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    Symbols in Swami and Friends

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    Sr Chandrodaya J
    The document analyzes symbols in the story 'Swami and Friends' including Swami's cap, cricket, and a book of fairy tales. Swami's cap represents his developing political consciousness. Cricket symbolizes how colonized peoples adapt aspects of oppressive cultures. The book of fairy tales given as a gift represents the crossroads of maturity faced by Swami and Rajam.

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    Symbols in Swami and Friends

    Uploaded by

    Sr Chandrodaya J
    89 views2 pages
    The document analyzes symbols in the story 'Swami and Friends' including Swami's cap, cricket, and a book of fairy tales. Swami's cap represents his developing political consciousness. Cricket symbolizes how colonized peoples adapt aspects of oppressive cultures. The book of fairy tales given as a gift represents the crossroads of maturity faced by Swami and Rajam.

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    Symbols in Swami and Friends

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    The document analyzes symbols in the story 'Swami and Friends' including Swami's cap, cricket, and a book of fairy tales. Swami's cap represents his developing political consciousness. Cricket symbolizes how colonized peoples adapt aspects of oppressive cultures. The book of fairy tales given as a gift represents the crossroads of maturity faced by Swami and Rajam.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    89 views2 pages

    Symbols in Swami and Friends

    Uploaded by

    Sr Chandrodaya J
    The document analyzes symbols in the story 'Swami and Friends' including Swami's cap, cricket, and a book of fairy tales. Swami's cap represents his developing political consciousness. Cricket symbolizes how colonized peoples adapt aspects of oppressive cultures. The book of fairy tales given as a gift represents the crossroads of maturity faced by Swami and Rajam.

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    St Xavier’s College, Mahuadanr

    SEM – II CORE – 3
    Symbols in Swami and Friends
    Swami’s Cap
    Swami’s cap becomes important to the story as he begins to develop a political
    consciousness. Swami thinks little of his clothes until the night that he
    and Mani stumble on a protest against British oppression, and Swami realizes that
    some of his clothing may be made by British manufacturers at the expense of Indian
    craftspeople. When a bystander suggests that he is “wearing a foreign cap,” Swami is
    ashamed and throws the cap into the fire—his first act in support of Indian liberation.
    However, the cap also comes to symbolize Swami’s innocence about political matters.
    The next morning, Swami thinks more not of his devotion to Indian independence, but
    of the anger his father will feel when he sees that the cap is missing. Then, even after
    his intense experience at the protest, Swami continues to view his political activity
    through the narrow lens of his own self-interest, telling his father that the cap was
    burned by someone else in the crowd rather than owning up to his own actions.
    Finally, Swami’s father informs him that the cap was Indian-made. The cap thus
    underscores Narayan’s point that Swami’s actions are tied to a political context even
    when he is only able to engage with that context in a childish way.

    2. Cricket

    The game of cricket is the story’s most powerful symbol of the complex way that
    English colonization plays out in the lives of Swami and his friends. As a
    quintessentially (typically) English activity, cricket is closely tied to England’s
    presence in India, but instead of rejecting it for its oppressive associations, Swami and
    his friends—particularly team captain Rajam—embrace the game as a means of
    gaining self-determination, dominance over opponents, and interpersonal connection.
    This paradoxical pursuit demonstrates the ways in which colonized peoples like
    Swami and his friends must necessarily adapt to the influences of the colonizer, even
    embracing aspects of the oppressive culture and overthrowing them into mechanisms
    of liberation. However, the friends’ cricket team has both positive and negative effects
    in Swami’s life; it initially helps him put aside his political differences with Rajam,
    but it also tears apart their friendship when Swami misses the crucial match. Through
    this symbol, Narayan seems to recognize the unstable and sometimes dangerous role
    that even the interesting aspects of colonizing nations play in the lives of the
    colonized.

    3. The Book of Fairy Tales

    Swami’s surprising choice of a book of fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen


    as a parting gift for Rajam acts as a symbol for the crossroads of maturity at which the
    two boys find themselves. Swami has struggled to enjoy reading, while Rajam has
    excelled at it, so Swami’s sensitivity to the kind of present that Rajam would
    appreciate demonstrates the way that he has learned to think outside of himself and his
    own desires. However, the fact that the book includes fairy tales rather than true facts
    indicates that the boys’ reality is still largely shaped by fantasy. As Swami is forced to
    face the painful fact that Rajam is moving away without repairing his friendship with
    Swami, he trusts on the power of a book of imagined realities to bridge the gap
    between them. Finally, Swami thinks that the book is full of “unknown,
    unpronounceable English words” which he cannot understand represents that
    mysterious foreign influence is present in every corner of his life, even the parts that
    concern fantasy rather than reality.

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