Rhetorical Analysis Of President Obama s Speech - 1407 Words

In his 2009 Inaugural Address, President Barack Obama gave an impassioned speech filled with extended metaphors along the lines of movement, travel, and a journey. In fact, much of his economic language throughout the first 100 days of his presidency followed this theme. Obama’s use of these metaphors served to characterize the economic crisis, unite the American people, and frame his perspective on the role of the presidency. Thus, through analysis of his rhetoric, we learn that metaphors really do matter. Generally, people see metaphors as a device of the poetic or literary imagination: a figure of speech or a rhetorical flourish. However, metaphors are so much more. First, they form a kind of conceptual system, influencing both cognition and emotion. They frame how people think about difficult or complex problems. â€Å"The importance of metaphors to language in general, and rhetoric in particular, cannot be overstated. Metaphors are the foundational element of language th rough which our concepts and meanings are formed† (Cox). Second, they provide insight into the rhetor’s thoughts, opinions, and attitudes. The metaphors one chooses to employ act like an ideological footprint, identifying how the person truly feels or thinks. When Obama was elected in 2008, the United States’ economy was in shambles. The housing market had imploded, Bush had begun government bailout programs of roughly one trillion dollars, and the citizens were deeply concerned. The general public, andShow MoreRelatedRhetorical Analysis Of President Obama s Inauguration Speech Essay1121 Words   |  5 PagesRhetorical Analysis: President Obama s Inauguration Speech 2013 President Barack Obama’s campaign theme in 2013 was to bring change throughout the United States, and he continues on with this motto while thanking the American people.He does this by stating the change he plans to bring,how he will bring change, what he values,and the importance of peace and unity. President Obama is addressing all of american people that voted for and against him,by continuously referring to them as a team.HeRead MoreRhetorical Analysis Of Obama s Victory Speech1245 Words   |  5 PagesRhetorical Analysis of Obama’s Victory Speech This speech was given by Barack Obama who won 2012 election as the president. I’m going to analysis his voice, audience, speaker’s message and occasion for the speech. Different angle, different view can show all the Obama’s rhetorical words in his victory speech. In 2012, this is Barack Obama’s second inaugural. He had greatest way to put all the rhetorical words in his speech. It was one of the best of his speech so far. Rhetoric was made in fifthRead MoreRhetorical Analysis Of Bill Clinton s Nomination Speech1566 Words   |  7 PagesA rhetorical analysis of Bill Clinton’s Nomination Speech In a world of politics, many politicians are involved in negative campaigns and as a result healthy conversation among politicians often lead to a disaster. With the endless political news cycles, rhetoric is essential for politicians to deliver their speeches. Therefore, in this essay, the style and delivery of Bill Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention will be examined. 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Lockhart Rhetorical Criticism 2 October 2015 A Neo-Aristotelian Analysis of President Obama’s: Oval Office Address on BP Oil Spill Energy On June 15, 2010, President Barack Obama formally addresses the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to inform people of his plans to contain the oil spill and the nation s need for clean energy. The purpose of this paper is to analyze President Obama’s speech on the BP oil spill using Foss’ neo-Aristotelian method of rhetorical criticism, by which I willRead MoreEssay on Analysis of Obamas Victory Speech831 Words   |  4 PagesAnalysis of Obama`s Victory Speech The presidential victory speech delivered by Barack Obama who is the president to be was held on November 4, 2008, in Grant Park, Chicago. It is about his won election for the office as the president. I will take a closer look on how Obama emphasizes his speech with stylistic devices. The speech is divided into four parts. The first part is from ll. 1-26, the second from ll. 27- 70, the third from ll. 71-9 and the last from ll. 95-105. In the first part of theRead MoreCritical Analysis Essay: On The Death Of Osama Bin Laden1896 Words   |  8 PagesCritical Analysis Essay: On the Death of Osama Bin Laden By Barack Obama Introduction When President Barrack Obama mentioned of the September 11th attack, for a moment the wounds left in the hearts of the Americans started bleeding again. There was nothing that could that could stop the bleeding other than one statement: â€Å"the perpetrator of the attack has been brought to justice†. On the night of 2nd May 2011, the Americans were woken up by the unusual speech delivered by the 44th president of theRead More Rhetoric in the American Immigration Debate Essay1659 Words   |  7 Pagesthe discourse even more convoluted. In analyzing three prominent voices in the immigration debate, US president Obama, journalist Sonia Nazario, and Arizona congressman J.D. Hayworth, we can evaluate the effectiveness of the different rhetorical approaches by whether or not they reach their intended audiences. Nazario fulfills her journalistic raison d’à ªtre by succeeding at objectivity, while Obama and Hayworth as politicians succeed by lying by omission in speeches an d in writing in order to pursueRead MoreLeader Persuasion1290 Words   |  6 Pages successful leaders utilize and capitalize on the needs and wants of their followers through persuasive word choice High level persons are persuasive; they have to be. Powerful speakers such as Adolf Hitler, Martin Luther King, Jr., and President Barack Obama all have something in common; they all have spoken and appealed to mass audiences using similar speaking techniques. Many of the speaking techniques utilized by these highly influential people are similar to those used by sales representative

Article Review Why Age Matters Essay - 855 Words

Summary of Article: Why Age Matters in the Work Preferences of Public Employees was an interesting journal article that discusses the challenges involved with employing individuals that vastly range in age. With organizations concentrating on age diversity, they are employing individuals that were born in different generations, and range in age from young to retirement age. The challenge for management is that each generation has different goals and expectations from their employer, and management is unable to treat all of these generational groups the same way. It’s a balancing act for management because the older employees are more concerned with job security and high pay, while the younger employees are more concerned with job†¦show more content†¦The senior employees possess all of the knowledge and skills regarding their profession. It is essential for leadership to recognize the benefit of coming up with a plan to retain these older employees that are approa ching retirement age, while at the same time trying to be appealing to younger less skilled employees (Bright, 2010). In my field, age diversity is a big part of the organization, as the more senior employees tend to hold the management positions within the company. The younger employees tend to have a more difficult time being promoted, as most supervisory positions require a minimum amount of work experience to be considered for a new position. Younger employees tend to want more opportunities for advancement and don’t worry so much about compensation (Bright, 2010). This does create a challenge for management, as they need to address the struggles that the younger employees face while balancing this with the issues that the older generations are facing, as each generation has different goals and priorities (Bright, 2010). In order for an organization to be successful, leadership needs to be skilled and trained in dealing with the issues that are created by employing di fferent generations of employees (Notter, 2009). In my profession some of my younger coworkers tend to get discouraged as they are over looked for advancement as they see employees like myself who are givenShow MoreRelatedRehabilitation Is The Best Punishment For Juvenile Crime900 Words   |  4 Pagescrime is†¦retribution, deterrence, and rehabilitation also known as correction in the juvenile court system. There is no doubt that if a crime is committed, the offender should and shall be punished. The doubt come in when the offender(s) are under the age of eighteen which is the majority for most states. A juvenile crime is different case-by-case, therefore, there is a debate on the severity of the punishment. 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Napoleon Bonaparte Persuasive Essay Example For Students

Napoleon Bonaparte Persuasive Essay Napoleon Bonaparte, who was also known as the Little Corsican (and later known as Emperor of France, and the prime mover of the Napolionic Wars), was born on August 15, in 1769 in Ajaccio, Corsica. From 1784 to 1785, Napoleon attended the Ecole Militire in Paris, where he received his military training. After the French Monarchy was overthrown on August 10, 1792, Napoleon decided to make his move up in the ranks. In 1793, Napoleon was chosen to direct the artillery against the siege in Toulon. He seized ground where he could get his guns in range of British ships. Soon after that, Toulon fell and he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. In 1794, he was wed to Josephine de Beauharnais. In 1795 Napoleon was appointed to put down a revolt in Paris. All he did was have his men shoot all the rebels in the streets. The French government was saved, but they decided to form a new government called the Directory. Napoleon was made commander of the French army in Italy, and he could not be stopped. Soon, instead of taking the defensive position Napoleon started taking the offensive position and thus, he started his conquest of Europe. During one attack he showed his bravery by forcing his way across a burning bridge. After that his troops gave him the name Petit Caporal or in English Little Corporal and the name stuck with him. In 1797 Napoleon negotiated a treaty with Austria called Campo Formio. Austria gave up its Netherlands and Lombardy to France. Austria also recognized Rhine as the eastern boundary of France. In return France gave Austria most of the old Venetian Republic. Napoleon returned in 1799 to find that the Directory was a mess. He, in his selfish way, saw this as the perfect time for self-advancement. So in November of 1799 he overthrew the Directory. He set up a government called the consulate in which he was the first of three consuls. About three years later, he made himself first consul for life. Everyone in France loved him then. Soon after the change in government, Napoleon began calling himself Napoleon I, instead of General Bonaparte. At this time, Napoleon had complete military and political power. In 1802, Germany and England were tired of fighting, so they signed a peace treaty. During the 14 months that followed, Napoleon drastically changed Europe. He reshaped Switzerland with France. He annexed Piedmont, Parma, and the Island of Elba to France. He also made the Napolionic code, which was the first clear, compact statement of the French law. The Napolionic Code has served as a base for legal systems all over the world. In 1803, war broke out between England and France. He crushed the Prussians at Pena. And he defeated more Russians at Friedland. He then created a peace treaty called the Peace of Tilsit. This basically brought all of Europe to his feet. In 1809 he ended his marriage with Josephine, but remarried again in 1810. At that time, he got a son, which made him very secure. Secure enough to wipe out most of the German states, which totally dissolved what was left of the Holy Roman Empire. Russia did not like Napoleons continental system. The continental system basically cut off trade with Britain. Everyone had found ways to work around it, but Russia finally decided to abandon it. In 1812, Napoleon made a strategic error. Initially defeating the Russians at Borodino, he found the advance into Russia restrained by the burnt-earth strategy practiced by the Russians. As it became cold and wintry, Napoleon retreated from Moscow. .ua16e3368b54d71f73c5051daade53fb0 , .ua16e3368b54d71f73c5051daade53fb0 .postImageUrl , .ua16e3368b54d71f73c5051daade53fb0 .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .ua16e3368b54d71f73c5051daade53fb0 , .ua16e3368b54d71f73c5051daade53fb0:hover , .ua16e3368b54d71f73c5051daade53fb0:visited , .ua16e3368b54d71f73c5051daade53fb0:active { border:0!important; } .ua16e3368b54d71f73c5051daade53fb0 .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .ua16e3368b54d71f73c5051daade53fb0 { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .ua16e3368b54d71f73c5051daade53fb0:active , .ua16e3368b54d71f73c5051daade53fb0:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .ua16e3368b54d71f73c5051daade53fb0 .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .ua16e3368b54d71f73c5051daade53fb0 .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .ua16e3368b54d71f73c5051daade53fb0 .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .ua16e3368b54d71f73c5051daade53fb0 .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .ua16e3368b54d71f73c5051daade53fb0:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .ua16e3368b54d71f73c5051daade53fb0 .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .ua16e3368b54d71f73c5051daade53fb0 .ua16e3368b54d71f73c5051daade53fb0-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .ua16e3368b54d71f73c5051daade53fb0:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: The Myth of Buildeus EssayIn 1814, Napoleon attempted suicide, but failed. He was then exiled to the Island of Elba. In 1815, he escaped from Elba. He collected devotees along the way back to Paris, making a triumphant entry in March 1815, and forcing Louis XVIII to flee to the Netherlands. Over the next 100 days, he raised a new Grand Army, with the aim of striking at the allied armies, currently dispersed. Wellington at Waterloo then defeated him. He then abdicated in favor of his son. He was then exiled to The Atlantic Island of St. Helena. He never saw

Narayans Swami and Friends free essay sample

A novelist of all humanity R. K. Narayan’s novels are like a box of Indian sweets: a highly-coloured container conceals a range of delectable treats, all di? erent in a subtle way, but each one clearly from the same place. There are fourteen novels in the oeuvre – enough to create a world. Enthusiasts of his work will read them all and return to them time and again. The busy, or the less committed, may open the box and take out one at random – it does not really matter which order one reads them in. But be warned: the consumption of one leads to a strong craving for more. Narayan’s life spanned the twentieth century, which meant that he belonged both to an old world and a new. At the time of his birth in , the British Raj, that astonishing imperial conceit, was ? rmly in place, as were those iron-clad notions of caste that were to prove so di? cult to shrug o?. The British presence in India had brought with it a large civil service, an educational system, and railways – to all of which institutions the people of the subcontinent took with enthusiasm. But it had also brought with it a language, and the literature which that language created, and it is this which proved a most productive legacy. The British took English to India and the Indians gave back a literary tradition which continues to delight and enrich us to this day. Contemporary writers such as Vikram Seth, Rohinton Mistry, or Anita Desai, whose novels have given such pleasure to readers in Europe and North America, stand rooted in a tradition which R. K. Narayan, as one of the earlier Indian novelists to write in English, did a great deal to establish. Although Narayan did not draw attention to his personal life, he did write a memoir, My Days, which tells us a great deal about his boyhood years and the inception and development of his literary career. His childhood was fairly typical of that of a middle-class boy of the time. His father was the headmaster vii R. K. NARAYAN of a school, a somewhat stern ? gure in his professional life, and this connection with the world of education is very much apparent in the earlier novels, where schools, colleges, and the whole business of becoming educated play a major role. His father’s job required mobility, and Narayan spent a number of childhood years living with his grandmother in Madras. Eventually, though, he joined his parents in Mysore, where he attended the school presided over by his father. He became a voracious reader, wading through the books and magazines which arrived on his father’s desk for the school library. As he wrote in My Days: My father did not mind our taking away whatever we wanted to read – provided we put them back on his desk without spoiling them, as they had to be placed on the school’s reading-room table on Monday morning. So our week-end reading was full and varied. We could dream over the advertisement pages in the Boys’ Own Paper or the Strand Magazine. Through the Strand we made the acquaintance of all English writers: Conan Doyle, Wodehouse, W. W. Jacobs, Arnold Bennett, and every English ? ction writer worth the name . . . Through Harper’s and the Atlantic, and American Mercury we attained glimpses of the New World and its writers. This sense of distance, of being a participant in a culture and yet not being of it, is a familiar feature of the literature of what is now the British Commonwealth and it is vividly portrayed in Narayan’s novels. Colonialism hurt and damaged those subjected to it, but it would be inaccurate to portray the process as being a simple matter of subjugation and humiliation; it was far more complex than that. The writer in the colonized country tended to soak up the culture of the colonial power and feel a familiarity and some a? ection for it, even though the experience of colonialism may have demoralized and destabilized his own colonized culture. This damage, although it may later be seen for what it is, is passed over: in his mind he is a member-in-waiting of a broader community of letters. His aspirations, though, are likely to be dashed; his yearning unful? lled. Although he may not realize it, the metropolitan culture is largely indi? erent to him and his world: the literary circles after which he yearns are distant, impossibly out of reach. Of course, the conquest is feasible, and literary doors viii INTRODUCTION may open. Narayan himself made it, as did others, although some did so by leaving the culture in which they had been brought up. Narayan remained in India – an Indian writer who was happy to be read by those outside India but who remained ? rmly within the world into which he had been born. The young Narayan was not a great scholar. Having failed his university entrance examinations, he spent a year reading and writing before he eventually succeeded in being admitted to the BA course at Maharaja’s College. During this year he acquired a copy of a book called How to Sell your Manuscripts and started to send his literary e? orts o? to magazines in London. He met with no success, encountering for the ? rst time those pieces of paper so familiar, and yet so devastating, to the aspiring writer – the printed rejection slip. In due course he completed his studies and graduated as a Bachelor of Arts. There then followed various attempts by his father and others to secure him a position. These were mostly unsuccessful, although they eventually bore fruit in the shape of a teaching post where he was immediately required to teach Tennyson’s Morte d’Arthur to a class of burly and uncooperative boys who had no interest in poetry. His teaching career was a dismal failure and shortly afterwards he walked out of the school and returned home. That was that: he would become a writer. How many have made that decision, and how many have failed. And how many aspiring writers have written their ? rst novel in the belief that it is ?  ction, only to discover that it is really about them, and, quite commonly, about their childhood. Swami and Friends, Narayan’s ? rst novel, is a novel of boyhood which draws heavily on his own experiences. Narayan sent the typescript to a series of publishers in London and became accustomed to having it returned at regular intervals. He expe rienced similar rejection with the short stories which he was now writing, although he eventually succeeded in his ambition to get into print abroad when a piece he wrote for Punch magazine in London was accepted and produced a handsome fee of six guineas. Narayan was to use this small measure of success to persuade his future father-in-law that the ?nancial prospects of a writer were not entirely gloomy. But he needed more than this: the ix R. K. NARAYAN unsuitability of his horoscope was seen by his intended bride’s family as being a major drawback to a possible match, and it was only after lengthy discussions that the marriage was able to go ahead. Narayan’s personal experience of the vagaries of matrimonial astrology was later re? ected in the highly amusing account of astrological discussions in his second novel, The Bachelor of Arts. Now married, Narayan began to earn a living as a journalist. Swami and Friends was still doing the rounds in London, with no success, and in desperation he wrote to a friend in Oxford, advising him that if the manuscript were to be returned to him from the publisher who was then considering it, he should weigh it down with a stone and throw it in the Thames. Fortunately the friend ignored this instruction and continued to show the manuscript to prospective publishers. Eventually he showed it to Graham Greene, who was then living in Oxford, and asked him to read it. It sat on Greene’s desk for some weeks and then eventually, in one of those moments of great good fortune which occur from time to time in literary history, Greene was su? ciently excited by the book to recommend and secure its publication in October . The publication of a ? rst novel is one thing, security in the literary world is another. Swami and Friends was well-reviewed, but was not a commercial success. In the years that followed, Narayan had to seek a variety of di? erent publishers, and it was to be some time before his reputation was secured amongst a wide international audience. His personal circumstances were also sometimes di? cult. In his wife, Rajam, died of typhoid. Narayan was devastated. In My Days he wrote: I have described this part of my experience of her sickness and death in The English Teacher so fully that I do not, and perhaps cannot, go over it again. More than any other book, The English Teacher is autobiographical in content, very little part of it being ? ction . . . The toll that typhoid took and all the desolation that followed, with a child to look after, and the psychic adjustments, are based on my own experience. After the publication of his fourth novel, The English Teacher, in , Narayan’s writing entered a period of greater maturity x INTRODUCTION and con? dence. The autobiographical element which had been so obvious in his earlier writing became less prominent, allowing him to develop his characters more freely. With the growing critical success of his novels in the West, he began to lead the life of the successful literary ? gure both in India and abroad. He travelled widely and, in time, was showered with honours. He did not leave his accustomed milieu, though, which was Mysore, where he built himself a house, went for rambling and talkative walks, and savoured the quotidian pursuits of life, including agriculture, which he studied with interest. In he was appointed to membership of the Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of the Indian Parliament. His inaugural speech there was on the subject of Indian children. Children, he said, were being deprived of time to play or to look at birds and trees. In he died. His mind was clear to the end, and on his death-bed he spoke of his desire to write another novel. This was the man who had confessed to friends: ‘I have become lazy since I entered my nineties. ’ Narayan’s novels are sometimes described as simple. The prose is indeed limpid, the descriptions clear, and the emphasis is on direct and intelligible storytelling, invoking a cast of vivid characters. To the modern reader, accustomed to arti? ce and allusion, this may give the books a slightly dated feel, and yet it is this quality of simplicity and directness which makes them such ? ne works of art. Narayan is a storyteller ?  rst and foremost, a characteristic which puts him in the company of the great nineteenth-century novelists as well as those twentiethcentury writers, such as Somerset Maugham, who believed that the novelist’s business is to narrate. His storytelling, though, sometimes has a somewhat rambling ? avour, with plots that can wander and which sometimes betray an absence of resolution. But this is not necessarily a ? aw: real lives are often aimless and unresolved, and when we read of such lives in literature we are quick to recognize their authenticity. There is nothing false in the world which Narayan creates – quite the opposite, in fact: these novels convey the taste and texture of India with a vividness which strikes the reader as utterly true. Even those who have no ? rst-hand experience of India will xi R. K. NARAYAN feel that what they experience in reading these books is a taste of the real place. The favoured setting of Narayan’s novels is Malgudi, an imaginary town which he describes as having ‘swum into view’ when he sat down to write Swami and Friends. Malgudi provides the strong sense of place which su? uses these books. This is India distilled – an urban India, but one in which a hinterland of jungle, of small villages, of wide plains is still present. When we read about Malgudi we feel we are there, and this powerful impression is created not by detailed descriptions of the countryside or buildings, but by the characters themselves and the suggestive nature of their thought and their speech. It is the voice which is distinctive here. It is a voice which is rooted in a world-view quite di? erent from that which we will encounter in, say, a modern novel located in North America or Western Europe. This voice is sensitive to a distinctive tradition in which the accumulated beliefs and social practices of centuries inform the smallest act. It is a wholly di? erent way of looking at the world. The four novels in this volume form the ? rst phase of Narayan’s career as a novelist. In them we see the author working through a number of concerns which, as a young man, were very much on his mind. These include boyhood (Swami and Friends), education and the ? nding of a role in life (The Bachelor of Arts), and marriage (The Dark Room and The English Teacher). In these early novels, we also see the development of Narayan as a writer, as he makes his way to the more mature and con? dent vision of the later novels. Swami and Friends is episodic in nature, which is exactly what the life of a young boy tends to be. Boys on the whole do not to have a long-term plan; they live for the moment, act on impulse, they pursue new enthusiasms and abandon old. Boyhood friendships, though, can persist, even if they may be tempestuous and competitive. The portrayal of Swami’s relationship with Rajam, the son of a senior police o?  cer, reveals how posturing and social embarrassment can loom large in the dealings a boy has with his friends. So many of us can remember the strength of that childhood feeling that our friends have more impressive xii INTRODUCTION parents, houses, cars, than we do. Narayan paints a deft picture of that particular anxiety. In Swami and Friends we are given an early sight of the humour which runs through Narayan’s novels. One of the features of British colonialism was the export of cricket, a game which strikes North Americans as being opaque and slowmoving. But at the time that Swami was written, cricket was more than just a sport – it stood, quite absurdly, for the whole ethos of an empire. Thus although we see Swami raised to heights of indignation by a political orator who laments the passivity of his countrymen which has allowed them to be dominated by an alien power, when it comes to cricket the boy is su? ciently enthusiastic to spend some time trying to explain what the game is all about to his aged grandmother. This comic scene, like so much of Narayan’s humour, has a strong poignancy to it. The grandmother represents the old India, a world in which cricket is not played. Her ignorance of the rules is a vivid metaphor for the extent to which the old and the new India are di? erent worlds. The cricket episode also allows Narayan to portray the naive aspirations of the boys. This is a familiar theme in many of his works, where so many of the characters are striving for something which is often just beyond their grasp. Narayan’s second novel, The Bachelor of Arts, again contains autobiographical elements but is much more satisfying in its structure than Swami. Chandran, the protagonist of this novel, is a typical Narayan hero – he is modest, slightly at odds with his surroundings, and engaged in a search. The search in this case is for freedom, and it takes place in the face of all the constraints which the Hindu family and wider Indian society can place in the way of a young man eager to ? nd himself. It is in this novel that we see one of Narayan’s main preoccupations come to the fore. This is marriage, and the complexities that Indian marriage involved and, indeed, still involves. Contemporary Westerners are sometimes astounded by the sheer fuss involved in an Indian marriage. In particular, the elaborate negotiations and the very large sums of money spent on celebrations impress outsiders, especially those who are accustomed to relatively informal weddings. The traditional xiii R. K. NARAYAN Hindu marriage, however, is an altogether di? erent thing from the typical arrangements of a Western couple: it involves the families on both sides, who are strongly interested in the suitability of the other side for a union. This means that the young man or young woman who nurtures hopes of a love-match, detached from considerations of social position or caste, may be heading for a major confrontation with family members who have very di? erent ideas. The Bachelor of Arts tells of a young man whose views of life, including marriage, are more ‘modern’ than those of his family. His relatives are immersed in the traditional beliefs of their religion: marriage is not a matter of personal choice, but something that is divinely ordained. As Chandran’s mother points out to her son: ‘It is all a matter of fate . You can marry only the person whom you are destined to marry and at the appointed time. When the time comes, let her be the ugliest girl, she willlook all right to the destined eye. ’ And in a letter which he writes to Chandran’s father, the intended bride’s own father says: ‘. . . we can only propose. He on the Thirupathi Hills alone knows what is best for us. ’ When Chandran’s horoscope is found to involve incompatibilities with that of the girl whom he wishes to marry, the full force of this fatalistic view of human a? airs comes home to him. What can a young man do in such circumstances other than give in or defy the convictions of everybody about him? And the prospect of revolt defeats Chandran, who is ultimately drawn back into the world of family and tradition, even although he does succeed in negotiating for himself a certain freedom. This process of selfexploration, challenge, and ? nally reconciliation is a familiar theme in Narayan’s ? ction. In a sense it mirrors Narayan’s own life as a man whose vision and understanding transported him beyond the rigid beliefs and practices of his society but never took him away from that society. And that central message – that we can be ourselves to an extent but that we all need to be anchored in society – is really a very attractive feature of these novels. Ultimately we feel comfortable and secure in reading Narayan because we detect in his work a resolution, an acceptance that we ourselves need in our own lives. If there is a great deal of light and freedom in these two xiv INTRODUCTION charming early novels, then in his third novel, The Dark Room, we enter graver, more disturbing territory. The portrait of this domestic tyrant is a compelling one, and we are also appalled, but fascinated, by the coquettish Shanta Bai, with whom he starts an a? air. The conduct of this a? air is beautifully described as Narayan directs his gaze at the shoddiness and deception of the o? ce romance. At the end of the day the patient Savitri, driven to an attempt at suicide as the only way out of her intolerable situation, returns to the matrimonial home and her unapologetic husband, defeated by centuries of custom. Hers is an awful fate, and although the position of women in traditional societies has improved, we might leave this book remembering that there are many women for whom this story would still ring very true. Marriage again plays a central role in The English Teacher. Narayan lost his wife to typhoid, and that is what happens to the central character, Krishna, in this novel. It is very sad, and very painful – just as it must have been for him in real life. The grief here is described with great tenderness, in passages that are quite haunting in their simplicity. The prose is like a funeral bell: solemn and resonant. As in the earlier novels, the idea of acceptance looms large: ultimately the hero, Krishna, has to accept the fact of the loss of his wife and the loneliness that follows. He has fought against this brute fact by attempting to communicate with her through paranormal means, but this leads nowhere, in the same way as all the smoke and mirrors of the various mystic ? gures who parade through Malgudi seem ultimately to lead nowhere. R. K. Narayan is a much beloved novelist, and for very good reason. Although the books in this volume were all written more than half a century ago, they are the freshest, the xv R. K. NARAYAN  most sparkling of gems. The struggle of the characters against social restrictions, their struggle to be something other than that which social destiny appears to be forcing them to be, are struggles with which we can all identify to a greater or lesser extent. As Samuel Johnson observed, many people waste part of their lives trying to be something they are not. Even tually, of course, they may come to realize what they really are, and if that happens to be a citizen of a small town, rather like Narayan’s Malgudi, bound up with neighbours and their concerns, sewn into a family and a nation, then there are very much worse fates than that. Alexander McCall Smith A M? C S is a professor of medical law at Edinburgh University. He was born in what is now known as Zimbabwe and taught law at the University of Botswana. He is the author of over ? fty books on a wide range of subjects, including the internationally bestselling novels of the No. ? Ladies Detective Agency series and the Sunday Philosophy Club series. He lives in Scotland. xvi