Seeking Identity and Integration: Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas

Abstract

The present research is an investigation into V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas (1961). It explores the failure, futility, isolation, alienation, dislocation, displacement, valuelessness and identity crisis in the postcolonial society. Main motto to prepare thesis is to vent out disintegration and identity crisis of third world people by studying the personality and behavior of the character, Biswa's. People express their identity in the situation when it is questioned or threatened. The people who face ‘other’ culture(s) feel themselves insecure and an unknown fear haunts them. As a result, their psychic facet of brain makes them to stay in the state of limbo. Still in the third world people in the west face the problem of belongingness. The thesis shows true representation of dislocation, displacement, cultural identity, mimicry, and hybridity under Indian diasporic discourse. Sense of alienation due to cultural displacement is presented in the novel. Mr. Biswas struggles to get rid of the crippling sense of dislocation and displacement as well as his psychological and physical sufferings. Therefore, there is a diasporic taste at the core of this novel. Thus, Mr. Biswas’s constant repulsion and attraction with the customs and values of the West and the East is realistically presented in the novel. Mr. Biswas, sometimes remains indifferent to all customs, rituals, and traditions observed in both to the West, and the East.