Poetry ( Udita Ma'am )

Critical Analysis Of Night Of The Scorpion

Nissim Ezekiel's “Night of the Scorpion” presents a scene out of rural Indian life as it shows how superstition modifies the reaction of people towards every situation. Following the line of vision of a child, the going shows the mother suffering after a scorpion has stung her even as the neighbours relate it to issues like evil sin and atonement. The poem ends with the unique way in which only a mother can respond to such a dangerous situation.

The speaker remembers the fateful night in his childhood:
“I remember the night my mother
  Was stung by a scorpion.”

It had been raining for ten hours, the scorpion had come from outside, had crawled under a sack of rice and then had stung the mother with his “diabolic tail” before going outdoors once again. The image is of a typical house in a village where people often sleep on floor, in rooms stacked with sacks of grain. Incidents of being troubled by insects or rodents are quite common in Indian villages.

The neighbouring farmers came to the house, they began to pray so that god would paralyse the scorpion:  
“ The peasants came like swarms of flies and buzz the name   hundred times to paralyse the evil one.”

The simile of swarm of flies indicates both the crowd of farmers and the buzzing sounds produced by their prayers. The farmers were superstitious, they could not locate the scorpion. They believe that if the scorpion move, the poison would also flow in the mother’s blood. They said that her suffering would atone for her sins and she would be happy in her next birth. The suffering would purify her body of all desire but they did not do anything to reduce her pain.
Superstitions had made the villagers passive. Their passive attitude could be as dangerous as the scorpions poison. This situation is suggested by the image where the speaker feels that the shadows of the villagers look like  ‘giant scorpion shadows’ on the walls. Their passive attitudes was in contrast with the suffering of the mother. It was an irony that the farmers did not understand the importance of giving medical care to the mother but they sat with “ peace of understanding on each face”.

On the other hand:
“ my mother twisted through and through
Groaning on a mat”

The speakers father reacted differently from the farmers. He was a sceptic, he did not believe in superstitions, he thought in a logical manner. He tried every possible medicine, as the last resort, he burnt the bitten toe to cauterise the affected area. At the same time, the holy man went on reciting prayers to counter the poison. Finally, after 20 hours the poison lost its effect. When mother became conscious she did not say anything about her pain and fear.

She only thanked God:
“ My mother only said
Thank God the scorpion picked on me and spared my children "

It is possible only for a mother to overlook her suffering and think about the safety of her children.
The poem Night of The Scorpion brings alive the atmosphere of rural India in the form of expressive images. The narration uses clear and simple diction. The use of run’ on lines contributes to the flow of the poem. Several similes such as the simile in which farmers are compared to swarms of flies, appeal to the visual and aural sensibilities. Personification can be seen in the case of the scorpion and in phrases like   “flame feeding on my mother” . There is the use of the literary device anaphora as in several places consecutive lines begin with the same word or phrase. Such repetition of words and phrases help the poet to emphasize some particular ideas and bring on the musical quality to the poem. However, the poem become most remarkable because of the presentation of the mothers selfless reaction to a near’ death experience.

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CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF OUR CASUARINA TREE

Toru Dutt’s autobiographical ‘Our Casuarina Tree’ expresses her nostalgia for the happy childhood spent at her native place. The tree represents the memory of her dead siblings and the happy days she spent with them. The poet wants this memory to live forever in her emotionally charged poetry. The poem has a melancholic tone. The poem also shows Toru Dutt’s  precocity (talent at a young age) in creating music and pictures with words.

The poet remembers the image of the ‘Casuarina tree’ in her native place. In her mind the tree is like a ‘Giant’ wearing the ‘scarf’ of a creeper. The creeper as huge as a python embraced the trunk, but the tree lived proudly with it. Birds and Bees spent the day hovering about the branches. All the branches had crimson flowers. The sweet song of the nightingale came out from the tree at night. Every morning the poet could see the tree on opening the window. She remembers the tree with a Baboon at the top and its children playing on the lower branches, the cows walking lazily to the pastures and the water lilies in the pond next to the tree.

“And in the shadow on the broad tank cast
By that hoar tree, so beautiful and vast,
The water lilies spring, like snow enmassed ”
With one lively image coming after another the poet presents her memories. The consonance of the sound /s/ enhances the musical quality.

The poet loves the Casuarina Tree not for it’s beauty but for symbolising the time she had spent with her loved ones. She misses her childhood standing on the beaches in France or Italy on moonlit nights. She hears the waves crashing on the pebbles on the beach to her melancholic heart this sound is like a ‘dirge like murmur’. She feels as if the sound of the waves carries the sound of the soughing of the leaves of the Casuarina Tree, it is as if the tree back home also weeps at her sorrow. The poet personifies the tree as a partner in her sorrow:

“It is the tree lament, an eerie speech,
That haply to the unknown land may reach
Unknown, yet well-known to the eye of faith”

People do not know anything of the world of the dead, yet many believe that the loved ones although dead are somewhere close by. The leaves of the tree still sough to lament the death of her siblings and this sorrow may reach her dear siblings.

In the poet’s imagination, the sound of the waves always brings the picture of the casuarina tree as a symbol of her childhood. The tree represents her happiest memories. She wants that these memories should become immortal in her poem. She refers to William Wordsworth’s poem on four old yew trees in a place called Borrowdale. She wishes that just like those yew trees her Casuarina tree may also become deathless and it may earn a permanent place in literature. In that way her memories will go beyond the fear of time and death. She wishes that

“ May thou be numbered when my days are done
With deathless tree-like this on Borrowdale.”

Her poetry might be weak but her love for the tree and the happy memories represented by the tree might create a permanent place for the poem in the mind of the readers. The readers may fall in love with the poem as well.

“ May love defend thee, from oblivions' curse.”

Our Casuarina tree travels across memories and present reality. The beginning and the concluding parts display a stark contrast in tone. The colourful description of the tree indicates the happy past. The sadness of missing those happy days is presented through the image of the beaches on moonlit nights in an unknown land with the sea gushing sadly. The images are concrete. Miltonic inversion is often seen as the verb goes to the and of the sentence to keep to the rhythm. For example the poem opens as

“ like a huge python…
…
A creeper climbs, in whose embraced bound
No others tree could live.”

The poem uses metaphors effectively, the Casuarina tree compared to a giant, is itself a metaphor for the poets memories of her past. Personification has been used in several places such as personifying the tree as a partner in the poet’s sorrow. The poem reflects her yearning for the days and the people gone by.

In the Zoo

A.K. Ramanujam’s poem ‘ in the zoo’ is a delicate mix of observation, analysis and nostalgia. The poet watches scavenger birds in the zoo and this experience brings on his comments about urban life and then the memories of his own childhood. Diverse images and sounds come together as beautifully as a patchwork quilt.

The poet is in a zoo where he comes across an enclosure of scavenger birds. Instantly he can find similarities between these birds and people living in the big cities.

The birds are
“fit emblems
For a city like Calcutta and Madura,
Crammed to the top of its gates
With whelping people and yapping dogs.

These scavenger birds eat the dead bodies of other organisms. In big cities people are so competitive that they survive by snatching away the chance of other people. The cage of the birds is over-crowded. Big cities are also over-populated, with people pushing each other to go ahead. The birds keep on screeching, urban people also are never peaceful or satisfied. They keep on complaining and criticising. The poet further highlights the degraded mentality of urban people by pointing out that just like dogs are ready to bite, many persons are always ready to enter into petty quarrels.

These scavenger birds are more as adjutant storks. The word adjutant is related to the personality of military men. These birds have been given the name adjutant storks because they have long legs and when they stand quietly they look very dignified. So they suggest an aura of “ long-legged dignity. However, these birds stand quietly only when they are about to catch a prey. Their dignity is artificial and the poet calls it “ slightly vulgar”. These birds reminds the poet that there are many people who appear to be cultured and dignified but their thoughts are very vulgar and selfish.

Watching the storks in the zoo the poet notices that those birds come in three shades. The faded black colour of some birds reminds the poet of the dull black colour of the coats of madras lawyers. Some birds are grey, the remaining one's are dirty white in colour. This white shade reminds the poet that when his grandmother used to make curd and the curd become stale, the white creamy surface of the curd began to look yellowish and got infested with maggots. Then the poet also notices that these birds are quite heavy when they begin to fly they have to flap their wings loudly for a number of times that struggle in their take off brings on a vivid image from the childhood memories. The poet remembers that in his childhood his father had big umbrellas but the spokes of the umbrella were either broken by the poet and his brothers or by the winds. When father had to open the umbrella. The umbrella also made a loud flapping sound and took some time.

The poet watches that ones those birds begin to fly they do not move their wings and keeping the wings open they float across the sky in circles. The poet feels that these huge birds have long legs like a spider and because of their bulky body, the poet called these birds “aunty of a bird”. Looking at the birds flying in circles the poet appears to miss his own childhood. The flight of the birds in ‘ slow sleepy perfect circles’ reminds the poet of the story of magic carpet. He remembers that his father had told him the story when he was very young. It had been a rainy day, his mother had been ill, the kitchen roof had been leaking and the kitchen floor was full of water. The poet and his brothers wanted to jump around in the watery kitchen and father had a hard time in cleaning the kitchen and diverting their minds. The concluding line presents a beautiful example of transferred epithet:
“ And he had to mock
The kitchen off our puttering feet”

The word puttering indicates the sound of the tiny rain drops but the poet uses this adjective along with the word feet. This creates the effect that the children were innocent enough to enjoy the beauty of rain even under a leaking roof.

The poem “ in the zoo” is a remarkable example of modernist poetry in Indian English literature. The lines are irregular in length. These lines follow a kind of stream-of-consciousness technique as the poet shifts between what he watches and what he remembers from different point of time. Many similes have been used particularly when the poet talks about his childhood memories. The images as well as the sounds make the poem an authentic and appealing experience to the readers. This poem is as much a glimpse into human character as it is a lovable example of childhood memory.

THE PROFESSOR CONDOLES

Keki N Daruwala’s poem The Professor condoles is a dramatic monologue which reflects an unusual attempt to handle a death in an accident the speaker is a Professor who in an effort to take his student away from immediate sorrow diverts threw students focus by discussing the nature of tragedy. The mind requires adequate time, space and distance to interpret any situation including the death of someone. In this context Daruwala comments

“I try and involve myself with attitudes to things rather than the incident itself”

A student’s eleven years old brother is run over and killed by a car. The student comes to the professor looking for support. The professor thinks that the students mind must be diverted From the thought of the accident, so he picks the word ‘Tragedy’ and says that the student must not call the accident a tragedy.

The student must have been angry at the driver of the car to take him away from anger. The professor says that tragedies are composed by writers but the accident was just a “depravity of circumstances”, a random planned thing.Expressing his own reaction to accident the professor shows the nauseating effect of accident through a graphic image.

However, tragedy is different it is work of literature. It does not repel the audience. On one hand the audience is able to identify with the characters but on the other hand the audience must feel a little removed from the characters to understand the action. A tragedy happens because of the hubris (pride) hamartia (tragic flaw) of the tragic hero. But in an accident there is no planning, no sin, no flaw and no guilt. So, all anger and desire for retaliation (revenge) is just pointless.

The professor describes the nature of tragedy in literature. Modern tragedy is not as grand and powerful as the classical or Shakespearean tragedy. In the past tragedy is used to be a strong expression of the impact of evil. The atmosphere is kept serious and gloomy as night. the night sky is like a canopy. Similarly the characters in a tragedy used to be like stars or mirrors against the dark background. Evil used to burn brightly like a magnesium flame and this flame of evil was reflected in all the characters. Destiny as well as sins of the past brought about the downfall of the hero but after that goodness prevailed over evil, just as sunrise indicates the end of the dark night. The professor presents the image of how against the orange sky at sunrise the trees look like grey strokes.

Accident does not spring from sin or evil, so there is no question of getting something good after the suffering. Suffering cannot bring the dead boy back. Suffering would be totally pointless like digging a canal between a desert and a dry river or trying to milk the odours of an old cow. Moreover no one else can share the student’s sorrow. Accidents are random like a “depraved enzymes in the belly of chance.”  If a person wants to find out why accidents happen the sorrow and the pain will just eat him up. Accidents are as unjustified and random as the disease of cancer.

The modern world is absurd and meaningless. Many things happen without justification. In such a world accidents are normal even though there is no reason behind them. The student has finally become calm. Now the professor agrees that the accident also is a tragedy but he repeats that the only way it handles the sorrow is to accept it. There is no other way out.

The professor condoles offers an interesting alternative to the usual reaction to death and sorrow. When someone faces the death of near and dear ones. Sympathy alone cannot helps the person. The person must be offered a certain objectivity in facing sorrow and the professor does that in his own way. The images are vivid and hard hitting. The tone is conversational. The diction has a scholarly touch. There are several references to literary terms and concept. The poet takes up a common situation and it presents quite an effective way to deal with that situation.

Critical Analysis Of The Whorehouse In The Calcutta Street

Jayant Mahapatra’s poem The Whorehouse in Calcutta Street brings out the trauma of women who work as prostitutes. Brothels are present everywhere even in civilised cities like Calcutta. Calcutta symbolizes the male dominated society. Such a society is full of hypocrisy. It talks of culture worships women but in reality views every women as a sexual commodity. Many poor women are forced to sell their body. This poem sketches images one after another to bring out the broken existence of prostitutes. The poem is written in the form of dramatic monologue.

The speaker invites the man visiting the brothle to go inside
“ walk right in. it is yours.”

The whorehouse on the lighted street personifies the prostitutes. These women stand at the door steps and smile mechanically to attract clients. Men thinks that these women are just objects men can use them in any way by paying money. Men often have fantasies about women. The visitor has been limited to posters and signboards. The brothel can provide women from different backgrounds to satisfy his curiosity. These women are different from each other and the only thing common is that they have become the victims of prostitution. Becoming victims is the point ‘where pasts join, and where they part.’

The man goes inside brothel. The courtyard appears to be clean and sacred but it is a hollow cover up from the dirty business of prostitution the phrase sacred hollow courtyard is an example of oxymoron. Men hatch the conspiracy of prostitution in which women have to sell their body. The visitor is a part of this conspiracy just because he is a man. The speaker ridicules him
“ Are you ashamed to believe you are in this?”

The man should dare to understand the psychological suffering of these women. The life of these women are like a dark night when there is no moonlight. Their dreams of a normal life are like secret moonlight hidden in the darkness of their life. These dreams of home and children are like “shooting stars”, they flash for a moment but go away in the next moment.
Many prostitutes dream about giving birth to children but their profession doesn’t allow them to become mothers. Their children are “ dream children” who exist only in their subconscious. Children are like those jewels which they cannot wear openly, some women have undergone abortions, the aborted babies have become ‘discarded things’. The prostitutes have the maternal instincts in their blood but the dream of becoming mothers is like a “rainbow”. It can never become a part of their reality.

The prostitutes do not express their feeling in front of their clients. The “dumblight” symbolizes their silence. The man is with a prostitute but his inner self refuses to enjoy the pleasure of the body. The inner self is like a “disobeying toy”. It criticises the man for participating in the dirty business of exploiting the body of a woman. The sense of guilt and dignity symbolizes as “the statue of the man within”, questions the man. The man understands that he can not pull down the walls between himself and the prostitute. He can not understand her for him she is just a body yet she has captured his imagination ‘like a girl holding on to your wide wilderness his half woken mind comes back to the reality when the woman asks him to let her go.  Her words push him out of the forbidden world in which women are just sexual object for the respectable people of his kind or type.

The whorehouse in calculator Street exposes the double standards of the society. On the outside society talks about culture but in the mind of everyman women is just a sexual object. The anger of the poet aims at making the reader sensitive to the suffering of the prostitutes. The time is like that of a conversation and at several places there are questions that mocks at men. There are several run-on lines. Metaphors are often connected for example the secret moonlight leads on to the shooting stars and the rainbow. The images are beautiful, personification can be seen in the phrases “House smiling wryly” and the “dumblight”, finally, it can be said that poem with its images and questions keep on haunting the reader.

Critical Analysis Of The Dance Of The Enunchs.

The dance of the eunuchs highlights the isolation and suffering in the life of Eunuchs. Kamala Das is known for her honest exploration of sexual its and the despair of sexual minorities in the society. She presents the dance of the Eunuchs which is the common scene in the Towns and Villages of India. Using the colours and sounds associated with such a scene. She brings out an honest presentation of the sorrow that is personified by the Eunuchs. There is a confessional element to the poetry which is related to the poets own melancholy in relation to sexuality.
The poem describes a hot afternoon in the neighbourhood under a gulmohar tree full of red orange flowers a group of Eunuchs had come to dance, as they were dancing their cymbals and anklets were making loud melodious sound. As they danced they went round and round, their skirts spread out going round as they danced. Their long black hair also appeared to move round and round. Their eyes looked dark black because of the Kajal that they had applied. They went on dancing and their feet began to bleed. They had green tattoos on their cheeks and fragrant jasmine in their hair. Some of them were quite beautiful. There was a contrast between how they appeared and how they were from inside. Their voices were harsh and they were singing sad songs about death of lovers and children not allowed to be born. These sad songs represented that it was the Destiny of Eunuchs to have an incomplete life without love family and children. Some of them were beating the drums others were beating their ‘sorry breasts’. This phrase indicates that although they were dressed like women they could not have the life of women. Their life was full of emptiness and unhappiness. Since they were unhappy. Their dance and song looked very mechanical. As they danced they appeared to be superficially happy but hollow and mechanical from inside. Their dance was a “vacant ecstasy”. Their dance had all the colour and music but was not something delightful.

The Eunuchs have a very despairing life on one hand and god keeps them incomplete, on the other hand the society doesn’t accept them. They do not get family, friends, lovers or children. Although they are alive society does not acknowledge them. They appear to hang between life and death. The poet presents a very hard hitting and disturbing image.
“...... they

The poet feels that the Eunuchs have an empty barren life so she says that there is a ‘draught’ in the life of Eunuchs. These people can not think of getting love and respect or making any progress. In this way their life has a kind of ‘ rottenness’. As the Eunuchs were dancing people were standing around them watching their dance. Their dance did not come out of real happiness. It was only a part of their routine. Their movements in the dance were similar to convulsions of a patient who throws his hands and legs because of pain. For the Eunuchs life was a never ending pain.  The poem ends with an image of rain. If the land is dry few drops of rain cannot make the land moist. Such scanty rainfall enhances the smell of dust and sewage. Such rain indicates that a handful of money or food and shelter cannot wash away the emptiness and sorrow in the life of the Eunuchs. The poem doesn’t end on the note of hope the last line have a visceral quality.
“The sky crackled them

The poem ‘The Dance of the Eunuchs’ was published in the collection summer in the Calcutta(1965). This poem brings alive the realities of the life of Eunuchs. Eunuchs are completely isolated from the society, people can watch them only when they come to dance. People are generally afraid of Eunuchs and do not include them in the mainstream society. In this way Eunuchs are let down by God as well as human beings. The poet uses a lot of bold flashes of colour and sound as it presents the dance and song of Eunuchs. There are examples of repetition and run on lines. The poem has a haunting quality brought by the graphic and appealing images.