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Mr Stone and the Knights Companion recounts the experiences of a man arming himself against death. Much of the novel's meaning, however, derives from its view of death as a multi-dimensional feminine force. Depicted in subtle yet unsettling archetypal terms. Earth and woman emerge as powers not only of life but also of death and extinction. This particular conception of Nature and woman largely accounts for the narrative's strong feniinine presence.
In Mr Stone and the Knights Companion? knighthood lies in dodging the dragon Death. The novel deals with the protagonist's fear of 'extinction' (a word widely used in Naipaul's fiction) and his efforts to combat this fear by finding means of continuity. Mr Stone had lost his mother at the age of seventeen, an event which he views as the 'sharpest' grief he has ever known (p. 15). The woman who gave him life is no longer there to minister to it; she has abandoned him to his own methods of shielding himself in an arbitrary world. But her death sends him to impose on his life a unique order in which things, to have any meaning, have to be done in a 'rimai' fashion. The present does not interest him; instead, he seeks assurance in the past, as his experiences stack themselves in a permanent, unchangeable way. It is a defensive ploy against change and impermanence, qualities well known as the property of the archetypal female, who brings death as well as life to the human race. But at this stage of his life, Mr Stone has not yet identified the object of his fear, at least not in a conscious way. Perhaps he could not explain why he furiously tills his garden and stops short of growing anything in it, why 'his passion' is 'all for digging' and for 'crazy paving' which cause his plants to wilt 'as in a drought', or why he mows the 'tender shoots' of his newly planted grass 'so ferociously' as to turn his lawn into 'bare and ragged earth' (p. 7). Later, however, he is able to see Earth as his adversary, the entity against which he lashes out whenever his consciousness of death has mounted to a climax. This theme, however, derives much of...