The Serpent And The Rope Analysis

The world is either unreal or real – the serpent or the rope. There is no in-between-the-two and all that’s in-between is poetry, is sainthood…. You gave your own eyes to the falling evening and cried, ‘Ayyo! Oh! It’s the serpent! You run and roll and lament, and have compassion for fear of pain, others’ or your own. You see the serpent and in fear you feel you are it, the serpent, the saint. One – the Guru – brings you the lantern; the road is seen, the long, white road, going with the statutory stars. ‘It’s only the rope.’ He shows it to you. And you touch your eyes and know there never was a serpent. Where was it, where, I ask you? The poet who saw the rope as serpent became the serpent, and so a saint. Now, the saint is shown that his saint-hood was identification, not realization. The actual, the real has no name. The rope is no rope to itself. (SR: 335)
The metaphysical theme which is the main preoccupation of the novelist is delineated through different modes in the novel. Quite often it takes the form of an

Raja Rao has demonstrated in very convincing terms of fiction what is the essence of human relationships and man’s union with the Absolute, which is possible only under the guidance of a Guru. The example of Ramaswamy serves the purpose exactly.
Esha Dey dedicates two chapters in her book to The Serpent and the Rope that itself indicates the importance of the novel in Raja Rao’s oeuvre. In the first chapter she focuses on the formal analysis of the novel, whereas in the second one she makes linguistic analysis. She proposes that the novel in structured on the principle of the myth of the eternal return because the Indian ethos is essentially beyond time; and the novel is reflection of a metaphysic of eternity. Dey starts with the thematic aspects of the