Narayan’s short fiction in general is often viewed as an insightful exploration of Indian life, and it has been observed that while Narayan explores aspects of the human condition, he does so on a personal level and that he avoids making overt political statements. In particular, Narayan’s ‘‘Forty-Five a Month’’ has been regarded as a…
Tag: India
Forty-Five a Month – Setting
Movement for Indian Independence from Britain At the time that Narayan was writing ‘‘Forty-Five a Month,’’ India was a colony of the British empire and was struggling to gain independence from Great Britain. This independence, declared in 1947, was not fully achieved until 1950, when India established its own constitution and declared itself a republic….
Forty-Five a Month – Literary Devices
Third-Person Multiple Point of View Narayan’s ‘‘Forty-Five a Month’’ is written in what is known as the third person, a method of storytelling in which the narration is conducted by a person outside the action of the story. The narrator in ‘‘Forty-Five a Month,’’ for example, informs the reader of what Shanta is doing, but…
Forty-Five a Month – Themes
Working Class The family that is the subject of Narayan’s ‘‘Forty-Five a Month’’ is a working-class family. In a working-class family, one or more members of the family earn the money the family needs for basic necessities. Working-class jobs are typically viewed as those that are low-paying, often require long hours, and often involve physical…
Forty-Five a Month – Characters
Kamala Kamala is a young schoolgirl, a friend of Shanta’s. Kamala incorrectly assures Shanta that it is five o’clock in the afternoon. Manager Venkat Rao’s manager is Rao’s direct superior. As long as Rao needs his job to support his family, he is at the mercy of his manager. The manager views work as a…
Forty-Five A Month – Summary
Narayan’s short story ‘‘Forty-Five a Month’’ opens in the classroom of a little girl named Shanta. The child asks her friend whether it is five o’clock yet, explaining that her father has promised to take her to the cinema later that evening. Shanta tells her teacher that she must go home because it is five…
Games At Twilight – Analysis – Essay
Most criticism of Anita Desai stresses the influence of Western writers such as Virginia Woolf, Albert Camus, or D. H. Lawrence on her work. Desai makes use of her rich Indian tradition in her stories, however, not only as locale or social background, but in terms of ideas from Indian philosophical classics such as the…
Games At Twilight – Setting
Colonial India The British East India Company was given permission by a Mughal emperor (Islamic Persian ruler) in 1617 to trade in India. In protecting its trading interests, Britain used more and more military force until it took over large areas of India and its administration, with the cooperation of local rulers. In 1857, after…
Games At Twilight – Literary Devices
Short Story The modern short story gained popularity in the nineteenth century with the stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Nikolai Gogol, and Guy de Maupassant. They gave the short narrative its modern form as a compressed story with a unified plot striving for a single effect. Though the modern short story generally concerns…
Games At Twilight – Themes
Identity Anita Desai’s fiction deals with individuals searching for their identity. This theme has been popular in Western fiction for at least two centuries, but it is a new theme in Indian literature since India was until recently a closed society. Traditionally, the family and social caste system dictated individual choices in everything from education…