A Traditional Story Teller:
The novel is a western art form but it is equally popular in India. Today many talented Indians are writing novels in English. Some of them follow the pattern of story-telling set by some great English novelist. But Narayan follows the Indian tradition of story- telling. He erects the structure of his novels on thin plots and there is nothing speculative or distractive about them. There does not run in his novels any parallel sub - plots. But he is successful in creating suspense in his novel and so the reader goes through his novel with the curiosity to know what is going to happen in the next chapters.
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| R.K. Narayan As A Traditional Story Teller |
A serious drawback in his art is that in each of the ten novels the plot breaks midway, never quite managing to analyse the difference between realism and fantasy which are its main ingredients. But Narayan being a traditional story teller does not care for all this. He does not adhere strictly to the artistic principles of story writing. His plots are thin, loose and episodic like the traditional story teller. Narayan has an easy flow of words and tells the story in a simple and easy way. But his way of story-telling is amusing and entertaining the reader feels lost in the story without caring for the writers’ violation of artistic principles.
But Narayan is not simply an entertainer. He also instructs in mild general way. However he lacks the force of the typical Indian story teller, perhaps because he does not base his stories on the traditional Indian resources. The epic tales and epic heroes appear in Gods, Demons and other stories. He has not referred to ancient Hindu mythology, religion or epics, though he has expressed the view that “You can't write a novel without Krishna, Ganesh, Hanuman, astrologers, pandits and Devdasi.”
Narayan is quite upright in narrating the story. His novels are not complicated. There is no chronological disjointedness or multipoint of view in his novels. The flashback in the sweet vendor and Mr. Sampath are clear while the chronological sequence in the Guide is a little more difficult to tabulate. But it is also simple enough. The similar point of view is delineates in various novels.
Sensible Progression:
In the words of Paul Verghese, Narayan's is the simplest form of prose fiction - the story which records a succession of events. There is no separation between character and plot, both are inseparately knit together. The qualities the novelist attributes to his characters determine the action and the action in turn progressively changes the characters and thus, the story is carried forward to the end. In other words as a good story teller, Narayan sees to it that this story has a beginning a middle and end. The end of his novel is a solution to the problem which sets the events moving, the end achieves that completeness towards which the action has been moving and beyond which the action cannot progress. This end very often consists either in a balance of forces and or in death or both.
Plot and Characters:
“That character influences events, creates difficulties and later the equilibrium is restored, is evident from The Man - Eater of Malgudi when Vasu and Printer meet , the complexion of their encounter , is immediately determined. The action is set going by the changing tension between them and by a few acts of intervention on the part of other figures. And the balance of all the forces within the novel creates and moulds the plot. There is no external framework, no more mechanical plot, all is character and at the same time action. There are comic elements included to give relief and an additional emphasis on action to serve as a sub - plot without being one.”
All of Narayan's novels with the exception of The English Teacher, The Guide and The Man Eater of Malgudi are written in third personal and thus traditional and conventional method of narration is followed in them. In The Guide alone, abandons the beaten track of traditional method of describing a story - the story of The Guide is partly told by the author and partly in the first person by the hero himself. This shows an improvement in the novelist’s narrative technique. However, it is necessitated by the nature of the story. The novel begins with the release of Raju from prison. The narrator describes Raju's life after his release from prison. While his previous life i.e. the life before his imprisonment is narrated in series of flashback in Raju's own words and finally in the form of confession to Velan who takes Raju to be a saint. This technique is adopted to make the figure of the hero more sharp and real than other characters of the novel.
Conclusion:
Narayan writes novel with the aim of providing entertainment and amusement of his reader by telling them an interesting story which does not require much stress on the form of novel. In England and America many novels are written without caring for the form or technique of the novel. Actually formlessness has itself become a form. Narayan does not preach or moralise. He is certainly different from modern novelists who probe into the conscious and unconscious and unfold the suppressed or hidden desires of which their characters themselves are not aware. In short Narayan is a good story teller and not a great literary artist.