Miguel Street by V.S.

Naipaul
Presentation by Makwaiba Tsibo
 Published in 1959, Miguel Street is set during World war 2 on Miguel Street located in

Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago.

 The text is divided into seventeen short stories told by an unnamed narrator. Each of the

seventeen stories has a main character, and each main character lives on Miguel Street.

 The characters are tied together geographically as well as by circumstance.

 Naipaul’s characters all go through not reaching life goals or just barely achieving a

dream.

Narrative Structure and style analysis

 The whole story is separated in seventeen disconnected episodes, each one starts a new

beginning and a temporary end, focusing on one major character.

 The story is written primarily in the first person, with each character getting his or her

own chapter, the narrator’s experiences are woven in-between.

 All the episodes are spoken and observed by the boy narrator who lives in Miguel Street

and knows all the people well within the story. Only the last episode is set the boy

narrator himself to leave Miguel Street with an opening end of making better future.

 The English been used by the major characters in the story is quite literarily broken,

Naipaul seems to put language apparently with grammar mistakes as a colonial world’s

symptom

 The whole narrative structure is confined in a street around the western Port of Spain,

where is much like a microscope of Trinidad during wartime, filled with a lively hybrid

atmosphere of multicultural neighborhood

belonging to a particular group of people

 Naipaul writes in a way of comedy tone to actually imply a sort of tragedy. This literary

style makes the readers easily pass through the story but still gaining a serious deep

meaning hidden inside

 Naipaul freely appropriates popular features from the Western culture as a prominent sign

of colonized culture and history in Trinidad

Characters and themes

 The first chapter talks of Bogart, a quite boring man who claims to go off on his own

adventures to live the American dream, but instead becomes an Americanized failure,

hence naming himself a fictional movie character.

 The second chapter is about Popo, 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 are of George and Elias, one a failure in marriage and in divorce,

the other in education as well as in manual labor.

 Chapter five tells the story of Man-man, labeled the town madman, 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 desire for escape from all the inhabitants of Miguel Street. Wordsworth claims to be

writing ‘ the greatest poem in the world,’ however he has not 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 seven different men. She is

callous, abusive and rough around the edges as well as within them, however she brought

to tears for the first time when she discovers that 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. Ton is a war veteran, a drunkard 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, becaude 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 good

thing if a man beats a woman every now and again.

 The final chapter brings all 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 he had been

pondering, 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 indirect support of it, many of

which this to the other major theme of broken dreams. Every character in Miguel Street

has 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.