37 pages • 1 hour read
R. K. NarayanSwami and Friends
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1935A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaSymbols & Motifs
The “Predators” Hallucination
After flinging his headmaster’s cane out of a window, Swaminathan decides to flee Malgudi for good. As Swaminathan runs away in Chapter Seventeen, he wanders for many miles, and by nighttime, he is extremely lost and exhausted. The combination of fatigue, hunger, and thirst causes hallucinations; he imagines elephants, tigers, leopards, snakes, and scorpions swarming around him, ready to attack. These hallucinations prove to be revelatory. When the animals attack, they intend to do damage and harm, but Swaminathan’s rebellion and flight, on the other hand, causes unintentional damage and harm to his friends. By fleeing from punishment, he unwittingly punishes his M.C.C. teammates, who lose their match in his absence. Though Swaminathan is found and ultimately unharmed in his attempt at flight, he irreparably harms his friendship with Rajam, a reality revealed through the surreal hallucinations.
Broken Window Panes
The headmaster’s office window panes, and their shattering, are one of the more concrete symbols of the book. After Swaminathan destroys the window, his future is permanently changed though he does not know it at the time. The broken glass serves to represent that Swaminathan has defied the established order, causing a break that he cannot repair, and crossing a point of no return. He is expelled from the school and forced to attend the Board High School, an action that alienates him from his friends and imprisons him into an even more authoritarian daily regimen of class work. While Swaminathan too young to realize the consequences of participating in mob brutality, is nonetheless forced to endure the substantial repercussions
Textbooks
An extension of the “Importance of Education” theme, textbooks are an important motif throughout the novel. Swaminathan’s father makes the boy periodically clean his books, and he constantly admonishes his son to use them in his studies. Moreover, when Mani visits a local school clerk to bribe him for the answers to the annual placement examination, the clerk replies that if Mani simply reads his textbooks he will do perfectly fine on the test. In light of their constant treatment in the narrative, textbooks are tools that can unlock the powers and capabilities of the mind. Swaminathan’s father and mother know this through experience, because books literally brought the father out of poverty and into middle-class respectability. While their constant admonishments may seem harsh or severe, they illustrate the fundamental power of books to improve and elevate the boy’s future.
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By R. K. Narayan
