THE JOURNEY

SYNOPSIS
of the novel
“THE JOURNEY”



The novel “The Journey – Living by the Dagger’s Edge” is a scintillating work of fiction which focuses on the life and sufferings as well as the misdeeds of a criminal throughout his short yet eventful life . It involves the analyses of criminal psychology through a fiction. A teenager named Orlando , a delinquent serving sentence for a bilk (deceiving) job in a British suburb, who ultimately transforms himself into a global criminal in his effort to escape from the law. This novel aims at the adult readers and it tries to analyse the intricate mental psychologies and emotions of the criminal and the people, men and women, both good and bad-natured, criminals and others around him and who comes in contact with him. This novel travels around characters of dark mentalities and so it is properly based on dark situations and locations.



The birth and baptism of the criminal were exceptional ones, probably, in compatibility with the graph of his dramatic and eventful future. The poor child’s campaign against sin, the world, and the devils were doomed to be of limited brilliancy. A kinder world would have mentored him without an eye to his ability and given him time to hone his
craft . Along the way he would have learnt perhaps the power of good living how life traverse time and space and go on to make their homes in unknown people’s hearts and minds . Given time and opportunity, he would have learnt, too, the responsibility that goes with it and would have developed his own good living ethic. But that was not his destiny.

Even after many years, he finds that effect and repercussion of the sentence served on him, which he tried to avoid by escaping from a juvenile prison, have never left him. He tries to veer away from the world of crime by settling down in good and peaceful life with good-natured people, but he never succeeds. When faced with the dilemma of choosing between good and bad life, he is always forced to commit deadly criminal activities, even murders, to avoid himself getting murdered by his dreaded enemies who follow him from one continent to another. He leaves trail of blood everywhere he goes.

He had no shortage of money, but the failure in love affairs turns him into a womanizer. He transforms himself into a globe-trotting adventurer-cum-businessman and seduces women, but still his criminal past haunts him in his real life . He gets love from many women but none of his love affairs, not even his marriage ends successfully, because his past never forgets to follow him. He never gets respite from his rivals and enemies. Sometimes, he lands in the clutches of the iron hands of the law and death, but every time he manages to escape . His life travels from England to Russia, then to India and finally he settles in the European mainland to escape from the clutches of law.

He is a kind of strange persona – a non-entity.

He is the person. He is not the first fool that comes along . He is a prominent member of the unsocial group outside the hinterland of what we call society.

He was the centre for general intelligence in this sphere. More useful than important. Man of no ideas. He speaks in gatherings and with individuals ---- not very well --- he speaks, of course. The only talent he shows really is his ability to elude the attention of the police somehow in his later years. Even if he gets touched by the long hands of the law, he somehow manages to come out of it. He does not seem to be looked after very closely.

He was regularly married in his later years. It is with his wife’s money that he had started a business for the sake of a false identity.

His parentage was obscure. His obscure title to that designation consisted in his having been once head of the section in a manufacturing company. He quarreled with the authorities upon a question of unfair treatment. His struggles, his privations, his hard work to raise himself in the social scale, had filled him with such an exalted conviction of his merits that it was extremely difficult for the world to treat him with justice --- the standard of the notion depending upon the patience of the individual. He had genius of darker quality and courage, but lacked the social virtue of resignation. That’s why he gets sympathy but not the kindness from individuals close to him.

Intellectually, he is a non-entity.

It was a ghastly failure on his part that he has lost the habit of constructive thinking.

“Solidarity with the extremist form of action” is one thing and “silly recklessness” is another. There is some mystery here in his sort of “moody brutality”.

There is some mystery in his work. Probably he himself does not even know which principle he is following in implementing his ideas.

Finally, when the fugitive comes in contact with a spiritual person, he begins the analysis of his so far short yet eventful life, he finds that --- all along, he has carried out in the “luxury of feeling solitude” even among a crowd of people . The only company being the drone of a hummable monotony ---- matched only by an endless stretch of voyage whose end no one knows of, not even the person whose destiny it is. On the advice of this spiritual person, this fugitive tries to wash some of his sins by committing himself to some good works during the social upheavals in Barcelona. The people never forgets his good works and he is revered in that Catalan city .

He ultimately found his freedom from the punishment of the scornful journey of life, when he himself understood that he had all along led a wrongful life and throughout this journey of life, he had also wronged the lives of other people . He tries to correct those wrongs but finds that it was already too late for him and the world around him. At last, while settling down in Italy, where he understood the “meaning of life”, he decides to end his life.

Composed in gripping and compelling descriptions and dialogues, the text flows at a brisk tempo. The plot contains more than a few unexpected twists, which should maintain the reader’s interest throughout. The characters are developed in a multi-dimensional fashion revealing the intricacies of their personalities which could forge a strong bond with the reader. Even the confrontations between the dreaded enemies and the dangerous action sequences and fightings brings out the mental battles one fights within and the mental sufferings of the not only the defeated but also of the victors . Navigating the plot through a series of sub-plots and journeying through a well conceived and logical conclusion , the author can leave the reader with the sense of time well invested in the reading of this novel.

The highly descriptive style of writing combined with a keen attention to detail can further enhance the appeal of this creative work. This novel also gives a universal appeal with the reader traveling from the English soil to Russia to India and at last to the Southern European mainland with the protagonist encounters the society and lives of the people in those countries.



N.B.:-
Noted Writer Miss Zadie Smith had once talked about writing as a way to locate herself in the world.

I write for another reason : to understand how dislocated I am from the world, and in identifying the fringes I occupy, I will have a better view of the centre I may never be a part of. So, my writings are about outsiders, pariahs, lost folks who, like me, are hanging out at the peripheries, uncertain, broken, yet always watchful.