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MIGUEL STREET ANALYSIS ESSAY

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Words: 1708Category: APA

Pages: 7

Miguel Street has been variously classified as a group of short stories, as a series of sketches, and as a
novel. The latter classification is supported by the fact that it is unified by a single narrator and by
several patterns and themes. Furthermore, although each chapter is dominated by a single character,
those major characters reappear as minor characters in other chapters. At the end of the book, all the
characters who still live on Miguel Street gather to present to the narrator (who is departing for college)
gifts representing their own attitudes toward life. Thus, the narratives are tied together, justifying the
label “novel.”

According to V. S. Naipaul, the genesis of Miguel Street was a shout that he remembered from a Port of
Spain boyhood: “What happening there, Bogart?” The purpose of the novel is to answer that question.
What happens in Miguel Street seems to be a repeated pattern of aspiration, defeat, and adjustment, all
defined and judged by Miguel Street itself.
In this close community, characters search for an identity which will be respected by the Street. Bogart,
for example—the first character whose life is explored in the novel—has made himself popular by the
mysterious self he has created, a tailor who never sews, an imitation Humphrey Bogart who disappears
from time to time and returns with elaborate accounts of his adventures, every time more like an
American gangster, expansive but chilling. When Bogart is arrested for bigamy, his real problem
becomes clear. Unable to father a child with his Tunapuna wife, he has impregnated a girl in Caroni;
forced to marry the Caroni girl, he has returned to Miguel Street and to the men whom he can impress.
Having proven his virility to himself, Bogart can act like Bogart. Unfortunately, he has had to commit
bigamy in order‘to do so, and even on Miguel Street, he is not safe from the law. Hat understands why
Bogart returned to Miguel Street: “To be a man, among we men.”

For Popo, the second character in the novel, the respect of the Miguel Street men comes only after the
desertion of his hardworking wife. Discouraged, drunk, angry, and rowdy, Popo is accepted as a man,
whereas before he was only a “man-woman.” Although his reputation dwindles when he brings back his
wife and remodels the house to please her, Popo once again impresses Miguel Street when he is
arrested for large-scale thievery of materials and furniture. Unfortunately, on his return from prison,
Popo turns industrious; Miguel Street men believe that profitable employment should be left to the
women.

Structurally, every chapter is related thematically to those which precede it and to those which follow it.
Thus, the account of Popo’s difficulties with his wife and with his reputation for virility is followed by
that of George, who is an outcast on the Street because he beats his wife and his children incessantly,
and by that of George’s son Elias, who cannot pass any examination to better himself but who refuses to
complain about his job driving a cart just as he has refused to admit his father’s brutality. The sketch of
the mad Man-man, finally removed from the Street and committed to an institution, is followed by the
story of B. Wordsworth, who possesses the imagination but not the talent of a poet, and who, like Man-
man, disappears from Miguel Street. Like B. Wordsworth, Big Foot is a pretender, and like the poet who
does not write, Big Foot vanishes when his cowardice becomes general knowledge. In the final sketch of
this group, Morgan, the maker of fireworks and the would-be comedian, also must flee from the
judgments of the Street.

Titus Hoyt, Laura, and Eddoes all keep their places on the Street and are among the friends who give
appropriate gifts to the narrator at the end of the book. Moving from one pedagogical project to the
next, Hoyt never gives up. Similarly, the prolific Laura moves cheerfully from pregnancy to pregnancy,
cracking briefly only when a daughter follows her pattern. The final story in this group, that of Eddoes,
also deals with a determined survivor, who finds joy in the discards of others, which he finds at the
dump, and eventually in a discarded baby, supposedly his.
Although the book does not develop chronologically, it ends with the narrator becoming an adult and
leaving Miguel Street, not to escape its judgments but to acquire an education. Unlike Elias, he passed
the necessary examinations; unlike so many of those on the Street, he has a real opportunity to alter his
life.

The Characters

Growing up in Miguel Street, the narrator learns to respect people whom outsiders might lump together
as ignorant slum-dwellers. He comments, “we who lived there saw our street as a world, where
everybody was quite different from everybody else. Man-man was mad; George was stupid; Big Foot
was a bully; Hat was an adventurer; Popo was a philosopher; and Morgan was our comedian.” Naipaul
reveals his characters by accurate recording of dialogue and through the narrator’s ongoing reporting of
gossip, facts, and his impressions as well as those of others. In the beginning of “The Pyrotechnicist,” for
example, the narrator contrasts the Street’s assessment of Morgan as “our comedian” with his own later
understanding of Morgan’s personality.

Then, Naipaul’s narrator sums up Morgan as “the sort of man who, having once created a laugh by
sticking the match in his mouth and trying to light it with his cigarette . . . does it over and over again”
and concludes by quoting Hat’s comment that Morgan is “not so happy at all.” Thus, in a sense, Naipaul
circles his characters, viewing them from various perspectives, including the perspective of the adult
narrator as he reviews the simpler evaluations of his youth.

Although everybody in Miguel Street is presented as being different from everyone else, there are also
similarities in outlook which set the people of the Street apart from most of those who read about them.
In the Street, there is a real understanding of what might be called the artistic temperament. Thus, the
carpenter Popo is no more respected when he makes chairs for sale than he was when he worked
industriously on an unnameable product, and Bhakhu, who is driven to tinker with all the mechanical
vehicles which come his way, is evaluated as almost a “mechanical genius,” despite his inevitable
disasters. The attitude seems to be more important than the product. Therefore, the Street accepts B.
Wordsworth as a poet, without asking to read his poem, and only his own need to admit his failure
eventually drives him from the Street.
Titus Hoyt, the teacher without credentials, remains and is respected. Since most of the people on
Miguel Street substitute dreams of glory for achievement, the society itself has learned to find
happiness in its illusions. It is ironic that when Bolo wins the sweepstakes—one of the few occasions in
the novel on which a dream comes true—he cannot accept his good fortune: Believing that he is being
mocked, Bolo tears up his winning ticket. One of the delightful qualities in Naipaul’s characters is that
they are so imaginative, so irrational, so inconsistent, and so ill at ease with reality.

Themes and Meanings

The themes of the novel are those truths which the narrator learns as he grows up on Miguel Street,
values which the community holds in common, values which are moral rather than legalistic. Indeed,
Sergeant Charles, the local officer of the law, is given to apologizing for enforcing it, and no one in the
Street seems to think less of anyone else simply because he is given a prison sentence. Sometimes, as
with Popo, he will return a hero.

The Street, however, has its own standards. It disapproves of the cruelty of George toward his wife and
his children, the beatings, the forced marriage of his daughter, the contempt toward his intelligent son.
Although occasional beatings may be necessary, the kind of pleasure that Mrs. Hereira’s lover takes in
brutality is deplored. Nor does the community approve of the coarse language and the rudeness toward
women which they observe in Laura’s lover Nathaniel. Indeed, the Street is delighted to learn that Laura
beats him, rather than his beating Laura, as he boasted.

It is significant that the triumphs in Miguel Street are not worldly successes, but endurance, dignity, and
compassion. “One of the miracles of life in Miguel Street,” comments the narrator, “was that no one
starved.” Nor were children neglected; thus Eddoes’ baby Pleasure is cared for by all the women in the
Street. Observing the lives of those around him, the narrator learns the importance of self-respect;
sympathetically, he tells no one that he has seen Big Foot’s cowardice. He also learns the value of
beauty from the eccentric painter Edward, the would-be poet B. Wordsworth, and Hat, the collector of
tropical birds. Finally, he learns the importance of imagination, which enables all the individuals of
Miguel Street to accept one another’s peculiarities and to take joy in the possibilities which each day
brings. It is clear that the values learned by the narrator are the themes of Naipaul’s novel.

Critical Context
Miguel Street was the third of V. S. Naipaul’s first four books, all of which were set in his native Trinidad.
Like The Mystic Masseur (1957) and The Suffrage of Elvira (1958), which preceded it, Miguel Street is
both comic and optimistic. In his later works, particularly those after The Mimic Men (1967), Naipaul
becomes more pessimistic.

It is significant that in Miguel Street, as in The Mystic Masseur and The Suffrage of Elvira, the hopeful
tone arises partly from the fact that even in the slums of Trinidad there is a spirit of community. In the
later works, Naipaul writes about characters who are isolated, rather than accepted, as lonely Caribbean
students in England or as Indians or whites in hostile Africa. His own experience as an East Indian
growing up in Trinidad and later transplanted to London gave him insight into three societies which he
came to see as all in a condition of decay.

Abakada Ina FilmsChewing Gum at School

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[5/23, 09:52] +263 71 690 0207: SuperSummary

Miguel Street

VS Naipaul Miguel Street

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Miguel Street Summary

SuperSummary, a modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, offers high-quality study guides
that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay
topics. This one-page guide includes a plot summary and brief analysis of Miguel Street by V. S. Naipaul.

Although a collection of short stories bound together in one book is seldom called a novel, Miguel Street
by V. S. Naipaul accomplishes this rare feat by tying all the stories under one unifying narrator. Miguel
Street is the story of the unnamed narrator, (easily identified as the author himself), and his childhood
memories in war-torn Trinidad and Tobago. An interesting method of storytelling is implemented here,
where each chapter is led by a different character, however each of those protagonists appears as a
supporting character in other chapters. The sole uniting factor is the narrator, who appears throughout,
and wraps up the book in the end with his own chapter and his own story.

The book is relatively short, and each story is pithily written, with tons of dialogue making the narrator’s
inner thoughts infrequent, and the themes driven solely by the action. Each chapter recounts the life,
purpose and ambition of each character, and the novel’s motif brings each story together through their
letdowns and inadequacies.

For instance, the first chapter talks of Bogart, a quiet boring man who claims to go off on his own
adventures, and leaves to America to live the American dream, but instead becomes an Americanized
failure, hence naming himself after a fictional movie character. The second chapter is about Popo, a
narrator favorite, and a self-proclaimed carpenter who never built anything of substance in his entire life
– another example of a character living in an imagined world. The next two chapters follow George and
Elias, one a failure in marriage and in divorce, the other in education as well as manual labor.

Chapter five tells the story of Man-man, labeled the town madman because of his eccentricities, but
ironically goes insane when his dog dies and he “sees God.” Chapter six is about Wordsworth, another
character named after a foreigner, accentuating the austere desire for escape from all the inhabitants of
Miguel Street. Wordsworth claims to be writing “the greatest poem in the world,” however he has never
written anything beyond the first line.

The following chapters tell the stories of Bigfoot, Hat and Titus – the failed boxer with a rough
appearance, the abusive father and husband imprisoned for arson, and another literary “thinker” living
in fantasy, respectively.

Chapter ten is about Laura, a prostitute with eight kids from 7 different men. She is callous, abusive and
rough around the edges, as well as within them, however she is brought to tears for the first time when
she discovers her oldest daughter, Lorna, who forgoes her opportunity to become educated and ends up
pregnant instead.

The next two chapters revolve around Eddos, and Mr. and Mrs. Hereira. Eddos is a garbage man who
likes to look sharp and collect books just to keep up on his shelf, finding value in having them instead of
reading them. Toni Hereira and Angela Hereira, are a couple who moved into a recently deceased lady’s
home. Toni is a war veteran, a drunk and a wife beater, and Mrs. Hereira eventually leaves him, and the
narrator’s mother befriends her to take care of her after the breakdown of her marriage and spirit.

The thirteenth chapter is about the narrator’s uncle Bhakcu. Bhakcu, another male wife beater, was
fascinated with cars, and often times found hovering around one. The narrator tells how the most
familiar part of his uncle to him was his legs and feet, because they were always sticking out from under
a car he was repairing. However, with all his time under the hood, it is revealed that he actually has no
idea how to fix cars. The next chapter is about Bolo, a man who was “born sad.” After being scammed
multiple times, he loses faith in people as well as the world, causing him to “not believe it” when he
actually wins in the sweepstakes.

The next few chapters are about Hat again, and his brother Edward. Both brothers had an inkling
towards the beauty of the world, admiring paintings and trinkets, but ironically, their relationship side
was quite foul. Edward’s barren wife left him for an American man, because she was unable to give him
a child, which in their neighborhood was quite an indignity. Hat is revealed once more as the severely
flagrant one, claiming that it is a good thing if a man beats a woman every now and again.

The final chapter brings all of these stories together in multiple ways, mainly allowing the narrator to
finally accept his aversion to this street, and his desire to vacate it. Titled “How I Left Miguel Street,” the
chapter begins with his mother telling him that it is best for him if he left, something that he had been
pondering, and packed his bags and decided to head for New York.

The final scene is of him hugging his mother and walking towards the airplane, which stands in the face
of one of the major themes: overt masculinity. It is quite clear the amount of sexism and machismo
there is on Miguel Street, where almost all the male characters either beat their wives, or are in direct
support of it, many of which attribute this to the other major theme of broken dreams. Every character
in Miguel Street has some sort of dream or longing that they were never able to satisfy, causing them to
live in their imagination, choosing fantasy over the dark and dismal existence that they lived, which was
beautifully and intricately canvased by this Nobel Prize winning author.

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