Abstract
This paper aims to elucidate and explore the rate of tragedy which is overcome to comic matter which has been totally overstated in Miguel Street by V. S. Naipaul. Even though the tragedy does not dominate directly because Naipaul also offers considerable humor, the novel possesses manifold deep ideas about the problems of society during the time of World War II. Indirectly the novel is the messenger of the plethora of agonies that postcolonial countries, with an especial concentration on Caribbean countries, suffer. The paper analyzes the rate of tragedy of the novel from various angles in four parts: “Women in Miguel Street,” “Language of the Residents,” “Escape,” and “Relationships,” applying the concept of Homosociality introduced to literature by American scholar Eve Sedgwick.
Keywords: Miguel Street, V. S. Naipaul, tragedy, humor, postcolonial, Caribbean, homosociality
Women in Miguel Street
Miguel Street is a semi-autobiographical novel set in World War II Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, published in 1959. The young narrator befriends numerous people on Miguel Street. It is a collection of short stories based on the narrator’s childhood recollections of events that occurred on Miguel Street. The book mostly gives vivid images in each short story focusing on each inhabitant’s ways to escape from their problems or their overall lifestyle. A major recurrent event is the physical abuse of women and children.
In the novel, woman has been considered as an especial character whose position in society is shown with great and outstanding focus. Miguel Street residents mostly thought about woman as an object, as Nathaniel says, “Women just cows. Cow and they is the same thing” (P. 110). This perspective along with women’s gullibility and illiteracy compiled to create them unimportant. The women were able to live in this street’s families who were first fruitful in bringing children, especially sons, and second very attractive; otherwise, their torture by their husbands would increase. The men’s most prideful factor was beating their own women who were thought as slaves in the home. Sometimes husbands’ cruel treatment caused wives to reply these behaviors in shameful ways.
The women’s significant role in this society was to bear children for their husbands; the more children they bore, the more respectful they were, and those who were barren were considered as bad omens. Furthermore, their illiteracy made them more naive encountering social happenings. They did not have the right to study or be educated; their roles were to work hard and bear offspring.
Language of the Residents
One of the most important factors of a society in considering its courtesy is its language spoken by its people. The style of language that most of the residents, both adults and children, use in their daily communications is very coarse and mostly offensive. This is one of the reasons, along with illiteracy, that make the difference between underdeveloped and developed countries more obvious. They like insulting each other and sometimes call each other in a very bad way, as if they welcome insults and cannot bond without them. Even two brothers do not respect each other, as Hat says to Edward, “Edward, you is my own brother, but you know you really is a son of a bitch” (P. 184).
The residents themselves knew that their behavior is under rationality and politeness. They knew they had to find a way to escape this situation, especially wanting to put the children out of these bad-speaking gangs; however, they are unable since it has become a habit for them.
Escape
Escape, one of the effective and dominant themes in the novel, can be attributed to most of the characters in various chapters for various reasons. The members of this street look for new and fresh happenings that make them adventurers. They want to discover the world that cannot be found in theirs while they do not know what it is. The most disastrous problem could be this: that you cannot understand the future and you cannot try to make it in a way that you love it. Escaping from destiny and questions posed by environment, instead of fighting and finding their answers, is the lowest and easiest work that a person would do without any attempt to stay.
As we see in the novel, the end of escape for the members of the street is just coming back without any result. The narrator himself left the city while he did not know where he was going or why; he had simply been given a scholarship by the government to study.
Relationships and Homosociality
Relationship and the way of its evolving can be considered as the most significant element in building a safe and secure society. The beginning of this formation is inside a family, and the lack of this element will bring an ever-standing flaw that will affect relationships. In this part, the paper applies approaches of the American scholar Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, who popularized Homosociality in literature in 1986, to show the relationships of the men among themselves.
Homosociality concerns social relationships or friendships between persons of the same gender, especially between men, without any romantic or sex-based intention. In the novel, most of the residents did not have a proper upbringing; fathers were mainly cruel with them, mothers did not pay attention to their success or social behaviors. The significant factor in the relationship of a man to other same-gender friends in the novel is the departure that makes the others happy, since the first thing they do is attend his house and take ownership of money and properties left behind.
Conclusion
This novel, one of the masterpieces in Caribbean Literature, indicates the situation of man in his world in the new world. The author has done his best to display how a group in a small society like Miguel Street, especially with its bizarre neighbors, can live. It expresses a deep agony and tragedy in the face of humor. The residents of Miguel Street, who can be a symbol of a larger society, pretend to have sympathy and emotions for each other while they think for their own benefits. They live with each other but not for each other, with a lot of humor and fun, knowing themselves that all are pretending to be happy.
Works Cited
- Josyjosy. “Interpretive Essay on Miguel Street.” Category English, TermPapersLab.com, March 30, 2011.
- Naipaul, V. S. Miguel Street. First Vintage International Edition, New York, June 2002.
- Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. Columbia University Press, April 15, 1985.
- Poore, Charles. Miguel Street. Online submission, The New York Company, 1998.