IMPACT: International Journal of Research in

Humanities, Arts and Literature (IMPACT: IJRHAL)

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES IN THE STORIES OF MANOJ DAS

Mahendra Kumar Bhoi

Received: 29 Mar 2018 Accepted: 04 Apr 2018 Published: 20 Apr 2018

ABSTRACT

Telling stories and listening to them are age -old phenomena. With the learning of speech by the primitive man
and the evolution of language, human being started telling stories, narrating their experiences, expressing their thoughts
and feelings. But story or fiction as a genre of literature is a fairly modern creation. Though stories were used
systematically by the great teachers of the world, like Christ and Buddha, modern fiction is a product of later time.
Modern fiction is different from the older tales in many ways, in form as well as in style and techniques of narration.
The various devices of storytelling are called Narrative Techniques. The study of narrative and narrative techniques as an
autonomous object of analysis emerged in the Twentieth Century. It began with Henry James, in his fictional narratives
and his discussions in the Prefaces to the New York Editions of his novels (1909-10), and developed through the works of
Russian Formalists, the New Critics, the Chicago Neo- Aristotelians, the Structuralist narratologists and post- classical
narratologists like Mary Patricia Martin, James Phelan and Gerard Genette. Most approaches to narrative recognize the
utility of a general division between ‘what’ (the domains of states, existence, characters, and events) and ‘how’
(the domains of techniques, voice, vision, temporality, a point of view etc.)

KEYWORDS: Narrative Techniques, Point of View, First Person Narrator, Third Person Narrator

INTRODUCTION

Very often the content in writing gains its importance from the way the writer presents it. Much of the success of
a story or fiction depends on the narrative (dynamics) techniques the writer uses. Narrative techniques broadly refer to all
perceptible and discernible signs of the author’s artistry employed in the narrative. It includes the technique of point of
view, form or structural principles, the method of picturisation and dramatization, setting and characterization,
the art of narration and other various means and elements that consequently make up the workmanship of a writer.

Mark Schorer opines that the form or technique and content are inseparable.

“Or technique is thought of in blunter terms… as the arrangement of events to create plot; or, within the plot, of
suspense and climax; or as the means of revealing character motivation, relationship, and development or the use of point
of view”. (David Lodge, p4)

A technique is the only means by which the writer discovers, explores, develops and conveys his subject and the
meaning thereof and eventually evaluates it. According to Wayne C. Booth:

“Technique is as broad as the work itself, but still capable of calling attention to that work as the product of
choosing, evaluating person rather than a self-existing thing”. (W.C. Booth, p.74)

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Percy Lubbock calls it ‘method’. To him:

“The whole intricate question of method in the craft of fiction is governed by the question of the point of
view – the question of the relation in which the narrator stands to the story”. (p.251)

In recent years, the point of view is more emphasized (by critics) as a means towards the positive definition of the
theme rather than a device of narrowing or broadening of perspective.

According to Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, there is four types of narration: “(1) First Person,
(2) First-person observer, (3) Author observer (4) Omniscient Author”. (Brooks and Warren, p.684)

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES OF MANOJ DAS

In the fiction of Manoj Das, we come across mainly two types of point of view: the first person and the
omniscient author. As Meenakshi Mukherjee says, “the most recurrent technique in Indo-Anglian Fiction has been that of
the first person narrative”. (31)

Manoj Das has adopted the method of first -person narration in quite a good number of stories: “Mystery of the
Missing Cap”, “Farewell to a Ghost”, “The Submerged Valley”, “Bhola Grandpa and the Tiger”, “The Murderer”,
“The General”, “Trespassers”, “A Letter from Last Spring”, “The Crocodile’s Lady”, “Sita’s Marriage”, “Encounters”,
“The Man who lifted the Mountain”. “The Concubine”, “The Stupid Servant”, “Old Folks of Northern Valley”,
“The Last I Heard of Them” and the like.

Some of these stories are narrated by children or grownups remembering their childhood and a few others are
narrated by elderly persons. Much of the charm in the stories like “Mystery of the Missing Cap”, “Farewell to a Ghost”,
“The Submerged Valley” and “Bhola-grandpa and the Tiger” depends upon the child’s point of view and manner of
narration.

This brings the effect and results in a simplicity and clarity. The child narrates like a first-hand writer’s or
informer’s rendering the testimony to facts like a man on the spot.

In many of these stories, the child narrator is not themain character, but a minor one whose main function is only
to tell the story. It is partly his stories and partly the stories of others. He is involved and shows his reactions and
observations. The readers’ response and appreciations are molded and modified by his feeling and attitude towards the
action. Thus, he becomes the center of consciousness because everything is narrated from his point of view.

In “Mystery of the Missing Cap” a child is the narrator – a first- person narrator. The child occupies a key place in
the story. He happens to know the truth of the missing cap. But he keeps it a secret in request of Mr. Maharana.
Here, he becomes a confidant to Maharana. Here, the narrative is smooth, as objective as possible and though it is a
first-person narrative, the ‘I’ has been kept to the minimum.

While “Mystery of the Missing Cap” centralizes the reader’s mind to a close-up scene, “Farewell to a Ghost” is
panoramic like “The Crocodile’s Lady”. It traces back to the history of the ghost from the Britishers’ days to her present,
her living in that abandoned villa and her final shifting to the palm tree where she was forced to live.

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In “Bhola-grandpa and the tiger” and “The Submerged Valley” the technique is retrospective. In the former, the
child recalls a scene from his childhood and recounts the story of Bhola-grandpa. Or, he is like a catalyst who rejoins the
sundry pieces of Bhola-grandpa’s life.

The narrator here fulfills two things. Firstly, he makes the narrative warm and authentic as Bhola-grandpa
belonged to his family as a servant, so the tone is marked with a note of affection and touch of intimacy. Secondly,
all the episodes which are a series of separate objective scenes are joined together. The narrator’s presence is not much
visible. It is like a thread in a garland, unifying the narrative and giving coherence to it. Otherwise, the method is scenic
as if everything is shown and not narrated:

“The real art of fiction does not begin until the novelist thinks of his story as a matter to be shown,
to be so exhibited that it will tell itself”. (P. Lubbock, p.62)

In “The Submerged Valley” the narration restructures the picture of his village after a gap of time.
It is again a first -person narrator’s point of view: The child’s impression of the overall situation, his sympathy for the
villagers, first disapproval and late admiration for his father, appreciation of mother and his curiosity for Abolkara,
occasional humor, (in everything) presentation is objective. Pictorial and scenic methods get merged. The whole situation
is visualized by the reader.

The first-person narrator is only a formal device in “The Crocodile’s Lady”. Otherwise, the prevailing method is
like that of a third-person observer-author focus. The narrator is not an interpreter of meaning as the child in
“Mystery of the Missing Cap”. He is just a reporter and translator. The method is reportorial and once again dramatic.
The ‘I’ is almost non-existent. The narrator is only a peripheral participant in the action, not central. Such a focus of
narration is quite suitably and effective in revealing the secret tale in “The Crocodile’s Lady”.

Such a variation of first-person narration is followed successfully in “Sita’s Marriage”, “Man Who Lifted the
Mountain”, “Encounter” etc.

Some other examples of the first-person narrator are “Trespassers”, “A Letter from the Last Spring”,
“The Concubine”, “The General”, and “The Murderer”. In these stories, the narrator is involved and has sympathy and
understanding of the characters he describes.

In “Man Who Lifted the Mountain” the real narrator of the story is the mountain itself. The narrator says, “I felt as
though a voice inaudible to physical ears, which were narrating the story was slowly fading within the vast rock”.
(P.159)

Here, the voice of the mountain is that of a “disguised narrator” (W. C. Booth, p. 152), or “narrator within
narrator”. Such intricate method of a story within a story, a narrator and an observer within an observer (rich as the Santhal
in “Bhola-grandpa and the Tiger”) is a common device of Manoj Das. He has used this device in stories like “The
Crocodile’s Lady”, “Farewell to a Ghost”, “Man who Lifted the Mountain”, and many others, he allows the expression ‘I”
confined to the framework of an outer third-person narrative.

Manoj Das uses the first-person narrative to his advantage. This is not a simple convention nor is there the
‘terrible fluidity’ of self-revelation, but the revelation of character and situation. The ‘I’ is a depersonalized expression.

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Moreover, there is warmth, naturalness, freshness, and immediacy in the narrative. The narration sounds very much
authentic and the narrator ‘speaks for or acts in accordance with the norms of the work, i.e. the implied author’s norms”
(W.C. Booth, p. 158). So, the narrator is a ‘reliable’ one.

Several reasons may be found to justify why Manoj Das choose children (or grown-up children) as narrator.
His love for children may be one. People are also eager to know the views of a child on various things and incidents.
A grown -up child remembering his childhood is a built-in device to dramatize things. Thus, the narrator is involved and
detached simultaneously. He is emotionally involved as the locality and setting are his, but he is temporally and physically
detached from the action. This is as good as Henry James “indirect and oblique view”. (Allot, p. 191)

This aims at concentration, subtlety, economy, and the intensity and simultaneously retains the warmth and
immediacy.

Manoj Das is able to project the sense of wonder, make-believe and looking at things with an aura of awe and
surprise through the child’s unsophisticated inquisitive eyes. The simplicity and directness of the child have crystallized
the commonplace episodes into the living, lore or the biblical type of stories.

OBSERVER-AUTHOR POINT OF VIEW

A brilliant example of a scenic method is “The Night the Tiger Came’ and “He who Rode the Tiger”.
The scenes here move in quick and rapid succession and they are presented vividly and dramatically. These stories contain
many self-contained objective scenes and a dramatic sense is created by the effective dialogues.

We get a ‘third-person limited point of view’ in an objective and reportorial method in “The Sage of Tarangire
and Seven Old Seekers”.

OMNISCIENT-AUTHOR POINT OF VIEW

The omniscient point of view is adopted in a large number of stories like “The Kite”, “A Song for Sunday”,
“The Time for a Style’, “Birds at Twilight”, “A Night in the Life of a Mayor”, “The Old man and the Camel”,
“Creatures of Conscience”, “The Sensitive Plant”, “The Dusky Hour”, “The Bridge in the Moonlight”, “The Vengeance”,
“Friends and Strangers”, “The Owl”, “The Love Letter”, “Prithviraj’s Horse”, “Operation Bride”, “The Turtle from the
Sky” and the like.

In “Sharma and the Wonderful Lump”, we have the third person focus of narration. In Sharma’s consciousness, there
is the Jamesian large lucid reflector” (Mukherjee, p.31). It is an instance of the ‘oblique method’ with a ‘dramatized
consciousness.’

“The Princess and the Story-teller” are one of Manoj Das’s finest stories. It begins as a third-person narration, but
as it gradually unfolds and grows more and more absorbing, it glides into a first-person mode. Manoj Das retell the old
story with a new point of view, where he makes us see a story within a story. This is a story about telling stories with its
“wheels within wheels structure”. Manoj Das is a great fabulator and a master in the art of metafiction”.

The omniscient method is used with certain variations in some stories. Though “The Tree”, “The Kite”,
“A Trip into the Jungle”, “A Tale of the Northern Valley” and “The Bull of jabalpur” is narrated from an omniscient point
of view, they tilt towards the scenic and observer-author method.

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Manoj Das seems to have imbibed in this omniscient method of narration from the ancient Indian tale. He exploits
the relative potentialities and manages the materials well. For example, one might feel that “Statue Breakers are Coming”
could have been presented in a rigid dramatic framework. But the enquiry into Guptaji’s mind won’t be there which is only
feasible by an intrusive omniscient or analytic author. Dr. C. V. Venugopal observes that “the ancient Indian tale follows
normally in a single method of narration – the omniscient author technique”. (p.109)

Manoj Das never states anything straight or confines himself to a single mode. He tangentially and pleasingly
shuffles across and adopts the variations as per the need of the theme. Ultimately, it is the ‘point of view’ that determines
the tenor and treatment of each story. Drama is the ultimate aim of fiction, or the highest point of fiction writer aspires for.
Naturally, the sole aim of Manoj Das is to ‘dramatize’ and he achieves it severally in his narrative. Manoj Das have
mastered the art of picturisation and dramatization. He does not simply recount his tale; rather he presents and shows them.
He knows that ‘an episode shown is more effective than an episode told”. (Liddel, p. 102)

Or, “dramatic telling is the only kind of storytelling” (Booth, p26). We can take the following example from the
story “Encounters” to see his visual imagination:

“Some scattered stools on the veranda despite the chilling guests. They were the ones in a hurry excepting that
pockmarked man in bright livery who leaned against the wall and seemed to relish every drop of his tea.
If he did not come, it was because the imported car he had parked before the cafe was too precious to be left out of his
sight. (p. 78)

Here, he does not state an action; he renders it in terms of scenery, situation and characters. The Bhola-grandpa’s
encounter with the tiger in Sunderbans, the exorcising ritual conducted by the necromancer pointing a bone in
“Farewell to a Ghost”, General Valla struggling to laugh on the stage in the role of a commander, the palanquin carrying
the dead body of the young man and the retinue of the old Jamindar following in “The Owl”, Bisu Jena falling into one of
his trances and becoming the voice of Tree-god and the villagers dancing and chanting in ecstasy, Kunja flying over waves
pursued by the police and the climatic confronting scene between the Minister and Moharana in “Mystery of the Missing
Cap” – are all rendered dramatically. The scenes are conspicuous for their vividness, sharpness and picturesqueness.

Manoj Das’s stories exhibit a delicate balance between the dramatic and narrative and summary and the scene.
“He Who Rode the Tiger”, “A Trip into the Jungle”, “The Bull of jabalpur” and “The Time for a Style”, “Tragedy”,
“The Bridge in the Moonlit Night”, “The Crocodiles’ Lady” and “Farewell to a Ghost’ are triumphs of summary.
His summary is not a bold documentation of facts; it is filled with the drama of feeling and emotion.

SENSE OF FORM

Brooks and Warren remark: “Form is not to be thought of merely as a sort of container for the story; it is rather
the total principal of organization and affects every aspect of the composition”. (p. 684) According to Percy Lubbock,
“the best form is that which makes the most of its subject…” (Lubbock p 40).

Manoj Das’s stories are based on well-defined plots. They are espoused to a single design and an unmistakable
unity of impression. All the great wealth of material has been used for the purpose of realizing the theme.
In stories like “The Kite”, “The Time for a Style”, “A Song for Sunday”, “Mystery of the Missing Cap”,
“The General”, “Encounters”, “The Sensitive Plant”, “The Bull of jabalpur” and “He Who Rode the Tiger”…

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the idea of the story and the meaning behind the idea are best displayed because the entire narrative has been, so to speak,
“jelled into one discrete mold, a shape, a design”. (Hale, p.138)

These stories possess a sense of solidity; shapeliness and finish. The dialogue, description, plot, and narration are
fused together to unfold the story. In other words, there is an assimilation of form into meaning. The stories have a center
or a kind of focus, as Tolstoy says, “Where all rays meet or from which they issue”. (Allot, p.235)

Even though some stories are episodic or elaborate in nature, they are not discursive since they are linked to the
main thread of the story. There is no confusion or blurring of vision.

Besides the ‘organic description” (Summers, p.99) is quite noticeable in his stories. The descriptions of nature, of
character and of the setting are not separated from the body of the story; they go hand in hand to further the movement of
the story. Thus, there is the ‘single vision’.

The most striking feature of Manoj Das’s stories is that the reader can never find any moment dull. While going
through them. A reader never feels any loss of interest while reading. As Henry James says, “There is nothing so
deplorable as a work of art with a leak in its interest…. A form is the absolute citadel and tabernacle of interest’ (Liddell,
p.103)

Manoj Das’s stories never betray a leakage of interest. Through suspense and surprise and gripping lucid
narration, he whets the curiosity and sustains the interest.

PATTERN AND RHYTHM

Manoj Das’s stories exhibit some kind of the pattern, if the idea of pattern implies a repetition. In terms of plot the
incident is not repeated, but a variety of incidents in sequence “recall us directly or indirectly to the central conflict”
(Brooks and Warren, p. 655), or question: It points to the motivation and development of character within a story.
In “Bhola-grandpa and the Tiger”, all the three episodes unfold the character of Bhola-grandpa and it is a story of
forgetfulness in its extreme.

In “The Crocodile’s lady”, the episode of Langley Baba, the villagers’ talk about the ghost, and finally the story
told by the lady herself – point to the make-believe world of the villagers and their capacity for fantasy-building.

In “Farewell to a Ghost”, the threats to demolish the deserted villa, the Feringhee episode, his accomplice killing
her, and finally the farewell to the ghost-girl… point to her pity and suffering and the villagers’ love and sympathy for the
girl.

Thus, in such stories as above, the chorus effect and a semblance of the pattern can be easily noticed.

Rhythm, ordinarily refers to ‘the rise and fall’ in the movement of fiction, technically, it is the ‘ebb and flow of
feeling’ love waxing and wanting to fill us with surprise and freshness and hope’ and “Interdependent sequences of crisis
and resolution which contribute to the ‘rhythm’ of the whole work”. (Allot, p.166)

E.M. Forster compares it to music or the symphony. He says “Expansion”, that is the idea the novelist must cling
to. Not completion. Not rounding off but opening out”. (p. 149).

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In this way, a story may move leisurely or fast, depending on its tempo and pressure. In “He Who Rode the tiger”,
“The Kite”, “A Trip into the Jungle”, “the Night the Tiger Came”, and ‘A Song for Sunday”…the movement is
fast and racy. But the movement of “A Tale of the Northern Valley”, “The Crocodile’s Lady”,
“A Farewell to a Ghost”, “Evening at Nijanpur”, “The Submerged Valley”, “The Bridge in the Moonlit Night”…
is lucid and leisurely. The rhythm of these stories helps a lot to pick up the feel and meaning of the story.

As we finish reading stories like “The Bridge in the Moonlit Night”, “He Who Rode the Tiger”, “A Trip into the
Jungle”, “The Kite”, “Birds at Twilight” etc… great chords begin to sound behind us”. Forster, p. 150)

THE BASIC FRAMEWORK

In India, most of the fiction writers adopt the form of an ancient tale. A strong cultural force in the tradition of
folktale, particularly in a country like ours, which has a cultural past of thousands of years. Every child here is practically
nourished on them. Every Indian, consciously or unconsciously, imbibes the form of the folktales so much so that its
simplicity, vigor, clear-cut characterization, and the style of narration are almost in his blood and our leading writers are no
exception to it.

The plot of a typical ‘Panchatantra’ story has the basic requirement of a well-told story, an effective beginning,
an interesting middle and a perfectly logical conclusion. Its style is smooth, diction simple and narration straightforward,
spiced with wits and humor. Manoj Das’s stories contain all these features profusely.

The allegory in a fable as well as the representation of animals behaving as human beings provided an excellent
medium of social satire. Manoj Das’s three ‘Panchtantra’ stories in “Fables and Fantasies for Adults” are bright glaring
examples.

The Indian writer’s tendency to fill in his stories with continuous action and episodes as evidence in Anand’s
“Barber’s Trade Union”, Narayan’s “The Roman Image’, Manoj Das’s “The Crocodiles Lady” or “Farewell to a Ghost”
owe to the “Kathasaritsagara”.

ELEMENT OF TRADITION

In both the manner of storytelling and the form he adopts, Manoj Das is traditional. His stories are modeled on the
basic framework of the “Panchatantra” and “Kathasaritsagara”. If the allegorical and satirical mode of his fables and
fantasies can be traced back to “The Panchatantra”, the element of supernatural, fantasy, fairy-tale, suspense, emboxing of
stories and human aspiration and desire belong to the hoary tradition of the “Kathasaritsagara”. His narrative tales even
owe to the manner and style of classical tales in Sanskrit found in the Vedas.

Manoj Das is an unusual blend of classicand romanticist. His imagination is essentially a folk-tale imagination.
The folk-tale served him most with the element of its credulity and myth-making power. He happily acknowledges the four
major influences on him:

“The heritage of Indian fiction – the great yarn-spinners of your like Vishnu Sharma and Somadeva constitute the
influence of which I am conscious…. Fakir Mohan the father of the Odia short story was also an early influence.
Then there is Sri Aurobindo. He has given me a new vision of man”. (P.Raja, p. 13)

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In this way Manoj Das is a glorious product as well as a part of that great unbroken continuum called Indian
Literature whose vast expanse and pervasive nature have been stressed by both Winterkill and Krishna Kripalini:

“Like the Indianculture of which it is more or less a faithful expression, Indian literature,
a composite growth, reflecting the impact of different ages, races, religions, and influences and maintaining
simultaneously, sometimes in harmony and sometimes in disharmony different levels of cultural consciousness and
intellectual development” (K. Kripalini,p. 12).

Manoj Das belongs to this ancient lineage. When viewed from this perspective, it will be revealed that his stories
lend a remarkable feature, rather a unique character of Indian Literature. His stories reflect a genuine image of India as
well as voice its inner soul and spirit.

He is an ardent admirer of T. S. Eliot’s theory of “Tradition and Individual Talent”. In fact, the meeting point of
the two elements is as subtle as the meeting point on the horizon of the ocean’s blue with the sky’s blue. He says,

“When an Indian writer is naturally Indian, his Indianness is hardly pronounced, but what becomes grotesquely
pronounced is when an Indian writer makes a conscious effort to highlight his Indianness or does the opposite – tries to
consciously cultivate a stance, which should appear dazzlingly different from the traditional writing”.
(P.Raja, pp. 133-134)

Thus, while drawing sustenance from the tradition, he resuscitates and dynamizes it. The fables and fantasies are
charmingly retold with fresh insight into the contemporary human situation.

In conception and invention, language and theme, subtlety and humor, he is original. He has blended the old art of
storytelling with modern ideas and techniques.

He has evolved a new method of his own, combining the salient features of the ancient Indian tale and the social
and individual consciousness seen in the stories from abroad.

In his realistic comical stories, he is like R. K. Narayan with his journalistic background, keen observation and
lively sense of humor and like F. M. Senapati, with his satire and social consciousness.

In his serious, realistic stories, he is like his western counterparts. He is in the line of Maupassant with his sense of
the plot, living details, and clear picture. But he is more of Anton Chekov in heart and spirit, as a compassionate suffering
observer. At home, he is more with M.R. Anand and Manjari Iswaran.

The stories like “The Time for a Style”, “A Song for Sunday”, “Trespassers” and “The Submerged Valley” are
seen in the light of human loss and tragedy. Similarly “A Letter from the Last Spring”, “Anatomy of Tragedy”, “Lakshmi’s
Adventure”, “Sita’s Marriage” and “The Kite” are stories of rare sensitivity and tenderness. They contain Kanta Kabi’s
(Lakshmikant Mohapatra) pathos and Tagore’s tragic awareness and above all a Christ-like all-embracing humanism.

Thus, the stories of Manoj Das are universal. They concern any human being at any place and any time, and the
pictures are more generic than specific.

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ELEMENT OF MODERNITY

Though Manoj Das are traditional in form, method, and projection of India’s image, he is modern in ideas and
sensibility. He is a synthetic digest of traditional technique and modern sensibility.

He is modern in the sense of his analysis of the human psyche and psychic reality. The existential dilemma is one
of the major themes of modern times. And Manoj Das present powerfully the predicament of man in the universe.

He is modern in the way he has used the techniques. He has used the technique of point of view in a variety of
ways. Also, the techniques like flashback (The Kite), a stream of consciousness (The Night the Tiger Came), naturalistic
technique (A Trip into the Jungle), the fusion of stream of consciousness with surrealism (The Bridge in the Moonlight),
and surrealism (Friends and Strangers) quite successfully. This shows his intrepid originality and ingenuity.

Besides these, his stories are touched by tricks and devices almost similar to O’Henry’s twist, Saki’s surprise and
humor, Saroyan’s or Thurber’s comic perception, Maupassant’s straightforwardness, Chekhov’s suggestiveness and the
hovering sense of mystery and Katherine Mansfield’s poetic grace and precision.

CONCLUSIONS

Manoj Das is unique and inimitable in every way. He is remarkable for his note of subtlety and delicacy,
gaiety and gravity, mystery and humanism. He is original and authentic, strikingly fresh and novel in his conception of
plot, humor, fantasy, style of narration and orchestration of language and imagery. His world and people are intensely
vivid, deep and absorbing and inexhaustibly stirring. Evidently, there is an unmistakable Mongolian stamp or the quality of
his stories.

His stories reveal his technical mastery of the storyteller’s art in bringing most adroitly all the threads together,
so that, the plots are carried forward with speed, suspense, and clarity along with the imaginative probing into a human
soul added to facts. Fiction is created out of facts plus powerful imagination. It can aptly become the mirror of the society
concerned, it worked out with lively and artistic form, then, it can reflect the clear picture of the society with inherent
contradictions as well as promises.

REFERENCES

1. Allot, Miriam. Novelists on the Novel, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.

2. Ibid. p.16.

3. Ibid. p.235

4. Booth, W.C. The Rhetoric of Fiction, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1971.

5. Ibid. p.26.

6. Brooks and Warren. Understanding Fiction, New York, 1971.

7. Ibid. p.684.

8. Ibid. p.655.

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9. Ibid. p.158.

10. Ibid. p.152.

11. Das, Manoj. Mystery of the Missing Cap, New Delhi, Sahitya Akademi, 1998.

12. Ibid. p.142.

13. Das, Manoj. Selected Fiction, New Delhi, Penguin Books, 2001.

14. Ibid. p.78.

15. Das, Manoj. “Preface”, Chasing the Rainbow, New Delhi, OUP, 2006.

16. Forster, E.M. Aspects of Novel, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1985.

17. Hale, Nancy. The Realities of Fiction, London, Longman Group Ltd., 1972.

18. Ibid. p.138.

19. Henry, James. Qtd. Allot, Novelist on the Novel, London, routledge and Kengan Paul.

20. Kripalini, Krishna. Modern Indian Literature: A Panoromic Glimpse, Bomboy, Nirmala Sadanande Publishers,
1968.

21. Liddle (Qtd.) Samal, S., p.119.

22. Lodge, David. Language of Fiction, Routledge and Kengan Paul, London, 1970.

23. Lubbock, P. The Craft of Fiction, B.R.Publication, New Delhi, 1983.

24. Ibid. p.62.

25. Ibid. p.40.

26. Mukherjee, Meenakshi. The Twice Born Fiction, New Delhi, Heinemann, 1971.

27. Ibid. p.31.

28. Ibid. p.31.

29. Raja. P (Qtd). Manoj Das: A Significant Story Teller, The Times Of India, 18 May, 1987.

30. Raja. P. (Qtd). “Indian Sensibility and Fiction of Manoj Das”, Indian Writing in English, 1987.

31. Venugopal, C.V. The Indian Short Story in English, Bareilly, Prakash Book Depot.

32. Ibid. p.19.

33. Ibid.p.109.

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