In his introduction to V.S. Naipaul’s Miguel Street , Laban Erapu argues that each of the characters is the victim of a society that “has not yet defined its goals” which makes it impossible for these people to fulfill their dreams. Grape believes that “the grueling life and environment of Miguel Street” drains its inhabitants (xv), and to support his point he cites the last line of this novel made up of short stories. As the narrator walks toward the plane that will take him to England he finds himself “looking only at my shadow before me, a dancing dwarf on the tarmac” (Naipaul 172), which to Erapu suggests that the Third World culture has reduced the narrator’s stature. He suggests that Miguel Street’s characters are starved for all that the developed world has to offer and that unless they escape from Trinidad they will never fulfill their potential. This essay will argue that Erapu is wrong about the cause of the characters’ problems. They are not held back by their society’s limitations but choose that society nothing is expected of them and no one rises high enough to make them feel bad about themselves. In the story “His Chosen Calling,” the narrator dreams of becoming a scavenger cart driver like his friend, Eddoes, a much more glamorous occupation than sweeping, the only alternative. Elias, the son of the bullying George, has other ambitions. He intends to become a doctor. He has already cast himself in that role, cultivating an air of stoicism that he associates with doctors. He accepts his father’s beatings without crying, never speaking a word against him even though George “used to tie him with rope, and then beat him with the rope he had soaked in the gutters of his cow-pen” (Naipaul 31). Elias fails the first exam but does not complain. The community supports and encourages him, and mothers continue to point him out to their children as role models because he is always clean, respectful, and studious. Elias already lives his dream, planning for the day when he would “go give a lot of money and thing to you and Boyee and the rest of you fellows” (Naipaul 32). After failing the exam for the third time he tries to qualify as a sanitary inspector but after three years of trying and failing to qualify, Elias gives up and takes up driving a scavenging cart. He has failed to realize his dreams but he will forever be distinguished from the others for having dreamed of becoming a doctor. More importantly, he is now “one of the street’s aristocrats” (37) and swears, threatens, and spits like everyone else. “B. Wordsworth” is the story of a street eccentric who has cast himself as William Wordsworth’s black brother. He sells his poetry like the calypsonians do but no one buys it… His one-room house stands among trees and bushes which separate it from the street life. He reveals that his late wife, also a poet, was responsible for the garden but whether that is true or not cannot be determined. He cannot quote Wordsworth nor are there any books in his hut. It is only in Miguel Street’s lax and forgiving culture – one in which being eccentric is good enough — that he can indulge his fantasies without ever having to prove himself. No one challenges him and no one is interested in his poetry, not even the narrator. He is a charming man, one who teaches the narrator about the beauties of