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IJELLH Volume 7, Issue 1, Month 2019 1740 Dr. Vipula Mathur Assistant Professor

IJELLH Volume 7, Issue 1, Month 2019 1740 Dr. Vipula Mathur Assistant Professor, Mahila PG College, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India vipulamathur.sgi@gmail.com Major Themes in the Novels of R.K. Narayan Abstract: Narayan deals with a society in which the combined weight of tradition, custom and social opinion usually compels individuals to play their expected life roles. He has also said that he value human relationship, very intensely. It makes one's existence worthwhile – human relationship in any and every form, whether at home or outside. It is the life of Malgudi which he knew intimately, which has fertilized his imagination and he renders it accurately, vividly and realistically in one novel after another. R.K. Narayan concent rates on orthodox family and incorporates numerous features of Indian life. He studies the various relationships in his novels with family as the nucleus. There is a strong sense of kinship in his fiction. Keywords-Narayan, Indian, family, relationships, novels, individual, themes Introduction: R.K. Narayan, has long been regarded as the best Indian writer in the English language. The adjective 'Indian' needs to be heavily underscored on several counts. Narayan is neither Anglo- Indian nor Indo- Indian nor Indo-Anglian, he is very much an Indian both in spirit and thought. He did not write with an eye on foreign audience, though he is published abroad and widely IJELLH Volume 7, Issue 1, Month 2019 1741 read abroad. He did not choose his themes nor distort them in order to please those in the West who continue to treat us Indians as if we are inferior breed. He deal with big themes – all which had been happening in India – but with deceptive simplicity. Even at the later age, the sources of R.K. Narayan's creative imagination had not dried up. The sparkling inventive skill, the effortless simplicity and the simplicity and the cerebral switch board of ideas are all in robust health. The Malgudi novels have a remarkable unity and a distinctive tone of voice, which combine style and virtue. An analysis of his novels reveals that R.K. Narayan dealt neither with the aristocracy at the top nor the poor. He practically like Jane Austen, identified himself with the middle class people and their various involvements, their clashes and adjustments that constitute the main interest of his novels. Like E.M. foster and D.H. Lawrence, he is a critic of contemporary society who ironically criticizes the follies and foibles of modern civilization reared on the material values of life. Narayan believes in the principal of 'Art for art's sake', and dealing with social problems in his novels like H.G. Wells and Galaworthy, he writes also for the pleasure of creation and beauty. He had a particular liking for religious life and hence in all his novels, we are bound to meet sanyasi, temple and Ganges. R.K. Narayan’s social consciousness is the subject of this study. R.M. MacIver and C.M. Page in 'Society' writes, "Society as a system of usages and procedures, of authority and mutual aid, of many groupings and diversions, of controls of human behaviors and liberties". Society exists where social beings "behave" towards one another. Any relations so determined we may broadly name "social". But society is not limited to human beings. There may be society also between animals of different species, as between a man and horse, or a dog or, say, between sheep and their shepherd. Thus by society our concern is with entire human species. And it is not only the sociologist but the novelist also, whose Prime concern is the various IJELLH Volume 7, Issue 1, Month 2019 1742 spheres of society and everyday mundane affairs. Indo – Anglian literature has served as a mirror for presenting the everyday happenings of society. “Since the novelist's subject is man – in society his subject matter must also be the texture of manners and conventions by which social man defines his own identity.”1 The Indo – Anglian novels present historical and Geographical awareness of Indian situations. Its subject is largely historical and sociological in approach dealing basically with the manners, customs, conventions and systems of Indian society. The Indo – Anglian novels has in the last decade been discussed frequently in the articles and reviewers in periodicals, both in Indian and abroad. The novels of R.K. Narayan, which is the special study of this subject, are not less influenced with the stream of social consciousness which swept over the Indian literature in the last decade. He is the most artistic of the Indian writers, his sole aim being to give aesthetic satisfaction, and not to use his art as a medium of propaganda or to serve some social purpose. R.K. Narayan is a novelist who was the rare example of a pure artist one who writes for the sake of art, and not out any ulterior motives. That is why his popularity has been world – wide and lasting. ”Perhaps it is true that a sincere Indian writer in English chooses as the medium of his creative expression because of the national and international public it reaches and the long tradition English literary forms enjoy.”2 R.K. Narayan like Jane Austen, has achieved greatness by working on his "two inches of ivory. In other words, he recognized the limitation of his range. He was born and bred in South India. It was there, he was educated, and he did not go out of this limited region till late in life when his reputation as a writer was already well-established, when he had already found himself. The formative years of his life were passed in this particular part of the country and therefore, as novelist he rightly confines himself to this particular region. IJELLH Volume 7, Issue 1, Month 2019 1743 Of this particular region, it was the life of the middle classes of which he had the most intimate knowledge. His memorable characters are all middle class. Upper class characters and characters belonging to the lower sections of society were outside his range and so they are seldom introduced with any success, in his works. It is the day – to day life of this particular class – a class to which he himself belonged – the tensions, and conflicts, stress and strains in human relations within the domestic circle of this class he has himself experienced, and hence he rightly makes then the basis of his works. His early novels are all domestic novels studying the relationship of husband and wife parents and sons, brothers and brothers etc., and in his last novel he again returns to these domestic relationships. Even when he covers a wider field as in 'The Guide' or 'Mr. Sampath' these domestic relationships are still explored and delineated. He depicts men in relation to each other than in relation to God, or some abstract idea, nor even politics. Politics is only in 'Waiting for the Mahatma' that the freedom struggle is brought in with disastrous consequences. He paints life with great skill, the externals of characters and manners, and passes by the vehement, the profound and the enthusiastic. In each of his works, he presents a slice of life, as he see it, with perfect sincerity and truthfulness. His integrity is above doubt. His one single aim is to amuse and entertain his readers by presenting before them life's little ironies, realistically and vividly. He presents life as it is both the good and the evil, he does not take any sides and it is difficult to determine where the novelist's own sympathies lie. He look with amused tolerance on the follies and frivolities which are a part of human life and renders both the wicked and the virtuous with equal sympathy and large heartedness. Narayan's Purpose is to entertain, to amuse his readers by telling them an interesting story which does not necessitate any great effort on their part. He does not preach or moralize. Though there is an analysis of human feelings, emotions, and motives, there is no probing into the sub-conscious, and the unconscious as is the case with a modern novelist. “The subject IJELLH Volume 7, Issue 1, Month 2019 1744 matter of novels is human relationships in which are shown the directions of men’s souls.”3 In short Narayan is a story – teller, nothing less and seldom more. Let us discuss some of his novels in brief. (1) Swami and Friends (1935) : It was his first novel, and a great writer Graham Greene called it, 'A book in ten thousand'. The novel describes the life of boys in South India schools. We get a vivid portrayal of thoughts, emotions and activities of school boys. The plot revolves round the activities of Swami, the hero and his friends Mani, Shankar, Somu, Samuel and Rajam. The novel is remarkable for the author's understanding of child's psychology and for his depiction of the carefree, buoyant world of school boys in a most realistic and convincing manner. (2) The Bachelor of Arts (1937) : His next novel 'The uploads/s3/ r-k-narayan-themes.pdf