SEARCH FOR SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS IN V.S. NAIPAUL’S A HOUSE FOR MR. BISWAS

Abstract

V.S.Naipaul is, beyond doubt, a great master of fiction and literary device, a craftsman of style and imagery. His art consists in reducing complexities to simple images and creating original descriptions that are pregnant with suggestive possibilities. The author tries constantly to understand human condition. He appears to be worried about man’s inclination towards lying and self-deception in his works. In all his writings Naipaul has focused on individuals attempting to escape fate. For Naipaul, fate belongs to a world of magic, myth and ritual where only the past exists but not history. According to him, it is history that provides a sense of wholeness and belonging to both people and nation. Many of Naipaul’s fictional figures are at the mercy of social and political forces and also their own personal compulsions. They remain ‘unhoused’ in themselves and are, therefore, located on the borderlines of fixed and shifting identities, living half-lives prescribed by the colonial and postcolonial experience.