Literature Library study guide
B. Wordsworth
A boy’s friendship with a self-proclaimed poet opens a world of wonder, then ends in uncertainty and loss.
- Literary form
- Short story
- First published
- 1959
- Literary period
- Postwar Caribbean literature
- Region / tradition
- Trinidad, Caribbean
- Original language
- English
What happens in this work?
“B. Wordsworth” is the sixth story in V. S. Naipaul’s linked collection Miguel Street. An unnamed narrator recalls being a boy in Port of Spain, Trinidad, when a neat, unusual stranger comes to his house saying he wants to see the bees in the yard. The man calls himself B. Wordsworth, later explaining that the initial stands for Black and presenting himself as a poet.
The boy’s mother buys one of the man’s cheaply sold poems, but the boy becomes much more interested in the poet than she is. B. Wordsworth takes him on walks, points out flowers and stars, and teaches him to attend closely to ordinary living things. He claims to be composing an enormous poem very slowly because every line must be exactly right. The boy begins to see the world as more exciting and even imagines becoming a poet himself.
B. Wordsworth also tells the boy a painful story about love, death, and the source of his tears. Late in the story, however, the boy finds him seriously ill. The poet insists that his stories, his poetry, and his grand claims were inventions. The reader cannot fully settle whether this confession is true, a final attempt to protect himself, or another story. A year after his death, the poet’s house has vanished, leaving the narrator with an absence that makes the friendship feel both real and dreamlike.
What was happening when it was written?
Miguel Street was published in 1959 and gathers short narratives about street life in Port of Spain. Naipaul, born in Trinidad, described choosing Port of Spain when asked to write about a city; the Nobel Prize’s account of his work notes the blend of humor, everyday street life, and calypso-like energy in the Miguel Street stories. This context helps explain why B. Wordsworth’s artistic ambitions stand out: his vision of poetry develops in a neighborhood where money, work, reputation, and survival are immediate concerns. The story’s title also invites comparison with the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth, whose writing is strongly associated with nature, childhood, and emotional response. B. Wordsworth’s chosen name is therefore both an artistic aspiration and a risky public performance.
Who matters, and why?
B. Wordsworth
B. Wordsworth is funny, dignified, vulnerable, and difficult to classify. He sells a poem for a few cents, calls himself the world’s greatest poet, and claims a close bond with a “White Wordsworth” who may be imaginary. Yet he gives the boy genuine experiences of attention: bees, flowers, open sky, and stars become meaningful because he asks the child to look. His final denial of everything he has said makes him unreliable, but it does not erase the emotional effect he has had. He represents both the beauty of artistic hope and the loneliness of someone whose identity is not believed or supported.
The unnamed boy narrator
The narrator is a child during the events but tells the story with the distance of memory. At first, he judges B. Wordsworth through simple categories: stranger, beggar, poet, friend. His trust lets readers feel the poet’s charisma and the thrill of discovering a larger world. At the same time, his limited understanding keeps important questions open, especially about the poet’s past and final confession. The narrator’s growth is not a neat lesson; instead, he learns that a person can change your life even when you cannot know exactly what was true about that person.
The narrator’s mother
The mother provides a practical counterpoint to the poet’s dreamlike language and behavior. Her household has regular visitors asking for help, so she initially treats B. Wordsworth as one more person seeking money. She does buy his poem, but she worries when her son spends long periods away from home. Her concerns are reasonable: she sees the social and economic risks that the child overlooks. Through her, the story does not simply celebrate imagination; it also recognizes the responsibilities and limits that shape everyday family life.
Big ideas to track
Imagination can reveal real value even when its source is uncertain
B. Wordsworth’s claims may be exaggerated or fabricated, but his lessons transform the boy’s experience. Before meeting him, the boy encounters a yard, a street, and nighttime as ordinary places. Afterward, he notices insects, plants, distant stars, and the possibility of poetry. The ending forces readers to separate factual truth from emotional truth. If the poet’s stories were false, the boy’s wonder was still real. Naipaul asks whether an imaginative act must be literally accurate to matter.
Artistic ambition meets poverty and public disbelief
The poet describes a huge artistic project while living with very little money and selling a poem at a bargain price. This gap between his claims and his circumstances creates comedy, but it also creates pain. The neighborhood has little reason to reward a person who announces himself as a poet without visible proof. His slow, perfectionist method may show devotion, avoidance, or both. The story makes readers consider how easily an artist can be dismissed when economic survival is more urgent than private ambition.
Childhood friendship includes trust, misunderstanding, and loss
The boy accepts B. Wordsworth’s friendship with an openness adults around him do not share. Their walks give him a private education beyond school and family rules. But the friendship is unequal: the adult controls the stories, the rules, and the final separation. When B. Wordsworth tells the boy not to return, the child cannot fully interpret the request or the sadness behind it. The later disappearance of the house turns a childhood memory into a lesson about how abruptly people and places can leave a young person’s world.
How the writing works
First-person retrospective narration
The story uses an adult voice looking back at a childhood encounter. This structure gives the prose two levels at once: the child’s immediate belief and the older narrator’s awareness that the episode remains mysterious. The narrator does not solve B. Wordsworth for the reader. Instead, his remembered uncertainty becomes part of the story’s meaning. Notice how this point of view lets Naipaul preserve childhood wonder while also allowing readers to question the poet’s speeches and behavior.
Contrast between plain comedy and quiet sadness
Naipaul often presents B. Wordsworth’s grand self-description in a comic setting: a poor neighborhood, a low-priced poem, and a boy who asks direct questions. The humor keeps the poet from becoming a simple saint or tragic hero. Gradually, though, his tears, isolation, illness, and disappearance change the emotional tone. This movement matters because it shows how laughter can coexist with hardship. The story’s comedy makes the eventual loss sharper rather than less serious.
Nature imagery as an education in attention
Bees, flowers, grass, and stars are not just decorative background. B. Wordsworth uses them to train the boy to slow down and observe. Small natural details lead toward big questions about beauty, loneliness, love, and human purpose. The stars in particular make the boy feel both small and enlarged, placing his private life inside a vast world. Nature therefore becomes the poet’s most convincing poem: something he can share even if his written masterpiece never appears.
Moments to notice while you read
Beginning: B. Wordsworth arrives at the narrator’s house
What to notice: Notice the mismatch between the man’s neat appearance, his unusual request about the bees, and the family’s expectation that visitors want charity.
Why it matters: This opening creates uncertainty immediately. It separates B. Wordsworth from familiar neighborhood visitors while showing that the family must interpret strangers through economic need and caution.
Early middle: the mother buys the inexpensive poem
What to notice: Pay attention to the tiny price of the poem and to the difference between the poet’s lofty identity and the way he must market his work.
Why it matters: The transaction introduces the story’s central tension between artistic ambition and material hardship. It can seem comic, but it also reveals how little public value poetry receives.
Middle: the walks and lessons about flowers
What to notice: Track how B. Wordsworth repeatedly directs the boy’s attention toward living things that the boy would normally pass without noticing.
Why it matters: These scenes show the friendship’s real gift. Whether or not the poet’s biography is reliable, he changes the boy’s habits of perception and makes ordinary surroundings feel larger.
Middle: the nighttime visit to the racecourse
What to notice: Notice the movement from the crowded neighborhood to open grass and stars, as well as the interruption by authority when a policeman questions them.
Why it matters: The scene joins freedom with vulnerability. The poet offers the boy a vast imaginative space, but the police encounter reminds readers that public space is regulated and suspicion can intrude.
Late middle: B. Wordsworth’s account of love and crying
What to notice: Consider how the story links the poet’s emotional sensitivity to his claim that love and grief have shaped his life.
Why it matters: This account deepens him beyond the comic figure who sells poems. It also prepares readers for the later question of whether a moving story can carry meaning even if details are invented.
Ending: the sick poet’s final denial and the vanished house
What to notice: Focus on the uncertainty of the final conversation, then on the physical disappearance of the place where the friendship happened.
Why it matters: The ending refuses a simple answer about truthfulness. The missing house turns private grief into a powerful image of memory: something can shape a life and still leave almost no visible trace.
Questions to test your understanding
Answer in your own words. Then point to a specific moment in the work that supports your answer.
- Why does B. Wordsworth begin his relationship with the boy by asking to see the bees, rather than by openly asking to sell a poem?
- How does the cheap sale of the poem complicate B. Wordsworth’s claim to be a great poet?
- What does the boy gain from the walks to see flowers and stars that he could not gain from his ordinary routines on Miguel Street?
- How does the police encounter at the racecourse change the meaning of the boy and B. Wordsworth lying under the stars?
- Why might B. Wordsworth tell the boy a sorrowful love story before later saying that all his stories were lies?
- At the end, is the poet’s final confession best read as honesty, self-protection, cruelty, performance, or something else? Use details from his illness and his relationship with the boy.
- What is the effect of ending with the disappearance of B. Wordsworth’s house instead of with a clear explanation of who he really was?
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