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Colonialism In Miguel Street

Good Essays

Trinidad, an island ravaged by colonialism, leaving its imprints on many, notwithstanding our prized writer, V.S. Naipaul. Miguel Street, published in 1959, is a collection of short stories about a fictional street in Trinidad and its occupants during the 1940’s. Each chapter focuses on a character and the experience had with the protagonist, a young boy. The British flooded the island with English literature and education, leaving many of the islanders lost in the sea of the forced external culture. Naipaul captures the effects of this colonialism, especially so in chapter six. This chapter is focused around a man, known as B. Wordsworth, who speaks proper English and dresses well. The story shows us, as Beck states, “the colonized subject responding to the English literary canon thrust upon him by colonial education and an imposed foreign culture.” …show more content…

Wordsworth, like many beggars, is found outside of the house of the protagonist, only he comes with a much stranger request. He asks to look at the bees in the grugru trees of the boy’s yard. As odd as it is, B. Wordsworth divulges in the boy that he is “the greatest poet.” He spends the majority of his days admiring with his gaze the wonders of Nature; an assortment of bugs and even morning glories, and cries over them. We learn, from the curiosity of the boy, that the ‘B’ in the poet’s name stands for Black, and that his brother is “White Wordsworth” and they “share on heart.” White Wordsworth is the name given to the famed poet of the Romantic Age, Williams Wordsworth. Seeing that he calls him ‘White’ based on his skin colour, we can carefully deduce that ‘Black’ is not his real name. It is a name taken on by him. In the face of invasion, Black forsakes his Trinidadian identity and embraces a new, more ‘appropriate’ one, based on a traditional English poet. Like his ‘brother,’ we see the strong admiration for Nature in

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