Theme of East and West in Raja Rao’s novel “The Serpent and the Rope”

Pages:19-20
Manjeet (Department of English, Singhania University Pacheri Beri, Jhunjunu, Rajasthan)

Raja Rao has been hailed as a great novelist all over the world. In spite of his meager output he stands in the front rank of Indian-English novelists. He is perhaps the most brilliant and certainly the most interesting writer of modern India. Raja Rao’s fame rests on his three novels-‘Kanthapura’, ‘The Serpent and the Rope’ and ‘The Cat and Shakespeare’.’ ‘The Serpent and the Rope” is the fruit of Raja Rao’s maturity, and he was at once hailed as a pioneer in the field of metaphysical fiction. All the wisdom of the Indian scriptures the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Gita has been summed up and presented in the form of this story. ‘The Serpent and the Rope’ has been recognized as a “Modern India Mahapurana (Major Epic Legend) in Miniature”1 It is a novel which combines in it a proper artistic balance Indian identity and Western technique of fiction. Prof. M.K. Naik regards the novel as the tragic story of a “marriage of minds” which drifts into “a spiritual autobiography.2