Symbol: Kenchamma the Goddess
In the Kanthapura village, the Kenchamma goddess is the symbol of divine and spiritual power. The goddess is believed to have killed all the demons that troubled the people. The villagers think that the Kenchamma goddess is sent from heaven to look after the spiritual wellbeing of the people. The narrator writes, “Kenchamma is our goddess. Great and bounteous is she. She killed demon ages, ages ago, a demon that had come to ask our young sons as food and young women as wives. Kenchamma came from the heavens—it was the sage Tripura who had made penances to bring her down" (2).
Symbol: The Demon
The narrator tends to symbolize the dark forces that are making the people suffer via the demon. For instance, rain fails to come due to the demon’s influence on people. However, the goddess is more powerful than the demon. When people confess their wrongdoings to the goddess, she forgives them and cries. When she cries, it rains and all people become happy. The demon is said to be defeated by the goddess who wants the sons and young women of the land to be secure and serve their purpose, and the demon wants to eat the young sons and make young women his wives but this does not happen because the goddess protects her people.
Symbol: Khadi
When Moorthy is converted to Gandhism, "he threw out his foreign clothes and his foreign books into the fire" (34). The clothes are a symbol of British rule, and, by contrast, khadi is a symbol of Indian self-reliance.
Symbol: The Skeffington Gate
The Skeffington Gate is a powerful symbol of the division of power between British and Indian, of foreign rule and self-rule. It is a physical object that separates and respects the larger, intangible modes of separation. An example of its power in the text is when the Godaveri coolies walked inside it and the maistri "banged the gate behind him and they all walked up" (46)—they ceased to have any independence.
Symbol: Crossing the Threshold
Moorthy does what no one else in Kanthapura had dared to do—cross the threshold of a Pariah house. When he does so, "the room seems to shake and all the gods and all the manes of heaven seem to cry out against him" (71). This is because Moorthy isn't just walking into a home he's never been to before, or a home of someone from a lower class. He is trespassing one of the most sacred boundaries of Indian society, showing that he has a different conception of the value of human life.
