Question- How successful is Achakka, the narrator in her attempt to tell the story of her village in the context of the Satyagraha movement?

Answer - 

The name of Achakka, the narrator of Kanthapura, appears only once in the novel, but it is through her eyes and from her point of view that we see everything that happens in it. She belongs to the upper caste Brahmin family of Veda Sastra Pravina Krishna Sastri, and is proud of that fact. Her grandson, Seenu and Moorthy are of the same age and inseparable like Rama and Lakshmana in the Ramayana. Therefore, she has a high regard for Moorthy and great faith in the Satyagraha Movement that he launches in the village. Being a devout Hindu who knows the Puranas, she has a good collection of stories from legends and epics, which she refers to again and again while narrating the story of her village. She tells the story of Goddess Kenchamma at the very beginning, and it is apparent that she has great faith in the goddess and her power of protecting the village community from all calamities. That is why she invokes her name repeatedly in the course of the narrative.

Achakka is a garrulous old woman who herself participates in the satyagraha led by Moorthy. No wonder, she narrates the events of the struggle with a sense of pride and a sense of achievement. Gifted with a sense of the past, she is a wonderful story-teller who at once, grips the attention of the reader, and holds him captive as a listener to the end. Apart from her remarkable memory, she has a vivid imagination to be able to visualize what must've happened at the Skeffington Coffee Estate where she was not present. That is possible because Raja Rao employs her as his mouth-piece, and grants her the author's privilege of omniscence. After all whatever she says in her narrative is what the writer himself allows her to say. But it goes without saying that she appears to be an authentic and convincing narrator.

Achakka's feminine touches and mannerisms effortless rotation of the tongue, meandering sentences and massive paragraphs makes her a powerful narrator. She does not divulge all the details about the characters but tells us only the essentials which are necessary for the development of the story.

Achakka is a dramatized first person narrator that is an established tradition in European novel. The intimacy and the personal touch predominate the narration of the grandmother in Kanthapura. And it is not by chance that Achakka is the narrator of the novel. Raja Rao has made his choice after much forethought.

Achakka's personality and her act of rendering concrete mental impressions of the characters who figure in her story are a big draw to the reader. She is also endowed with an imaginative freedom coupled with a maternal compassion which comes quite naturally to her Achakka's compassion is all embracing and it includes even the vicious money-lender, Bhatta in its kind fold. In the Hindu society, the grandmother plays a special role She presides over the household, binds it together with love and authority and also narrates stories to her children and grand children.

Achakka plays all these roles to perfection, and that is how Raja Rao intends her to be taken by the readers.

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