The Vendor of Sweets

Chapter 3 of The Vendor of Sweets starts with a conversation between Jagan and his son, Mali, at the breakfast table. Mali has decided that he does not want to study anymore, and the very thought...

In The Vendor of Sweets, the unemployed cousin is presented as a bit of a economically unambitious individual who contributes positively to the lives of the other characters through his emotional...

The Vendor of Sweets deals with the tensions of modernization in India playing out through the tensions between Jagan and his son Mali. Ambika died long ago from a brain tumor. Her death, it's...

The collision between tradition and modernity can be seen in the opposition of Jagan and Mali. I think that it's clear that Mali represents the more modern approach to things. He is more inclined...

The Vendor of Sweets is a 1967 novel written by Indian writer R. K. Narayan. The book is, essentially, a fictional biographical tale of an Indian man named Jagan who works as a vendor of sweets in...

In The Vendor of Sweets, author R. K. Narayan brings readers back to the community of Malgudi to examine themes of tradition, modernization, and family in post-independence India. Jagan, a former...

Written by R. K. Narayan in 1967, The Vendor of Sweets is a novel that tells the story of Jagan, a fifty-five-year-old sweet vendor in the fictional town of Malgudi, India. The story centers on...

The man with the white beard is a friend of men that Jagan knows. At first, he thinks the man is someone's brother. The white-bearded man appears with his friends to ask why Jagan has lowered the...

The Vendor of Sweets is, in many ways, a story about the ways that marriages are built to tie up two people's autonomy together and ultimately to give husbands power and control over their wives....

In chapter 4 of The Vendor of Sweets, Jagan makes peace with Mali’s ambitions of becoming a writer. Jagan remembers Mahatma Gandhi's teachings about the importance of serving people and is happy...

I think that though the strained relationship between Jagan and Mali—the father and son at the heart of R. K. Narayan’s The Vendor of Sweets (1967)—is a result of clashing personalities and value...

In his novel The Vendor of Sweets, R. K. Narayan depicts the tensions and conflicts between East and West in terms of the tensions and conflicts between a father and a son and within the father...

While R. K. Narayan focuses on one family two decades after India’s liberation from British rule, he uses their case to make larger statements about the ongoing impact of colonialism. Narayan makes...

Chapter 9 begins in the aftermath of Jagan's encounter with Chinna Dorai. He is inspired by Chinna's dedication to sculpting and begins to wonder if he is destined to help the artist finish the...

In The Vendor of Sweets, R. K. Narayan primarily uses third-person point of view. The narrator speaks mainly from Jagan’s perspective, and includes long passages in quotation marks that present...

Jagan is a passive, tolerant man. He lives his life according to the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. He is a pacifist, with a deep-seated aversion to violence and confrontation. In keeping with the...

The Vendor of Sweets by R. K. Narayan explores generational conflict in the setting of the author’s fictional town of Malgudi in southern India. The novel features a traditional father and his...

The Vendor of Sweets is very much a piece of writing where the theme and concept of marriage plays a central role. This piece of writing cleverly shows both modern and traditional views of...

Jagan's first impression of Grace was not entirely positive, but by the end of the novel, he's softened toward her and helps her have an option to leave and go home. When Jagan's son, Mali, comes...

The Vendor of Sweets shows us a society that is in the process of transition. In urban areas of India, some of the old certainties are being undermined by rapid economic change. Traditional family...

The choice of point of view is an important decision for any author as they craft a story, because it influences the reader's perception of the characters and interpretation of the plot. In his...

This question highlights the central conflict and competing value systems between father and son in the 1967 novel The Vendor of Sweets by R. K. Narayan. Jagan and Mali present two models of a...

In his relationship with Grace, Mali wants to have the best of both worlds. On the one hand, he wants a Western girlfriend that he can show off as a trophy. On the other, he wants someone who will...

Jagan, the protagonist of The Vendor of Sweets, is a traditional Indian man in the sense that he had followed Gandhi, worked for India’s independence, and studies religious texts. Author R. K....

In R. K. Narayan’s book Vendor of Sweets, the main character Jagan runs a sweet shop located in a fictional town called Malgudi, India. Several of Narayan’s stories take place in this town, like...

The theme of order/disorder is closely related to that of the clash of generations, and of East versus West. Through hard work over many years, Jagan has built himself a nice little business. He...

R. K. Narayan’s novel The Vendor of Sweets is largely concerned with the relationship between Jagan, a supposedly traditional, devout Hindu, and Mali, his modern-thinking son. Both men suffer the...

I think that there are a couple of characters towards whom immediate attention has to be paid in understanding Narayan's novel. The first would be Jagan, who is the "vendor of sweets." His role...

In The Vendor of Sweets, Jagan has reached retirement age and would like to withdraw from the confectionary business that he owns. He feels that his primary concern in his senior years should be...

In the first few pages of The Vendor of Sweets, we are introduced to the philosophical maxim by which Jagan tries to live his life: Conquer taste, and you will have conquered the self. What Jagan...

In R. K. Narayan's The Vendor of Sweets, father Jagan and son Mali have some very different ideas and goals. Jagan owns a sweetshop and tries to follow the teachings of Gandhi. Mali, though, longs...

As the story progresses, we learn that Jagan sets great store in the philosophy "Conquer taste, and you will have conquered the self." On the surface, Jagan prizes the minimalist principles that...

The question of what we consider "the message" of a novel such as The Vendor of Sweets is a question of interpretation, and there are many possible answers. A central theme in the novel is the...

In The Vendor of Sweets, the protagonist Jagan is a strong advocate of moderation in one’s appetites. He applies this philosophy literally to his diet. "Conquer taste, and you will have conquered...

The important quotes in each chapter of The Vendor of Sweets relate to the novel’s central themes, which include materialism, family, and spirituality. At the end of chapter 1, Jagan manipulates...

Throughout The Vendor of Sweets, the author makes it apparent that there is a large gap between Jagan’s opinion of himself and the way he lives his life. In some ways, Jagan’s lack of...

In The Vendor of Sweets by R. K. Narayan, readers learn that Jagan used to be an activist in Gandhi's satyagraha movement. So someone would expect him to adhere to certain spiritual principles and...

In chapter 8, the bearded man takes Jagan on a tour of his “garden.” The space is lush. There’s a pond, stone, mango trees, and “vegetation of every type.” There are also monkeys and snakes. Jagan...

In the novel The Vendor of Sweets, Ambika and Grace are completely different in that Ambika was a traditional Indian wife whereas Grace is very much her own woman. The late Ambika was Jagan's wife....

In chapter 3, Jagan tells the doctor who treated his wife for a brain tumor that perhaps "a nature-cure" would have helped with the treatment. The doctor responds scornfully, telling Jagan, "Nature...

Jagan has a very funny way of showing interest in Mali's (criminal) activity. He prepares to enter into the last stage of his life, putting his business affairs in order before finally disengaging...