A House for Mr. Biswas

“[T]hey were past such frivolities, and had already begun to work, joyfully cooperating with the estates in breaking the law about the employment of children.”

The young Trinidadian-Indian boys are too young to understand how they are being exploited. To them, the work is a game. The joy comes from the defiance, of operating beyond the laws and rules which govern their lives. But even this act of defiance becomes an illustration of their subservience, as they are forced to work to survive even though they are still only children. Their exploitation is hidden within the game of defiance.

“Mr Biswas was astonished at his own smallness.”

Mr. Biswas is never a striking or imposing figure. His physical stature reflects his role in society, a precursor of his own irrelevance. Mr. Biswas fails to impose himself on the community, the society, or the world in any meaningful sense. When reflecting on the past, he stares at a photograph of himself and realizes that this has always been the case. He is fundamentally not an important person, and he struggles to come to terms with his own smallness throughout his life.

“The world carried no witness to Mr Biswas's birth and early years.”

Without witnesses to Mr. Biswas's early years, his actions and his influence cannot be deemed to exist. He is so alienated from the society, and he lives so far on the fringes that nothing he does has any impact on the state of the world. Without witnesses, nothing can be proved, and Mr. Biswas continues to rage against his own irrelevance.

“As fatigue overcame him he began to long for the day to end, to relieve him of his freedom.”

Mr. Biswas's first real taste of freedom shows him the inherent limitations of his dreams. He has hoped for so long to have a day to himself but, when such a day comes, he lacks the money and the resources to make the most of it. He wastes the day and hopes for it to end, learning that he should never quite trust his desires as they will always betray him. This lesson foreshadows his later dream of owning a house, which will cause many problems throughout his life.

“The world was too small, the Tulsi family too large. He felt trapped.”

Even before Mr. Biswas is a formal member of the Tulsi family, he feels their overbearing influence. He feels overwhelmed, as though he has encountered an unstoppable force which smothers him completely and leaves him with nowhere to run. For the rest of his life, his relationship to (and attempts to escape from) the Tulsi family determines the course of his life. Whether living with them, trying to escape them, living apart, or forced to go back to them, Mr. Biswas is now permanently "trapped" (59) by their influence.

“Idols are stepping-stones to the worship of the real thing.”

Mr. Biswas believes he is being clever in making a point about religion, lecturing the Tulsi family on their worship of idols. However, he views houses in the same way. He covets a home of his own and worships the idealized version of domestic independence that he holds in his head. He worships the idea of home ownership as though it were an idol, rather than dealing with the practicalities and consequences of owning a home.

“And that was what Mr Biswas continued to feel about their venture: that it was temporary and not quite real, and it didn't matter how it was arranged.”

To Mr. Biswas, everything feels temporary. He is buffeted through his life by social pressure, often forced into situations from which he cannot escape. His marriage to Shama is such an arrangement; he quickly lost interest in her but did not have the gumption or the authority to say so, forcing himself into the marriage. His marriage, his housing arrangement, his jobs, and even the lives of his children feel temporary and distant, speaking to the alienation he feels. Mr. Biswas feels disconnected from everything because he feels like a passive observer in a world he cannot influence.

“He wanted, in the first place, a real house, made with real materials.”

Mr. Biswas wants a house, but he is focused only on the physical realities of home ownership. He does not think about his family, the costs, or the requirements of building a home. Instead, he focuses on the raw materials. He believes in the things that he can touch, so a brick which could one day be a house feels more like realizing his dream than living in borrowed or rented accommodation with his family. Mr. Biswas already lives in a real house but, until he can assert ownership over the physical materials, he never truly feels as though he has a home.

“The gilt stuck to his fingers and the covers reminded him of funeral palls…”

The pun drawn between "gilt" (168) and guilt is a subtle indication of Mr. Biswas's state of mind. He feels guilty for abandoning his family, so much so that every movement and gesture is a reminder of his guilt. Even reading—one of his favorite hobbies—is not free of such a reminder. The gilt-laced cover of a book no longer gives him pleasure because it reminds him, immediately, of the guilt for leaving his family.

“The past was counterfeit, a series of cheating accidents.”

The further Mr. Biswas feels from his life objectives, the more he wishes to reject his past as a false construct. He has been unable to do anything for himself, feeling as though he has been the victim of other people's whims for too long. As a result, his past is not his own, merely a "series of cheating accidents" (195) based on other people's actions. Mr. Biswas's depression is caused, in part, by his inability to assert control over his life. By rejecting his past, he becomes determined to write his own story and his own future.

“The offer was stupendous: a house, no less. It was the climax of his current good fortune, which must now, he felt, surely end.”

The closer Mr. Biswas gets to achieving a goal, the more he fears losing it. He is immediately concerned that any success is only the precursor to an even greater failure and any run of good luck is only setting him up for imminent tragedy. Mr. Biswas's fear is rooted in his own sense of inadequacy, as he has spent so long being told that he is worthless that he has internalized this idea and come to believe it himself. He does not believe he has earned success, so any success which is bestowed upon him must be a mistake which will soon be rectified.

“I don't want you to be like me.”

In a moment of searing honesty, Mr. Biswas tells Anand that he fears that his son will grow up to be like him. Mr. Biswas projects a confident version of himself into the world but, when reckoning with his own failures, he realizes that he will never become the person he always wanted to be. Instead, he hopes to live vicariously through his children. Mr. Biswas does not want Anand to be like him because he wants Anand to be happy and successful. His words are an insight into his unspoken pain and self-loathing.

“Despite the solidity of their establishment the Tulsis had never considered themselves to be settled in Arwacas or even Trinidad.”

Nothing for the Tulsi family is permanent. Their presence in Trinidad is a fleeting concern, a brief entry in a long and storied family history. This attitude is prevalent in the novel, in which very little is considered permanent or unmovable. Houses are knocked down and rebuilt, land is bought and sold, and marriages fall apart and are rebuilt constantly.

“…Mr Biswas found it easy to imagine the other race of Indians moving about this road before the world grew dark for them.”

The violence of colonialism lingers in the minds of the colonial subjects. Mr. Biswas, an Trinidadian-Indian, is in the Caribbean because of the flow of people through the British Empire to serve the economic purposes of the colonial forces. The first people on the island, the "other race of Indians" (253) were exterminated and replaced long ago by those same forces because they did not suit the needs of empire. Mr. Biswas, reflecting on their ghostly presence on the island, places himself in the same category as these people, with whom his own ethnic group and national identity share a name.

“The duty of the puja was shared by many of the men and boys. Sometimes even Anand had to do it.”

With each passing generation, the Trinidadian-Indians lose something of their connection to their cultural past. Anand repeats the rituals and gestures of the religion, but they are devoid of meaning to him. He knows only how to mimic the physical aspect of the religion without being able to delve into the deeper spirituality or meaning of his actions. With each passing year, these rituals become increasingly disconnected from the past and become hollow echoes of the culture that was left behind.

“Those words were never read to the group. This story, like the others, was never finished.”

Mr. Biswas starts his story many times, but life continues to get in the way of finishing the story. There is no escape for Mr. Biswas from the continual grind of existence, as he has no time to pause and reflect on his own life through literature. In this instance, his mother's death punctuates another attempt at self-expression, and he must deal with the blunt trauma of reality rather than look inwards in self-examination.

“Their shyness slowly wore away.”

The vacation is the first time the family have come close to experiencing luxury. They are freed from their cares for a short time and permitted to enjoy themselves without having to worry about work, school, or domestic chores. However, like the ownership of their homes, they are prevented from truly enjoying the vacation. The vacation, like their homes, is rented. It is borrowed and impermanent; it is not truly theirs and it must be given back at the end. While their shyness is slowly wearing away, they are increasingly confronted with the reality of their material situation.

“…[T]hese trips to the Treasury made him feel that he was at last getting at the wealth of the colony.”

Mr. Biswas begins to work for the state and, in doing so, he deludes himself into thinking that he has reached a pinnacle of success. He feels as though he is sharing in the wealth of the colonial powers simply by claiming the expenses that he generates while at work. However, the reality of his situation is that he is a cog in the imperial machine. The expenses are a trivial, miniscule amount compared to the wealth, which is plundered by the colonial powers, a plunder which Mr. Biswas is helping to facilitate. He is not paid directly, as he must spend his own money and then claim it back from the state. He does not share in the "wealth of the colony" (320); rather, he helps in the extraction of the wealth and is pitifully recompensed for doing so.

“She became obsessed with the decay of her body...”

As Mrs. Tulsi grows old, she is confronted with her own mortality. Her body begins to fail her, and she struggles to deal with her decrease in power and capability. The decay of her body obsesses her because, after a lifetime of ruling over the Tulsi family, she feels her grip on power weaken. Her situation is like Mr. Biswas, who is obsessed by the decay in his good fortune. While Mrs. Tulsi is a person with agency who struggles with the diminished control she has over her family, Mr. Biswas is a passive person without agency who struggles with his own decaying fortune.

“It sickened him that he had fallen into Mrs Tulsi's trap and shown himself grateful to her.”

Mr. Biswas thinks of himself as an intelligent man who can navigate the schemes of the Tulsi family. However, he must admit that Mrs. Tulsi holds an influence over him that he cannot match. She is a master manipulator, even in her old age, and he resents how much he must depend on her. The "trap" (333) is painful for Mr. Biswas not because Mrs. Tulsi wins, but because it reminds him of how often and how badly he must lose.

“Anand felt betrayed. He had adopted all of Owad's political and artistic views…”

Anand struggles with Owad's turn against him because he does not understand the reality of politics or ideology. He adopted his uncle's views as a costume, attempting to imitate the gestures of Owad without understanding the actual, sincere beliefs. As with the time he performed the Hindu rituals, Anand is too young and naïve to understand the significance of his actions or words, he is only able to imitate the gestures of others in a pantomime fashion. When this pantomime proves flawed, he feels betrayed because he does not understand the hollowness of his own beliefs.

“Having committed himself, he lacked the courage to go back yet found the energy to go ahead.”

At the beginning of the novel, Mr. Biswas wants to marry Shama but changes his mind. He is manipulated and cajoled into doing it anyway, trapping him in the marriage for the rest of his life. At the end of the novel, a similar event happens when he is buying a house. The similarity between the marriage and the house illustrates the extent to which Mr. Biswas's lack of agency has persevered throughout his life. He is a romantic, a man who allows himself to be sold on other people's interpretations of his dreams. As such, people take advantage of him. Even after a lifetime of experience, Mr. Biswas remains the same romantic, as easy to trick as ever.

“Laughing on the outside, crying on the inside.”

The song lyrics sung by the painters are a subtle reflection of the state of the Biswas house and the reaction of the Biswas family. The house appears fine on the outside, but it is falling apart on the inside. The family, on learning about the terrible state of the house, put on a façade and convince their extended family that they have bought a good home while hiding the truth.