KMC Journal

[A Peer-Reviewed, Open-Access Multidisciplinary Journal]

ISSN 2961-1709 (Print)
Published by the Research Management Cell
Kailali Multiple Campus, Dhangadhi
Far Western University, Nepal

Alienation and Fragmentation in Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas

Bimal Kishore Shrivastwa (PhD)
Post Graduate Campus, Biratnagar, Tribhuvan University, Nepal

Corresponding Author: Bimal Kishore Shrivastwa, Email: bimalksrivastav@gmail.com

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3126/kmcj.v4i2.47739

Abstract

This paper seeks to examine the issues of alienation, fragmentation, and the predicament of identity
experienced by Mohun Biswas, the protagonist in V.S. Naipaul’s novel, A House for Mr. Biswas, from the
perspective of post-colonialism. To uncover how Naipaul grapples with issues of post-colonialism such
as dislocation, identity crisis, and longing for a sense of belonging in an alien world, the research tool
taken for the investigation is post-colonialism, with special reference to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,
Homi K. Bhabha, and Leela Gandhi. The research design used for the analysis is textual analysis. The
principal finding is that Mr. Biswas, a representative of the novelist’s voice, resides in an alienated
situation within his own community, despite the fact that he is physically residing with them. The
paper focuses on key terms of postcolonial literature such as dislocation, identity crisis, and diaspora to
diagnose the character’s attitudes towards the alienated lifestyle. The readers and scholars interested in
researching diaspora literature in future are expected to take the paper as a reference.

Keywords: diaspora, displaced, identity crisis, resistance

Introduction
Postcolonial literature often records racism, including slavery, dislocation,
alienation, and exile experienced by the people who were formerly colonized
(Masood, 2019). The chief focus of this research paper is to observe certain post-
colonial issues of dislocation, and loss of identity addressed in V.S. Naipaul’s novel
A House for Mr. Biswas. Boehmer (1995) marked V.S. Naipaul as the founding figure
of the old diaspora and Salman Rushdie as the representative of the modern diaspora.
Naipaul’s writings have been taken as the best representative of the problems of
Copyright 2022 Author(s) This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License.
KMC Journal, Volume 4, Issue 2, August 2022, 66-77 66
people living a nomadic life. Naipaul is noted for his dark novels of alienation and
his vigilant narrative of life and travels (Barnouw, 2003; Dooley, 2006; Ray, 2005).
Although Naipaul’s had lineage, he was born and brought up in the multicultural
society of Trinidad where he felt as if he were an alien in the midst of other aliens
(Chakroberty, 2005). Despite living in London for twenty-seven years, Naipaul felt
as an outsider there and depicted the autobiographical experiences in his novels.
He sensed being an Indian in the West Indies, and a West Indian in England (Ray,
2005). Naipaul’s third novel A House for Mr. Biswas, published in 1961, is about
a Trinidadian Hindu whose greatest desire is to own his own home. The novel is
mainly concerned with Naipaul’s journey in quest of the personal community beyond
the alienating effects of colonialism (Garebian, 1984; Kumar, 2002). It is replete with
the life story of the author’s father, and hence, some biographical elements from.
The story of A House for Mr. Biswas (AHMB) rotates around the continuous
struggle of Mohun Biswas, a Hindu Indo-Trinidadian, who is married into the
dominating Tulsi family, finally sets into the mission of owning his own house
(Hayward, 2002). Naipaul attempts to record the sentimental and traumatic
adventures of an immigrant through the protagonist (Kukreti, 2007; Ray, 2005). The
novel depicts the struggle of Naipaul to become a writer. The use of the indefinite
article, “‘A’ in the title, A House for Mr. Biswas indicates the intensity of his desire to
belong somewhere, to feel at home, to get rid of alienation” (Kukreti, 2007, para. 1).
A researcher intends to ask why his characters in the novel are obsessed with the idea
of escaping the dreary intolerable environment of the Caribbean, why his characters
feel as if they have lost their identity, and they are certified as mere slaves of Western
cultural imperialism. The rationale of the paper lies in the researcher’s attempt to
mark the loss of identity and other post-colonial traits in the fiction.
Literature Review
There are several works carried out on Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas that
shed light on Naipaul’s characterization, narrative, theme, and purpose of writing this
novel. Chinnam (2014) made a critical analysis of Naipaul’s characters and found the
central character, Biswas undergoing the process of articulation and socialization.
Thieme (1996), a critic inseparably associated with Naipaul, wrote about the
use of the central trope of the house and Biswas’s struggle to become a householder.
This idea is recorded after his own experience of visiting the houses of the settlers
in a foreign land when he was working on Naipaul. The real-life experience on
which the novel is based was transformed into fiction (Kukreti 2007; Thieme, 1996).
Another critic Dooliy (2006) embarked on an academic pilgrimage. He notices an
Indian standpoint, and while doing so he engages in a new exploration of the trope of

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the house and home. In the process, he had a vision of Naipaul’s successive homes,
especially the two Naipaul inhabited in the formative early years. Mr. Biswas lives
in a comic position because he is unfamiliar to the familiar world (Garebian, 1984;
Hayward, 2002; Kumar, 2002). A House for Mr. Biswas projects the struggle of the
settlers through the lens of creolization, a process of settling by establishing control
over the indigenous people of an area-to gain a better understanding of Biswas’s
characterization. Khan (1998) noted Naipaul’s emphasis is on the linguistic hybridity
and cultural amalgamation which is part of Trinidad identity formation. According
to Tas (2011), Naipaul depicts a real fighter who is “in all his littleness, and still
preserve a sense of man’s inner dignity” (p.117). Levy (1995) observes the language
of Naipaul in this novel and finds that his narrative technique is characterized by
simplicity. In this way, critics like Khan and Tas marked simple language, rather than
the ornate with the use of literary devices in the novel.
The critics’ reviews on the text A House for Mr. Biswas from various
perspectives signify that they have noticed the problems of settlement and
unsettlement confronted by the central characters of the novel. But the critics have
not noticed the predicament of identity and fragmentation and their impacts on the
lives of the chief characters in the text. Therefore, this article attempts to address the
research gap. It is oriented to survey the causes and impacts of the loss of identity,
fragmentation, alienation, and exile connected to the protagonist of the novel, Mr.
Biswas.
Methods and Procedures
The paper made an analysis of the primary resource, that is, the text, A House
for Mr. Biswas, by V. S. Naipaul applying a discursive, qualitative approach itself
from a theoretical modality based on postcolonial theories of Leela Gandhi, Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak, and Homi K. Bhabha. And the secondary resources such as
literature from journals, and commentaries on the text given through websites were
surveyed to note the research gap. The delimitation of the paper primarily lies in
focusing on the attempt of the characters of the novel to find their identity in an alien
world.
Postcolonial literature is the literature created and narrated by the people
from the countries formerly colonized (Raja, 2019). It addresses the problems and
consequences of decolonization of a country, and issues related to the political
and cultural independence of formerly subjugated people. Hybridity, dislocation,
mimicry, third-space, and ambivalence are the key aspects of postcolonial literature
(Bhabha, 1994). Postcolonial literature is typically characterized by its revolt against
the colonization by the colonizers. All postcolonial writing is resistance writing

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(Bhabha, 1994; Gandhi, 1998). When the colonizer gets encountered with the
colonized, both cultures get affected (Bhabha, 1994). The colonizer intends to deter
the colonized by developing specific behavior of suppression. Spivak (1988) marked
the exploitation of subalterns like that of the colonized by the colonizers in the post-
colonial discourse.
The Post-colonial approaches of the theorists mentioned above are key
research tools used to examine how the sense of dislocation and anonymity are
experienced by Mr. Biswas in Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas.
Results and Discussion
The central concern of the paper is to observe how V. S. Naipaul raises the
issues of identity crisis, dislocation, and indifference towards an individual leading
to alienation and fragmentation in his celebrated work A House for Mr. Biswas.
From the very beginning of the fiction, the novelist portrays a desperate picture of
the leading character. Mr. Biswas is struggling to preserve his identity and build an
authentic selfhood in a bizarre environment. Bhabha (1994) argued that migrant
subjects suffer from “a doubling, dissembling image of being in at least two places
at once which makes it impossible…to accept the invitation to identity” (pp. 112-
113). A researcher notices how Mohun Biswas is sketched as an individual losing
his identity in the very first chapter of the novel. Even an astrologer, Pundit Sitaram
studied the birth details of Mohun Biswas consulting his astrological almanac and
remarked, “The boy will be a lecher and a spendthrift. Possibly a liar as well” (p.
16). The six fingers of Mr. Biswas, for Pundit Sitaram, symbolize bad fortune for
his family. Hence, Mohun’s predicament of identity begins from his home. It is the
ruling ideology that makes the elites to discriminate against the non-elites (Gandhi,
1998; Spivak, 1988). Pundit Sitaram stands for the elite who create space for the
marginalization of Mr. Biswas. Mohun experiences alienation in his house because
the family priest has interpreted his horoscope and declared him to be ominous.
Such judgments make him feel as if he was an outsider in his Indian community. His
journey to find a home is his attempt to acquire his social role and identity.
Mr. Biswas realizes that the crisis in identity arises due to the ambivalence
state. Ambivalence refers to “a simultaneous attraction toward and repulsion from an
object, person or action” (Young, 1995, p. 161), or a continual fluctuation between
wanting one thing and wanting its opposite. Naipaul portrays the ambivalence and
complexity of the relationship between a man and his origins and his inability to
escape from it. Aware of his loneliness and dilemma, Mr. Biswas tells his son, “I am
just somebody. Nobody at all” (AHMB, p. 279). Unlike his father and brothers who
have inherited the social identity of laborers, this cannot be claimed by Mr. Biswas.

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Alienation is viewed as an emblem of personal dissatisfaction with certain structural
components of modern society (Lystad, 1972; Silva, 2017). Mr. Biswas first looks
after his uncle’s shop; then he finds work as sign-painter. While doing the job of the
sign-painter, he encounters Shama, the Tulsis’ daughter, and later on, marries her.
His life after marriage is a symbol of the third space. The alienated people struggle to
find their identity in the third space (Bhabha, 1994; Oversveen, 2021). The married
life makes Mr. Biswas feel that life opens no room for not romance, but increases
responsibility.
When no money and dowry were received from the Tulsis, Mr. Biswas has
no alternative but to shift into the Hanuman House. Bhabha (1994) contended that
home is not home but it signifies a mode of living taken as “a metaphor of survival”
(p. 113). But this metaphor does not work for Mr. Biswas. The unfriendly family
atmosphere heightens his mental complexity. To Mr. Biswas, it is a typical joint
family which functions on the same pattern as “the British Empire in the West
Indies” (p. 112). Hanuman House provides shelter to Mr. Biswas but loses his
identity in return. Hanuman House, another metaphorical representation, is depicted
as follows:
The concrete walls looked as thick as they were and when the narrow doors
of the Tulsi Store on the ground floor were closed, the House became bulky,
impregnable, and blank. The balustrade which hedged the flat roof was crowned
with a concrete statue of the benevolent Monkey God Hanuman. (p. 186)
This description signifies how the concrete wall of the house appeared narrow
and how the House looked bulky for a struggling settler like Mr. Biswas in an alien
world.
Mr. Biswas finds his condition ambivalent day after day. Ambivalence
is a complicated state of repulsion and attraction marked in the link between the
colonizer and the colonized (Bhabha, 194). Mr. Biswas observes that men are
required to do labor work in the Tulsi family, no matter whether they are husbands or
not. He realizes that he is not welcomed in Hanuman House where “he was treated
with indifference rather than hostility” (AHMB, p. 187). This realization builds
his ambivalent character. However, he “held his tongue and tried to win favor” (p.
188). He has a strong faith in gaining his freedom and independence. He keeps on
attempting to rediscover his identity. Govind, one of Tulsi sons-in-law, advises Mr.
Biswas to quit sign-painting and be a driver of the Tulsi estate. Mr. Biswas retorts
his disapproval: “Give up sign-painting? And my independence? No, boy. My motto
is: paddle your own canoe” (p. 107). It seems that for Mr. Biswas sign-painting
displays his identity. He disagrees to adopt any profession connected to the Tulsis.

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Moreover, he does not intend to get himself identified by the insignificant son-in-law,
in the Tulsi family. This demonstrates his attempt to create his own identity from the
ambivalent state.
Mr. Biswas looks bewildered in the hybrid state. Hybridity is a postcolonial
trait highlighted by Homi K. Bhabha. Hybridity commonly refers to the creation of
new transcultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonization (Bhabha,
1994). Mr. Biswas attempts to gain his freedom in Hanuman House. He tries to
be closer to the Aryans, the so-called protestant Hindu communities from India.
His voice for the eradication of the caste system, child marriage, and idol worship
doctrines making the Tulsis ferocious. Like the colonized, Mr. Biswas struggles
without any proper job, income, and a house of his own in his identity predicament.
This is shown in the text:
The future he feared was upon him. He was falling into the void, and that terror
known only in dreams, was with him as he lay awake at nights, hearing the snores
and creaks and the occasional cries of babies from the other rooms. The relief that
morning brought steadily diminished. Food and tobacco were tasteless. He was
always tired and always restless. (AHMB, p. 227)
The fragmented life makes his world dark. He apprehends life without solace
and comfort.
Mr. Biswas is disappointed that nobody loves him, nobody knows him, rather
everybody ridicules at his condition (Levy, 1995). Mr. Biswas experiences bitter
stillness around him in the evenings as long as he is locked into the room.
Mr. Biswas is a subaltern who acts in an absurd way in many situations.
The crisis of identity, the rootlessness, and the feeling of subaltern force man to act
in an absurd way (Spivak, 1988). Mr. Biswas performs several absurd activities to
highlight his individuality and to get acknowledged, such as his revenge on Bhandat
(spitting in his rum) or giving various nicknames to the Tulsis. For example, ‘the old
hen’, ‘the old queen’, ‘the old cow’ intended to Mrs. Tulsi, and ‘the big boss’ for
Seth, or ‘the two Gods’ for Tulsi’s sons. The narrator finds himself so troubled that he
says “he could not be trusted” (AHMB, p. 102). Even when Mr. Biswas’s daughter
is born, Seth and Hari decide to name her Savi without consulting Mr. Biswas. To
register his protest, Mr. Biswas writes on the birth certificate: “Real calling name:
Lakshmi. Signed by Mohun Biswas, father. Below that was the date” (p. 163). This
signifies the ceaseless attempt of Mr. Biswas to assert his identity in the post-colonial
world.

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 Mr. Biswas goes through the creolization. Creolization is mostly used to
refer to those “post-colonial societies whose present ethnically or racially mixed
populations are a product of European colonization” (Ashcroft et al., 2000, p. 51).
In another section, named, ‘The Chase’, Mr. Biswas begins to live independent
life with Sharma. Nevertheless, he has a bitter feeling that he is an inessential and
unwanted person. For Mr. Biswas, “Chase was a pause, a preparation” (AHMB, p.
147). Mr. Biswas’s desire to own his own house signals the problem of identity crisis
among displaced people. Spivak (1988) believed that the dispossessed attempt to
establish their identity, voice, and collective locus. At Chase, Mr. Biswas marks that
“the Hanuman House was the world, more real than the Chase, and less exposed;
everything beyond its gates was foreign and unimportant” (AHMB, p. 188). Mr.
Biswas expects to get his identity discovered in Chase. But wherever he shifts, he
experiences a sense of fragmentation and alienation looming before him. He finds
himself as the dispossessed and keeps on attempting to establish his identity. It is
the perception of economic inequality that intensifies the affliction of alienation
(Oversveen, 2021; Silva, 2017). Mr. Biswas keeps on striving to regain his own
identity among the migrated East Indians in Trinidad.
Mr. Biswas suffers in his attempt to imitate the English colonizers. Mimicry is
a key term associated with post-colonialism and marked in the novel. Bhabha (1994)
defined mimicry as exaggerated copying of language, culture, manners, and ideas.
Pundit Jairum tries to teach Mr. Biswas the Ramayana and other traditional lessons.
But he ignores reading them. Instead, he reads philosophical books like Bell’s
Standard Elocutionist. Reading philosophical books and fiction, Mr. Biswas realizes
that the people of his community have no valuable history. Mr. Biswas regards that
the romance which he notices reading Bell’s Standard Elocutionist is unachievable
in this land. This idea is recorded in these lines: “He read the novels of Hall Caine
and Marie Corelli. They introduced him to intoxicating worlds” (AHMB, p. 74).
His disappointment intensifies his inferiority complex. Seth questions Mr. Biswas
about his father at the very first encounter with the Tulsis, but Mr. Biswas evades
the question and says, “I am the nephew of Ajodha Pagotes” (p. 85). He admits this
because his inheritance and his identity in Trinidad are not safe, and he cannot be
totally free from suffering. Life, for Mr. Biswas, is futile without Sharma, without his
children, and even without the Tulsis. Garebian (1984) found Mr. Biswas a grotesque
character ridiculed by his state of dislocation. Mr. Biswas visits Hanuman House
more frequently in bewilderment and to seek his identity.
Mr. Biswas is sometimes found to be performing colonial mimicry for the
sake of identity. It is a violation of self in order to gain something great. Bhabha
(1994) believed that “colonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed, recognizable
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other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite” (p. 86).
Mr. Biswas admits the truth that England is the land of offering opportunity and
freedom. He does not like the trend of identifying a person by his caste. He believes
that “a man’s caste should be determined only by his actions” (AHMB, p. 111).
Thus, his thoughts are of a modern English man, while he is really a Brahmin Indian
immigrant who inherits a status as a labourer from his immigrant father.
The loneliness and depression of Mr. Biswas are the results of this
incongruity which is by itself a product of his mimicry. Mimicry is not a
representation of the servitude of the colonized; rather it can be considered as an
attempt to change its identity (Bhabha, 1994). Mr. Biswas has a strong faith that a
nobler purpose is awaiting him. The narrator reports this conviction of Mr. Biswas
in these words: “Though he never ceased to feel that some nobler purpose awaited
him, even in this limiting society, he gave up reading Samuel Smiles. That author
depressed him acutely. He turned to religion and philosophy” (AHMB, p. 174).
All the time Mr. Biswas finds himself as a man belonging to another world, quite
distanced from the world he resides in. Though the books read by him are unfamiliar
to his world, they offer him comfort and relief. The books provide him with solace
because he lacks security in his real world. He cannot decide where to start from.
Thus, living a life of mimicry throws him in a position where no one notices him.
This even intensifies his feeling of humiliation. Readers can notice the paradox
between Mr. Biswas’s intention and confrontation, dream and reality. Nevertheless,
he intends to imitate the English so that he can disguise himself from being
colonized.
Although his stay at the Green Vale provides Mr. Biswas a sense of liberty
and significance, his activities in Green Vale are characterized by the physical and
mental insecurity. In the Post-colonial scenario, the non-elites, the discarded fight
against insecurity for their identity (Gaandhi, 1998). Here, his dream to build a house
begins to shape into reality. It is not that he wants a spacious place for himself, but
he wants to be recognized as the father of his children, especially by his son, Anand.
For Mr. Biswas, “Anand belonged completely to Tulsis” (AHMB, p. 216). Though
he begins to build his house in Green Vale, it is not exactly identical to his dream
house. Bhabha (1994) delineated “mimicry repeats rather than re-presents” (p. 85).
Mr. Biswas goes into the comfortable rooms of the house thinking that it will bring
a change in his mind. But the feeling of alienation and dislocation lurks here too. He
feels discarded like the non-elite in the world of the so-called elites.
Wherever Mr. Biswas goes, he finds entangled between mimicry and
mockery. Bhabha (1994) opined that “ambivalence represents the existing fluctuating
relationship between mimicry and mockery” (p. 87). Port of Spain exposes new
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prospects for Mr. Biswas. The city proffers him some prospects of establishing his
identity. He works as a reporter for the Trinidad Sentinel and draws a salary of fifteen
dollars a month. This job helps him gain some prestige from the Tulsis as well. Mr.
Biswas, too, never feels what he used to feel when Sharma is pregnant for the fourth
time, “one child claimed; one still hostile, one unknown. And now another” (AHMB,
p. 227). His relation with Mrs. Tulsi is gradually improved. But the tragedy is that
happiness is short-lived. The hold of the Trinidad Sentinel by new authorities and
Mrs. Tulsi’s verdict to live in Shorthills gives a blow to Mr. Biswas. Nevertheless,
the house of Mr. Biswas is not conveniently situated. He has to walk a mile daily
for shopping confronting the problem of transportation. His children also wish to go
back to Port of Spain.
Mr. Biswas keeps on realizing his duties as a father and as a husband in
Port of Spain. He always has double consciousness. Tyson (2006) described that
the colonized have a double consciousness, that of the colonizer and indigenous
community. The house stands as a prison for Mr. Biswas because it is distanced from
the city. Mr. Biswas “could not simply leave the house in this place. He had to be
released from it” (AHMB, p. 432). Mr. Biswas reports Sharma that he is going to
leave the house very soon. He has a quest for his own house. The quest for the house
signifies the quest of Mr. Biswas to obtain his identity, self-respect, and dignity. This
instinct is a process of creolization of Mr. Biswas. When people are fed up with
the dominant culture, they produce a totally new construct in creolization (Ashcroft
et al., 2000; Oversveen, 2021). Sharma, the wife of Mr. Biswas wishes to leave
the house although she had insisted on living with the Tulsi family earlier. Sharma
remarks, “I do not want anything bigger. This is just right for me. Something small
and nice” (p. 580). Ultimately, Mr. Biswas succeeds in getting a loan from Ajodha
and purchasing a house in Port of Spain. He depicts the house in these words: “The
sun came through the open window on the ground floor and struck the kitchen wall.
Woodwork and frosted glass were hot to the touch. The Sun went through the home
and laid dazzling strips on the exposed staircase” (p. 572). The presence of the sun
in the dazzling house signifies the happiness and gratification of Mr. Biswas living in
the new house.
This is the indirect representation of Naipaul’s gratification at the
accomplishment of his wish. But Mr. Biswas finds many infirmities in the house later
on though his sense of satisfaction for owning a house lurks there. Naipaul implies
that for dislocated people like Mr. Biswas, owning a house is not just a matter of
sheltering from the cold or rain but also an indication of establishing order in the
heterogeneous and fragmented society of Trinidad.

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 Mr. Biswas is described as a determined man who is struggling against the
hostile environment instead of escaping from it. One of the dominant issues of post-
colonial literature is the diaspora. Ingleby (1999) regarded that diaspora includes a
dispersion from one place or a center from which all the dispersed take their identity.
The symbolic meaning of a house for Mr. Biswas is highlighted in the Prologue:
How terrible it would have been, at this time, to be without it; to have died among
the Tulsis; amid of the squalor of that large, disintegrating and indifferent family;
to have left Shama and the children among them, in one room; 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. (AHMB,
p. 14)
Naipaul demonstrates the bitter situation and the lifestyle of the Indian
diasporic community in Trinidad through the depiction of the hero, Mr. Biswas.
In this way, the novelist becomes successful in universalizing the issue of
alienation experienced by an individual. The protagonist stands for the novelist
himself who battles against the painful condition of dislocation. At times, the
novel even grows darker as Biswas’s battle with the Tulsis becomes complicated.
Nevertheless, Mr. Biswas succeeds to possess a house of his own by the end. Naipaul
seems to have carefully chosen the name of the protagonist, Mr. Biswas. He seeks to
picture the problems of the Hindu living in an alien world. Therefore, the first name
of Mr. Biswas, Mohun signifies ‘beloved’, although Mr. Biswas is portrayed as an
unlucky individual struggling to trace out his identity in a hostile world. The novel
depicts the activities of the Indians struggling to find their place and identity in an
alien country. The predicament of identity is generated by unfamiliar language, and
religious and cultural practices.
Conclusion
Thus, Naipaul’s fiction, A House for Mr. Biswas, delineates the pathos of
migrants struggling for survival in a state devoid of their identity. The life of Mr.
Biswas revolves around the unifying, integrating, and central metaphor of the house.
Narrated in compassionate tones, the house, for Mr. Biswas, stands for his search for
independence from dependence. The novel exposes the dark outlook of the social
and ethnic past of the marginalized East Indian migrants living in Trinidad. The
narrative attempts to balance Mr. Biswas’s inner self and the disinterested view of the
outer world. The dislocated life of Mr. Biswas reflects the ambivalent life of Naipaul
himself. Naipaul, like Mr. Biswas, had experienced a bitter life of fragmentation and
alienation while residing in Trinidad. In the quest for his own identity, Mr. Biswas
moves from village to city and from nuclear family to joint family. But, he is unable
KMC Journal, Volume 4, Issue 2, August 2022, 66-77 75
to discover his own roots in the alienated world. The chief finding of the research is
that the novel demonstrates how the dislocated Indians live a hard life in Trinidad,
and how they find themselves colonized by the local people or the colonizers there.
Despite being a member of the Trinidad community, he resides in a situation of
anonymity. He is displaced from his ancestors’ home because he has no home and
land in India, neither does he have loving community in Trinidad despite he succeeds
in possessing a house there. Like his forefathers, Mr. Biswas is obliged to go away
from his birthplace and wander in an alien world in quest for the identity and
security. Naipaul portrays struggle of Biswas in tracing out his identity in the novel.
It is not just an expression of an individual but the collective attempt of the Indian
diaspora that finds a place in the fiction.
Acknowledgement
The researcher is grateful to the Research Management Cell (RMC) of the Post
Graduate Campus (Tribhuvan University), Biratnagar, Nepal for providing academic
assistance in collecting the research materials required for the preparation of this
paper. The researcher received no any fund from any government or non-government
agencies for the preparation of the paper. The researcher has no any conflict of
interest to disclose.
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