Role of Social Conventions in R.K. Narayan’s “The Guide”

Abstract

Narayan’s The Guide, which was adopted for a popular film of the same name, won
him international recognition as an eminent Indian English novelist. The novel earned
him the coveted Sahitya Akademi Award in 1960 and flooded the bookstalls and
counters. Reviews filled the pages of dailies and periodicals. A close study of the
novel reveals that it is a fine document of India’s customs, wide-spread ignorance and
backwardness. It gives the reader a glimpse of superstitions, arranged marriages,
exploitation and debased religion. It represents outdated morality and the on salguth
of the new values of money, individualism and materialism in Indian Society. The
novel gives a vivid description of Malgudi-its men and vehicles, hogs and boys-the
panorama of life, including its fairs and festivals, temples and Swamis. Raju, the
protagonist, wistfully recalls to Velan how the town, before the arrival of the railway
and the inception of Albert Mission College during the thirties, was mainly a business
centre for the rural peasantry