Miguel Street Critique - Essay Example

Miguel Street :A Critique Introduction: The novel, Miguel street, written by Naipaul, presents a series of separate episodes of childhood that was expeienced by the unnamed narrator. The situation in the novel is Miguel street a street in western Port of spain. This novel contains a number of idiosyncratic characters who never accomplishes anything and is always working. The book has characters named as Mr Popo, the poet B, Man- Man etc. it is a story of great ambtions that never went anywhere. At the end only the narrator himself manages to escape from Miguel street and leave trinidad. The story reminds us of the character of a child in Harper lee’s scout where the child sees everything and the others don’t see them. The stories are filled with nostalgia and depicts both povety and greatness along with love, domestic violence and failure. The author takes great care to add tenderness even when the darker sides of characters are described. The book provides an excellent window into the consolidation of modern ideology. The characters are clothed with ideological abstractions taken from colonial experiences and cultures. Moreover the author has also taken space to describe disintegration and discontinuation among Indian communities. The characters of the novel carry unevenness in their approach. They are gulfed between one world and another. The juxtaposition of Americanness which a symbol of modernity is seen as dilemmas resulting from the lack of social traditions. The book does not deal with the disintegration of the colonial concept but expressly takes up the thinking that the new order fails to replace the existing one. In this book, Naipaul discusses about the uneven development that continued after the casting off colonialism. His views were channeled towards the rising expectations of Trinidadians working classes during that time. The characters expressed their attitudes through social and cultural modes followed by popular Americans in those times. Pessimistic interpretations were used by the characters in the book. The nationalists’ viewed that colonialism by Americans has funded popular desires that the colonial societies have neglected to satisfy, indeed it was accelerated. It changed the self conceptions among the working class of Trinidad. Post colonization created a bunch of people particularly younger ones who were truly uprooted and adrift. The moral anchor was dislodged after the post colonization era. One of the main things that are highlighted by Naipaul in his book is the emergence of Americanization among the new cultures of the region. Decolonization has given birth to malformed modernity. Modernity was taken as anything that appeared in American films, comics, magazines etc. The nationalists’ were terrified because of this change and the author also echoes their voices in this book. The exposition process taken up by the post colonization Trinidadians on the basis of popular American figures is an attraction in this book. The image of the Hollywood B man who takes up the gestures of Hollywood masculinity and other hundreds of young men adopting hardboiled Bogartian attitudes are ideal examples of this process. Gestures adopted by these characters expand and deepen through repetitions until these men become images of on screen personalities that they imitate. Repetition is an important structural device in this book and becomes a social condition. Repetition is a category that gains importance as modernization ideologies penetrate deep enough into the intellectual field in the form of structuralism thereby providing a link between the goals of modernization as well as the knowledge provided by social sciences. Repetition gestures of B man of Bogart fame is a symbol of powerlessness of the individual. Such procedures can be found out in today’s society also where powerless people fail to develop their own personality and blindly imitate some icons they follow. These people also succeed in repeating the gestures of these icons so that they become established and forms part of their personality. This form of blind imitating is due to the lack of definite relationship between the person and his environment. .Moreover the social condition of repetition is located in the lack of tradition and displaced subjectivity. Naipaul has highlighted the concept of lack of tradition and history. History is always built on achievement and creation, but nothing was created in West Indies with regard to that. The character in the novel, Titus Hoyt who demonstrate to the boys the ruined monuments of Fort George uses the term ‘We’. This shows lack of identity. The character still thinks about British nationality even after independence. He is a person living in two worlds. Such kind of unevenness is evident in societies living under the siege of the colonization. They fail to accept their own culture and demands to be living under the hallucinations of the colonization culture. It is true that colonization has destroyed different cultures around the world, but it is ironically a fact that many societies have not broken up from the past and joined their original cultures The linked phenomenon of the Bogartian attitude of the 1940’s and the adoption of the Zoot suit in Trinidad that helped to create the “saga boy” personality and style, have something to say in this book. The saga boy style seen during the post colonization period indicated working class subjectivity in the area of push and pull between colonialism, decolonization and modernization. These represent working class negotiations of modernizations. The characters who adopted the Saga Boy style where in fact brothers of others in the society who worked hard to create a new regime of humility that was characterized by male domination and inherently challenged the legitimacy .Another character, Popo the carpenter claims that Women are for work and Man not make for work. This thinking by the character ideologies itself to the principle of male domination in the society, in fact Popo is a spokesman of such ideologies. Themes of masculinity and humility become associated in the novel with alternating claims of denial of patrimony. The novel unmasks the impotence of the hardboiled Bogartian attitude which is purely male dominated. He is the symbol of the patriarchal male that is promised by modern day societies. Another character in the novel, George was the craziest among the bunch. He is a symbol of insecure and misled male who is always uncomfortable. He beats his family and makes a slide show of it. Such types of characters who enjoy spousal abuses are found in almost all parts of the world irrespective of the fact that they are living in a developed or underdeveloped country. Most of the characters in the novel, Miguel street are portrayed negatively, the characters are surrounded by alcoholism, prostitution and abuses. Some are willing to have hope for the future and their hope rests on immigrating to other countries. Such types of situations prevail in most of the societies in developing countries. The novel is written on a background of controversies and each has an element of conflict with someone else in the story. The conflicts seem to reveal the nature of the characters as well as the way they think when faced with different types of problems. The conflict between men and women in the family is quite common. This is a symbol of a modern day family governed by false and unwanted egos. Naipaul has added B.Wordsworth’s feelings towards destruction of nature in the home land. The vulnerability of man in the face of universal change as corresponding to the vulnerability of nature is greatly expressed. Some characters in the book like the dancing dwarf on the tarmac are a reflection of life in the third world society. The characters are portrayed comically because of the fact that they could not be understood better without a touch of humor. But behind the comedy and laughter there is the bitter truth of reality. Laughter is a mere escape that is used by the characters of the book. As in real life society, many frustrating moments are covered through humor and laughter. It is considered as the only way to overcome the limitations of the society. Conclusion: Miguel Street is a wonderful work by Naipaul which depicts the transformations undergoing in a society after gaining independence. The author has effectively given suggestive evidences that say that society can transform to unprecedented levels forgetting its past. Many characters in the novel having typical characterizations are not only found in West Indies but in many other parts of the world. The novel gives an opportunity to cross examine societies and their cultures across the globe (Naipaul). Works cited: Naipaul.Vidiyadhar.. Miguel Street. Johannesburg: Heinemann Publishers. (2000) Read More