Allied to this shift is the shift in the ideological perspective. Instead of individual encounters being concerned primarily with individuals, now the encounters explore also the constraints imposed on individuals in a more general sense. The stories start exploring "typical" situations. "A 'typical' or 'representative' character incarnates historical forces without thereby ceasing to be richly individualised." The individual's private world is no longer the main concern of the writer, but instead the social domain within which the individual has his being, is. For example, the story "A chip of glass ruby" starts off with:

When the duplicating machine was brought into the house, Bamjee said, "Isn't is enough that you've got the Indians' troubles on your back?" Mrs Bamje said, with a smile that showed the gap of a missing tooth but was confident all the same, "What's the difference, Yusuf?—we've all got the same...