The Lost Child-Mulk Raj Anand

Critical Analysis

The story ‘The Lost Child’ is very emotional. The author Mulk Raj Anand has brought before us the bustling and fervent movements during the festive season in a village. The setting is a village street where the seasonal fair was going on during spring with groves and flowering mustard field near the street. The story dates back sometime before the contemporary period. There were people riding on horses on roads and others sitting and carried in the bamboo and bullock carts. With only four characters without any names, – the child, the hero, his parents, and unknown man who tried to console the lost and sobbing child - the author has made them immortal in our minds. The nature, character and emotions of all the four are explicit from the precise and brief descriptions of the setting and the incidents. The story is all praise for nature, the gift of god. The author has expressed his aesthetic pleasure in describing the beauty of the flowers, grove and the mustard field with short and appropriate prepositions. The story tells us the psychology of a young child and the inherent love for his parents more than anything in the world which was dormant in his sub-conscious inner mind that found its bursting expression when the child feels that he has missed an lost his parents. The incidents are so cogent that even on the reverse journey of the child with the man who tries to console him with exciting things and in search of his parents, we find the same things in reverse order which earlier excited the child. The child is depicted as so innocent that he feels lonely without his parents amidst so much crowd. The fear is predominant and all his childish awe and excitement which he had earlier on the sight of the sweet burfi, gulmohar garments, the pole with balloons of various bright colours, the music of snake charmer, and the roundabout all vanished without any shadow. The introduction of a