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Savi
Anand is Mr Biswas and Shama’s second child and only son. Anand is three years younger than Savi and was also born while his father was absent, working at The Chase. In his earliest years, Anand is timid, anxious, diminutive, and often afraid to talk to his disappointed father, who gives him little attention and lets the Tulsis “claim” him. He has trouble in his first years at the mission school, but eventually becomes Mr Biswas’s favorite son, particularly after staying with his father at Green Vale “because they was going to leave you alone.” Anand quickly takes after his father’s interests in science, religion, and especially literature. After Mr Biswas convinces him to move to Port of Spain with promises of real ice cream and Coca Cola, Anand becomes something of a prodigy at school, winning affection and support from everyone in the family, much as Owad had. He becomes “strong” and starts to look down on his “weak” sisters; later, despite believing he failed his exhibition exams, he actually scores near the top of his class and wins a scholarship to the local college. His academic successes lead him to first revere, and then resent, Owad upon his return from England. At the end of the book, when Mr Biswas dies, Anand is abroad, also on scholarship. Many scholars have suggested that, especially since Mr Biswas represents V.S. Naipaul’s father, Anand represents Naipaul himself and could even be seen as the book’s narrator.
Anand Quotes in A House for Mr Biswas
The A House for Mr Biswas quotes below are all either spoken by Anand or refer to Anand. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Part 2, Chapter 2
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“I don’t want you to be like me.”
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Part 2, Chapter 4
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It was now that he began to speak to his children of his childhood. He told them of the hut, the men digging in the garden at night; he told them of the oil that was later found on the land. What fortune might have been theirs, if only his father had not died, if only he had stuck to the land like his brothers, if he had not gone to Pagotes, not become a sign-writer, not gone to Hanuman House, not married! If only so many things had not happened!
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Mr Biswas went past Dehuti to look at the body. Then he did not wish to see it again. But always, as he wandered about the yard among the mourners, he was aware of the body. He was oppressed by a sense of loss: not of present loss, but of something missed in the past. He would have liked to be alone, to commune with this feeling. But time was short, and always there was the sight of Shama and the children, alien growths, alien affections, which fed on him and called him away from that part of him which yet remained purely himself, that part which had for long been submerged and was now to disappear.
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Part 2, Chapter 6
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“Communism, like charity, should begin at home.”
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Anand Quotes in A House for Mr Biswas
The A House for Mr Biswas quotes below are all either spoken by Anand or refer to Anand. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Part 2, Chapter 2
Quotes
“I don’t want you to be like me.”
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Part 2, Chapter 4
Quotes
It was now that he began to speak to his children of his childhood. He told them of the hut, the men digging in the garden at night; he told them of the oil that was later found on the land. What fortune might have been theirs, if only his father had not died, if only he had stuck to the land like his brothers, if he had not gone to Pagotes, not become a sign-writer, not gone to Hanuman House, not married! If only so many things had not happened!
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Mr Biswas went past Dehuti to look at the body. Then he did not wish to see it again. But always, as he wandered about the yard among the mourners, he was aware of the body. He was oppressed by a sense of loss: not of present loss, but of something missed in the past. He would have liked to be alone, to commune with this feeling. But time was short, and always there was the sight of Shama and the children, alien growths, alien affections, which fed on him and called him away from that part of him which yet remained purely himself, that part which had for long been submerged and was now to disappear.
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Part 2, Chapter 6
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“Communism, like charity, should begin at home.”
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