Summary

Anand has entered college, and Mr. Biswas has changed without realizing it. The shifts in his ambitions have made him feel that he cannot change his circumstances after all, and he has “lost the vision of the house.” He sinks into despair “as into the void which, in his imagining, has always stood for the life he has yet to live.” He becomes withdrawn, but doesn’t have the fear and anxiety as he did before now.

Life goes on; then, when he is sent on an interview at a new government department, the Community Welfare Department, he is offered a job as Community Welfare Officer, for fifty dollars a month more than he is making at The Sentinel. He fantasizes a position where he will be placed in many supervisory positions, winning the confidence and devotion of peasants and juvenile delinquents.

The actual requirements of...