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The Collective Worlds of John Steinbeck, Anantha Murthy and Raja Rao
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the lesson that self-denial in itself does not promote any kind of nobility and to be in love with life is an essential prerequisite for living it well and to be contented for a bigger cause, and, there is no harm in enjoying the gifts of God and Nature. In fact, Danny and his friends and also Mack and the boys along with a host of others experience a rare kind of contentment which helps them to survive the commercialized world outside or at least not be affected by it. To mention the contemporary only reminds one of the fact that the worlds of these writers are over and above any one particular locality or country for that matter in that they reach out to a world beyond with the help of a unique kind of realism that is not limiting in any way because of its inclusion of myths, legends, folklore and a purpose and vision of a literary prophet. For example, Samskara holds out a reinterpretation of religious myths that have been wrongly interpreted by a selfish society of Brahmins for their own gains to stay at the top of an hierarchy that has been there in Indian society for long enough. Robert Young in his book, Postcolonialism" (2001) draws our attention to the fact that Hinduism also indicates a diasporic receptivity to other ideas and cultural forms as a combination of rootedness and openness:
"Rooted in the ancient heritage of his native Hinduism, but open to the spiritual inheritance of the world".
Modernity comes to us with the understanding that the "imaginary pure" (indigenous knowledge) cannot be challenged and done away with but neither can a "dialectical mixture of classical and folk knowledges, the pure and the mixed, the high and the low, the masculine and the feminine" be discarded. It is through myth and repeated patterns of human behaviour that the writers discover an emerging pattern of what could be a desirable society of human beings in which creatures great and small occupy their respective places.
Whether it is Mack and the boys or the Paisanos of Tortilla Flat or the selfless: Moorthy of Kanthapura; Ma Joad of The Grapes of Wrath; Praneshacharya of Samskara, the world need never be bereft of people who continue to take on larger dimensions and shoulder bigger responsibilities than the less extraordinary inhabitants of our earth. The leaders may emerge from the common crowd such as Mack and the boys or be political and social reformers such as Moorthy and Praneshacharya. The archetypal figures of Ma Joad or Tom emerge from the common matrix of mankind and acquire unfathomable dimensions. Apart from this there is the occasional spiritual or religious personage who wins over the narrow limitations of self and religion. The self becomes the nation represents it, shapes it and gives it new meaning. This person enters a phase of expansiveness wherein he merges and mingles with the crowd around him in simple and innocent joys. Such is Praneshacharya, who, through his knowledge and wisdom of the age-old myths and through his own empirical, objective observations of the living people aims for a freedom from man-made boundaries and distinctions. The wilderness, gives him, like it did for Dimesdale and so many others, a release from the individual self. The expansion of the single soul into the collectivity is in accordance with the faith of the oversoul.
The Romantic spirit was replaced by realistic and empirical factors. Naturalism, a vital ingredient of realism, was in sway-scientific enquiries into the fabric of the natural and humanistic networking were now a part of the socio-intellectual background of man. Realism gives way to legend and myth or uses it to highlight and pinpoint certain threatened value systems as in Tortilla Flat. The myth becomes a legend or a support system to the values that the novelist desires to convey through his writings
