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fictional works. Godaan explores the struggles of the individual in a class-caste dominated society arising mainly out of poor economic conditions. Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath has a strikingly similar theme where the individual's struggle against a cruel upper-class society is depicted with acute empathy. Both novels are modern folktales carrying the burden of a contemporary, complex phenomenon of human crises and evolution.
Emerging out of the world of The Grapes of Wrath and Godaan, when the reader enters the world of Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row Samskara and Kanthapura; he gets to grapple with new dimensions and areas of perception. Whereas Kanthapura looks minutely at the very contemporary independence struggle of India, it is in confirmation with the bigger concern of finding the ideal formula for human existence and teaches us to strive for the all-time universal good of self-reliance, selflessness, non-violence in all forms and so on.
Tortilla Flat presents the ideal state of comradeship against a natural and non-commercial background. It is an allegory that uses the mythical legend of Sir Arthur and his Round Table. Cannery Row has a semi-urban setting where we find that in spite of the commercial backdrop, the more simple way of life continues to exist In Tortilla Flat there is no real probing into the dynamics of knowledge and formal education but the simple life of the peasant is celebrated for its innocence and simplicity. In Kanthapura the life of the village takes on to the teachings of Gandhi as a powerful weapon to drive the British away. Lessons of simplicity, non-violence and self-sufficiency find their way into the consciousness of the Indian people and the entire process is carried out at a tangible. socio-political plane. A similar awareness was creating itself in American life and thought although at a more subconscious level which happens when old values are being displaced by new ones, or worse still, creating a void. The wave of urbanity and modernism threatened to engulf the entire nation in which the agrarian way of life would be lost forever. Undoubtedly, Steinbeck's or any other writer's attitude under discussion were probably not the romantic views of Rousseau's "Back to Nature" thing but the individualistic creed of modernism was certainly well under the grip of life and although the emerging horrors could not be distinctly visualized by the living writers of the times, the intense uneasiness comes through in their writings. Samskara cuts out on the individualistic concerns of society split up into caste and creed-a division that is based on narrow concerns and the effort to maintain an individualistic hierarchy. The novelists' pointers are undoubtedly aimed towards creating a more wholesome society where human equality is only a part of Nature's laws.
The changes all around were some for the better and some for the worse. Man's material progress had something inherently positive about it but on the other hand, man's materialism would be the doom for them all. Man's condition needed to be examined in terms of what had to be welcomed in the new situation and what was not to be.
Speaking of the four novels together would need a kind of forgetfulness of the so many oft-cited issues that have been raised with particular reference to each. Each novel stands apart and aloof in its own right, although of course, Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row have been compared many a time for similarities in theme if not technique. As far as Kanthapura and Samskara are concerned, they are different works of writing dealing with different themes. Whereas Kanthapura' tells the tale of the struggle for independence within the framework of a small Indian village, Samskara has to do with the probings of Indian myth, folklore and reinterpretation of the religious scriptures with the aim to discover hidden meanings and clues for a better and more equal human existence as that which
