Krishnan, the central character in RK Narayan’s ‘The English Teacher’, embarks on an emotional, intellectual and spiritual journey over the course of the novel. At the beginning of the novel he is an English teacher, lives and teaches in the same school where he was a student, and at the end we see him resign his position, start working in a daycare center and learn to communicate psychically with his dead wife. .
Krishnan’s change comes not as a result of some grand plan or ambition, but as a result of a series of challenging circumstances that arise once he begins to move away from the cloistered and protective environment of his school.
But while Krishnan’s journey is unpredictable, a number of themes are being resolved throughout the novel. These themes could be said to be Krishnan’s progress from the predictable to the unpredictable, from the academic world to the real world of life and death, from adulthood to childhood, and from a Western mindset to an Eastern mindset.
From predictability to unpredictability.
Krishnan finds himself repeatedly pulled out of situations that should have been predictable and ordered by events that are spontaneous and unpredictable, and it is clear that he finds spontaneity and unpredictability exhilarating and life-enhancing, while predictability and order, while providing a mattress of comfort and security, it is ultimately suffocating and numbing
Susila, his wife, brings the unpredictable into his life at all times. For example, when they go to see a house, she wants to take a long detour to walk by the river and wash her feet, where the orderly rational Krishnan would naturally have taken the more direct route, and he clearly finds her unpredictable. she conducts a source of delight and inspiration.
The turning point of the story arises from Susila’s unpredictability. When they go to see the house, we couldn’t predict that she would go out for a walk alone, she would get stuck in a contaminated bathroom and then she would get sick.
The futility of clinging to the belief that life can be ordered, predictable, and knowable is shown in two central, symmetrical predictions that figure prominently in the novel. The first is the doctor’s statement that typhoid fever, which Susila has contracted, ‘is the only fever that strictly follows its own rules. Follow a schedule’ and Susila will be fine in a few weeks. But despite her further assurances that her attack is ‘Absolutely normal. Without complications. A perfect attack of typhoid fever’ Susila dies.
The other prominent demonstration of the futility of believing that life can be knowable and predictable is seen in the director’s belief in a prediction made by an astrologer, “who can see past, present, and future as one, and give all its true value” that he will die on a certain date. But although (just as the doctor had claimed that Susila’s typhoid fever was ‘a perfect typhoid fever’) the director discovered that his ‘life has gone exactly as he predicted’, the director lives.
Both episodes show the limitations of man’s ability to know and predict the world. The truth is that we cannot know, and cannot predict, and any view of life, whether derived from modern Western science or ancient Eastern mysticism, ignores the unknowable and sees only what is supposedly known. and is supposed to be predictable, it is hopelessly inadequate.
From the academic world to the ‘law of life’
While these episodes give Krishnan nothing rational to believe in, they do bring him face to face with the reality of life and death, and confronting the realities of life without retreating into the safe cerebral world of literature and philosophy. is an important component. of his trip.
By accepting the death of his wife, literature, philosophy and rationalism are of no use to him. They are all illusions, and the journey he is on involves leaving illusions behind. The truth that Krishnan wants to discover cannot be found in Shakespeare, Carlyle or Plato, he is found only among real people leading real lives, it is ‘the law of life’.
From adulthood to childhood
Children are very much in evidence throughout ‘The English Teacher’ and are important guides for Krishnan on his journey. The children who help show her the way are the younger children, her own daughter, Leela, and the children at the daycare she attends.
The most prominent character in the novel, after Krishnan and his family, is the headmaster of Leela’s school. He is a champion of childhood, he has dedicated his life to children ever since he received the prediction that he would die, and he believes that they are ‘angels’, ‘the true gods on earth’, and employs what he calls ‘The Leave System Alone’ at your school.
In the second half of the novel, Krishnan’s discovery of children as an effective countermeasure against “the curse of adulthood”, and the opening of his mind that he is experiencing through meditation, pave the way for his resignation. to his old job and adopting a more genuine lifestyle.
from west to east
Another component of Krishnan’s journey is that he finds the coexistence of native and western cultural attitudes, which also represent the attitudes of the Indians of a newer and older generation. For example, when Susila is sick, she is treated by both a doctor who practices Western scientific medicine and a Swamiji who uses mystical healing methods. The Swamiji is summoned by Susila’s mother, who represents a generation older than Krishnan himself, who believes that the ‘Evil Eye’ has fallen on her daughter, and it is notable that Krishnan feels ‘ashamed’ that the doctor finds to the Swamiji in the house, showing that he is alienated and embarrassed by the native culture of the older generation of his own country.
The final stage of Krishnan’s journey takes him further away from the Western intellectual frame of mind, inherited from the British, in which he was immersed at the beginning of the novel, and more towards native Indian spiritual practices. To achieve his goal of “a harmonious existence”, he accepts his late wife’s psychically communicated challenge, which he initially receives through a medium, to develop his mind enough to communicate with her psychically himself and bridge the gap between the life and life. after death. Although he had initially been taken aback by her wife’s devotional practices, mocking her with ‘Oh! Become a yogi! now he trusts her to guide him, from beyond the grave, in her ‘her self-development’.
In the final chapter, the novel’s themes come to a head with Krishnan’s resignation from his position teaching English and his psychic reunion with his wife. In his attack on the system he rebels against, he criticizes not English literature per se “for who could be insensitive to Shakespeare’s sonnets or Ode to the West Wind”, but India’s adherence to an educational system that it stifles the spirit of its students and alienates them. of their native culture:
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