Narrative Techniques of Indian English Novels

Narrtive technique is one among the important aspects of literature. It deals with the facts and imagination as based on the narrator. A narrative is different to that of descriptions in a work’s quality or situations. It consists of a set of events as recounted by the author through the narrator in which the events are selected and arranged in a particular order, like telling a story through a first person narrative and third person narrative.

      A narrative  technique is the method of telling stories which is distinct from that of dramatic and lyrical poetry. To put it short, a narrative is a story which can be conveyed through pictures, poetry, songs and so on in a fiction or any non-fiction. This mode narrating a story is connected to someone in specific and hence becomes a technique used by that person who narrates the story. This narrator serves as a prism through which ideas and views are transmitted to the readers. A narrator has to detain the past, by holding the present and making the reader ready for the future.

      Some techniques since 1930s when Raja Roa’s  when Kanthapura was published. Usually narrative techniques are explained through point of view in a novel, which posseses three types namely- first person narrative, when he comments on the events; the third person narrative in which the narrator is objective and omniscient  point of view where the narrator is God who makes his in bgpresence felt.

A narrator has plethora of options to narrate the events.It is based on either the temporal or casual way of narrating through ‘focalization’. It changes the course of0 narrative as a reader, receiving impressions of characters through narration. Moreover in an emerging narrative technique, a reader can notice double consciousnesls in the narrator. This is due to the narrator’s speaking language which  is tinged with deep anguish for mymotherland since 1990s in Indian English fiction. Thus there is deep rooted awareness of the belonging to the periphery.

In this way, R.K.Narayanis a good story teller who shows no interest in socio-political issues or even in following techniques. He values only the story and narrates it in a superficial level and in a deeper sense.His tone of narration gives rise to humour, and the narrative technique of Narayan.

There are several other writers who use the stream of consciousness technique in narrating stories. Like things one after the another,whereas Khushwanth Singh in his Train to Pakistan gives a blending of growth in space and movement in time. He elegantly describes the movement of trains, signaling time for action, symbol of despair and darkness. His symbol of narrative is suggestive of the upcoming events of the novel.