A House for Mr Biswas

by

V. S. Naipaul

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on A House for Mr Biswas makes teaching easy.

Raghu Character Analysis

Raghu, who is Mr Biswas’s father and Bipti’s husband, is a notoriously miserly cane estate worker who buries his money in jars that nobody can find. He is not present for Mr Biswas’s birth, and Pundit Sitaram advises the family that he should not see his son until the twenty-first day. He refuses to go to work whenever Mr Biswas sneezes, which is a sign of bad luck, and dies while diving to look for Mr Biswas in a pond, believing that he and the calf he was looking after have drowned. After his death, neighbors invade his family’s garden at night, looking for his buried money, and this drives Bipti to send her children away and bring Mr Biswas to Pagotes.

Raghu Quotes in A House for Mr Biswas

The A House for Mr Biswas quotes below are all either spoken by Raghu or refer to Raghu. 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:
Independence vs. Belonging Theme Icon
).
Part 1, Chapter 1 Quotes

Mr Biswas never went to work on the estates. Events which were to occur presently led him away from that. They did not lead him to riches, but made it possible for him to console himself in later life with the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, while he rested on the Slumberking bed in the one room which contained most of his possessions.

Related Characters: Mr Biswas, Bipti, Raghu, Pratap, Prasad
Page Number: 23
Explanation and Analysis:

And so Mr Biswas came to leave the only house to which he had some right. For the next thirty-five years he was to be a wanderer with no place he could call his own, with no family except that which he was to attempt to create out of the engulfing world of the Tulsis. For with his mother’s parents dead, his father dead, his brothers on the estate at Felicity, Dehuti as a servant in Tara’s house, and himself rapidly growing away from Bipti who, broken, became increasingly useless and impenetrable, it seemed to him that he was really quite alone.

Related Characters: Mr Biswas, Bipti, Raghu, Dehuti
Related Symbols: Houses
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 1 Quotes

“I raised my hand but I did not know if it got to the top. I opened my mouth to cry for help. Water filled it. I thought I was going to die and I closed my eyes because I did not want to look at the water.”

Related Characters: Mr Biswas, Raghu
Page Number: 342
Explanation and Analysis:
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!

Related Characters: Mr Biswas, Savi, Anand, Raghu, Myna, Kamla
Page Number: 421
Explanation and Analysis:
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Raghu Quotes in A House for Mr Biswas

The A House for Mr Biswas quotes below are all either spoken by Raghu or refer to Raghu. 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:
Independence vs. Belonging Theme Icon
).
Part 1, Chapter 1 Quotes

Mr Biswas never went to work on the estates. Events which were to occur presently led him away from that. They did not lead him to riches, but made it possible for him to console himself in later life with the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, while he rested on the Slumberking bed in the one room which contained most of his possessions.

Related Characters: Mr Biswas, Bipti, Raghu, Pratap, Prasad
Page Number: 23
Explanation and Analysis:

And so Mr Biswas came to leave the only house to which he had some right. For the next thirty-five years he was to be a wanderer with no place he could call his own, with no family except that which he was to attempt to create out of the engulfing world of the Tulsis. For with his mother’s parents dead, his father dead, his brothers on the estate at Felicity, Dehuti as a servant in Tara’s house, and himself rapidly growing away from Bipti who, broken, became increasingly useless and impenetrable, it seemed to him that he was really quite alone.

Related Characters: Mr Biswas, Bipti, Raghu, Dehuti
Related Symbols: Houses
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 1 Quotes

“I raised my hand but I did not know if it got to the top. I opened my mouth to cry for help. Water filled it. I thought I was going to die and I closed my eyes because I did not want to look at the water.”

Related Characters: Mr Biswas, Raghu
Page Number: 342
Explanation and Analysis:
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!

Related Characters: Mr Biswas, Savi, Anand, Raghu, Myna, Kamla
Page Number: 421
Explanation and Analysis: