SHORT STORY PROJECT The Raffle, V.S. Naipaul

PLOT

Beginning

-Who? It's the story of a scholar called Vidiadhar Naipaul. Unlike the other boys, he never gets beaten, humiliated or punished by his teacher, the cross Mr Hinds. In class, Mr Hinds calls him by his first name, contrarily to the other pupils. The boys of his class don't like him much and tend to neglect him (“At cricket I wasn't allowed to bowl or keep wicket and I always went in at number eleven”, page 9). The scholars say that Mr Hinds' “weak spot” is that he's poor, and that it's for this reason that he gives the pupils private lessons for which he forces them to pay. If the child refuses, he gets beaten, but as the pupils tend to fear him (“It wouldn't have been so bad if Mr Hinds hadn't been so young and athletics”, page 8), they usually accept to pay for the private lessons.

-Where? The story is set in Trinidad, at a Hindu school called Endeavour.

-When? The author of the story tells about his childhood, at an age when he was old enough to go to Queen's Royal College (“My consolation was that I was spending only two terms at the school before going on to Queen's Royal College”, page 9) when he was about eleven years old, that means in the 1940's.

Conflict

The event that sets the story in motion is when Vidiadhar wins a goat in a raffle that Mr Hinds organized. The boys of his class were sure that it would be him who would get it because he's his favorite pupil, and they were right (“Mr Hinds borrowed my cap, put the slips in, took one out, said “Vidiadhar, is your goat”, and immediately threw all the slips into the wastepaper basket”, page 10).

Rising action

Soon after he gets the goat, Vidiadhar realizes that it doesn't give any milk although it eats grass all day. His mother decides to put a sign “Ram for service, apply within for terms” in front of the house. Some days later, a man comes grumbling about the fact the Vidiadhar's mother charged his brother with