[The Serpent and the Rope] reflects the cultural synthesis effected in the mind of the author in his own encounter with Europe as epitomized by his intellectual French wife. Transcending these is his love for Savithri, a pseudonym for an Indian woman with whom Rao has maintained a Platonic relationship for some thirty years. To express the divine quality of their love, Rao borrows from the literature of Europe and India both, and the result is a monument to absolute love coupled with a series of metaphysical questions answerable only in terms of a lifelong philosophical quest. (p. 247)

In total, The Serpent and the Rope is an overwhelming novel, for Raja Rao a tour de force which encapsules and communicates a philosophical predicament which has occupied the better part of his life. In addition, this novel comprises a major synthesis of Eastern and Western cultures in the vast number of allusions to European and Indian literature, music and philosophy incorporated into the structure of the story. It further speaks to the eternal dichotomy between maleness and femaleness which is of concern periodically in the human cultural response to family and society. The novel as a whole represents a quest for an elusive unity, a resolution of the opposition between wisdom and goodness, East and West, male and female. It may be that these are polarities of human life which cannot be fully resolved, even through the means of Advaita Vedanta. As in every religious tradition, man continues to struggle with these conflicts, even though he knows of paths that offer him escape. If we are to accept Rao's third novel, The Cat and Shakespeare, as a resolution of sorts, we see that duality disappears only in play. But even then, we are reminded that duality is never resolved into oneness—only into non-duality. The distinction is a subtle one; the texture of the language is Eastern. It is a truth and therefore also a mystery. How can it be explained, except to say that in being one can know being?

This mysterious sense of non-duality, the possibility of something other than suffering and illusion, lies at the heart of The Serpent and the Rope. Ramaswamy's quest is directed toward that end. The first-person point of view, heavy use of description, and densely-textured language all work to create a strongly metaphysical atmosphere. In order to hint at the possibility of non-duality, the novelist can do little more than explain it in tautological terms and employ rhythmic patterns which offer a sense of some greater order beyond that of the story itself. For the reader who is himself searching for metaphysical solutions, it is worth the demands on his time and intellect to puzzle out the terms of such a possibility. The Serpent and the Rope is in effect a transmission of esoteric knowledge from writer to reader in the tradition of the Upanishads.

These scriptures, it should be noted, take the form of philosophical dialogues narrated as stories; with some exceptions, each has a protagonist who quests and makes mistakes and learns just as Ramaswamy does in Rao's novel. The meaning of upanishad in Sanscrit is "to sit near," and it is in this vein that the reader as student "sits near" the writer as teacher in order to learn of Truth. In such a context, the combination of strongly autobiographical and clearly metaphysical elements is particularly striking. Raja Rao's motive in writing the novel is akin to that of Augustine and Dante: having found Truth, he feels compelled to record the spiritual struggle which led him to that point. The line between reality and illusion, truth and fiction, is indeed a fine one. Obligated to record his experiences, the writer embroiders only slightly on the events of his own life and consequently presents the resulting story in a tone of utter seriousness.

The extreme lack of playfulness or humor in The Serpent and the Rope is … a characteristic of the metaphysical novel…. By taking seriously the events and insights that come his way, Ramaswamy forces us to do the same; at all costs, we must not laugh at him. This recognition is part of the compact which exists between writer and reader with a novel of this type. (pp. 256-57)

[The Serpent and the Rope concerns] the intellectual and spiritual predicament of the modern Western-educated Indian. The Serpent and the Rope is therefore also a metaphysical novel of the sort which in the modern age fulfills the traditional function of religious scriptures. The story comprises a value structure and a metaphysical system which, if followed, would enable a hypothetical reader to cope with conflicts in his own existence. This is not to say that Rao's novel replaces the Upanishads or Shankara's commentaries. Rather, it functions to point the reader toward the traditional scriptures by illustrating their relevance to the predicament of contemporary man. (p. 258)