Hypocrisy
Hypocrisy is one of the major themes of the novel. Raju is a hypocritical character from the very beginning of his life. As a tour guide, he misinforms the tourists at will as if he has no sense of right or wrong. His words turn normal old buildings into ancient works of architecture and downgrade amazing feats of history. He makes stories out of thin air as he pleases while a tour guide. He helps Rosie only for his own interest and in the end poses as a swami as yet another example of his charlatan nature. According to the Hindu principle of karma, however, Raju eventually reaps the punishments due. He loses his power and money and is forced into a position where he has to fast and nearly die. He seems to learn that hypocrisy is morally corroding and will eventually catch up with a person.
Dishonesty
The protagonist, Raju, has always been a dishonest character. As a child, he eats the green peppermints from his father’s shop even though he was strictly forbidden to. Growing up, he becomes a tour guide who misinforms and misguides his tourists to get more money out of them. He misleads Rosie into falling in love with him by telling her all the things she wanted to hear, all for his own interest in getting her into bed. He gets a two-year prison sentence for forgery. Coming out of prison, he poses as a sage at a ruined shrine far away from the locality. Even as he fasts, he eats a stack of food hidden away in an aluminum pot on the very first day. Dishonesty is embedded in Raju's very marrow, and it is not until the end of the novel that he has to come to terms with it.
Materialism
Raju is a highly materialistic character, as he only hankers after money and does not at all value any emotion or feeling. He tricks people to extract money out of them and that is all that matters to him. He lacks all sense of morality or religion and that permits him to solely care about worldly things without hesitation. For him, money means more than people and he feels like a failure if he is not earning the maximum amount of it. Finally his actions lead him to a place where money is no longer attainable, and he has to orient himself to this new reality. Narayan suggests that money does not, after all, bring happiness and that a person should be careful about how much they value it over other things.
Transformation
When Raju finishes telling his life story to Velan, Raju expects him to snap, but as a blind follower Velan takes it in stride and as merely Raju's past. The fact that Raju guesses that Velan would stop believing in him and yet pours his heart out to him shows some sort of growth in his character. At the very end, out of extreme hunger Raju starts to fast sincerely and avoid all thoughts regarding food and bodily suffering. This helps him concentrate and that ends his hunger.
When the doctors and the government go all out to save him, Raju goes out to perform his daily routine of climbing down the steps to the river with the help of two men on both sides. He stands in the knee deep water and faces the mountain muttering his prayer while Velan and the other man continues to hold him and he says, “Velan, it’s raining in the hills. I can feel it coming up under my feet, up my legs,“ and he sags down. Here the water can mean purity and rain may literally be on its way but there is no way to know for sure as the author ends it just like that. Regardless of what exactly happens, Narayan suggests that even the most trickster of men can be redeemed.
Rosie is another character in the novel who goes through a transformation. Her change of name marks her transformation. Named Rosie, she is a wife longing for a husband’s love and attention, a passionate dancer waiting on her husband’s approval. Later, though, she becomes a renowned dancer named Nalini, a mature independent woman who chooses to live alone peacefully.
Past and Present
The Guide shows the intersection of past and present in numerous ways. First, there is the coming of the railroad and the railway station, which changes jobs, communication, travel, and more. Second, Rosie is a dancer in the classical manner but it is the conditions of modernity that allow her fame to spread as it does. Her dance, even though it is classical in theme, is also juxtaposed against Marco's focus on "dead and decaying things." Rosie's sexuality and independence are fully of the modern moment while Marco's paternalism is of the past. As critic John Thieme writes, Marco is "resistant to any suggestion that the classical and the contemporary may be related" even when he sees the dancing motif on the cave walls. Third, there is a confluence of past and present when the ancient temple is unearthed by the receding waters in the present-day drought, which serves "as a metonym for the notion of an archeologically layered India, albeit one in which the different strata were coming to exist contiguously rather than in a temporal sequence, since an ancient infrastructure was now present on the surface."
Karma
Though he's not violent or "evil," Raju is without a doubt an amoral, obnoxious, and self-interested character. He's a hypocrite and a liar, a charlatan and a greedy, materialistic person. He uses other people to make himself feel good and to make him money. He ignores his obligations, his family, and his community to pursue what he wants. However, Narayan doesn't allow Raju to continue on like this forever. He shows how Raju's greed leads him to lose Rosie, his money, and his influence and land in jail. And more than that, he has Raju's gig as a holy man result in a real act of redemption and transformation. Karma catches up with all of us eventually, Narayan suggests.
Feminism
Narayan is certainly not a "feminist" writer but his character Rosie is a notable one in terms of what contemporary feminists were advocating for. Rosie is an educated woman who makes her own choices. First, she chooses a conventional path of getting married, but she does this so she can free herself from caste limitations. She does her best to retain her selfhood in a miserable, patriarchal marriage, and though she is at her lowest point when she allows Raju to manipulate her into a sexual relationship that she is unsure is the right thing, she eventually lets this become a springboard to attaining her great dream of becoming a dancer. And in the end, of course, she takes care of herself by getting rid of Raju and all other baggage and living her life as she sees fit. She is not a perfect feminine heroine, but she is a remarkably modern woman.
