Miguel Street – V.S Naipaul
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Miguel Street Review
`Miguel Street is a novel by V.S Naipaul that represents a series of experiences by an unnamed narrator. The book is set in Miguel Street, Trinidad, in western Port of Spain. The book contain a number of different individual characters who are used by the author to bring into light his intended message to the readers and in development of themes. Some of the common characters in the include Mr. Popo who is a carpenter, the poet B. Wordsworth and Man-man who becomes a prophet. All through the book, the author presents great ambitions by his authors that are never accomplished. The narrator also constitutes a group of kids from the street who are involved in various adventures in the street surrounding aimlessly with no concern for their future lives. The author has used different stories in the book to highlight the plight of women in poor society that is dominated by men.
The book is an enjoyable, entertaining and simple to read. The author of the book uses simple English that is easily understood by readers who are not first English speakers. This has enabled readers from Spain where the book is set to understand its contents. The book is divided into seventeen separate chapters with each chapter covering a different story about the fate of women in Miguel Street. Although this kind of structure makes the book to appear broader, it has enabled the author to develop deferent themes about women without complexity. These themes are unified by use of a common unnamed author who narrates events about different character from one story to another. This enables readers to understand the flow of events from one chapter to another. Use of different stories in the novel makes the book more interested to the readers since the monotony in reading one continuous story is broken as one shifts from one story to another.
The setting of the book is also in cohesion with the themes addressed in the by the author. The book is set in Miguel street in Trinidad one of the towns in western Spain. The street is a slum where living standards are poor due to poverty, high population, lack of employment and income by the residents. The fact that Naipaul intended to address issues facing women before and during the Second World War makes his choice of setting a suitable one. Spain was one of the countries affected by war and people were busy working hard to shape their lives. Slums were mostly affected and Miguel Street was a good choice of a setting to present such experiences. This choice of a really place for the setting of the novel makes the story more factual and themes are believed to represent the actual life of people and events in that region. This makes the book to be more logical to readers as they read more to familiarize with what happened in Trinidad during the First World War two.
Style of narration is also important in literary writings. Miguel Street is written in first person narration style whereby an unnamed young character describes what is happening to different characters through out the book. Naipaul decided to use an imaginary narrator in order to avoid a state of biasness in his stories. This was a good style because when a really narrator is used in a novel, most readers feel that he/she could be biased in his narration. Use of first person narration also makes the novel more understandable. Readers of the novel are able to capture the actual picture of the kind of life women of Miguel Street went through. This has made it easier for beginners, especially the juniors and non first English speakers, to understand the book without referring to guides and reviews by advanced readers. The narrator is able bring harmony between different chapters and stories in the book.
The book is more of a comedy that is in form of short stories than a single continuous story. This style of writing has enabled the author