Roll no: - 14
Paper Name: - Indian Writing in English
Topic: - R .K Narayana as a novelist
Topic: - R .K Narayana as a novelist
Guide: - Heena ma’am zala
Submitted: - smt. Gardi
m.k Bhavanagar, Department
of English.
Year:- 2015-17.
Year:- 2015-17.
Introduction
:-
R.K. Narayan is one of the most famous and widely read Indian novelists. His stories were grounded
in a compassionate humanism and celebrated the humor and energy of ordinary life.R.K. Narayan was
born on October 10, 1906 in Madras. His father was a provincial head master. R.K. Narayan spent his early childhood with his
maternal grandmother, Parvathi in Madras and
used to spend only a few weeks each summer visiting his parents and siblings. R.K. Narayan studied for eight years at Lutheran
Mission School close to his grandmother's
house in Madras, also for a short time at the CRC High School. When his father was appointed headmaster of the Maharajah's High
School in Mysore, R.K. Narayan moved back in
with his parents. He obtained his bachelor's degree from the University of
Mysore.
R.K.
Narayan began his writing career with Swami and Friends in 1935. Most of his
work including Swami and friends is set in
the fictional town of Malgudi which captures everything
Indian while having a unique identity of its own. R.K. Narayan's writing style
was marked by simplicity and subtle humor. He told
stories of ordinary people trying to live
their simple lives in a changing world.
R.K. Narayan's famous works include The Bachelor of Arts (1937), The
Dark Room (1938), The English Teacher (1945), The
Financial Ex), pert (1952), The Guide (1958), The Man-Eater of Malgudi (1961), The Vendor of Sweets (1967),
Malgudi Days (1982 and The Grandmother's Tale
(1993).R.K. Narayan won numerous awards and honors for his works. These
include: Sahitya Akademi Award for The Guide in 1958; Padma Bhushan in 1964;
and AC Benson Medal by the Royal Society of Literature in 1980; R.K. Narayan
was elected an honorary member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts
and Letters in 1982. He was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1989. Besides, he
was also conferred honorary doctorates by the University of Mysore, Delhi University.
R. K Narayana’s famous works
1) The Bacholar
of arts ( 1937)
2) The dark
room (1938)
3) The English
Teacher ( 1945)
4)The Financial
experts (1952)
5)The Guide (1958)
6)The man Easter of malgudi (1961)
7)The vendor
of sweet (1967)
8)Malgudi Days (1982)
9) The grandmother ‘s Tale
10)Swami and Friends ( 1935)
Narayan's writing technique was unpretentious
with a natural element of humor about it. It
focused on ordinary people, reminding the
reader of next-door neighbors, cousins and the like, thereby providing a
greater ability to relate to the topic. Unlike
his national contemporaries, he was able to write about the intricacies of
Indian society without having to modify his characteristic
simplicity to conform to trends and fashions in fiction writing. He also employed
the use of nuanced dialog prose with gentle Tamil overtones based on the
nature of his characters. Critics have considered Narayan to be the Indian Chekhov,
due to the similarities in their writings, the
simplicity and the gentle beauty and humor in tragic situations. Greene considered Narayan to be more similar to Chekhov than any Indian writer. Anthony West of The New Yorker considered Narayan's
writings to be of the realism variety of Nikolai
Gogol.
According to Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri, Narayan's short
stories have the same captivating feeling as his
novels, with most of them less than ten pages long, and taking about as many minutes
to read. She adds that between the title
sentence and the end, Narayan provides the reader something novelists struggle
to achieve in hundreds more pages: a complete
insight to the lives of his characters. These characteristics and abilities led
Lahiri to classify him as belonging to the pantheon
of short-story geniuses that include O. Henry, Frank O'Connor and Flannery O'Connor. Lahiri also compares him to
Guy De Maupassant for their ability to compress the
narrative without losing the story, and the common themes of middle-class life
written with an unyielding and unpitying
vision.
Critics
have noted that Narayan's writings tend to be more descriptive and less
analytical; the objective style, rooted
in a detached spirit, providing for a more authentic and realistic narration.
His attitude, coupled with his perception of life, provided a unique ability to fuse
characters and actions, and an ability to use
ordinary events to create a connection in the
mind of the reader. A significant contributor
to his writing style was his creation of
Malgudi, a stereotypical small town, where the standard norms of superstition
and tradition apply. Narayan's writing style was often compared to
that of William Faulkner since both their works brought out the humour and energy of ordinary life while displaying
compassionate humanism. The similarities also
extended to their juxtaposing of the demands
of society against the confusions of individuality. Although their
approach to subjects was similar, their method
was different from another
novelist. .
1) Swami and Friends:-
Swami and Friends were
given an early sight of the humor which runs through
Narayan’s novels.One of the features of British colonialism
was the export of cricket, a game
which strikes North
Americans as being opaque
and slow moving.But
atthetime that Swami was written, cricket was more than justasport– it stood ,quite absurdly, for the whole
ethos of an empire .Thus although we see Swami raised to heights of
indignation by a political orator laments the passivity of his countrymen
which has allowed
them to be dominated
by an alien power ,when it comes to cricket
the boy is sufficiently enthusiastic to spend
some time trying to explain
what the game is all about to his aged grandmother.
This comic scene, like so much of Narayan’s humor, has a strong poignancy. The grandmother represents
the old India , a world
in which cricket is not played.Her
ignorance of the rules
is a vivid metaphor for the extent
to which the old and the
new India are different
worlds.The cricket episode
also allows Narayan to portray
the naive aspirations
of the boys.This
is a familiar the main many of his works,
where some any of the characters are striving for something which is often
just beyond their
grasp.
2) The Guide :- R.k guide a novel ( 1958) is narayan’s The written in such a socio economic context when India was still a tradition based country with the majority of the population living in village were mostiy uneducated , simple, gullible and superstitious. Children here grew up hearing legends and myths of many gods, goddesses and sages, which entered into their intelligentsia And developed their aesthetic senses and moral values. Narayan himself may have heard many such stories from her grandmother of the novel in point. Thus may have had a firsthand experience of these believes of the village people. Hence, he chooses such a village to unfold the story he guide is set in malgudi (a fictional town created by narayana), and it opens with its protagonist, recently released from prison, sitting on a granite slab beside an ancient shrine on a bank of the river sarayu, on the other bank of which is situated the village Mangal , where people are so simple and gullible as to be made to accept for granted even the most unbelievable things. It is a man called velan from this village, who first mistakes raju for a saint and gradually makes other people of his village believe raju to be a saint telling them of the miracle that he believes raju has performed to solve a crucial problem of his family. Raju, perhaps already having a lesson of his misdeeds,feels reluctant to play the role assigned by Velan, but when Velan tells Raju his problem for a solution, Raju cannot help asserting his old habit of getting “involved in other people’s interests and activities” . Irritated by the greatness thrust upon him, Raju tells Velan to bring his sister the next day and thus reluctantly accepted a position superior to velen.
2) The Guide :- R.k guide a novel ( 1958) is narayan’s The written in such a socio economic context when India was still a tradition based country with the majority of the population living in village were mostiy uneducated , simple, gullible and superstitious. Children here grew up hearing legends and myths of many gods, goddesses and sages, which entered into their intelligentsia And developed their aesthetic senses and moral values. Narayan himself may have heard many such stories from her grandmother of the novel in point. Thus may have had a firsthand experience of these believes of the village people. Hence, he chooses such a village to unfold the story he guide is set in malgudi (a fictional town created by narayana), and it opens with its protagonist, recently released from prison, sitting on a granite slab beside an ancient shrine on a bank of the river sarayu, on the other bank of which is situated the village Mangal , where people are so simple and gullible as to be made to accept for granted even the most unbelievable things. It is a man called velan from this village, who first mistakes raju for a saint and gradually makes other people of his village believe raju to be a saint telling them of the miracle that he believes raju has performed to solve a crucial problem of his family. Raju, perhaps already having a lesson of his misdeeds,feels reluctant to play the role assigned by Velan, but when Velan tells Raju his problem for a solution, Raju cannot help asserting his old habit of getting “involved in other people’s interests and activities” . Irritated by the greatness thrust upon him, Raju tells Velan to bring his sister the next day and thus reluctantly accepted a position superior to velen.
3)Malgudi Days :-
Malgudi day
is a collection of 32 short funny
and witty stories. Its author
as a I
have mentioned in
the tittle is
r.k narayana . the stories
happen in malpudi
,an imaginary town
located somewhere on
the bank of
sarayu(a river in south India ). Even though it is common to call
malgudi , an imaginary
town , you can
trace it to
any village in
south India. The stories carry the scent and sounds of these
villages.
Rather than revolving around a
particular plot their stories describes. The relationship between member
and family. the various
social taboo prevalent
in a the mid nineties . all the
stories will seem
faintly similar but
they are vastly
different from each other . The
stories deals with the most ordinary men and women and
that make stories
extraordinary.
Conclusion :-
Conclusion :-
His
four novels in
this volume form
the first phase of Narayan’s career
as a novelist.In them we see the
author working
through a number of
concerns which, as a young man,
were
very much on his mind. These include
boyhood (Swami and Friends), education
and the finding of a role in life (The Bachelor of
Arts), and marriage (The Dark
Room and The English Teacher) .In these early
novels, we also see the
development of Narayan as a writer.
:
:
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