Question- What are the main features of Raja Rao's narrative technique in Kanthapura?

Answer - 

Raja Rao presents the story of Kanthapura as a sthalapurana in English coloured by the regional idiom of South India. The narrative that he offers recalls a visionary experience. The narrator of the story, Achakka having herself gone through it all, is reliving in memory an unforgettable experience of the heroism and tragedy of the entire village. Since Kanthapura is a novel of memory, Raja Rao freely uses reflection, dream flash-back, reminescence and narration of inter-connected episodes. Rejecting the stream of consciousness technique he employs the local form of the narration, which is a kind of non-stop, breathless style of story-telling. Starting with an account of the village and its surroundings, the narrator passes on to introducing the main characters, and straightaway plunges into describing how the Gandhian Satyagraha movement came to the village and what repercussions it had on the village community. From the beginning to the end, it is a non-stop emotion-packed narration that is bound to touch the heart of the reader.

Raja Rao's narrative act retains the nature Indian flavour inspite of his using the foreign medium of English. The narrator has an easy manner of presentation without being in any way uneasy, awkward or self-conscious. Her language suffers from no distortion even though it belongs to the Indian situation and absorbs the Indian manner of speech and gesture. The peculiarities of narrative act are in tune with the complexity of the experience that it presents. The indomitable and unwavering spirit of the Satyagrahis is projected in an enduring narrative of the Indian experience. The reader of Kanthapura participates in the breathless action from the beginning to the end.

Raja Rao's narrative act in Kanthapura consciously represents the reality in its descriptions of the setting. The digressions in which he indulges from time to time help to fill the gaps in the story and also provide some breathing space to the reader. In the detailed description of the Skeffington Coffee Estate, the elaborate digression on the Indian poisonous snakes is perhaps presented for the information of the non-Indian Western readers. The legend of Goddess Kenchamma is, on the other hand, deliberately given at the beginning to set the tune of a sthalapurana. Through subtle changes in the narrative technique, from time to time, the focus of the novel is shifted, now narrowed down to the village, now broadened to include the whole of India.

The distinctive touch of Raja Rao's technique at the beginning of the novel is to give a wealth of detail about the location, the village, its various quarters, and the prominent people living there. Without waiting time over a lengthy introduction, he quickly draw the reader's attention into the activities of the villagers and their inter-relations. He employs a very intimate way of individualizing them by referring to the peculiarities of their houses, calling or mannerisms. In this way, the author fixes the reader in the living would of a South Indian village at a definite point of time.

Raja Rao's telling of the story of Kanthapura is at the level of a mythical plane. The continuous flow of the monologue of the narrator is particularly seated for psychological analysis of characters and their motives. The uninterrupted monologue initiates the flow of speech, and helps to reveal the different level of consciousness of the village community, including that of Moorthy. Raja Rao's narrative style in Kanthapura accommodates descriptive and dramatic modes, thereby he maintains the interest of the readers and avoids monotory.

It is also seen that Raja Rao is quite successful in making his kind of Indian English 'an authentic basis for imaginative writing'. Kanthapura has a vitality of language and style which comes from the author's ability to put into practice the literary principles outlined by him in the forward of the novel. The appropriateness of his narrative technique is established by the life story of Gandhi as total by Jayaramachar, the Harikathaman, at the end of the first chapter of the novel.

Raja Rao's understanding of the folk psyche and his skill in undering this understanding artistically is a genuine quality of Kanthapura that has the appeal of a novelty to the Western readers. Quite easily, he mingles popular superstition with metaphysical institution to present the belief of the villagers in Goddess Kenchamma's power of intervention in human affairs. Their unshakeable faith in the ancient sayings and the relevance that these have to the present, project the idea of a hereditary fate.

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