Analysis Of Paul Scott's 'The Raj Quartet'

Paul Scott (1920-1978) is a British novelist who shows his great interest in the colonial and post-colonial India. The Raj Quartet is the best novel in Scott’s oeuvre. Scott revisits the Quit India period of 1942-1947 in The Raj Quartet, which is a tetralogy comprising The Jewel in the Crown (1966), The Day of the Scorpion (1968), The Towers of Silence (1971) and A Division of Spoils (1975). Before his death in 1978, Scott wished his magnum opus, The Raj Quartet to be filmed. In The Raj Quartet, Paul Scott deftly represents one of the most tumultuous periods of British rule in India. Deviating from the trend of justifying colonialism and imperialism, Paul Scott, like E.M. Forster, displays a liberal humanist’s perspective in portraying the

In the serial The Jewel in the Crown consisting of fourteen episodes, the director Ken Taylor made several changes and eliminated several literary methods in the film script. The structure of the novel is different from the film. The four volumes of The Raj Quartet run into almost two thousand pages, while the director condenses the narratives within 14 episodes in the film. By allowing his free play of imagination, the director reshuffled the arrangement of the text as he selected and made several changes in the arrangement and sequence of the 14 episodes TV serial. Besides the form, the narratives and other literary devices of The Jewel in the Crown are also different from those in The Raj Quartet. The essence of The Raj Quartet lies in its narratives and other literary devices like the tropes, metaphors, symbols, images and idioms. In Quartet, Scott follows the narrative style that distinguishes him from the rest of the Raj novelists. The Raj Quartet dramatically breaks the traditional way of the representation of India as Scott delineates the events and happenings from multiple points of view. Thus he has been able to present the panoramic view of the empire rather than simplistic conforming colonial myths and thereby enabling the readers to find the truth and reality of the empire. Through diverse narratives, Scott even allows both the “antagonists” and “protagonists” of the novel to voice their opinion on the tragic events and does not impose his personal comments. Scott’s narrative methods manifest his liberal humanistic approach that is completely different from the colonial imperial attitude of his