Understanding the Features and Characters in Novels

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Let us try to find out the reasons why a novel is read, the categories of novels, and the steps involved in reading a novel.

The reading of a novel is an exciting experience, especially when the novel appeals to us, to our mood at the time of reading, to our innermost feelings and emotions, and to our attitudes towards life. We generally read what we like. We enjoy books of stories. We read novels. They comfort us, delight us, entertain us, satisfy our curiosity, and fulfill our desire for insight about reality. They instruct us and open before us the hitherto hidden areas of experiences of life. They bring to us hundreds upon hundreds of possibilities and probabilities of intricate human relationships.

Novels afford us an escape from the world of reality. We identify ourselves with the key characters in the story and experience all those feelings and emotions which the characters experience. We learn about man’s real interests, desires, intentions, strengths, weaknesses, troubles, and concepts of happiness. A great novel does much more than this. It bestows upon us a new way of looking at life, tears veils of ignorance asunder, and offers us a new vision of life, a new philosophy so convincingly that we incline to believe in it readily.

Let’s start with what we know about her from the introduction in the story. She is married to Marco and has an affair with Raju. She is beautiful and a dancer. Just from that, a reader can start gleaning some extra characteristics of Rosie.

She is married, yes, but it is not a happy marriage. Her husband, Marco, is gone a lot on archaeological studies. This allows Raju time and opportunity to woo Rosie. If she were in a happy marriage, his attempts would not have made any difference. So she is either unhappy, a flirt, or just not committed to her wedding vows. This trait of falling hard in love and then “cooling” off seems to be a theme with Rosie. She does run away with Raju, but he doesn’t treat her that well. Yet she stays with him. Is it a case of battered wife syndrome? Of course, she doesn’t stick around after he gets thrown in jail, so again Rosie isn’t that committed to the men in her life.

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Apart from many things, R.K. Narayan’s masterpiece ‘The Guide’ shows a fine play of ironic reversals, which makes the book more dramatic than his early works. The irony used in the book is not rough, harsh, or rugged, but it is genial, jovial, mild, and pure. It sometimes creates comedy and sometimes pathos.

Both humor and irony are so inextricably woven together that they remind us of Jane Austen and Henry James. The most striking feature of Narayan’s use of irony is his unusual wedding of irony with moral imagination, making it more subtle. R.K. Narayan’s use of irony is tantamount to Jane Austen. It is always genial, humorous, full of mirth, and vivacity.

Let us highlight various types of setting and discuss the basic types: the concrete and the abstract. It concentrates on social and natural settings and their realization (dramatization) in the novel. The social setting of the novel.

Setting can mean a number of things. In its simplest form, it is meant to be a background. However, setting tells a wider meaning. One often talks about the social setting, the historical period, or the natural or physical location against which the novelist sets his novel. There are many other types. Despite the big number, setting in the final analysis is understood as the ‘concrete’ setting and the ‘abstract’ setting. The actual locale, for instance, can come under the concrete setting, whereas the ethos of community (its beliefs and mode of thinking) can be taken as the abstract setting.

Santiago is an impoverished old man who has endured many ordeals, whose best days are behind him, whose wife has died, and who never had children. For 84 days, he has gone without catching the fish upon which his meager existence, the community’s respect, and his sense of identity as an accomplished fisherman all depend. As a result, the young man who is like a son to him (the young man who, since the age of five, has fished with him and learned from him) now fishes, at the behest of his parents, with another fisherman.

Indeed, Santiago’s philosophy and internal code of behavior make him unconventional in his society (as critics such as Bickford Sylvester have mentioned). Santiago’s dedication to his craft (beyond concerns of material gain or survival) separates him from the pragmatic fishermen motivated by money. He stands apart from Cuba’s evolution to a new materialism and a village fishing culture converting to a fishing industry. He remains dedicated to a profession he sees as a more spiritual way of life and a part of nature’s order in the eternal cycle that makes all creatures brothers in their common condition of both predator and prey.

Manolin is Santiago’s last and deepest human relationship, his replacement in the generational cycle of human existence, the one to whom he wishes to entrust his skill as a fisherman, the transforming power of his vision, and his memory. As Santiago is mentor, spiritual father, and the old man or old age, Manolin is pupil, son, and the boy or youth. Manolin loves and cares for Santiago, and at the story’s end, he professes his faith in Santiago and everything Santiago represents. Living up to his name, which is the diminutive of Manuel (Spanish for Emmanuel, the Redeemer), Manolin articulates for Santiago the true meaning of his great struggle, which has brought him the intangibles he craves. Three times, Manolin professes his faith in Santiago. In accepting the marlin’s spear, Manolin demonstrates once and for all that he clearly understands and accepts all that Santiago wishes to bequeath him and all that comes with that inheritance.

The novel ‘The Guide’ is a piece of work by R.K. Narayan, one of the most important figures in the field of Indo-Anglican fiction. This novel brought Narayan much fame and received the Sahitya Akademi Award. There are various major and minor characters in the novel, and Raju is one of the major characters. The novel begins and closes with him. Let us discuss him in detail.

Raju can be called the hero of the novel. He is the central and leading character. The child Raju loves to play with his friends and enjoys the bullock-cart ride to the taluka bazaar with his father. He finds it difficult to go to bed without listening to one of the Devaka tales which his mother tells him every day.

Raju enters the railway station shop after the death of his father. With a desire to help tourists find places of interest, he begins to play the role of a guide. Soon enough, he becomes the most popular guide, and the tourists call him Railway Raju. Gaffur, a close friend and taxi driver, helps him conduct trips for the tourists.

Santiago does think of sharks. On the third day, nearly at noon, he kills the marlin. He lashes the fish alongside. He is proud of his victory (the great Di Maggio would be proud of me today). The novel begins to tell you the story of deprivation. Santiago is thoroughly exhausted. He kills the first shark. He is worried about the fish. He feels that he should not have caught the fish (perhaps it was a sin to kill the fish). He becomes more philosophical. He finds justification for his action in self-defense and says that he killed him well. Later, the sharks come in rapacious ripping packs and move in on his trophy. By the time he has reached his harbor, there is nothing left of it except the skeleton, the bony head, and the proud sail-like tail. He starts up the shore, falls under the weight of the mast and the sail, gets up, and goes to his shack and sleeps. He is dreaming of lions.

Should I kill the fish or not? Is it a sin? Are the people worthy to kill fish? All these questions are based on some kind of conflict. The conflict is, therefore, yet another concept that helps the author make the plot move.

Picaresque narratives are also considered predecessors of the novel. Unlike romances, the picaresque narratives were realistic. They contained many episodes in them. The word picaresque comes from the Spanish word ‘pícaro,’ which means ‘a rogue’ or ‘a thief.’ The picaresque stories usually dealt with the adventures and chivalric romance of a rogue. They were long narratives full of varied incidents and events related to the main character. The best examples of picaresque narratives in the later period were Cervantes’s ‘Don Quixote’ and Kingsley Amis’s ‘Lucky Jim.’

Stories written in ordinary language for ordinary readers came into vogue in the 17th century. This was the time when there were remarkable changes in social, educational, and political fields. Yet the reading public was restricted. Common people could not afford the luxury of buying books. Women readers were more numerous. Availability of leisure was mainly for men. Of course, illiteracy was a hurdle in the way of the propagation of novels.

We will give you some hints on how to use this course. After you finish reading this unit, you should read the novels first and then go for studying Part II of the book. Remember, you cannot study literature without first reading literature.

We should go about studying this course systematically in the following manner:

Read one of the novels, e.g., ‘The Guide.’

Write down what you think is the meaning of the novel, without anybody else’s help. You should write at least two pages.

Make a list of characters in the novel, in their order of importance. Make a list of the events in the novel.

Read Part I of this book thoroughly. Try to understand the theory of the novel discussed in it.

Read Part I of this book (especially units 2, 4, and 5) as many times as you can without getting bored!

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One of the earliest people in the English-speaking world who distinguished between these two was the novelist E.M. Forster, whose views we give here in a summarized form:

“Once upon a time, there was a king, and he had a queen. The king died. The queen died after some time.” This is a story. But “Once upon a time, there was a king, and he had a queen. The king died, and the queen died out of grief” is a plot. What, again, is the difference? In the first example, there is no necessary link between the first and the second sentence, whereas in the second example, there is a causal link between the sentences—the king’s death and the queen’s death. The second example for plot gives us the reason or the cause behind the queen’s death.

After his release from jail, Raju accidentally takes shelter in an ancient shrine of a village called Mangala. Velan, the headman of the village, takes him to be a wandering sadhu. Soon enough, the entire village community follows Velan, and Raju becomes ‘Swami’ for them. Then comes the drought. Raju sends a message through a semi-moron (stupid) cousin of Velan to the quarreling groups. The cousin twists the message, and ultimately Raju is obliged to undergo a twelve-day fast. On the eleventh day, during his ritual, he whispers to Velan that he feels the incoming rains, and he sags down.

This, in brief, is the story of ‘The Guide.’ You should, however, note that in this unit we shall be mainly concerned with the ‘setting’ of the novel. It is important to note that setting is not a mere background ‘attached’ to the novel. In fact, it is intimately related to the other components of the novel, such as plot and character. In other words, setting cannot be considered in isolation because it is an integral part of the novel.

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‘The Guide’ by R.K. Narayan is based on the conflicts of human interest and nature. The story mainly shuttles between Rosie, her husband Marco, and Raju, who enters their life as a guide. It is contrasting but interesting to note that these characters never reach a point of agreement in the book. Raju takes interest in Rosie, thus Marco, her husband, leaves her. When they fall in love, Rosie becomes an eminent dancer and singer, and Raju comes to terms with exploiting her finances. In a sense, he uses Rosie for his income, which she doesn’t like at all, and differences begin to throw them apart. It is Rosie who sends Raju to jail for two years as he forges her signature to take hold of her jewelry box. This can be considered the second main climax of the book; the first climax is when Marco discovers his wife in love with Raju.

Romances: Long narratives reflecting royal life

As has already been mentioned, long narratives known as romances were written by Greek writers in the second and third centuries A.D. They were written in old European languages and were extremely popular all over the European continent. Romances narrated stories related to royal families—especially the legends of King Arthur and his knights. The English continuations of romances were stories like Sir Philip Sidney’s ‘Arcadia’ or Robert Greene’s ‘Menaphon.’ These romances, written in the Elizabethan period, never became very important; their language was artificial, they had classical or pastoral settings, and the characters in them bore Greek or Latin names. They were meant for people who were rich and who could understand references to Greek and Latin literature.

Picaresque: Adventures and chivalric romance

Picaresque narratives are also considered predecessors of the novel. Unlike romances, the picaresque narratives were realistic.

Birth of Pamela: The first novel in English, Daniel Defoe’s ‘The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,’ published in 1719, is a very popular book even today. It was a sort of biography of a fictitious person. Jonathan Swift’s popular work ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ was not only a children’s book but a book that reflected the writer’s observation and understanding of the meaning of human life as a whole. Samuel Richardson’s ‘Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded’ (1740) is accepted by most critics as the first novel in English literature. In this novel, a young, sentimental but clever girl, Pamela, who is a maidservant, becomes successful in winning the heart of and getting married to the wild, young son of her mistress.

Richardson, Fielding, and Andrew

The psychological insight of the writer, the presentation of the then prevalent social and domestic ways of life, and the emphasis on characters and not on incidents were a few of the distinguishing qualities of this novel. Later, Henry Fielding wrote ‘The Adventures of Joseph Andrews.’