Compare and Contrast Beka Lamb and Miguel Street Essay

Most writers of the Caribbean bring been preoccupied by grouchy themes and turn over adhitherd to mutual tracks, while often contrasted in approach and writing. The chess opening move or impossibility of the account of mavennesss written report, when the very imagination of the individual has been crushed by slavery and colonisation, the circumstances of advent of a new Caribbean identity, the analysis of the past, writing in exile and lastly, landscape and nature where the environ opuspowert or surrounding tells the story, is an essential basis of examination of oneself and ones community.Writers have too oftentimes concentrated on antecedent oral and mixer customs, so as to examine c argonfully the instalment they assimi deeply in the advancement of modern- solar day community and consciousness. In two(prenominal) Miguel avenue and Beka deliver the impact of colonisation that influenced the major themes much(prenominal) as the issue of identity, exile and mig ration, and women, will be epitomised by comparing and contrasting.Beka Lamb was issued in 1982, the year subsequent to independence, but it portrays to the reader somewhat of the late 1970s, right between the political melee that conflicted the British Crown and Guatemala, a country whose territorial prerogatives on British Honduras had been extensively deliberated on the Belizean community.The social jeopardy that Edgell produces consist of the indigenous peril that Creoles, harbour, from the increasing Hispanic universe and the socioeconomic hindrances that Creoles experience as they endeavour to ascend from inferior to intercede status on the whole in the wider perspective of Belize upgrading from just a society to an independent state. Zee Edgell gives the impression of hope, that, through suitable discipline, Creoles can as redeem their rank in the Belizean indigenous hierarchy and also jaunt from lowly to more proficient professionsand with disclose negotiating too often of their affluent heathenish heritage.During the course of the novel Belize is publicised as a country quiet down vacillating between its embryonic subject consciousness and a post-colonial viewpoint, a country wedged amid contrasting but pre-determined visions of itself. It is in this socio-political milieu that the story of Beka is established. The contending altogetheregiances at play in the country, exasperating ones find out for for identity, argon echoed in the central character of the novel.From the article entitled, The Wake in Caribbean Literature a Celebration of Self-k instanterledge and Community says, One of the best examples in Caribbean fiction of the dialectic relationship between the individual and society, between the baby bird and its community is reverberated through the protagonist of the novel. Politics and community life are much more in the novel than a mere setting for an individual life-story.They are the inner landscape of every individual, of eve ry nestling in Belize society, and Bekas quest for a viable identity, for a tenacious self-image, reflects a collective lowtaking (Misrahi-Barak, Judith). In the introduction of Caribbean Women Writers, it says, The figure of the grannie is an obvious emblem of the continuing influence of the past as permeative in Caribbean womens fiction, often kindred(p) Velma Pollards naan who is a master baker, recollected in terms of a practical skill Ma Chess in Jamaica Kincaids Annie John is a therapist granny knot Ivy in Zee Edgells Beka Lamb or the grand have in Dionne Brandss short story Photograph, or an association with its rural beauty, akin Ma in Merle Hodges Crick Crack Monkey or the grandmother in Marlene Nourbese Philips Harriets Daughter (Conde, Mary). Miguel Street is Naipauls semi-nonfictional description of his juvenile ground prevail, Trinidad. Miguel Street is actu aloney a sneak-peek account of the innate farcicality that immensely embodies the lives of Trinidadians (a microcosm of Trinidad) or to an accomplishment the West Indies.The arrangement of the book is layered and proposes that Naipaul could have been motivated from the passel he had met during his churlhood in Trinidad. It took prat in the course of hu humanitys War II and recounted by an anonymousbut articulately law-abidingneighborhood boy who narrates the innumerable lives of idiosyncratic occupants of his neighbourhood in a cleverly yet innocent way. His tone is both disconnected and sagaciously vigilant at the same snip. There is no impression of plan until the very latter chapters, by and by the plot speaks about the narrator himself and his sonorousness with few other main characters.The novel can also be perceived a collection of short stories, as each chapter takes devote over years and deals with one character at a time but even if every chapter are unquestionably devoted for a sole character, the close interweaving of destiny of the dissimilar characters and the Street itself obscures the incoherence and concentrates on the appetizing feel of a novel. In Edgells novel the 2 main characters of which are Toycie and Beka, have both been forewarned about getting large(predicate) forrader graduation. Pregnancy out of marriage occurs regularly among teenage girls in Belize.Females are allowed to attend school nevertheless, not only the rate of instruction is too costly for most families, but once girls start to go school, they encounter rules that are different to the rules for the boys. In the middle of Toycies nett year she makes pregnant. She is banished and not permitted to come sticker because the school believes, In cases like this, we believe it is entirely up to the modesty of the girl to prevent these happenings (Edgell 119). The induce of Toycies child, Emilio, has no consequence to face.Unlike Toycie, he is not banished from school. He will be able to get the education his affluent family pays for, and when he graduates and em ployment that will grant him the freedom that Toycie had awaited. The money for Toycie education was work-shy that her aunt had so struggled for. Toycie will go down the same avenue of the women formerly to her, like her aunt, Miss Eila, whom Bekas father said, is a bare(a) woman, like many of our women, in certain matters, (Edgell 120). Miss Eila lacks the funds to turn in sufficiently for herself and her family.Toycie will upbring a child and contend every day to somehow make a living. Early pregnancy causes the limited roles getable to women. It produces a social rotation that girls like Beka must apprehend to travel against. The preponderance of the characters in Beka Lamb are pistillate and the story is communicated from a womans outlook, which is the total opposite to Miguel Street where most of the characters are male and few were women, most of whom remained bodless as well as the story is narrated by a male. Bekas mother remains home with the family.Beka and Toycie attend an all-girls Catholic school where they are educated by nuns. The absence of male characters is bold passable to know that the blunder was deliberate. The story demonstrates the verity of the Belize culture. Male characters work or become learned while the women agree the homes and make what salary they can. In the novel, the scarce male characters have at least one fault that turns the reader away. Emilio gets Toycie pregnant, and after refuses to marry her. tiptop is unsuccessful in aiming consistent love to his family he frequently seems unconcerned or too busy.In Voices from the Gaps says The women who surround Beka influence her idea and judgments. Interestingly, the women are politically well-informed. One would not expect the simple women to have interest in politics. While Beka respects her father, she does so partially out of fear and partially because she is supposed to. Bekas respect for Granny is different. Granny knows more about life and about Belize than either Beka or her father. Bekas ability to recognize this demonstrates not only Bekas maturity, but also her curiosity about and reverence toward the Belize culture. Horan, Kaite). Both Miguel Street and Beka Lamb have an issue with women. In Beka Lamb the women go through a harsher punishment than the men, though they are dominant in the novel they are persecuted under a prison-like structure although slavery days have long gone. Whereas, in Miguel Street, they marginalise the women and treat them as objects. There are few female characters which some dont even have a name i. e Georges wife was never a proper person. I always thought of her just as Georges wife and that was all (Naipaul V. S. 27).Also implying that women really did not have an identity or could not have existed without men, who were always in the forefront and women remained in the background. In the head start of the novel, Beka is perplexed about her identity and appears to be a very ungrateful child. Her bac kground is of a middle class, Creole family, but does not show gratefulness for her decent life because she does not pass first form. She at once irons her hair and has to live two opposite lives one at the school compound and another(prenominal) separate from school in her Belizean community.At school she has to upkeep the qualities of the Virgin Mary and is compulsorily to be all told dissimilar from the persons in her life. When not in school, Beka is challenged with the behaviours of her Belizean Creole people which creates a war in the manner she should behave internally. Bekas life before long changes with Toycies pregnancy. Before Toycie became pregnant, Beka had subsisted a safe, expectable life. She had quarrels with her family and she had chores, but Beka had not experience life. Toycies situation pushed Beka to face organisation, separation, and demise.Beka goes back to school after Toycies removal and wins an essay contest. The self-doubts Beka confronted her whole l ife starts to withdraw. The platform Toycie once hoisted upon is now vacant. Beka has not substituted Toycie, but has begun to change her perception of whats on that platform. In The quarrel with history it mentions what one should be careful of, similar to Bekas situation, We can be victims of History when we submit passively to it never managing to flow its harrowing power.History (like literature) is capable of quarrying deep within us, as a consciousness or the emergence of a consciousness, as a neurosis (symptom of loss) and a contraction of the self (Baugh, Edward). The seventeen chapters of Miguel Street are often referred to separately as short stories, but read as a novel they create a Bildungsroman (as well as in Beak Lamb)in the European practice, a novel of edification or developmentthat traces its protagonists progress toward manhood, climaxing in the protagonist discovering his place in the world.Also the apparent template sublimely suggested of what a man should be in nearly most of the chapters of Miguel Street. Naipaul arrogates this European custom to annotate upon the advent of Trinidad as an independent nation. Bogart, the first story, ends with what could be called Miguel Streets thesis after forsaking two women, one of whom has borne him a child becoming a drunkard They had never seen Bogart drink so much (Naipaul, V. S. 13) Bogart finally returns to Miguel Street To be a man, among we men (Naipaul, V. S. 16).It is understood, in the opening of chapter three that Popo is a carpenter who does not really create anything that could be categorized as furniture or architecture except the teensy-weensy galvanised-iron workshop below the mango tree behind his yard (Naipaul, V. S. 17). The men of the street mock him for not only the fact that he is an sham carpenter but also, his wife is out performing all of the work whereas he sits at home constructing things with no name and drinking rum. In fact, Hat parallels him to a man-woman. Not a p roper man (Naipaul, V. S. 19).However, a little further down in the chapter Popos wife leaves him for another man and on one occasion he grows irritated enough to get the urge to beat up everybody and remain drunk all the time, and then the men decided to accept Popo as a man after all and acknowledged him as a member of the band (Naipaul, V. S. 21). Hat says We was wrong about Popo. He is a man like any of we (Naipaul, V. S. 21). It becomes distinct that to almost all of the men, exhibiting hostility, cosmos tangibly tempestuous and masking oneself in drunken sorrows is what sanctions one as a man.It appears that they are not very fond of neither the sensitive type nor the poetical type. After looking at Popo and his circumstances, it becomes distinct to that narrator that to be pass judgment as a real man, it is imperative to demand ones respect, even at the cost of others. The deification that Popo receives when he takes his wife back from the new man, is training the narra tor that men similar to Bogart or takers such as men in the situation of Popo get all the esteem while the characters such as B. Wordsworth are not given the same respect and involuntary hide-off absent from the other men similar to B.Wordsworth did before his passing.Hat was the main father figure of the entire novel who was mentioned in almost in every chapter. He had gone to jail (Naipaul, V. S. 207), He was always getting himself into trouble with the police. A little cockfighting here, some looseness there, a little drinking somewhere else and so on (Naipaul, V. S. 204) were all considered factors to be a man among men. Later in both novels we can see where both Beka and the unnamed narrator finds their identity. Beka Lamb turns into a self-created, self-governing young lady by the conclusion of the novel.Her identity and, by insinuation, the identity of the New Belize is composite and subtly drawn. On the social level, one is enthralled by Bekas seeming lack of friends on ca shew nut Street and at school, succeeding Toycies death. Replacing Toycie, Beka makes friends only with a Mayan girl, Thomasita Ek, who is also an foreigner at St. Cecilias Academy. On a national scale, that friendship lacks much real importance, since the Mayas lean towards being so traditionally and geographically isolated from urban tradition that no spot-on, long-lasting ethnic conflict has thereby been associated.Beka at the end of the novel gives the impression being composed to become a nun in the service of her homeland. Her essay, after all, dealt with the history of Belize. She composed it for the period of National Day. The day the petitioners were incarcerated, was the day she had win the prize. It was always her dream to be a politician, and at the politics-laden St. Georges Caye, she practise to become such. Then it can be observed where the narrator in Miguel Street also grows up and finds his identity.He is no longer stupefied by Popo who keeps building this thing without a name. He does not look up to Hat after he goes to jail. The narrator leaves Miguel Street as a ceremony of growing up. You must get over this, I said to my mother, Is not my fault really. Is just Tr inidad. What else anybody can do here except drink? (Naipaul, V. S. 216). He comes to reality and begins to ponder of what he wants to become in the future. He decides on becoming an Engineer and sticks with it regardless that his mother wants him to pursue law.