A Critical Study of Literary Devices And Themes In Prem Chand’s Short Fiction “The Chess Players

Premchand is actually the pen name and a pseudonym of Dhanpat Rai Srivatsava. He was born in 1880 in Banaras and he died also in Banaras in 1936. He wrote a lot of novels and short stories in Hindi and Urdu and many of them were translated into the English language later on. His first novel ‘Sevasadan’ which was published in 1918 is known as the House of Service and it talks about the problems of prostitution and moral corruption among the Indian middle classes. Premchand is one of the realist Indian modern story writers in Hindi and Urdu. He created artistic literary works in form of short-stories, novels, and drama. This article analyses the narrative structure and use of literary devices in his famous short story “The Chess Players”. Research methodology employed for this article is analytical descriptive approach to analyse  Premchand’s “The chess players”. This story is fully developed from the beginning till the end and the idea of philosophical and emotional truth is important in the context of Premchand’s understanding of short fiction. He gave a psychological climax which he successfully communicated to the general readers. He justified the psychological point at the end of the story. He did not use beautiful and smart words and a brilliant style as he gave less importance to the writing style and the choice of words but put more importance to the ideas or meanings that he communicated through the story to the society. He developed the characters according to the story. There is a natural progression towards the climax. “The Chess Players” revolves around one emotional or psychological or philosophical truth and the climax was a natural outcome of the theme that he wanted to explore in relation to various aspects of the story.