Stream of Consciousness in Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand

Mrs. Ritu Bajaj

Associate Prof.

Department of English

Hans Raj Mahila Maha Vidyalaya, Jalandhar

• The stream of consciousness is a fictional technique in which the novelist does not himself narrate the story, but places us within the mind of some particular character or characters, and gives us the flow of ideas and sensations through the mind of such characters. In this way in the psychological or stream of consciousness novel, the interest shifts from the external to the internal and the novelist is able to give us a peep into the mind and heart of his protagonists and reveal what goes on within their troubled souls. He thus portrays the psychology of his characters, the motive and impulses, conscious or unconscious, which are the springs of sources of their actions.

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Anand’s use of it�

• In untouchable Anand wanted to depict the suffering and anguish of the Untouchables as a result of oppression and exploitation and hence the stream consciousness technique was most appropriate for his purposes. Anand had learned this technique from a study of James Jyce’s Ulysses and as M.K. Naik point out of his first novel, “he has used it in a much modified and simplified form, in order to realize his objective of presenting a vivid picture both of Bakha’s mind and milieu.”

• There could have been no other more effective method of bringing home to us the anguish and torment of these outcastes of society and of enlisting our sympathies for them. Thus there is a perfect integration of theme and technique, of form and content, of Anand’s social vision and of the method he has chosen to convey that vision.

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Bakha’s inner Anguish and Spiritual Torture�

• Every traumatic (psychological hurt) experience that Bakha has every time he is subjected to one humiliation or the other, we get his stream of unconsciousness and in this way we are enabled to form an idea of his intense anguish and inner torture. Thus after he has accidentally touched a caste Hindu in the bazaar, he is abused insulted and slapped and we are given an idea of his intense suffering through a rendering of his stream of consciousness.

• But there was a smouldering rage in his soul. His feelings would rise like spurts of smoke from a half-smothered fire, in pitful, unbalanced jerks, when the recollection of some abuse or rebuke he had suffered kindled a spark in the ashes of remorse inside him. And in the smoky atmosphere of his mind arose dim ghosts of forms peopling the scene he had been through.

• The picture of the touched man stood in the forefront, among several indistinct faces, his blood shot eyes…his ridiculously agitated manner, his abuse and there was the circle of the crowd, jeering, scoffing, abusing, while he himself stood with joined hands in the centre. Why was all this.? He asked himself in the soundless speech of cells receiving and transmitting emotions, which was his usual way of communicating with himself. No other way more effective could have been devised to depict with full force the inner anguish of Bakha and arouse our sympathy for him and other like him.

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Bakha’s Thought Process �

• Similarly, Bakha’s nightmarish fear as he thinks of climbing the steps of the temple, his agitated and troubled mental state, has been graphically depicted by giving us a peep into his thought processes. The temple seemed to advance towards him like a monster and to envelop him. When he dozes off in an uneasy half-sleep in the silbersmith’s lane (where he has gone to ask for food) the labyrinthine depths of his unconscious begins to weave strange, weird fantasies and dreams. On such occasion Anand gives us the phantasmagoria that a conjured up by his feverish and agitated brain.

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Bakha’s Stream of Consciousness

• Bakha’s stream of consciousness portrays his suffering and anguish, his fears and cogitations. In contrast to this, three is the stream of consciousness of Lakha, which tells us of his greed and his lack of all sense of self-respect and human dignity. In his old age he remembers the left overs of feasts he used to enjoy in days gone by.

• He remembers the great big piles of cooked food which he had received on the occasion of marriages in the alleys in the city. There were fried bread and chingripuffs, vegetables, curries and sweet smelling puddina, sweets and tasty pickles, remainders from the trays of high-caste men and sometimes portions direct from the kitchen…..

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• The pitfalls of this technique : ways in which Anand has made effective use of the stream of consciousness technique to depict the psychological states of various characters. Use of this technique is fraught with one great danger, it often results in incoherence, confusion and unintelligibility. As the novelist follows the tortuous and meandering course of the thought-process of his characters, the readers get lost and are confused and puzzled.

• Anand has skillfully avoided such incoherence by alternating the account of inner tensions and conflicts-of which the theater is Bakha’s mind and soul – with the account of Bakha’s social milieu and his external environment. The contours of the principal characters are clear and definite, the passing of time clearly indicated, the setting in which each traumatic experience takes place is graphically described, the movement of action is on the whole direct, chronological, swift and straightforward.

• As R.S. Singh points out, “Brisk and direct movement, economy in the selection of incidents, and definiteness of the contours of the characters” makes the novel not only compact and well-knit but also a triumph of the use of the interior monologue (stream of consciousness) for rendering the disturbed, restless and paranoiac mental states.

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• Untouchable is Anand’s first novel and it is the least flawed in form and structure. It is a compact and well-knit work of art, characterized by economy of means and elimination of all superfluity, except perhaps, from its concluding part. Anand’s purpose was to render the spiritual suffering and anguish of the untouchable, as a result of the age-old injustice and exploitation, and the technique of the interior monologue used is well-suited for his purpose.

• Thus the novel has organic wholeness i.e. perfect integration of form and content. The form is quite adequate and suitable for his social purpose. Anand was quite conscious of the fact that the novel is an amorphous literary genre, and so he has, used an elaborate system of parallelisms literary genre, and so he has, used an elaborate system of parallelisms and contrasts to give form and unity to his material. One vivid and graphic scene follows another in quick succession, and the novel is thus built up prick, like a symmetrical and well proportioned building.

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Observance of the Three Unities�

• The three classical unities of time, place nad action have been well observed. The entire action takes place in the cantonment town of Bulashah and does not stray farther than the Goal Maidan and the railway station. The time taken is one day in the life of a single individual Bakha. The novel opens early in the morning and ends with the fall of darkness.

• The attention is focused throughout on the spiritual anguish and suffering of bakha and thus there is tremendous gain in concentration and intensity. The graph of Bakha’s spirit, soaring and falling alternately has been constantly kept in sight, and skillfully rendered. This has been made possible by the novelist’s use of the stream of consciousness technique but the incoherence of the psychological novel has been avoided by timely accounts of the social milieu and the environment. Thus there is a judicious integration of internal and the external of form and content.

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The Action : Three Clear Stages�

• According to M.K. Naik The poet’s harangue apart, the narrative itself is a thing of perfect unity and chiseled finish. The whole action, which takes place during twelve hours from dawn to dusk shows three clear stages of development. In the first stage, at the end of which suddenly comes the traumatic experience of pollution in the market place, Bakha had a comparatively easy time.

• In spite of the abuses of his father and the rigours of his morning task, he is eagerly looking forward to getting the gift of a hockey stick from Charat Singh in the afternoon, and the prospect of having a look at the sights and sounds in the bazaar is an additional attraction. The climax of hisfelicity is reached when with a packet of Jalebis in his hand and the taste of the warm and sweet syrup in his mouth, he is moving through the market place. And then dramatically descends the blow, when after the collision with the caste Hindu, his jalebis and his felicity both bite the dust.

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• This first stage occupies a little more than the first one third of the book. The second stage covers slightly less than half of the book and shows the graph of Bakha’s spirits going through rapid fluctuations, the indignity of crying “posh, posh, sweeper coming” and the shock of Sohini’s molestation at the hands of the priest being offset by the joy of getting the hockey stick and scoring a goal and the sympathy of friends and these in turn are cancelled out by the fiasco in which the hockey match ends.

• Second encounter with his father plunges Bakha into the depths of despair and then equally dramatically as earlier, the third phase is ushered in with the coming of Colonel Hutchinson. This third and last phase balance the first and like it almost fills about one third of the novel. During this stage, three possible solutions to his problems are suggested of Bakha. Each stage ends on a dramatic note and this and the fact that Bakha’s course on this momentons day goes continuously through ups and downs, together ensure that suspense is maintained throughout.

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Combination of Eastern and Western Techniques

• H.C. Harrex has studies the form and structure of the novel in detail and he is rightly of the view that the formal pattern or structure of the novel, combines the moral fable form, and the principle of interplay, indeed interpenetration, of situation and character which Anand saw as the significant feature of the western short story. Present in Bakha’s character is the pathetic incongruity of natural vitality sapped by conditioned docility.

• In the epiphany-like main touching scene, we see the interplay of character and incident producing the germ of a new consciousness in Bakha, beginning with a realization of his social identity. The birth of this consciousness conforms to Gandhi’s psychological approach to the problem of untouchability whereby the outcaste is encouraged to develop self-esteem in place of self abasement. From this point on, the narrative development-involving as it does Bakha’s increasing enlightenment regarding work, social discrimination, poverty and the doctrine of pollution-fulfils the requirement of the moral fable.

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• The evil of the social system, has been exposed and the novel concludes with a desire image suggesting how the evil should be eradicated. Bakha experiences the shock of self-recognition : “It illuminated the inner chambers of his mind…a shock had passed through his perceptions, previously numb and torpid. After this experience Bakha is developed into something of a fable figure and is endowed with an elementary visionary quality. He has the ability to contrast the families with the unknown and this is described in terms of the impulse which tries to create a new harmony.

• He had grown out of this native shoes into the ammunition boots he had secured as a gift. And with this and other strange and exotic items of dress, he had built up a new world, which was commendable, if for nothing else because it represented a change from old ossified order…He was a pioneer in his own way….
• Having thus far counterpointed the antithetical elements (“ossified order, impulse…to create a new harmony) in the narrative structure, Anand employs two devices to bring Bakha to the brink of a personal and social synthesis.

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The Desire Image

• The ending of Untouchable is conceived as prophecy suggesting a choice of possibilities (Christ, Gandhi, Marx, the machine) because of his belief that the writer who does not have a romantic as well as a realistic point of view, will not see the whole of life and will be in danger of affirming only negation of life. The novel of revolutionary romanticism….seeks the desire image, that is to say to suggest what the writer would like life to be like, by implication, as against what it is.

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The spokesman figure �

• The second device Anand uses to promote his social vision is the spokesman figure, the young poet, who who is introduced in the final scene and who explains the “choice of possibilities” to a section of the crowd that includes the receptive Bakha. The poet reveres Gandhi as “the greatest liberating force of our age” but suggests that India “has suffered for not accepting the machine”. If untouchables can develop a consciousness of self-respect and india adopts the flush-system, then untouchability may be eradicated.

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Some faults�

• Structurally, this conclusion is reached through a coalescence of desire image and spokesman devices. Thus the close of the novel which has generally been regarded as superfluous is seen to be an integral part of the novel. In this part he has projected his own dream of a golden age when there would be no untouchability, as well as an imagined connection between himself as the reformist spokesman author and the untouchable on whose behalf he was writing. The only fault that can be found with this part is that the speech of the poet is too long and can profitably be shortened, and that everything which follows the appearance of Gandhi comes as an anti-climax. It was a mistake to have introduced in person.

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