ICSE Class Literature Sample Project Work

Literature Project Work

 


Summary 


R.K. Narayan’s Malgudi is a fictitious town of India which forms the 
setting of most of his novels and short stories. The simple and 
ordinary characters of his fiction live and enact their roles in life 
here. The versatile author has very aptly portrayed this imaginary 
town in South India as a microcosm of India. The city is as synonymous 
with Wessex created by Thomas Hardy as it is for Narayan. He populates 
an imaginary landscape with the unique characters of his narratives. 

In Narayan’s own words, ‘Malgudi was an earth-shaking discovery for
me, because I had no mind for facts and things like that, which would
be necessary in writing about Lalgudi or any real place. I first
pictured not my town but just the railway station, which was a small
platform with a banyan tree, a station master, and two trains a day,
one coming and one going. On Vijayadasami I sat down and wrote the
first sentence about my town: The train had just arrived at Malgudi
Station.'' The same landmarks used in his novels and short stories
have somehow lent an organic wholeness to his literary creations.

Critical Appreciation 

The fictional world of Malgudi strongly smacks of Indianness brimming
over with basically Indian sensibilities. The human drama growing and
developing in ‘Malgudi Days’ is not only dynamic like real life is but
the characters themselves also appear to be drawing sustenance from
the drama itself.

Narayan chose to treat Malgudi exclusively as provincial because he
thought –

``I must be absolutely certain about the psychology of the character I
am writing about, and I must be equally sure of the background. I know
the Tamil and Kannada speaking people most. I know their background. I
know how their minds work and almost as if it is happening to me, I
know exactly what will happen to them in certain circumstances. And I
know how they will react.''

Even a writer of Graham Greene's stature has expressed his love for
the symbolic town saying that Malgudi is a place ‘where you could go.’
According to him - ``into those loved and shabby streets and see with
excitement and a certainty of pleasure a stranger approaching past the
bank, the cinema, the haircutting saloon, a stranger who will greet
us, we know, with some unexpected and revealing phrase that will open
the door to yet another human existence.'' 

``into those loved and shabby streets and see with excitement and a
certainty of pleasure a stranger approaching past the bank, the
cinema, the haircutting saloon, a stranger who will greet us, we know,
with some unexpected and revealing phrase that will open the door to
yet another human existence.''

There is no doubt that the popularity of Narayan’s literary work among
the general reading public and literary critics evidence the versatile
depth and expanse of his story-telling canvas.