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Chapter I
Introduction
R.K. Narayan is one of those lucky writers, very few in number,
who have achieved recognition and acceptance, with their very first
publication. Narayan's Swami and Friends, his first publication, is a great
schoolboy classic in which Narayan gives us not only admirable pictures
of school life but also displays a penetrating insight into child
psychology, by depicting the world from the point of view of the boy at
school. His reputation has been gradually rising, his works have beentranslated into most of the important languages of the world, and he was
awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for his The Guide which has also
been filmed, and the film has never failed to draw packed houses. Today,
he is regarded as the greatest of the Indo-Anglian writers of fiction.
Narayan has Indianised the novel, an essentially Western art-form.
Of all the Indo-Anglian novelists, Narayan alone has the distinction
of being a pure artist, one who writes for art's sake and not for propagati g
his views, political, economic, moral or religious. In each one of his
novels, he presents a slice of life as he sees it, impartially and
dispassionately. His perfect objectivity is to be contrasted with the
partiality of Mulk Raj Anand for the underdog of society, whose
propagandist and spokesman he is in each one of his novels. That is why
his novels have grown dated while those of Narayan have a perennial
freshness about them. They have the universal appeal of all great art He is
to be contrasted with Anand in another way also. His novels are not
disfigured by any such liberal translations of regional swear words and
idiomatic expressions, of the coarse and the vulgar, as mar the pages of
Anand.
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Narayan's is an art for art's sake, but it does not mean that he is a
writer without any vision of life. It simply means that there is no intrusive
message, philosophy or morality in his novels. They are entirely free
from all didacticism. But Narayan is a penetrating analyst of human
passions and human motives — the springs of human action — and this
makes him a great critic of human conduct. Human relationships within
the family circle — and relationships centring round sex and money — are
his ever-recurring themes and we can learn from them how to establish
right relationships. Whatever disturbs the norm is an aberration, a
disorder; sanity lies in the return to, and acceptance of, the normal. Life
must be accepted and lived, despite its many shortcomings, follies and
foibles. This may be said to be the Narayan's message, but it has to be
gleaned by each reader according to the light that is in him.
Narayan is the creator of Malgudi. He has put this particular region
of South India on the world map. His treatment of it is realistic and vivid
so much so that many have taken the fictitious to be the real and have
tried to identify the various geographical features and other landmarks
that constantly recur in his novels. Thus, some have thought that
Narayan's Malgudi is Lalgudi, while others have identified it with
Coimbatore. But like Hardy's Wessex, it is a pure country of the mind, a
dream-country in which physical features of various places, intimately
known to the novelist, fuse and mingle and are re-arranged, modified and
magnified. We see Malgudi growing from a small town into a large city,
and are also told of its history, customs and traditions. The recurrence of
the same landmarks serves to weld the various novels into an organic
whole. They may rightly be called Malgudi novels, just as Hardy s novels
are called Wessex novels.
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Narayan is a great regional novelist, but he is never parochial. It is
against the backdrop of Malgudi scenes and sights that Narayan studies
life's little ironies, which have always been the same in every age and
country. His novels are tragi-comedies of mischance and misdirection,
studies in the human predicament which, essentially, has always been the
same. From the particular Narayan rises to the general, and intensity and
universality are achieved by concentration. According to William Walsh,
"Malgudi, the locale of all his novels, is a symbol of India. Whatever
happens in the one, happens in the other, and also the reader begins to
believe whatever happens there happens everywhere" (54 Page).
Narayan is the creator of a whole picture-gallery of the immortals
of literature. A number of life-like memorable figures move in and out of
his novels and once we have been acquainted with them, we can never
forget them. He writes of the middle class, his own class, the members of
which are neither too well-off, nor too worried about money and position
nor dehumanized by absolute need. His hero is usually modest, sensitive,
ardent about himself and sufficiently conscious to have an active inner
life and to grope towards some existence independent of the family. The
family is the immediate context in which his sensibility operates and his
novels are remarkable for the delicacy and precision of the family
relations treated — that of son and parents, and brother and brother in The
Bachelor of Arts, of husband and wife and father and daughter in The
English Teacher, of father and son in The Financial Expert, of the
grandmother and grandson in Waiting for Mahatma.
The characteristic Narayan figure always has the capacity to be
surprised by the turn of events. His individuality has a certain
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formlessness, a lack of finish, indeed, as though the definition of his
personality depended upon the play of external influence, which of course
is Indian, with immense weight of inherited tradition. This quality of the
incompleteness in the hero means a further capacity not just to be startled
by what happens, but, to be, at least in part, reconstituted by it. The
procedure in a Narayan's novel is almost invariably a renovation or
reforming of the central character in response to the encouragement or
provocation of events, which is never, however, totally enough to be
revolutionary, but sufficient to make a new bend in the flow of continuity.
Narayan's women may be divided into two categories. First, there
are the typical Hindu housewives, suffering and drudging through life but
always remaining faithful to their homes and their husbands. Sometimes
they may revolt against the tyranny of their husbands as does Savitri in
The Dark Room, but ultimately they come back to their homes and their
husbands. To the second category belong butterfly-type of women like
Rosie, Shanta Bi' and Shanthi. They are glamorous and charming, not
very particular about 'Chastity', 'Virtue', etc., and these butterflies often
cause discords within the family but ultimately peace and harmony are
restored. Rosie in The Guide is the most complex of these women
characters. She is enigmatic, mysterious, and both Raju and Marco fail to
understand her.
We also come across another kind of character generally
introduced into a novel rather late and assigned a minor role. He is a
mysteriously enigmatic character, showing that certain characters, certain
events, or certain experiences, like knots in wood, cannot be assimilated
into ordinary day-today life. Such are the Madras rake in The Bachelor of
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Arts or the strange priest in The Financial Expert. The function of these
characters is to demonstrate, in keeping with Narayan's profoundly Indian
and religious view of life, the inexplicable in experience, the human
capacity for not being wholly susceptible to rational analysis.
Narayan's novels are so many studies in human relationships,
particularly family relationships. Of relationships within the family,
father-son relationship is most frequently studied. As his art matured, his
study of human relationships became more complex and intricate. Such
complex relationships which he explores are those which centre round
sex or money. These relationships are of particular importance in The
Financial Expert, The Guide, and The Man-Eater of Malgudi. In these
novels money and sex appear in different guises and are explored and
studied from different angles. Excessive pre-occupation with either
money or sex is an aberration which results in discords and disharmony —
in the disrupting of the normal family life, for instance — but peace and
harmony ultimately return and normalcy is restored. This is so much so
the case that the disruption of the accepted order and the ultimate
restoration of normalcy may be said to be the central theme of the novels.
Alone among Indo-Anglian writers of fiction, Narayan is the
practitioner of "serious comedy", a very difficult art form. His novels are
comedies of sadness. The sadness comes from the painful experience of
dismantling the routine self which, the context being Indian, seems less a
private possession than something distilled by powerful and ancient
convention and, secondly, the reconstruction or more frequently the
having reconstructed for one, of another personality. The comedy arises
from the sometimes bumbling, sometimes desperate, sometimes absurd,
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exploration of different experiences in the search for a new, and it may be
done exquisitely in the appropriate roles. “ The complex theme of
Narayan's serious comedies, then, is the rebirth of self and the process of
its education” (20). In his novels the gay and the serious, the tragic and
the comic, often lie close together so that we smile through our tears.
Narayan is the greatest humorist among the Indo-Anglian writers
of fiction. He is a pure humorist whose aim is the entertainment of his
readers. There is satire also but it is usually kindly and tolerant. Immense
is the variety of his humour and like that of Shakespeare, it is all-
pervasive. Humour of character, farcical humour of situation, verbal
humour, wit, irony, etc., are all there. Margayya of The Financial Expert
is one of the greatest comic creations and towards the end of The Guide
there is an almost Shakespearean interpenetration of tragedy and comedy.
There are ironic contrasts. Narayan's eyes ever take on a merry twinkle,
as do those of the grown-ups when watching children at play, as they fall
on the follies and foibles of mankind.
He himself enjoys the tragicomic spectacle of humanity on the march and
has at his command a scintillating, lucid and powerful prose style to
convey his own enjoyment to his readers.
Narayan is a great artist who has achieved greatness by recognising
the limitations of his range, and keeping within it. Like Jane Austen, he
has achieved greatness by working on his "two inches of ivory." He knew
only one particular region most intimately and he rarely goes out of it. He
himself belonged to the middle class, intimately knew only this class, and
so he draws his characters from this class alone. He studies men in
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relation to each other and not in relation to God or religion or politics
because such relationships were outside his range. Contemporary Indian
politics rarely enters his novels. Gandhi and his freedom movement are
introduced only in one of his novels, Waiting for Mahatma and the result
is rather unfortunate. Further, his range was limited by his comic vision
and so only such aspects of life are selected as are susceptible to comic
treatment It is for this reason that the passions, "the stormy sisterhood",
are eschewed and attention is confined to the surface reality of life. There
is no probing of the sub-conscious or the unconscious. Narayan does not
soar high because such soaring is incompatible with the comic mode.
Narayan as a novelist follows the tradition of story-telling as it
existed in ancient India, but adapts it to his form and style taken from the
West. The instruments of his critical strategy are comedy, irony and
satire. Narayan keeps very close to surface reality, for his aim is to reveal
the tragi-comedy implicit in ordinary life. His problem is to give the
reader a picture that strikes him as typical of everyday reality. For this, he
depends on selection. He, therefore, excludes from his picture such
aspects of reality as are not susceptible to comic treatment. His picture of
life is always true to facts, but to those facts only at which a reasonable
being can be expected to smile. He is also careful to survey his subject-
matter from an angle from which its coi lie aspects are most prominently
visible.
R.K. Narayan is one of those lucky writers who have achieved
recognition with the publication of their very first novel. He has ten
novels, about a hundred short stories, a number of articles and sketches,
to his credit and all this large body of work, with few exceptions (as The
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Dark Room), is uniformly of a high standard. His first three novels deal
with three different stages in the life of the same character though he is
given different names. Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts and The
English Teacher are novels of school and college life and they are deeply
autobiographical. The Dark Room, which came in between the last two,
and The Sweet-Vendor (1967) are also novels of domestic life. The
Financial Expert, Mr. Sampath, The Guide and The Man-Eater of
Malgudi deal with the careers of money-hunting men of the world.
Usually, Narayan takes no note of the stirring political events of the day,
but in Waiting for Mahatma, he has introduced the figure of the great
Mahatma, and the effect is rather melodramatic, but this, too, is not a
political novel. It was no doubt an artistic mistake to have dragged in the
great Mahatma, too big for any single work of art, but the Gandhian
movement is not its theme. Its real theme is the love story of Sriram and
Bharati, and it has been dealt with effectively and credibly. All this work
is remarkably even in the quality of its achievement. Naturally, his later
work is more complex, and more introspective than his earlier work, but
there can be no question about the quality even of his earlier work.
R.K. Narayan, like Jane Austen, has achieved greatness by
working on his "two inches of ivory." In other words, he recognised the
limitations of his range. He was born and bred in South India. It was there
that 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 a novelist he rightly confines himself to
this particular region. It is the life of Malgudi which he knew intimately,
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which had fertilised his imagination, and he renders it accurately, vividly
and realistically, in one novel after another.
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
lowest 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, stresses and strains in human relations within the domestic
circle of this class he had himself experienced, and hence he rightly
makes them the basis of his works.
His early novels are all domestic novels studying the relationships
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, the domestic
relationships are still explored and delineated. He depicts men in relation
to each other, rather than in relation to God, or some abstract idea, even
politics. Politics, even the contemporary struggle for independence, was
outside his range. He had never meddled with it, he had no first-hand
knowledge of it, and so he keeps it out of his novels. It is only in Waiting for Mahatma that the freedom struggle is brought in with disastrous
consequences. The introduction of the great Mahatma is certainly
melodramatic.
Narayan's range is limited in another way also. It is limited by the
comic vision. Only such subjects and characters as are susceptible to
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comic treatment are introduced. As Paul Verghese points out: "Narayan
keeps-ery close to surface reality, for his aim is to reveal the tragi-
comedy implicit in ordinary life. His problem is to give the reader a
picture that strikes him as typical of everyday reality. For this, he depends
on selection. He, therefore, excludes from his picture such aspects of
reality as are not susceptible to comic treatment His picture of life is
always true to facts, but to those facts only at which a reasonable being
can be expected to smile. He is also careful to survey his subject-matter
from an angle from which its comic aspects are most prominently visible"
(60). Human oddities, follies and frivolities are all observed and
ridiculed. His eye takes on a merry twinkle as it falls on something odd or
comic in character and situation and he conveys his own amusement to
his readers. He paints with great skill the surface of life, the externals of
characters and manners, and passes by the vehement, the profound and
the enthusiastic, all that is not capable of humorous treatment.
According to Srinivasa Iyengar, "Narayan's is the art of resolved
limitation and conscientious exploration; he is content, like Jane Austen,
with his little bit of ivory, just so many inches wide; he would like to be a
detached observer, to concentrate on a narrow scene, to sense the
atmosphere of the place, to snap a small group of characters in their
oddities and angularities; he would, if he could, explore the inner
countries of the mind, heart and soul, catch the uniqueness, in the
ordinary, the tragic. Malgudi is Narayan's Casterbridge but the inhabitants
of Malgudi — although they may have their recognizable local trappings —
are essentially human and hence have their kinship with all humanity. In
this sense, Malgudi is everywhere" (65).
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In short, there is careful selection and ordering of material and all
that is outside his range is carefully eschewed. By exercising such artistic
self-control, Narayan has achieved greatness. He works on his two inches
of ivory, but working within this limited range, he has achieved greatness.
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Chapter II
Conflict between Good and Evil
The Man-Eater of Malgudi is the 9th novel of R.K. Narayan. It was
published in 1961 and, though CD. Narasimaiaha regards it as an
anticlimax, coming as it does after The Guide, an undisputed masterpiece,
it has been highly praised by a number of critics and has been regarded as
one of his finest works. Its popularity was immediate and it has also been
universal. On its publication, it was highly praised by the editors of Times
Literary Supplement in the following words:
"Narayan has now written his most delightful story of the
little world of Malgudi, his imaginary town in South India.
The good printer Nataraj and his close friends, a poet and a
journalist, find their congenial days disturbed when Vasu, a
power-hungry taxidermist, moves in with his stuffed hyenas
and pythons, and brings his dancing-women up the printer's
private stairs. When Vasu, in search of larger game,
threatens the life of a temple elephant that Nataraj has
befriended, complications ensue that are both laughable and
tragic. A not unwelcome death occurs, murder is indicated,
and the search for the guilty party who might have been
Nataraj himself or anyone of his friends, or even the temple
dancer — lends suspense to this bizarre, yet moving tale"
(75).
"Pungent as a Madras curry, gay, witty, the rueful wry gaiety
of Tamils and Telugus, Narayan's The Man-Eater of
Malgudi makes a most rich and satisfying mixture. Hilarity
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and high seriousness are rarely yoked together in partnership
as effectively as they are in this book. Narayan's writing is
limpid and beautifully unforced" (80).
This praise has been echoed by successive critics of the novel. The
Man-Eater of Malgudi is an allegory or fable showing that evil is self-
destructive. The title is ironic, for the man-eater in the novel is no tiger,
but a mighty man, Vasu, who not only kills a large number of wild
animals in Mempi forest but can also kill a man with a single blow of his
hammer-fist.
The story is narrated in the first person by its tragi-comic hero
Nataraj, a printer of Malgudi. In his printing works, he is assisted by
Sastri who is a compositor, a proof-reader and a machine-man all
combined in one. Among his constant companions are a poet who is
engaged in writing the life of God Krishna, and Sen, the journalist, who is
always criticising Nehru. The smooth and congenial life of this small
group is disturbed when, H. Vasu, M.A. taxidermist, comes to stay with
them in a room in the upper storey of the printing press. This tall man, of
about six feet, with his bull neck, hammer-fist and rough and aggressive
behaviour, arouses fear in the hearts of Nataraj and his friends. Nataraj
tolerates him in his room upstairs till he makes himself unbearable by
robbing Mempi forest of its wild life and collecting dead animals in his
room for stuffing them.
When Nataraj's neighbours complain to him about the insanitary
conditions, he requests Vasu to find a new house for himself. The
taxidermist treats this as an insult and sues him fo~ harassing him and
trying to evict him by unlawful means. The timely help from one of his
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clients, an old lawyer, his ability to prolong a case beyond the wildest
dream of a litigant, saves Nataraj from the clutches of law. Soon after,
Vasu starts bringing Rangi, a notorious dancing woman and some other
women like her, to his room to the great annoyance of all concerned. But
Vasu does not care for their feelings.
The crisis, however, comes to a head when the pitiless taxidermist
threatens to kill Kumar, a temple-elephant who is to be taken in a festival
procession organized to celebrate the poet's completion of a portion of his
religious epic. Nataraj is very fond of the animal. He naturally gets very
much upset, the moment he learns from Rangi that Vasu intends to shoot
it on the night of the proposed celebrations. Nataraj immediately
acquaints his friends — the poet, the lawyer, and other important people of
the town — with the taxidermist's wicked intentions. The matter is
reported to the police authorities but they express their inability to take
any action against him until the crime has been actually committed.
The very thought of Kumar's murder, however, drives Nataraj
crazy. Even while compelled to stay in his house owing to the agitated
condition of his mind, he continues thinking of Kumar. As the procession
passes in front of his printing press, his heart begins to beat with fear. He
waits every moment to hear the noise of gun shots and the cries of panic-
stricken people. He is surprised when the procession passes away without
any untoward incident.
Relieved of a great worry, Nataraj goes to his office as usual in the
morning. To his great shock and dismay, he learns that Vasu is dead. The
police authorities of the town soon start investigations. Murder is
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suspected and Nataraj, his friends, and Rangi, the temple dancer, are
interrogated by the police. From the medical report it is gathered that
Vasu has died of a concussion received on his right temple from a blunt
instrument. When the police fails to find any clue of the culprit, the
matter is dropped. Rangi later tells them that while striking a mosquito
settled on his forehead, Vasu slapped his temple and died instantaneously.
He thus died of a blow from his own hammer-fist.
The novel has a well-knit coherent plot and a fine gallery of vivid,
lifelike characters. The character of Vasu, the central figure, is a
masterpiece. The narration is enlivened by Narayan's comic vision which
frequently fuses and mingles with pathos. In short, it is a great and
complex work of art with a number of themes and ideas standing out of it.
The title of a literary piece of composition should be apt and
suggestive. Just as a signboard indicates the goods that are sold in a shop,
so a good title should indicate the theme of a novel. Let us critically
examine if the title The Man-Eater of Malgudi satisfies these
requirements.
The present title consists of two parts: (1) Man-Eater, and (2)
Malgudi. So far as the second part of the title is concerned, it is quite
appropriate for it at once indicates the particular place or locality where
the various events and incidents narrated in the novel take place. Malgudi
in South India, essentially a "country of the mind", provides the setting to
the novel. A number of its localities such as Market Road, Kabir Street,
Sarayu river, the Taluk Office, the Lawley Extension, the Mempi Forest
are mentioned. An account is also given of the professions, beliefs,
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customs, susperstitions, traditions, etc., of its people. Nataraj, the
unheroic hero, has his Nataraj Printing Works, and next door there is the
Star Press with its modern German printing machine. Malgudi is shown
to be a developing town. Important changes are taking place. The project
for the establishment of a veterinary Hospital has been cleared, and a
veterinary doctor is already there. However, the implementation of the
project has been delayed because of the apathy of the officials concerned
and the paucity of funds. At the foot of the Mempi forest there is the
Mempi village, and a Government bus plies between this village and
Malgudi.
The tenor of life is peaceful and the people, on the whole, are
happy and contented. They have ample leisure. They gossip for hours
together and make elaborate arrangements to take out processions to
celebrate some religious occasion. Sen, the journalist, dwells at length on
the mistakes of Nehru and a teacher-turned-poet writes an epic inmonosyllabic verse and recites the verses to Nataraj as the composition
proceeds. There are also jealousies, doubts and suspicions and women of
loose morals like the temple-dancer Rangi. An elaborate picture is
painted of Malgudi and its life, and so it may be concluded that the
second part of the title is quite apt and suggestive.
As regards the first part of the title, it, too, is apt and suggestive if
not in letter, at least in spirit. Man-eater means a tiger who has once
tasted human blood, has relished it, and so attacks human beings
whenever it gets an opportunity to do so. It causes death and destruction
and so is an object of terror to all in the neighbourhood. There is no man-
eater in Malgudi in the literal sense. But there is H. Vasu, the taxidermist,
who is as destructive as a man-eater.
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Vasu is an aggressive bully and from the very first day of his
arrival in Malgudi, he creates death and destruction and spoils the
peaceful, carefree life of Nataraj and his circle. He treats the poet and
Sen, the journalist, with contempt, makes fun of them and passes sarcastic
remarks. The result of his aggressive behaviour is that Nataraj's friends
steal away as soon as he arrives. He takes possession of Nataraj's attic
without his permission and continues to live in it without paying any rent,
and refuses to vacate it when asked by Nataraj to do so. He treats the
printer's parlour — which is his drawing room and business place as an
extension of the attic and moves in and out of it at will, without caring or
paying any heed to decency and etiquette. In everything he gets his will
by his bullying conduct and tactics. Thus, he forces Nataraj to come in his
jeep for a few minutes, and refuses to tell him both of his purpose and his
destination. Poor Nataraj is forced to accompany him without his shirt-
buttons and without even a single pie in his pocket. He drives rashly, to
the great terror of Nataraj, and leaves the poor printer stranded in Mempi
village. The poor fellow returns to Malgudi late in the night after a long
and tiresome journey in a bus. Thus, he destroys Nataraj's peace of mind
and his professional efficiency. With his hammer-fist he can silence any
opposition, and send his opponents sprawling on the ground. All are
afraid of him and none dares even to contradict him.
Soon he converts Nataraj's attic into a charnel house. He shoots big
game in the Mempi forest without permission of the Forest Department.
He prowls there stealthily like a man-eater in search of its prey, and
brings to the attic the animals he kills in the forest. There he skins them
and stuffs them and then sells them at huge profit to himself. A hyena and
a snake are hung in the staircase and his attic is soon full of stuffed dogs,
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cats, eagles, crows, etc. He shoots a pet dog in the street from the window
of his attic and the owner comes to Nataraj, with his complaint. Soon the
foul smell emanating from the attic causes the residents of the locality to
protest but Vasu does not heed such protests.
A man-eater kills man, but this man-eater kills animals as also the
peace of mind of all concerned. All protests, both from the citizens of
Malgudi and from the officials of the Forest Department, fail to move
him from his purpose. When at last his activities in the forest are
curtailed, he starts bringing women of loose character into the attic
without caring even a fig for the fair name and reputation of Nataraj, or
for the worry that his actions would cause to the helpless printer.
So destructive is he that he even plans to kill the sacred temple
elephant Kumar. This causes much mental agitation and spiritual anguish
to Nataraj and so on the day of the celebration he grows delirious and
loudly cries out 'Vishnu', which makes the agitated people rush to him to
see what has gone wrong. Vasu is evil incarnate, a rakshasa, and every
demon, as Sastri puts it, carries the seeds of destruction in himself. Vasu
dies of a blow of his own hammer-fist on his head to drive away some
mosquitoes. However, in death he proves to be more destructive than in
life.
Vasu dead proved a greater nuisance than Vasu alive. Anyone who
had anything to do with him for the past six weeks was summoned to the
press by the police. Muthu was there, away from his teashop, the poet
was there, the journalist was, of course, there, and the elephant doctor and
the tailor (who was bewailing all along that he had promised clothes for a
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wedding and ought to be back at his sewing machine). A police van had
gone and brought them all. All, even his friends and his wife, suspect
Nataraj of being the murderer. "This was the greatest act of destruction
that the man-eater had performed; he had destroyed my name, my
friendships, and my world. The thought was too much for me. Hugging
the tiger cub, I burst into tears" (78).
Thus, the title of the novel is apt, suggestive and eye-catching, at
least in spirit, if not in letter.
Nataraj and Vasu are contrasted characters. Nataraj, no doubt
central figure and the action of the novel is viewed through his eyes. It is
his point of view that we always get. But he is an unheroic-hero, good at
heart but passive and inactive like most of us. Vasu, on the other hand, is
evil incarnate and, like Milton's Satan, he has all the fascination of evil
about him. He is an anti-hero, aggressive and bullying, and Nataraj is
both attracted and repelled by him. The novel makes it clear that theirs is
a Love – hate relationship.
Nataraj is the owner of a printing press, which is situated behind a
bule curtain, which keeps the goings-on there hidden from the view of the
visitors and clients. Narayan invests everything connected with Nataraj
with an aura of mysteriousness. The entire process of printing is shown as
shrouded in mystery and Nataraj is thought of as equipped for big tasks. It
is obvious that Narayan intends Nataraj to symbolise the mystery of
religion. In his morning rounds he recites a prayer to the Sun to illumine
his mind, which shows his religious bent of mind.
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The parlour of Nataraj is frequented by two people, one a poet,
who in writing the life of God Krishna in monosyllabic verse, and the
other Sen, a journalist, who holds forth on the mistakes Nehru was
making.
Nataraj is upset when he finds that the sanctity of his premises his
violated by a stranger. He soon learns that this stranger's name is H. Vasu
and that he is a taxidermist by profession. A complex and strangely
fascinating relationship is formed between Vasu and Nataraj. As Nataraj
says, ―I began to feel intrigued by the man, I didn't wanted to lose him
even if I wanted to, I had no means of getting rid of him. He had sought
me out and I'd have to have him until he decided to leave."
Vasu is a Faustian character with his virtually insatiable curiosity
and thirst for power and knowledge. He holds his master's degree in
History, Economics and Literature and Nataraj says about him, "The
man's curiosity was limitless and recognised no proprieties." He soon
occupies the attic in Nataraj's press. He stands "in the middle of the room
like a giant". Nataraj, on the other hand, is a typical Narayan character
with a non-committal neutrality as his ideal. As he voices his philosophy:
"I left everyone alone. If they wrangled and lost their heads and voices, it
was their business and not mine. Even if heads had been broken, I don't
think I'd have interfered" (99). Vasu as is his habit, naturally quarrels
with everyone. He says, "We are not lone dwellers in the Sahara to live
self-centred lives. We are members of a society and there is no point in
living like a recluse, shutting oneself away from all the people around"
(102). But Nataraj finds him to be full of danger and destructiveness. As
he says about him, "Now it was like having a middle-aged man-eater in
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your office and home, with the same uncertainties, possibilities and
potentialities" (125).
Nataraj is struck by Vasu's sweep of mind. He says about him: "He
was the lord of the universe, he had no use for other people's words."
Then he quotes his views on road-sense, marriage and prohibition.
Nataraj comes to realise that Vasu is a defiler of his precincts but he finds
himself helpless to do anything about it. He watches helplessly his attic
being converted into a camel house. In spite of the fact that Nataraj is
oppressed and harassed by the presence of Vasu, he does not cease
wondering at him. He says about him, "...now we were bitter enemies. I
admired him for his capacity for work, for all the dreadful "things he was
able to accomplish single-handed; short of creating the animals, he did
everything" (142).
Nataraj finds him so fascinating that he does not want to lose him.
Te says about Vasu, "He was a terrible specimen of human being, no
doubt, but I wanted to be on talking terms with him. This was a complex
mood. I couldn't say that I liked him or approved of anything he said or
did, but I didn't want to be repulsed by him" (143).
In short, the relationship between Nataraj and Vasu is a love-hate
relationship. Nataraj is himself passive and colourless, is attracted by his
forceful dominating personality, but he is also repulsed by him for he is
evil incarnate, a demon or a rakshasa. Vasu has all the fascination of evil,
like Milton's Satan, and this accounts for the attraction of Nataraj for him.
Theirs is a love-hate relationship. The weak, passive man hates the strong
active bully, but is still drawn towards him.
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A writer may use ancient myths, legends and folklore
unconsciously in his works, or he may use ancient myths consciously as a
technique of narration. Narayan is well versed in the Hindu epics, like
Ramayan and Mahabharat, and other Hindu scriptures, as also in the
myths and legends which form a part of the Indian folklore. This is
clearly brought out by a study of his work entitled Gods, Demons and
Other Stories. Reference and allusions to such myths and legends abound
in his stories. But it is only in The Man-Eater of Malgudi that he has
consciously used myth as a technique in the manner of such modern
English writers as T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats and many others.
The writer who makes a conscious use of the mythical technique
goes to ancient myths and legends, juxtaposes them with the facts of
modern life, and in this way brings out the similarities and contrasts
between the past and the present. The mythical method is simply a way,
"of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and significance to the
immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary
history" (125). The modern artist is acutely conscious of the bewildering
variety, complexity and intricacy of modern life. His bewilderment is
further increased by his 'historic sense', by his consciousness that the
whole of literature forms a single whole, and this vast literary tradition is
dynamic, modifying and influencing literary activity in the present and
being modified in its own turn by such activity.
The problem of the contemporary artist is how to render in his art
this variety and complexity. He must impose some sort of order and
control, he must discover some pattern in this variety, otherwise the result
would be chaotic. The artist must convey a sense of the multiplicity of his
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age, but he can only do so by imposing on it some sort of order and form.
Writers bring about this order and control by the use of the mythical
method.
All the myths and legends Narayan uses point to the fact that the
surface differences between the customs, beliefs and ways of life of
mankind tend to mask profound resemblances. Similarities lie beneath
contrasting appearances and there is a fundamental unity in diversity. He
thus discovers " a common principle underlying all manifestations of
life"; and he uses this principle as a pattern to impose order and unity on
the chaotic variety and complexity of his rendering of modern life. As
pointed out by a number of critics, Narayan has used this mythical
technique with remarkable success in The Man-Eater of Malgudi.
Vasu is evil incarnate. He frightens children, kills dogs, repels
neighbourhood people with the stench of his workshop and defies social
conventions by bringing in prostitutes. All these negative acts set him
apart from common human beings. Fairly early in the novel, Sastri
identifies him with the rakshasa, embodying forces of destruction. Vasu
corresponds to the letter with Sastri's definition of a rakshasa as a
demoniac creature, possessing enormous strength, strange powers and
genius, but recognising no sort of restraint of man or god. In The Man-
Eater of Malgudi also this demon gets swollen with his ego. He thinks he
is invincible, beyond every law, but finally he oversteps his limitations
and is destroyed.
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The novelist has used the Bhasmasura myth as a conscious
technique, the mythical technique, the purpose being to stress the self-
destructive nature of Vasu, to enrich the texture of the novel and to link it
up with the Indian Classical tradition. Sastri says to Nataraj, "to deal with
a rakshasa one must possess the marksmanship of a hunter, the wit of a
pundit, and the guile of a harlot."
"Vasu shows all the definitions of a rakshasa", persisted Sastri and
went on to define the make-up of a rakshasa. He said, "Every rakshasa
gets swollen with his ego. He thinks he is invincible, beyond every law.
But sooner or later something or other will destroy him." He stood
expiating on the lives of various demons in Puranas to prove his point.
He displayed great versatility and knowledge. Nataraj found his talk
enlightening. He went on, his information was encyclopedic. He removed
his silver-rimmed spectacles and put them away in his shirt pocket as
being an impediment to his discourse.
He further said "There was Ravana, the protagonist in the
Ramayana who had ten heads and twenty arms and enormous yogic and
physical powers, and a boon from the gods that he could never be
vanquished. The earth shook under his tyranny. Still he came to a sad
end. Or take Mahisha, the asura, who meditated and acquired a boon of
immortality and invincibility and who had secured an especial favour that
every drop of blood shed from his body should give rise to another
demon in his own image and strength, and who nevertheless was
destroyed. The Goddess with six arms, each bearing a different weapon,
came riding for the fight on a lion which sucked every drop of blood
drawn from the demon" (155).
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"Then there was Bhasmasura, who acquired a special boon that
everything he touched should be scorched, while nothing could ever
destroy him. He made humanity suffer. God Vishnu was incarnated as a
dancer of great beauty, named Mohini, with whom the asura became
infatuated. She promised to yield to him only if he imitated all the
gestures and movements of her own dancing. At one point in the dance,
Mohini placed her palms on her head, and the demon followed this
gesture in complete forgetfulness and was reduced to ashes that very
second, the blighting touch becoming active on his own head. Every man
can think that he is great and will live forever, but no one can guess from
which quarter his doom will come" (162).
Thus, Sastri stresses the parallel between Vasu and Bhasmasura
and hints at the manner of Vasu's sudden and unexpected death. He dies
like Bhasmasura with a blow of his fist on his own head and the novel
concludes with the following words of Sastri, "Every demon appears in
the world with a special boon of indestructibility. Yet the universe has
survived all the rakshasas that were ever born. Every demon carries
within him, unknown to himself, a tiny seed of self-destruction and goes
up in thin air at the most unexpected moment. Otherwise what is to
happen to humanity ?" (168). He narrated again for Nataraj's benefit the
story of Bhasmasura the unconquerable, who scorched everything he
touched, and finally reduced himself to ashes by placing the tips of his
fingers on his own head.
In short, in the novel Narayan has consciously used the mythical
technique, in the manner of Western writers like T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats,
Eugiene O' Neill and James Joyce.
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In Narayan's novels there is not an organic compound of realism
and fantasy, but merely a mechanical mixture. In the later part of the
novels, fantasy predominates, and strikes one as incongruous in the
context of the realism of the first part. Savitri's attempted suicide in The
Dark Room ends in a miraculous escape, and she returns to her home and
children. Chandran's renunciation of life in The Bachelor of Arts, his
wandering as a sadhu, Krishna's communication with the spirit of his
dead wife, are all examples of such fantasy. All this is certainly
incongruous with the realistic content of the novels, though it cannot be
regarded as improbable in the Indian context.
However, H. Vasu in The Man-Eater of Malgudi is certainly
fantastic, he meets a fantastic death by his own hands reminding us of the
ancient Hindu myth of the rakshasa who died as in dancing he placed his
hand on his own head. Equally fantastic and incongruous is his scheme of
shooting the elephant. In Waiting for Mahatma, we have the fantasy of
the intrusion of Gandhi and Gandhian politics into the simple and realistic
love-story of Bharati and Sriram. In this very novel, there is even the
more fantastic coming to life on the cremation ground of an old woman
supposed to be dead. Even The Financial Expert and The Sweet-Vendor,
two of Narayan's finest novels, are spoiled by this uneven mixture of
fantasy and realism. In the former, there is the fantastic worship ritual and
fast to win the favour of Goddess Laxmi, and in the latter, as already
mentioned, there is the fantastic story-writing machine, besides many
other eccentricities and absurdities of character and event.
The word picaresque comes from the Spanish word Picaro,
meaning a rogue or a villain. A picaresque novel deals with the
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adventures of a rogue or villain. The rogue or Picaro is the central figure,
and in the novel, he plays many roles and wears many masks.
A picaresque novel has a number of peculiar features of its own. It
is a string of incidents and episodes, which have no unity and coherence,
except the unity of the hero, that is to say, the same hero, the same picaro
or rogue, figures in each of them. It is episodic in character and the
characters are not rounded three-dimensional figures. They lack
individuality and are not fully developed. Most of the characters appear
and then disappear, never to make their appearance again. New characters
are introduced even towards the close of the novel, so that we know very
little about them.
The Man-eater of Malgudi has many of the features of a picaresque
novel. H. Vasu is a picaro, an anti-hero and adventurous wanderer. The
stress on his many roles and adventures makes the plot loose and
episodic. Vasu is evil and the novel gives the account of his wanderings,
of his adventures, and of the many roles he plays and the many masks he
wears. We are given a detailed account of his past, of his several
adventures, and roles, before he comes to Malgudi to play the role of a
taxidermist. He himself narrates his past to Nataraj: "I was in Junagadh —
you know the place — and there I grew interested in the art. I came across
a master there, one Suleiman. When he stuffed a lion (you know,
Junadgadh is a place where we have lions) he could make it look more
terrifying than it would be in the jungle. His stuffing's go all over the
world. He was a master, and he taught me the art. After all, we are
civilized human beings educated and cultured, and it is up to us to prove
our superiority to nature. Science conquers nature in a new way each day:
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why not in creation also ? That's my philosophy, sir. I challenge any man
to contradict me" (172). He sighed at the thought of Suleiman, his master.
"He was a saint He taught me his art sincerely" (173).
Continuing with the account of his adventurous past and of the
many roles he has played, he further tells Nataraj that he was educated in
the Presidency College. He took his Master's degree in History,
Economics and Literature. That was in the year 1931. Then he joined the
civil disobedience movement against British rule, broke the laws,
marched, demonstrated and ended up in jail. He went repeatedly to prison
and once when he was released found himself in the streets of Nagpur.
There he met a phaelwan at a show. "That man could bear a half-
ton stone siab on his chest and have it split by hammer strokes; he could
snap steel chains and he could hit a block of hard granite with his fist and
pulverize it. I was young then, his strength appealed to me. I was
prepared to become his disciple at any cost. I introduced myself to the
phaelwan" (175). He remained thoughtful for a while and continued, "I
learnt everything from this master. The training was unsparing. He woke
me up at three o'clock every morning and put me through exercises. And
he provided me with the right diet. I had to eat a hundred almonds every
morning and wash them down with half a seer of milk; two hours later six
eggs with honey; at lunch chicken and rice; at night vegetables and fruit.
Not everyone can hope to have this diet, but I was lucky in finding a man
who enjoyed stuffing me like that. In six months, I could understudy for
him. On my first day, when 1 banged my fist on a century-old door of a
house in Lucknow, the three-inch panel of seasoned teak splintered. My
master patted me on the back with tears of joy in his eyes, "You are
growing on the right lines, my boy" (179).
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"In a few months, 1 could also snap chains, twist iron bars and
pulverize granite. We travelled all over the country and gave our shows at
every market fair in the villages, and in the town halls in the cities, and he
made a lot of money. Gradually, he grew flabby and lazy, and let me do
everything. They announced his name on the notices, but actually 1 did
all the twisting and smashing of stone, iron, and what not. When I spoke
to him about it he called me an ungrateful dog and other names, and tried
to push me out. 1 resisted...and..." Vasu laughed at the recollection of this
incident. "I knew his weak spot. I hit him there with the edge of my palm
with a chopping movement...and he fell down and squirmed on the floor.
I knew he could perform no more. I left him there and walked out and
gave up the strong man's life once and for all" (183).
Thus, Vasu has been a scholar, a phaelwan, a patriot, an adventurer
in search of a career, and now he sets up as a taxidermist in Malgudi. As
he tells Nataraj, the fame of Mempi forests has brought him to Malgudi.
He now acts like an aggressive bully, begins to live in Nataraj's attic
without his permission and even without paying him any rent. He soon
turns Nataraj's parlour into an extension of the attic and makes fun of his
closest friends, so that they go away as soon as he comes in.
He cringes and flatters the forest officer in order to get his
permission to shoot big game in the Mempi forest and when the
permission is not given, he plays the role of a poacher and shoots wild
animals there. Soon the attic is turned into a charnel house and the foul
smell emanating from there gets intolerable. When at last he has to give
up poaching in the Mempi forest, he plays the role of a womaniser.
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Rangi and other such women are frequently seen going up to the
attic and coming down. He is entirely unprincipled and immoral and
plans even to shoot Kumar, the temple elephant. He dies in mysterious
circumstances of a blow on his head from his own hammer-fist. Nataraj is
suspected of having murdered him and, so, this man-eater destroys his
reputation and peace of mind.
The plot of the novel is loose and episodic and the various
incidents and episodes have no unity except the unity provided by the fact
that the same person, Vasu, appears in all of them. There is much
superfluity. Too much space has been devoted to Vasu's varied activities.
A number of characters appear for a short duration, play their respective
roles and then disappear. The forest officer, the bus conductor and driver,
the D.S.R, the Inspector of Police, Muthu, the adjournment lawyers, etc.,
are such characters.
They are not rounded, three-dimensional figures. The phaelwan
and Vasu's guru Suleiman do not appear at all in the novel and Rangi
who, no doubt, plays an important role, is introduced very late. Even
Nataraj's son Babu and his wife, are merely background figures. Their
characters are not developed, and this applies also to the case of the poet
and the journalist Sen.
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Chapter III
Summing Up
An allegory is a technique of vision. It serves to convey abstract
and mystic truths in an easy-popular way. For the common reader, the
writer merely narrates an entertaining story, but for the more discerning
reader the story carries a profound moral lesson. Thus, the allegory is a
literary composition with a hidden moral lesson. Medieval English
literature is largely allegorical. Morality plays are all allegorical,
depicting the conflict between the Good and the Evil for the possession of the human soul. The Man-Eater of Malgudi is also an allegory, for not
only does it narrate an interesting story, but it also represents the conflict
of the Good and the Evil, of the normal and the uncommon, of the passive
and the active. These allegorical implications of the story become clear, if
we compare and contrast the characters of Nataraj, the unheroic-hero, and
H. Vasu, the anti-hero
The New York Times reviewer read the novel as an allegory and
Edwin Gerow, in a perceptive analysis of the novel, has pointed out how
closely the novel follows the allegorical pattern of Sanskrit literature.
Even a casual reader will notice the allegorical nature of the novel. The
polarity between Nataraj, the meek and tolerant printer, and Vasu, the
dynamic man of action is too clear to be overlooked. Nataraj is mainly
passive, things happen to him and he has very little power to influence
events; while Vasu is the great advocate of individual achievements.
Vasu is alone, he comes from outside, and sets up his business of
taxidermy unaided by anyone, fighting with the Forest Department, on
one hand, and the Malgudi people, on the other. He secures a room, a jeep
and a game licence on his own initiative, and kills, processes, stuffs
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animals, packs them in boxes and sends them out to different places
single handed, while "I (Nataraj) noted it all from my seat in the press and
said to myself from this humble town of Malgudi stuffed carcasses
radiate to the four corners of the earth" (185).
If action and inaction are the two attributes of Vasu and Nataraj,
associated with them are also the qualities of tolerance and intolerance as
is clear from the following dialogue:
Look here Vasu," I said, with a sudden access of
foolhardiness, "You should leave others alone; it will make
for happiness all around (187).
I can't agree with you," he said, "we are not alone, dwellers
in the Sahara, to live self-centered lives, and, there is no
point in living like a recluse... (188).
It should be noted, however, that in spite of his insistence on man
being a social animal, it is Vasu himself who is anti-social in his isolation
and egoism. He frightens children, kills dogs, repels neighbourhood
people with the stench of his workshop and defies social conventions by
bringing prostitutes home. All these negative acts set him apart from
common human beings. Fairly early in the novel, Sastri identifies him
with the rakshasa, embodying his definition of a rakshasa as a demoniac
creature, possessing enormous strength, strange powers, and genius, but
recognising no sort of restraint of man or god. In The Man-Eater of
Malgudi also, the demon gets swollen with his ego. He thinks he is
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invincible, beyond every law, but finally he oversteps his limitations, and
is destroyed.
The opposition between Nataraj and Vasu is so clearly marked that
one is tempted to read in the story of their conflict an allegorical
implication. Theirs is the opposition between Sattva and Rajas. The battle
between the gods and demons, the suras and the asuras, is a recurrent
motif in Hindu mythology. The asuras were powerful, sometimes even
more than the gods, and many times they triumphed, threatening Indra in
heaven with chaos and confusion. But every time Indra's throne was
saved by some miracle of divine strategy whereby the demons caused
their own destruction and order was restored in the cosmos again.
The structure of The Man-Eater of Malgudi more or less follows
the same puranic pattern. The drawn blue curtain of the printer's room
stands for order and normalcy, as it were, and from the day the six-foot
tall, broad-shouldered giant, called Vasu, crosses the threshold intruding
into the privacy beyond the curtain, confusion begins. Vasu's very
philosophy of life is in opposition to the peaceful ordered universe of
Malgudi.
Vasu announces himself as a rival to nature soon after his arrival:
"After all we are civilized human beings, educated and cultured, and it is
upto us to prove our superiority to nature. Science conquers nature in a
new way each day: why not in creation also ? That's my philosophy, Sir,
1 challenge any man to contradict me" (190).
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He goes on relentlessly in his fight against nature by stuffing dead
animals to make them look real. The conflict is not between Nataraj
alone, but between Vasu and society in general and Vasu's seeming
superiority over so vast a force merely underlines the fact that evil is
often far more dynamic than forces of goodness. Nataraj's fascination for
Vasu and his attempts to reestablish friendly relations with the
taxidermist indicate that evil is not merely stronger but also more
attractive than goodness.
Edwin Gerow says, ―In a sense the rakshasa represents evil, but,
this puts too moral a cast on it, he is rather an aspect of creation — the
chaotic, the disruptive, his weakness is not that he is bad, but that he is
ultimately not real‖ (195). Gerow goes on to state that the settled order of
the cosmos is in the Indian view the fundamental ontological fact. This
settled order was threatened with dislocation by Vasu. But the threat is
finally dissipated and the novel ends where it began with the enduring
cosmos.
It is evident that the story of The Man-Eater of Malgudi follows the
familiar pattern of a tale from the Puranas where a demon gets too
powerful, threatens the heavens with his elemental forces of disorder, but
finally goes up in the air like a bubble, leaving the universe as calm as
before. Vasu meets a similar fate. He destroys not only wild animals but
also the peace of mind, the fair name and reputation of Nataraj. But
ultimately the aggressive and bullying taxidermist, the anti-hero, and the
very incarnation of evil, kills himself with the blow on his head from his
own hammer-fist.
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The moral obviously is that Evil carries within it the seeds of its
own destruction and like Bhasmasura, the rakshasa, it is bound to burn
itself out in the long run. The wicked and the uncommon like Vasu may
triumph for the time being, but their triumph is of a short duration while
the good and the normal like Nataraj, even though they may be unheroic
and passive, flourish and are long-lasting. It is good to be active, but this
activity should be benign and directed to good-doing. It must not be
destructive and harmful as is the activity of Vasu, the anti-hero. Nataraj
may be passive but he is quite active in doing good. His goodness is seen
in the help which he extends to Muthu, in his working hard to make
suitable arrangement for the temple procession, and in his efforts to save
the life of Kumar. He is a hero for this reason, though an unheroic one,
and the entire action is rightly viewed through his eyes.
The novelist has succeeded in driving home this moral truth. He
has told an entertaining story, but he has also conveyed deep moral and
religious truths of perennial significance. However, Narayan's morality is
not obtrusive, it can be acquired only by the discerning reader who can
read between the lines. The novel is to be read on two levels.
In every one of Narayan's novels, the usual order of life, i.e., the
normally, is disturbed by the arrival of an outsider into the sheltered
world of Malgudi or by some flight or uprooting, but in the end there is
always a return, a renewal and a restoration of normalcy. The normal
order is disturbed only temporarily and by the end we see the usual order
established once again and life going on as usual for all practical
purposes. Narayan perceives an elaborate system of checks and balances
operating in the universe, but in the end it is not the Absurd or the
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Eccentric that is enthroned but it is the Moral order which is restored and
established. This theme can be easily studied through a brief
consideration of his novels.
In the present novel, normalcy is disturbed by the arrival of H.
Vasu, the taxidermist and the man-eater of the title, and it is restored
when he kills himself, and Nataraj is able to run his printing works as
usual. The disorder created by Vasu is symbolised by his act of removing
the blue curtain and intruding into the inner room of Nataraj's press, the
blue curtain itself being a symbol of the normal established social order.
Vasu is an aggressive bully. From the very beginning he throws to the
wind the established norms, and creates disorder all around. He passes
sarcastic remarks on Nataraj's friends so that they slink away quietly. He
takes possession of Nataraj's attic without his permission and without
paying any rent. His behaviour is abnormal and destructive of social
order, and inimical to peaceful social life.
Vasu does not allow Nataraj to carry on his business undisturbed.
When one day Nataraj is discussing business with the adjournment
lawyer regarding the printing of wedding cards urgently needed by the
lawyer, Vasu drags out Nataraj forcibly, so to say, and the poor printer
has to go with him in his jeep, without his shirt buttons and without a
single pie in his pocket. He drives recklessly to the great annoyance and
discomfiture of the poor printer. He leaves him at the tea stall of Muthu at
the bottom of Mempi forest and the poor fellow returns home late in the
night after suffering much humiliation and discomfort and worry. His
peace of mind is spoiled and his business is disrupted.
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The taxidermist does not stop at anything. He shoots wild animals
even in the Mempi forest without the permission of the authorities and
soon turns Nataraj's attic into a charnel house. He shoots dogs moving
about in the streets, crows, eagles and other animals. He hangs a stuffed
hyena and a huge serpent on the stairs leading to the attic. A foul smell
soon emanates from the attic to the great anger and agitation of the
neighbours. He does not pay any heed to the protestations and
remonstrances of Nataraj and goes on in his disruptive activities
unconcerned. He even plans to shoot the temple elephant Kumar. Soon he
takes to womanising and brings in women of loose character, an activity
which causes much concern to Nataraj, a family man.
Vasu does not care for any social norms or for the established
social order. He threatens the police officer when he visits him and
pressures him to give up his antisocial activities. But all is to no avail. He
even goes to the extent of filing a lawsuit against the poor printer with the
Rent Control Officer.
Thus, there is a well-established order prior to the sudden arrival of
Vasu and this order is disrupted by him. There is disorder for some time,
but order is restored once again by his equally sudden death. Like the
Rakshasa Bhasmasura he kills himself with a blow of his hammer-fist on
his head. Evil is, thus, expelled and normal peaceful life once again
becomes possible for Nataraj. The blue curtain is drawn once again.
Nataraj and his wife are reconciled; they shake hands, so to say, over the
dead body of the Rakshasa Vasu and the printer carries on his work as
usual, as he did before the arrival of Vasu, symbolizing the forces of evil
and disorder.
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In short, in the novel, the normal social order is distributed, there is
conflict between the forces of order and disorder, and in the end there is a
restoration of normalcy. It is not the absurd or the eccentric or the evil
that is re-established, but the good and the normal. There is always a
renewal of life love, beauty, peace. Despite temporary aberrations, life
must go on as usual. This seems to be the message of R.K. Narayan.
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Works cited
Primary Source
Narayan R.K. The Man Eater of Malgudi. Chennai : Indian
Thought Publications, 1968. Print.
Secondary Source
1. Iyengar, Srinivasa. Indian Writing in English. New Delhi: Asia
Publications, 1962. Print.
2. Mukerji, Nirmal. The World of Malgudi. New Delhi: Louisiana state
University, 1960. Print.
3. Raizada, Harish. R.K. Narayan, a critical Study of His Works. New
Delhi: Young Asia Publications, 1969. Print
4. Spencer, Dorothy. Indian Fiction in English. New Delhi: Atlantic
Publications, 1998. Print.
5. Walsh, William. R.K. Narayan, a critical appreciation. New Delhi :
University of Chicago press, 1982. Print.
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