The Naipauls

Question 1

A House for Mr Biswas PUB DATE

Answer 1

1961

Question 2

The Adventures of Gurudeva PUB DATE

Answer 2

1943

Question 3

Oppression Mr B. quotes

Answer 3

• “born in the wrong way” + “the world carried no witness to Mr Biswas’ birth and early years”
• “a boy leaning against an earth house that had no reason for being there, under a dark falling sky, a boy who didn’t know where the road, and that bus, went”
• “when huts of mud and grass are pulled down they leave no trace.”

Question 4

oppression crit.

Answer 4

• coming from a place which is not real, a place which is imperfectly made, and a place where people are, really, quite inferior, because they demand so little of themselves. They are colonials, in a type of perpetual colonial situation.
• illiteracy in Gurudeva

Question 5

Official docs. Mr B. quotes

Answer 5

• “In this way [birth certificate] official notice was taken of Mr Biswas’s existence, and he entered the new world.”

Question 6

Official docs. crit.

Answer 6

“When I began to write, there were large parts of the world that were not considered worth writing about.” – Naipaul interview, The Paris Review

Question 7

House quotes

Answer 7

• “How terrible it would have been, at this time, to be without it [the house]…worse, to have lived without even attempting to lay claim to one’s portion of the earth; to have lived and died as one had been born, unnecessary and unaccommodated.”
• “Unless he started his house now he never would…nothing would arrest his descent into the void.”

Question 8

Mr B.’s writing/finding his own style quotes

Answer 8

• “the wound was still there, too deep for anger or thoughts of retribution…it was an error…He wished this stated…the mother who had remained unknown”
• “He addressed his mother. He did not think of rhythm; he used no cheating abstract words.”
• “You want to build a little India of your own in Trinidad…It cannot be done….You will be distinctly West Indian” – A.oG.

Question 9

Mr B.’s writing/finding his own style crit.

Answer 9

• “You are writing to … leave a fair record behind, to alter what you think is incomplete and make it good.” – Naipaul, The Paris Review interview

Question 10

4 – novel as a record of these peoples + mausoleum to his father’s work, legacy quotes

Answer 10

• Name, Mohun, approved by Pundit as it “means beloved, and was the name given by the milkmaids to Lord Krishna” = Hindu God of protection  sees father as protector/conservor of T. culture

Question 11

4 – novel as a record of these peoples + mausoleum to his father’s work, legacy crit.

Answer 11

• [on the importance of his father’s work] “They are a unique record of the life of the Indian or Hindu community in Trinidad in the first fifty years of the century” p.19
• “a novel, not of narrative, but of situation and observation” – David Ormerod