A HOUSE FOR MR. BISWAS- A FEW POINTS AND QUOTES

 

A HOUSE FOR MR.BISWAS deals with a theme of deeper significance, the theme of selfhood where an individual quests for identity and struggles to acquire a personal place for which the “house” stands as an evocative symbol all through. It traces the story of a man’s struggle to make something out of a circumscribed and mediocre existence. The concluding lines of the ‘Prologue’ to the novel sum up, in a nutshell, what the novel is actually about: “How terrible it would have been at this time, to be without it…to have lived and died as one had been born, unnecessary and unaccommodated.” The words very clearly suggests that the ‘House’ becomes a symbol of order and identity. It affirms the importance of such values as independence, individuality, creativity and a degree of freedom from human complicity.    The possibility of acquiring a personal space in the New World is suggestive of a fragile hope.

 

The protagonist, Mr. Biswas’s task in the novel happens to be to create something of his own, out of nothing. The life of Biswas being the story of an Indian immigrant’s dilemma, it depicts the exile’s desire to strike roots to attain an authentic selfhood. The narrative unfolds the gradual Indian accommodation to what was originally a foreign land. By sacrificing traditions and self-respect, it evidences the decay of Hindu spirit in the New World. In this sense Mr. Biswas’s aim to die as an accommodated individual assume importance as it points to the struggle and fragile hope of acquiring a personal space in the New World.

 

Very early in the book, we are given a hint to the rebellious nature of Biswas. For instance, his revenge on Bhandat by spitting in the rum by bottling it, for having insulted him and then saying:

         “I am going to get a job on my own. And I am going to get my own house too,

testifies his will to affirm identity and selfhood is unmistakably present in him. The comic revolts of Biswas, especially after his entry into the Tulsi household, Naipaul illustrates the rebellion of a weak, mediocre man. Gordon Rohlehr in “Character and Rebellion in a House for Mr. Biswas” says-

 

 “Rebellion in Biswas is defined by his state as a cultural, psychological and social orphan.”

That is why very often his revolt contains a childlike rage and grief just as a child who wants to prove that his suffering is the result of the fault of someone else.

 

Biswas’s entry into the Tulsi family is an important stage in the assertion of his selfhood. It is a typical joint family which functions on the same principle as those of the British Empire in the West Indies, or for that matter, any colonial establishment. It provides sustenance and shelter in total abdication of the self. No wonder then Mr. Biswas felt ‘trapped’ when fell into the clutches of Tulsidom: for Naipaul depicts Hanuman House as a symbol of rigidity and communal life. When Biswas realizes that men are necessary in the Tulsi estates only as husbands for the Tulsi daughter and as labourers on the Tulsi estate, the individual in him rebels. He asserts himself by putting forward his motto as, “paddle your own canoe”.

 

Pitted against the Tulsidom, Mr. Biwas is very well aware of his limited talents and his own stakes if he rebelled and came out of the Tulsi system once for all. But he constantly seeks to negotiate a free space for himself wherein he can overcome the degenerating and suppressing tendencies of the Tulsi environment. His option to live at the Chase on his own is one of his attempts to escape from the suffocating servility of the Tulsis.

 

Mr. Biswas’s move to Green Vale is a very important phase in his development as a mature individual. This brief period gives him a chance to know about the reality of the situation and his own weaknesses. He feels compelled to take a decision about his future. After his breakdown at Green Vale, his escapist tendency (as seen earlier in the novel when under fear and insecurity he cycled to Tulsi house and when his individual identity felt threatened, once again he prepared to face the world outside), undergoes a change.

 

                “He was going out into the world, to test it for its power to frighten. The past was counterfeit, a series of cheating accidents. Real life. And its especial sweetness, awaited; he was still beginning… the spasms of terror didn’t come. The knots of fear was still in his stomach, but they were so subdued he knew he could ignore them. The world had been restored to him."

 

After this point, Biswas does not feel impelled to raise a rebellion, as the Hanuman House ceases to threaten him.  The Tulsi clan has already begun to disintegrate from within. Thus there is an interlink between Biswas’s progress towards selfhood and the decline of the Tulsis.