Unveiling The Psychological and Emotional Impact of Violence: A Comparative Study of Saadat Hasan Manto’s "The Assignment" and R.K. Narayan’s "Martyr’s Corner

This article offers a comparative reading of Saadat Hasan Manto’s “The Assignment” and R. K. Narayan’s “Martyr’s Corner” to explore how two distinct narrative registers—Manto’s blunt realism and Narayan’s restrained irony—represent the psychological and emotional consequences of violence. While Manto frames violence as immediate, dislocating, and dehumanizing, Narayan shows its quieter aftermath: social dispossession, prolonged humiliation, and the slow erosion of self-worth. Through close textual analysis informed by trauma studies and narrative theory, the paper argues that both authors reveal complementary dimensions of violence: the raw psychic rupture of sudden terror and the enduring, domestic wounds that alter ordinary life. Reading these stories together highlights how South Asian fiction confronts both public catastrophes and the private, often invisible, costs of social upheaval.