Naipaul, in his book "Miguel Street" portrays a variety of characters, a variety of ideas and assumptions and an assortment of themes that reveal to the reader aspects of fictional Trinidad and the perspectives of those living that life through the eyes of the boy narrator who runs throughout the novel. The novel "Miguel Street" portrays the lives of those people with whom the narrator comes into contact with on Miguel Street. These characters, if they are to be so labeled are brought to life through the eyes of a nameless boy acting as narrator. Miguel Street I noticed one recurrent theme, is the ideal of manliness searching for identity and the struggle to define oneself. .
This will lead to the discovery that the definitions of masculinity and femininity prove that those characteristics apply to the opposite sex in which the women often act like men, and the men often act like women. All of this will be discussed through looking at both male and female characters in the book as well as the boy narrator of the book. The first example is introduced with a carpenter named Popo. In the chapter titled "The Thing Without A Name" we are told that "Popo never made any money. His wife used to go out and work and this was easy , because they had no children. Popo said ' Women and them like work. Man not made for work" ( Naipaul, P. 17). This attitude immediately makes Popo stand out from the rest of the men of Miguel Street. Hat, another character in the novel thinks of Popo as a "man- woman. Not a proper man" (Naipaul, P. 17) because Popo's wife makes all the money. Popo has no children which questions his masculinity. It is also important to notice that Popo's wife has no identity except that of being Popo's wife. We only first learn of her name, Imelda, through a calypso. An illusion is created that Popo's wife is just another one of Popo's possessions. Now "He smelled of rum, and he used to cry and then grow angry and want to beat up everybody.
