In his introduction to V.S. Naipaul’s Miguel Street, Laban Erapu argues that each of the characters is the victim of a society that “has not yet defined its goals” which makes it impossible for these people to fulfill their dreams. Grape believes that “the grueling life and environment of Miguel Street” drains its inhabitants (xv), and to support his point he cites the last line of this novel made up of short stories. As the narrator walks toward the plane that will take him to England he finds himself “looking only at my shadow before me, a dancing dwarf on the tarmac” (Naipaul 172), which to Erapu suggests that the Third World culture has reduced the narrator’s stature.
He suggests that Miguel Street’s characters are starved for all that the developed world has to offer and that unless they escape from Trinidad they will never fulfill their potential. This essay will argue that Erapu is wrong about the cause of the characters’ problems. They are not held back by their society’s limitations but choose that society nothing is expected of them and no one rises high enough to make them feel bad about themselves.
In the story “His Chosen Calling,” the narrator dreams of becoming a scavenger cart driver like his friend, Eddoes, a much more glamorous occupation than sweeping, the only alternative. Elias, the son of the bullying George, has other ambitions. He intends to become a doctor. He has already cast himself in that role, cultivating an air of stoicism that he associates with doctors. He accepts his father’s beatings without crying, never speaking a word against him even though George “used to tie him with rope, and then beat him with the rope he had soaked in the gutters of his cow-pen” (Naipaul 31). Elias fails the first exam but does not complain.
The community supports and encourages him, and mothers continue to point him out to their children as role models because he is always clean, respectful, and studious. Elias already lives his dream, planning for the day when he would “go give a lot of money and thing to you and Boyee and the rest of you fellows” (Naipaul 32).
After failing the exam for the third time he tries to qualify as a sanitary inspector but after three years of trying and failing to qualify, Elias gives up and takes up driving a scavenging cart. He has failed to realize his dreams but he will forever be distinguished from the others for having dreamed of becoming a doctor. More importantly, he is now “one of the street’s aristocrats” (37) and swears, threatens, and spits like everyone else.
“B. Wordsworth” is the story of a street eccentric who has cast himself as William Wordsworth’s black brother. He sells his poetry like the calypsonians do but no one buys it… His one-room house stands among trees and bushes which separate it from the street life. He reveals that his late wife, also a poet, was responsible for the garden but whether that is true or not cannot be determined. He cannot quote Wordsworth nor are there any books in his hut.
It is only in Miguel Street’s lax and forgiving culture – one in which being eccentric is good enough — that he can indulge his fantasies without ever having to prove himself. No one challenges him and no one is interested in his poetry, not even the narrator. He is a charming man, one who teaches the narrator about the beauties of nature. What most impresses the narrator is that B. Wordsworth “does everything as though he were doing some church rite (Naipaul 49), that is, he gives every event in his life equal importance.
He planned to write the greatest poem in the world which, at the rate of one line per month, would take another twenty-two years to be completed but then it would “sing to all humanity” (Naipaul 50). Before he dies he confesses that everything he had told the boy is a lie; but for many years that lie had sustained Wordsworth, had given him a persona, standing in the community and the respect and love of a boy.
In “The Coward,” a mean black man called Big Foot has assumed the persona of the bully, an intimidating man who carries a knife, says very little, and is feared by everyone. Everyone also wants to be his friend and brags about their closeness with him. In Trinidad, he is regarded as a prankster for once having thrown a rock through a radio station’s window and for having told the passengers on the bus he was driving to wash.
Only the narrator knows that Big Foot is afraid of small dogs, but he keeps the man’s secret because if he were to reveal it, Big Foot would have a new persona, that of a coward. In his desperation to hold on to his original persona, Big Foot takes up boxing, and “Miguel Street grew more afraid of him and more proud of him” (60) when he wins a string of fights. Finally, he challenges an Englishman reputed to be the Air Force champion, but when he loses on points he breaks down into tears while still standing in the ring. This is reported in the local newspaper, and now his image is ruined and he must leave Miguel Street.
The structure of the stories reflect life in Miguel Street – they are amateurish, the work of the designated chronicler who is not necessarily the best man for the job but who does a passable imitation of a Writer.
Standards are low in this community, anyone can become anything, whether it be a poet or a doctor or a champion boxer, at least until the outside world intrudes. The insiders, as Erapu calls the regular characters, live on Miguel Street because they do not want to test themselves against the world’s standards. The street is their refuge, a place to keep their dreams alive. Whether their society has defined its goals or not is immaterial to them. Only the people who grow bored with the limited life along Miguel Street, such as the narrator, break loose from its comfortable hold and venture into the world beyond Trinidad.