Guerrillas Summary
The status of Guerrillas as a major novel rests on its classification as a political novel. Unlike A House for Mr Biswas (1961), Guerrillas has a small cast of characters. Only three are of major importance: Peter Roche, a dispossessed white victim of South African oppression, who has emigrated to the nameless Caribbean island that is the novel's setting; Jimmy Ahmed, a half-Chinese, half-black "revolutionary" leader; and Jane, a Canadian who seems to be hoping for a personal definition through these two men.
For such a situation to express political concerns, the individual relations of the characters must be symbolic of a larger social relationship. In short, the personal relations should give an outline of a culture, as each character represents a part of the social world.
Such an action tends toward allegory, and an initial interpretation of Guerrillas might be that of a story...
(read more from the Short Guide)
Study Pack
The Guerrillas Study Pack contains:
Guerrillas Short Guide
V. S. Naipaul Biographies (5)
1,152 words, approx. 4 pages
V. S. Naipaul (born 1932) was one of the foremost spokespersons in English prose of the post-colonial Third World.Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born August 17, 1932, in Trinidad, where his grandfa...
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27,446 words, approx. 92 pages
Biography Essay"Half the writer's work . . . is the discovery of his subject." With this statement V. S. Naipaul declares his purpose as a writer and the object of his craft—the imaginative shap...
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17,264 words, approx. 58 pages
V. S. Naipaul is both one of the most highly regarded and one of the most controversial of contemporary writers. Widely admired in North America and Europe for the lucidity of his prose style, his inc...
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4,285 words, approx. 15 pages
In a 1994 interview with John F. Baker, V. S. Naipaul said: I'd like to travel some more before the body shuts down completely. But I can't travel without writing. I love to see things come out ...
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6,059 words, approx. 21 pages
V. S. Naipaul is a gifted contemporary novelist. No important guide to twentieth-century literature is presently without a reference to his work, which has been prolific. In the early stages of his ca...
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