Characterization in R. K. Narayan's The man- eater of malgudi

R.K.Narayan is the greatest of Indo- Anglian novelists. He is undoubtedly India's most famous author and is most accomplished. R. K. Narayan has deservedly come to be regarded as a pioneer of the Indian novel in English. He has endeared himself to millions of readers throughout the world, because of his impassioned blend of profound and comic vision. He has an uncanny capacity for empathizing with the common masses in a realistic manner. His art of storytelling enabled him to carry the tradition of great writers to new heights. His complete objectivity as a creative writer made it vitally important for him to infuse life into the inhabitants of his fictional world. His characters with their oddities and eccentricities do not strike as figures from morality plays or humours. They preserve a basic quality of individuality despite their allegorical and representative characters in some cases. Raju, Sampath and Nataraj are among the most illustrative of his characters in this regard. The exotic and bizarre in Narayan's comic art gets its most striking manifestation in The Man- Eater of Malgudi (1961). The most striking feature of this character is the element of the fantastic, fabulous and allegorical in him. Narayan portrays his characters and their feelings, emotions and actions for an exploration of hidden human conflicts, which are live pictures of South India. So his Indian spirit successfully forms an organic whole in The Man - Eater of Malgudi. The characters are thoroughly realistic in The Man-Eater of Malgudi. The present study is an attempt to analyse the characters of Narayan in his novel The Man Eater of Malgudi.