Is B. Wordsworth, the character who appears in Naipaul’s short story of that name, a real poet or is he a fake, a dreamer? His name, which is presumably not the name he inherited but one he adopted for himself to fit his self-image, clearly shows how he wants others to think of him. The…
Tag: Caribbean
B. Wordsworth by V. S. Naipaul – Setting
Trinidad in the 1930s and 1940s Trinidad, where the story is set, and where Naipaul lived until he was eighteen, was colonized by Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and Spanish control continued until 1797, when the island was captured by Great Britain, which then assumed control. In the 1840s, the British began recruiting…
B. Wordsworth by V. S. Naipaul – Literary Devices
Dialect Of the three characters given dialogue in the story, two of them speak a local dialect that might be called non-standard English. When B. Wordsworth first comes to the narrator’s house, the boy calls to his mother, ‘‘Ma, it have a man outside here. He say he want to watch the bees.’’ In the…
B. Wordsworth by V. S. Naipaul – Themes
Friendship The young boy and B. Wordsworth form an unusual but genuine friendship. Each one contributes something to it. The boy finds B. Wordsworth a very interesting character. He has probably never met anyone quite like him. He listens to the poet’s fanciful words without cynicism or judgment, and he learns a lot from him….
B. Wordsworth by V. S. Naipaul – Characters
The Narrator The unnamed narrator is a young boy who is being raised by his mother in a house on Miguel Street. His father is dead. (This is revealed in ‘‘Love, Love, Love, Alone,’’ one of the other stories in Miguel Street). The boy’s age is not given, but he is no younger than eight…
B. Wordsworth by V. S. Naipaul – Summary
B. Wordsworth’’ is set in Miguel Street, a poor area in Port of Spain, Trinidad, during the early 1940s. It is narrated by an unnamed young boy who lives there with his family. He is used to seeing beggars come to the house seeking food. But one afternoon someone rather different turns up. After the…
To Da-Duh, in Memoriam: Analysis
Marshall’s short story “To Da-duh, in Memoriam,” revolving around a rivalry between a grandmother and a granddaughter, functions within a series of contrasts as each female tries to prove that her world is superior. “I tried giving the contests I had sensed between us a wider meaning,” Marshall notes in her introduction to the story…
To Da-Duh, in Memoriam: Setting
Colonial Barbados By the 1930s, Barbados had been under British colonial rule for over three hundred years. Always a poor country ruled by a white, propertied minority, Barbados suffered throughout the 1930s. The rapidly growing population, rising cost of living, and fixed wage scale was exacerbated by the worldwide Great Depression. Riots broke out throughout…
To Da-Duh, in Memoriam: Literary Devices
Point of View “To Da-duh, in Memoriam” is written from the first-person point of view. The majority of the story is viewed through the child narrator’s eyes. She recalls when she first met Da-duh, her first impression of the sugar cane fields, and the rivalry that exists between the two family members. Hers is the…
To Da-Duh, in Memoriam: Themes
Rivalry The story pits an aging Barbadian grandmother against her youthful American granddaughter. Upon their first meeting, the two sense a similarity in each other that far outweighs the differences presented by the seventy years between them. Most importantly, each has a stubborn strength of will and a confidence that her way of regarding the…