V.S Naipaul’s Miguel Street walks us through an auto fictive account of his childhood street. Immediately, we are familiarised with the recurring theme of escapism which defines the street, as the characters reach to project their daily visions into the wider-world, drawing parallels to the realm of celebrities with characters that ‘recalled Rex Harrison’ thus indicating a subconscious desire to build beyond the street’s boundaries.
”Look, boys, it ever strike you that the world not real at all?”
Unfortunately, they are ultimately enclosed, with the majority of the imagery being restricted to their animal counterparts. This is clearly portrayed as the threat of pursuing the route of escapism is depicted through unruly dogs. The euphoric and suspended connotations of the ‘leap and bark’ of the dogs, in the hope that the ‘ropes would break’, are swiftly undercut as they are punished for their excitement to escape as they are ‘poisoned’, thus muting their fantasies.
Throughout the novel, we are introduced to the concept of social boundaries and the inability to progress beyond this street. With the image of the street comes the vision of the houses, which aptly portrays the characters’ relationships with the street: it certainly puts a comforting ‘roof over their head’ but ultimately acts as a boundary to them reaching their potential. We see this, for example, with Laura, who is the archetype maternal figure of the novel. On Miguel Street, Laura is notorious for having ‘eight children [who] had seven fathers’, leading to the narrator ‘suppos[ing] Laura holds a world record’. This plays with the concept of achievement, in this microcosmic world with little prospects, they seem desperate to find pride, even in natural processes. As opposed to birth-giving being presented as a draining process, it adds to her character a ‘vivacious[ness]’. When, however, her daughter becomes pregnant Laura’s house turns into a ‘dead, silent house’; void and misery-stricken, it seems that she was relying on her role as birth-giver to uphold her character.
The love-hate relationship with the street and all it represents is only unleashed in retrospect. As the main character pursues an education in England, he looks at his ‘shadow before [him], a dancing dwarf on the tarmac.’. The vision of the ‘shadow’ could be extended metaphorically to his identity on Miguel Street, pursuing all of his future endeavours and acting as an inescapable form. Its shrunken and compact vision, furthermore, suggests that the narrator’s creative endeavours were oppressed throughout Miguel Street, under the guise of being a free and ‘dancing’ figure, due to lack of exposure.
What is most interesting, however, is the fact that their tragedy - their lack of awareness of their situation - is simultaneously their saving factor, as they do not dwell on their misery. Even their tragedies and saving aspects are limited to be the same, emphasising the poverty in which they live.