R.K. Narayans The Guide The setting of R.K.

Narayans novel, The Guide, as in most of his novels, is Malgudi, a fictional town in southern India. The novel is told through a series of flashbacks. Raju, the central character, grows up near a railway station, and becomes a shopkeeper, and then a resourceful tourist guide. He meets Rosie, a beautiful dancer, and her husband, whom Raju nicknames Marco, because the man dresses in a thick jacket and helmet as if undertaking an expedition, like Marco Polo. Marco is a scholar and anthropologist, who is more interested in his research than in his young wife Rosie. Rosie and Marco engage Rajus services as a tourist guide, and he takes them sightseeing. She wants to see a king cobra dancing; Marco wants to study cave paintings. Rosie and Marco quarrel constantly, and Marco remains cold and aloof toward Rosie. While Marco is away studying cave paintings, Raju falls in love with Rosie. When Marco discovers that Raju and Rosie have become lovers, Marco abandons her and returns to Madras. Raju becomes infatuated with Rosie. He is so obsessed with Rosie that he forgets his business, falls into debt, and loses his shop at the railway station. He also loses his mothers respect because he is living with a married woman. Rajus mother moves out of their house, and the house is claimed to pay off his debts. Raju encourages Rosie to resume her career as a dancer, and becomes her manager, launching her on a successful career as an interpreter of Bharat Natya, the classical dance of India. But he spends money extravagantly, and is tricked by Marco into forging Rosies signature for a package of her jewels, a mistake that earns him a two-year prison sentence. On his release from prison, Raju stops to rest near an abandoned temple, where a villager named Velan mistakes him for a holy man. Raju does not want to return in disgrace to his friends in Malgudi, and reluctantly decides to play the part of a holy man. He is happy to accept the daily offering of food which the villagers bring him. Gradually he accepts the role which has been thrust upon him, and he acts as spiritual advisor to the village community. Raju is content with the arrangement, until a drought occurs, and, to save face, he has to take up a 12-day fast. As a great crowd gathers to watch him during his ordeal, he begins to believe in the role he has created. He has taken on an unselfish task, not for love or money, for the first time in his life. Despite grave danger to his health, he continues to fast until he collapses. His legs sag down as he feels that the rain is falling in the hills. The ending of the novel leaves unanswered the question of whether he dies, or whether the drought has really ended. A central theme of the novel is the transformation of Raju from his role as a tour guide to that of a spiritual guide. The title of the novel, The Guide, has a double meaning, and Raju is in a sense a double character. As a tour guide and lover, he is impulsive,

unprincipled, and self-indulgent. After his imprisonment, and after his transformation as a holy man, he is careful, thoughtful, and self-disciplined. The novel also tells two stories, that of Rajus relationship with Rosie, and that of Rajus relationship with the villagers as a holy man. The novel begins with Raju sitting beside the temple and meeting the villager named Velan, who mistakes him for a holy man. The novel then alternates between an account of Rajus career as a holy man, which is told in the third-person, and Rajus account to Velan of his previous career as a tour guide and lover, which is told in the first-person. This dualism reflects the dualism in Rajus character. He is transformed from a sinner to a saint, though he is never truly a sinner, and never truly a saint. Because of his capacity for empathy, Raju is a sympathetic character throughout the novel.

The Guide By R.K. Narayan :REVIEW

No matter how many books I read, I keep coming back to R.K. Narayan for yet another dose of his humorous satire, laden with rare pearls of wisdom, steeped in the humblest of real life situations. Yes, recently, I finished yet another novel of R.K. Narayan, The Guide and the story was so interesting that I did not want to put it down, even after the novel has ended. The Guide tells the story of Railway Raju, a young fatherless boy, who is transformed from a lost-in-world jail convict into a holy saint without any conscious effort on his part. Destiny pushes him towards saintliness in the most unprecedented manner, and R.K. Narayan in his true style creates a wonderful tale brimming with love, treachery and faith. The story begins with Raju sitting somberly on a river bank, near Malgudi, contemplating his next move, as he has just come out of the jail after two years of punishment for fraud and forgery. As Raju stares vacantly, he is noticed by a villager Velan, who is impressed by the silent, wise man, and wants Raju to solve his problems. Raju is disarmed with Velans innocence and his own instincts to guide a lost man. By sheer coincidence, Velans problem is solved and he becomes a die-hard Raju loyalist. He invites his villagers to take shelter under the feet of countrys wisest and yet humblest holy man. One thing leads to another, and soon Raju Guide becomes famous as a wandering saint, who is venerated like a God among villagers, and gives them daily discourses citing mythological and allegorical stories. The villagers believe him to possess some kind of magical qualities, and place him on a high pedestal, expecting him to solve their small, myriad problems. For a few months, Raju enjoys his life as an anonymous saint, relishing the food and respect offered by villagers, and keeps himself busy with small children and adulating adults. However, one day, the villagers just stop coming, thereby forcing Raju to starve. He anxiously steps into the village, and sees that it is affected by the most dangerous droughts. His first instinct is to leave the place and move onto greener pastures, but,

somehow, with some misunderstanding, he gets entangled in villagers problems, and is expected to fast unto death, to pacify the Rain God. Raju, who is corrupt to the core, is street-smart, knows how to fleece people for his petty benefits, is now tied with the innocent, expectant countrymen, who hail him as their savior and are ready to do anything for him. Will Raju be able to satisfy the villagers and the Rain Gods, or will he run away from the tricky situation, and return to his earlier life of falsehood and forgery is what the story is all about. The Guide with its 247 pages long narrative, is essentially a tale of human instincts, where faith and love can be expected to bring about a massive change in a mans nature, capable of transforming a devil into saint. R.K. Narayan is at his best in this novel. He is sublimely funny, satiric and thought provoking at the same time. Within the limited spheres of a small town Malgudi, he once again fabricates an engaging, highly entertaining story. Narayans clever use of third person narration to tell the story of Raju the Saint and first person narration to talk about Rajus past as a young restless boy, a careless son, a smart crook, a blind lover and an over clever event manager for his beloved Rosie was simply awesome. I always thought it was a cardinal sin to mix up the narrator in a story, as it confuses the readers. However, Narayan dispels all my doubts as the story oscillates between Rajus past and present, with him adopting the changing garbs of an efficient manager, a jilted lover and a holier than thou saint easily, rapidly changing the narration from third person to first person. All thanks to the authors well laid narrative, I was privy to Rajus innermost thoughts and was laughing out loud at the foolishness of people, whom Raju took for an easy ride. He fleeced his believing customers, worldly unwise Marco, cunning Gaffur and ambitious Rosie, in his disarmingly charming style. And yet, Rajus inner change becomes noticeable, when he begins to take his role as a saint seriously, really wishes to bring about a change in the lives of people, and is ready to sacrifice his own life for the betterment of villagers. As I said earlier also, while reading Bachelor of Arts, I had an inkling that the renunciation episode of Chandran was in a way responsible for creation of a fake saint in The Guide. And, I expected something on the lines of a loser trying to hide behind holy garbs theory in Guide as well. But, the story turned out to be quite different and impressed me more than I ever expected. The Guide is delightfully funny, and yet extraordinarily serious at the same time. I simply loved the contrasting nature of its characters, who struck me as real as Tagores characters, as neither Raju, nor Rosie or Velan are entirely black or white, they all have a mysterious grey shade and are blended well to chalk out a wonderful story of trust and betrayal. Though, I was not very satisfied with the climax, as Narayan leaves it dangling, with just a hint of the future events. But, all in all, it is a wonderful book and I have

marked it prominently on my Read Again list. A true Guide to light up the paths of your life!

The Guide Characters

Raju is a splendidly realized character. Not given to thought, drifting in and out of situations, and until the last stage of his life ruled by an individualistic spirit which carries him away from family, friends, and morality, he will ultimately learn what it is to act responsibly. But even when he is selfish and full of guile, he is immensely likable, especially because he wants to please other people as much as he can. Except for forging Rosie's signature on a truly reprehensible impulse, he never strikes readers as a wicked character. And although he deludes others as well as himself from time to time, he likes to see things grow and tries to help people achieve their ambitions. Because Raju narrates most of the novel, readers tend to see the other characters through him. Still, Rosie is another finely wrought portrait of... (read more)

The Guide Social Concerns/Themes

Preview of The Guide Summary: Widely considered to be Narayan's best book, The Guide is the story of Raju, a scamp who ends up becoming a saint. For most of his life Raju had managed to manipulate other people's emotional needs for his own advantage, but the novel shows him going beyond himself to do a genuinely disinterested act at the cost of his life. Raju, in other words, dies so that others may live. Raju begins his professional life as the owner of a sweetmeat stall at the railway station in a region of India that has become a popular tourist attraction. He soon discovers that he has a knack for telling people what they would like to hear and becomes a fulltime guide. This profession leads him into an affair with one of his clients, Rosie. She is the wife of Marco, a man who does not really care..

The Guide Techniques

Narayan is not usually given to elaborate technical experiments or overt display of his artistic skills, but The Guide is one of his few works that draws attention to itself because of its somewhat unusual narrative method.

In telling Raju's story, Narayan alternates third-person and first-person narration and uses such cinematic techniques as flashbacks and jump cuts. When we first encounter Raju, he is about to meet Velan, and he is seen at this point from the perspective of an omniscient narrator. Then Raju takes over the narrative chores and relates his progress from sweetmeat seller to jailbird to Velan. In between, the omniscient narrator punctuates Raju's narrative by showing him dealing with the villagers as a holy man. At the end, Raju ceases to be a narrator as he loses his hold on his consciousness. The omniscient narrator concludes the story, showing us a Raju who is...

The Guide Adaptations

There have been two unsuccessful attempts to represent The Guide in other mediums: a film version produced in India, which Narayan has decried for taking all sorts of liberties with the text; and on off-Broadway adaptation by Harvey Breitt and Patricia Rhineheart that folded after three performances in 1968.