of the West Indian society. Naipaul with his sarcastic tone in all the stories seems to have denounced the culture, habits, and values of West Indian Society. There are no laws of the land, no moral and ethical conventions to order the disordered lives of the inhabitants. Miguel Street is fully replete with mere anarchy. There is no particular culture to bind them and they have no ambitions to achieve. These inhabitants are outcastes, prostitutes, and knaves. This research papers aims to study the gullible characters portrayed by V.S. Naipual in Miguel Street.

Download | Pages : 150-152