Delineation of Berne’s Child, Adult, Parent Psychology with Special Reference to

Narayan’s Trilogy (Swami & Friends, The Bachelor of Arts, and The English
Teacher)

Abstract

This study focuses on the psychological aspect predominant in Narayan’s

trilogy taking into account the Child, Adult, Parent attitudes of characters namely
Swami, Chandran, and Krishna respectively. Psychology is the scientific study of
the mind and behavior. Sigmund Freud an Austrian neurologist, Carl Jung, Piaget
and Eric Berne are some of the notable psychologists. Transactional Analysis is a
widely recognized form of modern psychology and one of the most accessible
theories of psychology. Founded by Eric Berne in the late 1950s TA is based on
the theory that each person has three ego states : Parent, Adult, and Child.

Introduction

Indian writing in English has a relatively short history. Indian English

Literature is a compendium of writings which includes different genres as poetry,
drama, fiction etc. Taking into account the evolution of this group of writings
which came into the literary scene at the end of the 18 th century and the beginning
of the 19th century. However most early Indian writing in English was non fictional
work such as biographies and political essays. There may be subdivisions such as
Kannada literature, Bengali literature, Assamese literature, Tamil literature put
under the umbrella term Indian English literature. If we take into account another
perspective of Indian English literature it takes us back to the sixth century BC
when the greatest epics were composed in verse.

The most significant feature of Indian English is “Unity in diversity” which

is due to the country’s varieties of languages and sub cultures. If we take poetry it
is the most ancient form of literature. To define it in simple terms “Poetry is the
criticism of life under conditions fixed by the laws of poetic truth and poetic
beauty. To make a mention of a list of Indian poets the first to appear in the list of
poets happen to be

1. HLV Derozio
2. Tagore the first Nobel Laureate for India
3. Sarojini Naidu
4. Sri Aurobindo
5. Kalidasa
6. Kamala Das
7. Nissim Ezekiel
8. AK Ramanujan
9. R. Parthasarathy etc.

If we proceed further to Indian fiction the contribution of the

three moorthies RK Narayan, Raja Rao, and Mulk Raj Anand cannot
be mentioned as a passing cloud. Even though there may be other
writers of fiction, these three are considered to be the founding fathers
of Indian English fiction. Among the three the author I’m going to
deal with is RK Narayan (10th October 1906 – 13th May). Born in a
Brahmin family in Madras, he is known for the creation of the
fictional town Malgudi where he set all his works starting from
Swami and Friends (1935). He is also known for the realistic
presentation of his novels and stories with the lower middle class
common man as his base. Malgudi is a fictional south Indian town
somewhere in Karnataka and to simplify it the name is a portmanteau
of two Bangalore based cities Malleshwaram and Basavangudi. Mal
from Malleshwaram and Gudi from Basavangudi. For Narayan
Malgudi is a microcosm of India as a whole. His genres are fiction,
mythology, and nonfiction. Apart from Swami and Friends the other
important works written by him include The Bachelor of Arts (1937),
The English Teacher (1945) all of which forming part of a trilogy.
Other works include The Dark Room (1938), The Guide (1958) which
won him the Sahitya Akademi Award, My Dateless Diary (1960), The
Financial Expert (1952), and Waiting for Mahatma (1955).
The other person who was instrumental in finding publisher for
his first four books is Graham Greene who also may be called as his
mentor. Now coming back to Swami and Friends the actual title was
Swami the Tate and later it was renamed as Swami and Friends by
Graham Greene. Swaminathan the ten years old boy is the eponymous
hero of the novel. Generally child psychology is the study of
subconscious and conscious childhood development. Child
psychologists observe how a child interacts with the parents,
themselves and the world to understand their mental development.
Generally speaking we can classify psychology under three heads
which includes Child, Adult, and Parent. To apply this in the novel the
interaction between Swami and his father WT Srinivasan a lawyer
mostly comes under the category of a Parent. According to
psychologist Eric Berne who developed the idea that people can
switch between different states of mind – sometimes in the same
conversation and certainly in different parts of their lives for example
at work and at home. Berne then christened it into Parent, Adult and
Child. The child state is just a part of us. It is like interplay between
the attitudes which is already present in us.
It is childlike but not childish. This is a state of “reside
intuition, creative and spontaneous drive and enjoyment. The parent
state reflects the absorption over the years of the influences of our
actual parents and of authority teachers, bosses and so on. It has two
functions. One is to enable people to be better actual parents of their
children. The adult state is where we hope as to be adults. It is our
adult selves dealing with the vicissitudes of everyday life. It also has
the function of regulating the activities of the Parent and the Child,
and mediating between them.
Let us take character sketch of Srinivasan the father of
Swaminathan. There may be some adult and parent element in a child.
Why can’t the child state peep out when a person attains the state of
parent so that he may recall his childhood days and better not put up
pressures upon a child of Swami’s age? Take for instance the plot
Swami wakes up a bit late on a Monday morning. As usual his father
scolds him for not getting up in time and his grandmother comes to
defend him as she does throughout the novel. Did Srinivasan get up
early in the morning every Monday or did he do his homework
without fail? The parent in Srinivasan comes out again when he scolds
Swami for not completing the homework. Though this may be the
character sketch of Srinivasan why can’t the parent quotient become
flexible at times and allow childish happiness to prevail over the mind
of Swami. Even that is evident while Srinivasan puts a condition to
read the books of the next year during the holidays.
Sometimes the adult quotient was evident in Swami when he
opposed Ebenezer who readily spread Christian faith belittling the
other religions. Inspite of that he had some childlike pleasures such as
following a paper boat which floated through a stream. Other
incidents include his quarreling with his friends who were against
Swami for supporting Rajam the son of the Deputy Superintend of
Police. Once he invites Rajam to visit his house and asks his mother to
prepare sweets and also asks his father to hire his room for that day
and the peak of that childlike mindset is cautioning his grandmother
not to enter into the room while Rajam is there. He was also playing
cricket and emerged as a great bowler. The child in Swami was also
evident when he had his own fears caught up in a forest as a result of
running away from the Boarding School and wandering hither and
thither and finally assuming the day to be Saturday as they had an
important match on Sunday. Actually it was a lie told by Nair the
Forest Officer. After knowing the fact it was too late for Swami to feel
sorry for his mistake and adding to that his getting disturbed by the
transfer of his best friend and here again his child quotient comes out
again when he wraps up a book of fairy tales and gives it to Mani as a
gift of memory to be given to Rajam. Even at the last moment he is in
a confused state of mind whether Rajam had forgiven him for the
Himalayan Blunder of not attending the important match on Sunday
which was interrupted by the whistling sound of the train.
Why I told it a Himalayan Blunder is that for the childlike mind
of Swami it would look like that but for the readers in general it would
look like a petty thing. The irony in the childhood life of Narayan was
that he had his schooling and college but had no friends except a
peacock and a mischievous monkey and the other thing why he had no
friends may be because of the reason that his father was the
headmaster of the school in which he was admitted. The next thing to
be taken into consideration is that he was reared by his maternal
grandmother who channelized his interest towards academics
including arithmetic, mythology which was one of his genres and
classical Indian music. Dickens, Hardy and Wodehouse were the
midnight darlings of RK Narayan.
He may have written Swami and Friends as the first work to
pour out all his childhood emotions which he missed during his
childhood days. It was just like the spontaneous overflow of powerful
passions. His themes include the study of family relationships; East
West encounter, tradition and modernity, and Indian freedom struggle
are some of themes dealt with by Narayan in his works as it was
written in the 1930s. Some incidents like burning the foreign things
highlighted in Swami and Friends is an important event in the
freedom struggle.
In Bachelor of Arts Narayan proceeds over to the adult stage
from the complex adolescent stage of Chandran. He is an upper
middle class youth. This work reflects the college life of Chandran in
the late colonial times and his love life. As soon as the moustache
grows seeds of love are sown in the heart and it begins to bloom not
even caring the families, friends and the surroundings. The
protagonist of this work and even the author himself are not an
exception to this. Even the astrology plays an important role in the life
of both Chandran and author himself. But inspite of that Narayan
successfully married his wife but in case of Chandran it was an utter
failure taking him to the level of becoming a Sanyasi and then after
some times he realizes his mistake and marries a girl as per his parents
wish. He also takes the job of a news agent and when a marriage
proposal comes to him though he disagrees earlier and then accepts it
and leads a happy life. The adolescent stage comes in between the
child and the parent. So the writer may have thought about letting the
adolescent mind have its free play during the love episode up to
Chandran becoming a Sanyasi. Then he brings out the adult in
Chandran for the sake of self realization and rejuvenation of his life.
India as a nation is not a single entity. Religion, culture, way of
life and unity in diversity all encompassed in one. Even the tradition
and myth play a pivotal role and it forms a part of the so called
culture. If we take for instance in the work Bachelor of Arts astrology
plays a major role in deciding the marriage of the hero. There may be
ambiguity whether to consult it or not but it becomes an important
custom when it comes to marriage entwined with the traditional mind
of parents who wholly believe in it. As they come to know that the
groom is a mangalik they immediately cancel the wedding. Here myth
plays a major role.
The English Teacher is the third of the trilogy. It is also an
autobiography. Krishna represents RK Narayan, Sushila represents
Rajam and Leela represents Hema. This is a stage between an adult
and a parent. RK Narayan himself was a teacher. So the protagonist is
also a teacher. He also realizes that teaching the students is not the be
all and end all of life but it is of a larger canvas. But as soon as his
mind is going towards late adulthood and parent that is of accepting
responsibility and leading a happy life Sushila contacts typhoid which
happens to Rajam in real life and once Sushila dies he comes back to
the mindset of a normal adult making trivial decisions about suicide
and giving it up for the sake of his daughter. At last having the
mindset of the parent that is of a kind of traditional fixation that he
may be able to communicate with her using a mediator between him
and Sushila in the spiritual world. It may be to find temporary solace
but life is a larger thing apart from birth and death which are the two
sure happenings for all. On the whole happy life after marriage in the
case of both Narayan and Krishna was like a soap bubble.
Life can be either a tale told by an idiot or even if it is madness
there is a method in it finally everything rests upon the individual’s
outlook and how he interprets it. But born, brought up and bound by
the traditions and customs of India he cannot go for thinking out of
box. Born and brought up in South India every writer from India
should follow its tradition and customs and R.K. Narayan is also not
an exception to it.
Bibliography :
1. Narayan R.K. Malgudi School Days; Penguin India
2. Narayan R.K. The English Teacher; 1980; University of
Chicago Press
Paper 2 Father Son Relationship in the Context of The Vendor of Sweets by RK
Narayan

Introduction

The crux of this novel is the father son relationship. To make it clear it is a
kind of conflict between the father and son. In other words it may be called as
generation gap. The other theme in man’s quest for identity. The difference
between Swami and Friends and The Vendor of Sweets is that of the innocent and
obedient school going boy and the topsy turvy mindset of a college going teenager.
The novel can in one way be related to Parent, Adult, and Child psychological
concept. Taking this novel into account Jagan the sweet vendor though has a deep
rooted interest in Gandhian principle of asceticism and also he has his own values
to which his son Mali totally dislikes and favors liberal western ideas.
 Jagan’s values includes the strict following the core Hindu scripture the
Bhagavad Gita simply referred to as Gita referred by Gandhi as his spiritual
dictionary. Jagan was also a strict vegetarian eating only green vegetable, and
honey and cuts salt and sugar from his diet. Previously he was an active politician
and has been jailed during a demonstration of Indian Resolution. But currently he
leads a peaceful life as a widower and a popular businessman. He prays to Lakshmi
every day. He became a widower because of his insistence on the natural remedies
leading to the death of his wife long ago because of brain tumor.

It is at this point begins the contrast of character between the father and son.
The thought that his father was the cause of his mother’s death made him to behave
indifferently towards his father. It may also lead Jagan to think that he could not
have born even ten years later for creating a ruckus in Jagan’s life including the
claiming of Grace as his wife without marrying her officially and at last landing in
jail for driving under the influence of alcohol and deserting his wife. Naturopathy
plays a pivotal role in the life of Jagan. Flash back technique also plays a pivotal
role in the novel in the context of his thinking about his son’s married life and that
of his own.

The portrayal of family life is also one of the most important aspects of
Indian English Literature. If RK Narayan portrays father son relationship as he did
in Swami and Friends then he would be called a stereotyped writer. That may be
the reason why the author explored both the positive and the negative sides in two
of his novels namely Swami and Friends and The Vendor of Sweets. Oedipus
Complex and Electra Complex are concerned with mother son relationship and
father daughter relationship respectively. They are just theories formulated by
human beings in the name of psychologists. Human relationship is much more
powerful than theories in the form of definitions. But we should also see it from
the other point of view that is the son thinks that the father is the cause for his
mother’s death while he fully had a deep rooted faith in Naturopathy.

If his mother had not died the son would have continued to love his father if
his mother was alive. Next if we take into account the Parent, Adult, Child theory
into account though the father has a deep rooted faith in traditional practices he
was also able to cope with the modern youth’s mindset in the form of encouraging
his son to become a writer and sending him to a foreign country to pursue his
ambition to study a course on creative writing and also accepting Grace an
American Korean girl as his daughter in law. At that point the flashback technique
was employed while the father was thinking about his own marriage and all the
rituals and rites done before and after the marriage.

He was shell shocked after knowing that the son had not married the girl
legally but he was even ready to make arrangements in a temple for his son’s
marriage. It is evident that as time passes his Parent state of mind alters and the
adult in him comes to the forefront. It was just a temporary change. But his son
keen about deserting her and he also makes an accident happen and for that reason
he will be put behind bars and this makes Jagan to lose his temper and even though
his cousin approaches him and asks him to apply for Mali’s bail he says that the
prison life would reform him and gives money for Grace’s going to her homeland
and leaves the sweet shop in his cousin’s charge and goes away.