Kirillov Character Analysis

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Kirillov is viewed with good-humoured irony as a professed communist who is yet very much Indian at heart. Kirillov is proclaimed by the novelist as an ‘Inverted Brahmin’ (CK: 119) probably in the sense that as a Marxist, and quite unlike a true Brahmin. He has place the material ends of life over the spiritual. As a spokesman of India and all that is best in Hinduism, the protagonist remains a simple and unified personality but the sway of an alien ideology over his mind brings all the complexity in his character. The equation in his case is reversed as he uncritically receives what the West gives to a rational and inquisitive mind, changing the Brahmin into an anti-Brahmin. Nevertheless he remains a Brahmin, suffering, no doubt, from a conflict between honesty of mind – the intellectual loyalty to Marxism – and honesty of being – the emotional pull of being Hindu. Narsingh Srivastava’s comment is very appropriate in this regard: Undoubtedly, the crux of Kirillov’s character as well as the theme of the novel rests in the dangerous position as an Indian communist who after all remains a mere convert to an alien ideology preserving in his sub-conscious his deep-rooted affiliations to an age-old cultural heritage. As such instead of remaining a …show more content…

For the most part one ‘R’ is a narrator, and part of the narration is done through the excerpts from Irene’s diary. Given at the end, diary entries portray some of the salient features of Kirillov’s personality. No doubt, Raja Rao has used the diary entries in the narration of The Serpent and the Rope also but that entries are put in between the main course of the novel, whereas in Comrade Kirillov it occurs at the end of the novel. At the end of the novel, the diary entries reveal the distinct dimension of Kirillov’s character without obstructing the flow of the main narrative. Anurag Bihari imparts the importance of this technique with these

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