DWAIPAYAN MITRA

Critical Appreciation of Shelley’s Ozymandias

2020-05-05T10:12:00.002-07:00

“Ozymandias” by P.B. Shelley is a profound commentary on the futility of monarchical power. This sonnet buttresses Shelley’s lifelong tirade against the dictatorial rule and shows us the onslaughts of time. As an ‘unacknowledged legislator of the world’, Shelley thinks it necessary to lay bare the fate of tyrant rulers who, in spite of their desperate attempts to immortalize their names, are reduced to nothingness by the ravages of time. Such has been the case in his “Ozymandias”. Actually, Ozymandias is the Greek name for Ramses II, the pharaoh of Egypt with whom Moses fought during the Exodus. For Shelley Ozymandias turns out to be a synecdoche for arrogant rulers.

Here the poet narrates a tale told to him by a traveller who has been from an ‘antique land.’ The phrase ‘antique land’ probably refers to Egypt. The first line contains an element of ambiguity as it suggests that the poet might have come across a traveller by tavelling through time. The entire poem is the narration of the tale that the unknown traveller told. He told the poet that he had seen a huge dilapidated statue standing in the desert. The statue was mostly ruined. What remained were a trunkless legs and a broken face. The broken face was half sunk in the ground. The face, though broken, reflected that person’s pride and anger. The expression ‘sneer of cold command’ reveals the autocratic nature of the Pharaoh. The fact that the sculptor well represented in art the personality of the Pharaoh corroborates that the said person had a vainglorious temperament and contemptuous of common people. The statue continues to survive though both the artist who made (‘mocked’) it and the person whose passions it indicates, are gone. The verb ‘mock’ has been used by Shelley to create a punning effect as it means both imitate and satirize. An undercurrent of irony pervades the line as the poet wants to hint at the fact that the statue, being damaged, remains as a satirical representation of Ozymandias.

On the pedestal on which the broken statue stands are inscribed the following words:

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Such a braggadocio speaks volumes for Ozymandias’s desire for attaining permanent glory. The last three lines, which contain the moral of the sonnet, are expressive of the fate of such tyrant rulers in the course of time:

“Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Time does not spare anyone; however powerful they may be. Mighty empires fall and great civilisations are reduced to dust by the ravages of time. The sand-image in the last line has been utilised by the poet to suggest death’s final triumph. Harold Bloom opines, ‘This very same sand, commonly used to measure time, has curiously lost that ability in a poem that is ultimately timeless.’ Thus, in this poem Shelley pronounces his message by holding on to one central image of a broken statue.

Role of Manolin in The Old Man and the Sea

2020-05-04T09:26:00.002-07:00

In ‘Of Grammatology’ Jaques Derrida writes that a supplement is not something extra that is added to something complete in itself. According to him, a supplement is not required to something that is complete in itself. Hence, a supplement exposes the ‘originary lack’. In terms of binary structure, the second exists so as to fill in the ‘originary lack’ of the first. In The Old Man and the Sea, the role of Manolin can be analysed from this point of view. The novella circles around the old man who stands on the edge of the precipice. However, the boy Manolin is a functional character who is required technically because it is through him that we come to know about the old man’s experiences. He is also the source of hope for Santiago. The name ‘Manolin’ is the fond diminutive of Manuel which is the name of the Messiah. He is a never-failing companion to Santiago providing him with hope and confidence. When the old man is cast down, the boy boosts his spirit. When he is zonked, the boy refreshes his mind with beer and hot coffee. Thus, Manolin exists to fill the void in Santiago’s character. He always takes special care of him: “When the old man sleeps in the chair he overs him with a blanket, goes out and comes back with supper. When the old man refuses to eat, he cajoles him into eating. He has brought black beans and rice, fried bananas, and some stew and two beer bottles from the Terrace.”

Manolin is a faithful apprentice. Santiago taught him the skill of fishing when he was about five years old. He is an affectionate soul. Though he is forced by his parents to leave Santiago because of his unluckiness, the warmth of love never cools down:

It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the faff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. (2000:103)

Their mutual love rises above the barriers of age and blood that speaks volumes for their unfeigned hearts.

Manolin is the only connection by which Santiago communicates with the mundane world. Santiago gets the information about the real world through the boy. P.G. Rama Rao observes, “The boy is not only a source of energy to the old man but his connection with the world- in short, his world. Hence, if he has to prove something it is to the boy (2012:103)”. Their conversation about the imaginary pot of yellow rice and fish is indicative of their closeness. They go through this fiction every day. This is a gesture to put at bay the harsh encroachment of reality.

The old man tries to initiate him in this field through various methods. He tries to create him in his image. From the age of five when Manolin joined Santiago, the latter tried to impart his philosophy. Like a proper ‘Guru’ Santiago never dons the mantle of a preacher. He lets Manolin acquire the necessary attributes of a fisherman naturally without any intervention from him. When Manolin requests to Santiago whether he can procure some sardines for him, Santiago demurs and replies, “No, Go and play baseball. I can still row and Rogelio will throw the net.” Baseball is one of the ways of initiating Manolin into the ‘experienced’ world. Though this game he will learn manliness, determination and endurance. This shows that Santiago’s philosophy is not cliché; it is profound. It is not nomothetic but idiographic. Life at the sea is no pastoral idyll; it is a space hedged in with numerous adversities. Therefore, a properly-built mind is a necessary prerequisite to learn the craft of a fisherman. This education cannot be transferred overnight but requires years to learn. In the end Santiago bequeaths his spear with which he killed Marlin to the boy. This is a symbolic transference of the old tradition to the new. The spear is an emblem of legacy. Readers can decipher that after Santiago’s death Manolin will step into the shoes of his ‘Guru’ and carry on the endless struggle between man and nature, a process that is endless.

While playing the tug-of-war with Marlin, Santiago thinks of Manolin again and again. He exclaimed, “I wish I had the boy.” On a superficial plane, this desire can be analysed as a cry for help, a desire for human support. But probed deeply, it might reveal the other side of the truth. Santiago is no ordinary fisherman. As a ‘Guru’ he wants that Manolin should acquire the first-hand knowledge about the real world. The encounter with the giant Marlin could have been an excellent opportunity for the boy to learn the basics of the fight: courage, commitment, sangfroid and discipline. The teacher-taught relationship could have reached its acme of culmination, an ideal moment of fruition.

The old man depends upon Manolin in another respect as well. The expression ‘I wished, I had the boy with me’ is a kind of magical incantation which, when uttered, boosts up the confidence of Santiago. He feels the stir of new vitality as though some of the strength of youth was racing in his veins and sustaining him though the moments of crisis. Like the dream of lions, the image of Manolin is a foundation of courage. When the old man has to feed himself on raw fish to keep body and soul together and to replenish his fund of energy and strength to cope with the ordeal that he has deliberately brought upon himself, he thinks of the boy.

While unfolding the character of Manolin Hemingway seems to have followed the method of the behavioral psychology. Behaviorism as a branch of philosophy rejects introspective method and tries to interpret behavior by measuring observable behaviors. This branch of philosophy originated in the U.S.A. in the early twentieth century by John Bradus Watson. Hemingway, influenced by this model, presents Manolin’s actions rather than examining his thoughts. His actions are indicative of his unconditional love for Santiago. The narrator does not depict Manolin’s sadness but delineate his actions that corroborate his unbounded affection for Santiago.

Works Cited:

Ghosh, Tapan Kumar (ed). The Old Man and the Sea. Kolkata: G.J. Book Society, 2000.

Rao, P.G. Rama. The Old Man and the Sea. New Delhi: Atlantic, 2012.

Singh, R.N. The Old Man and the Sea. New Delhi: Atlantic, 1999.

Deconstruction of Patriarchal Myth in Githa Hariharan's The Thousand Faces of Night

2020-04-20T08:19:00.000-07:00

The Thousand Faces of Night is a scathing criticism of the way the women are compelled to perform the subordinated roles as decreed by the patriarchy. Through the help of various myths all of which descended from patriarchal tradition the male world try to subjugate the women and instil into them a false consciousness. Devi, the protagonist of the novel, sees through the falsity of mythical stories and the so-called grand-narratives of patriarchy. Like Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, the various accounts of trials and survivals given by the women characters in the novel ranging from the earlier narration by the grandmother to the misery of Mayamma open up a discursive space for women to initiate a feminine discourse.

From the beginning of the novel we see how Devi is denied the choice of her own and is subjected to go through the demands of man-made order. Devi ends her desire for Dan, a person with whom she forged bonds of friendship while studying in America as it does fit in with her tradition. She comes back to India to find herself hedged in with the traditional roles assigned for the women. Her mother arranges a swayamvara for her that shows how marriage is the posited as the raison d'être in a traditional Indian family. We are reminded of Judith Butler’s notion of gender construction of the female in terms of performative acts which inscribe neutral body with social constructions.

According to traditional view, Gandhari is an exemplum of a sacrificing wife who, seeing the plight of her husband, blindfolded herself. However, for Devi’s grandmother Gandhari’s act is not an act of sacrifice but an act of protest. Gandhari married her husband without having seen him and after marriage found him to be blind. She tied up her eyes out of intense anger. Equally interesting is the myth of Amba, ‘the princess who shed her womanhood through her dreams of revenge and become a man’ (35). The grandmother tells about the myth of Amba in connection with the misery of Uma who could not channelize her ill treatment into an act of protest. This filled Devi with great courage as she says:

Close to death, she made me a gift of the ultimate fantasy: a woman avenger who could earn manhood through her penance. (40)

That motherhood is not simply about giving birth to and feeding the child but also about performing rigorous practices continually is shown by the story of Ganga. While walking alone near the Ganga, king Shantanu came across a beautiful damsel and fell in love with her. She reciprocated his proposal with the condition that he would not stop her from doing whatever she wanted. The king agreed only to find her throwing her new born babies into the waters of the Ganga year after year. When Shantanu, unable to tolerate this, urged Ganga to stop when she was about to throw her eighth child into the water, she said, ‘Then take him and be father and mother to him. I shall not free him from life (88).’She did all this to protect her sons from a curse. Through this myth the grandmother teaches Devi that ‘to be a mother at all, you have to earn the title, just as you have to renew your wifely vows every day (89).’

Parvatiamma, the mother of Mahesh, stands as an ardent feminist who does not buckle under the onslaughts of patriarchy but rejects them to uphold a space of enunciation. Devi learns about her from the maid-servant Mayamma. Parvati, as Mayamma tells Devi, relinquished her motherhood and embraced spirituality as means of way-out. According to the traditional myth Parvati is the helpmate of Shiva and she helped Shiva attain the status of yogi by taking charge of the household activities. ‘But’, observes Sarita Prabhakar, ‘in the novel Parvati turns the story upside down as she gives up the life of a householder (57).’

That the novel is not only about the narration of variegated patriarchal myths but also about survivals from those myths through resilience is shown clearly towards the end of the novel. We find the women in The Thousand Faces of Night tearing apart the network of myths to eke out a space for themselves. Mayamma no longer faces the threat of a drunken husband or a tyrannical mother-in-law. Devi escapes her husband’s indifference and her own nonchalance into her mother’s world of music. Sita also asserts herself by renewing her contact with the world of music that offers her a creative individuality. The music of the veena signals the end of chaos in the mind and a beginning of a life where women will have a room of their own.

Spivak in her essay ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ talks about the ventriloquisation of women’s voices by the British colonizers and the Indian leaders. According to Spivak, this act of ventriloquisation suppresses the real voices of women which lie hidden. Hariharan in her novel The Thousand Faces of Night tries to retrieve the lost voices of women by showing how they stand opposite to the traditional modes of representation and the novel becomes a gynocentric version of the Mahabharata. Through reworking of old myths, reshaping personal dilemmas and offering new vistas for women Hariharan joins the bandwagon of modern Indian women novelists in English. Thus Jon Mee aptly remarks:

In many respects it also marks a coming-of-age of a certain kind of women’s fiction in English in India, one that is written undisguisedly in ‘a woman’s voice’, a condition - of-woman novel. (228)

Diasporic Elements in Naipauls' A House for Mr Biswas

2020-04-20T08:15:00.001-07:00

Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unbearable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted. (173)

Such kind of experience is so rife among the writers of the twentieth century, such as Joyce, Sartre, Camus, Kafka. Two World Wars, decolonisation, cold war have made this century a century of exile. Home has become an ever-elusive signified for this estranged generation. The encyclopaedic the experience, the intense the concept of home has become. This experience is more enriched by the advent of postcolonial thinkers who use their memory of dispersion to de-territorialize the history of slavery and re-territorialize an identity devoid of the trauma of exploitation and indenture.

Displacement shapes the life of Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, known as V. S.Naipaul. He was born in 1932 in the British colony of Trinidad, displaced from Indian indentured labourers brought to work the island’s sugar plantations following the abolition of slavery. Naipaul was an alien in his homeland as his Hindu roots thwarted a total assimilation with the multiracial Trinidadian society. In an antique land away from home his forefathers attempted to maintain their identity. However, they failed completely to do so because the project of colonial hegemony has annihilated the roots and instilled into them a fragmented identity. Naipaul depicts this culture in his The Middle Passage thus:

A peasant-minded, money-minded community, spiritually cut off from its roots, its religion reduced to rites without philosophy set in a materialistic colonial history: a combination of historical accidents and national temperament has turned the Trinidad into a complete colonial, even more philistine than the white.(MP 89)

This aversion to the Trinidadian society prompted him to depart for London though his experience in London was no better either. His aspiring dream to start his publishing career ended in a fiasco. His maladjustment in London was a corollary of his maladjustment in Trinidad. In his autobiographical work Letters Between a Father and Son we come across numerous episodes of his sense of unhomely in London.

This sense of placelessness shapes the framework of Naipaulean fictions creating in his protagonists a sense of non-belongingness. Mr Biswas in A House for Mr Biswas, Indar in A Bend in the River, Santosh in In a Free State and Willie in Half a Life search for an identity in a fluid universe. A House for Mr Biswas is an attempt to retrace the roots in a derelict land and create a universe out of chaotic world. ‘Biswas’s perpetual quest for a house as home, conceptualizes the challenges and anxieties experienced by the diaspora. A house of his own, in this sense, constitutes for him a sense of belonging. This disturbing sense of exile, alienation and uprootedness are the malaise originally experienced by exiles like Naipaul and his father. In an extended sense, the feeling presages the many journeys undertaken by Naipaul himself and his arrivals at no fixed destinations.’(Ormerod)

Mr Biswas’s quest of having his own house starts off with the death of his father which results in a dispossession of his ancestral house. As the security of the house is dispossessed, Mr Biswas is forced to live with strangers sans maternal guidance. The effacement of ancestral lineage haunts Mr Biswas when he goes to school and finds that the world has carried no witness to his birth. When Lal insults him by saying ‘you people don’t even know how to born’ he presents before us the legacy of non- belongingness inherited from his indentured father. Kavita Nandan writes,” Biswas's story, although unique and fictional, represents the post-indenture diasporic subject's efforts to protect himself against destitution. This predicament is reinforced by the fact that he has to struggle against a history of homelessness which was a legacy of his parents.”

His humiliating experiences as a neophyte at Pundit Jairam’s house, depressing encounter at his sister’s house are a mere prologue to his further deprivation at the Tulsi household. His momentary infatuation for Shama forces him to marry her by virtue of which he finds himself ensnared within the colonial structure of Hanuman House; a bastion of totalitarianism which bears strong resemblances with the patriarchal world of Ayemenem House in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things .The power structure of Hanuman House comprising Mrs Tulsi; the matriarch, her right –hand man Seth and Govind the policeman encroaches upon the individuality of Mr Biswas. They always remind him of his non-entity. Unable to sustain the soul crushing system, he bursts into such sporadic rebellious acts as dumping his food on Owad, calling Mrs Tulsi as the ‘old she fox’ etc.

It has been pointed out by critics that Naipaul explores landscapes in order to provide characters with a real home, a true place of belonging. Against the slippery and fluid universe his nomadic characters try to seize upon something to give permanence – Biswas’s desire for a house, Mr Stone’s scheme for the aged, Ganesh’s desire for the goals of education and religion. Through the likes of Biswas, Naipaul tries to resurrect the roots that have been erased in the Caribbean culture channelizing the feelings of exile and loss into an enchanted vision. Bruce king, thus, in West Indian Literature rightly remarks that A House for Mr Biswas “has a reputation as a New World epic celebrating the struggles of an immigrant towards acculturisation and success.”

Thematic Analysis of Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines

2020-04-20T04:54:00.001-07:00

Salman Rushdie in his essay Imaginary Homelands talks about the homogenizing tendencies of the narratives of nation and pitches the notion of imaginary homeland against the all-encompassing grand narratives of a unified national identity. He categorically writes that India, despite those panoptic nationalist views, was ultimately came into existence by the power of imagination. This anti-essentialist view of place overcoming the barriers of state- sponsored demarcating lines pervades Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines which raises serious questions regarding the validity of the concept of nation. Ghosh’s narrative, through various convoluted time-shifts, lays bare the fragility of drawing borderlines to separate one nation from another. It goes without saying that the concept of nation has been instrumental in the emergence of new countries earlier subjugated by colonial rule. It bolstered the vision of a country fragmented and mutilated by the colonial administration. However, the concept of nationalism has also been a pretext for sowing the seeds of separatism, communality and racism in postcolonial countries. Edward Said in his Culture and Imperialism is critical of the notion of post-nationalism which advocates a complete rejection of imperial cultures and spreads the desire of difference. According to Said, this notion is circumscribed by the reiteration of the colonial discourse.

Ghosh in his The Shadow Lines has documented the man- made barriers and prejudices which have given birth to fissiparous identities. The title is evocative of the shadowy qualities of barriers. However, there are instances galore in the text that authenticates the fact that cultural ethos cannot be made divisive in spite of the drawing of these arbitrary lines. Though the novel presents sporadic references of partition in different parts of the narrative, Ghosh’s aim is not to chart the cataclysmic horror that followed partition immediately. His concern is much deeper as he confronts such questions as what constitutes freedom and how dominant nationalist discourse constructs borderlines for political interests. He calls into question the basic rubric of modern nation states that simultaneously advocate freedom and separatism.

Against the official version of the concept of nationalism, Ghosh offers us his idealistic version of internationalism which aims at bridging the gulf between various nations. In that idealised world borders would be non-existent and nationalism an invalid discourse. The mutual relationship between two families from India and England over three generations is suggestive of this view-point. The friendship between Justice Chandrasekhar Dutta-Chaudhuri and Lionel Tresawsen in Calcutta in 19 ^thcentury survives even after the independence of India. In post-independent India the cordial relationship is manifest in the form of love affair between Tridib and Mary. Moreover, when Tridib is killed in an accident, the narrator finds a moment of bliss in the arm of May indicating how relationships transgress the territorial limitations of nations.

The critique of narrow nationalism is seen in Ghosh’s presentation of the grandmother who stands as a staunch supporter of militant nationalism. She harbours the idea that only clear cut tangible boundaries will eliminate tension between communities. She is highly critical of Ila who is enamoured of western world. She is also contemptuous of Tridib who, according to her, plays ducks and drakes with his father’s money and is nothing but a loafer and a wastrel. Thamma also cherishes romantic notions about nationalism. She remembers the incident during her college days when a young reticent young man was arrested and deported to the Cellular Gaol in Andaman Islands. She is fascinated by that incident which shows her desire to be a part of the militant group.

That violence cannot be checked by demarcating lines is seen in the incident of the theft of the hair of the seer Mohammad, called ‘Mui-Mubarak’ in 1963. Though the incident took place in Srinagar it created tumult even in East Pakistan. It created so much an impact that Karachi labelled 31 December as a ‘Black Day.’ The violence in Dhaka in 1964 that took the lives of so many people including Tridib was an offshoot of this communal disharmony. The total episode of the theft of the hair and the resultant violence that engulfed people crossing borderlines indicate that lines are arbitrary and mirage-like. At a single provocation the tremor of violence can cross borders with in a twinkling of an eye.

Ghosh complicates the issue of merely critiquing nationalism in his presentation of Ila. Hers is a story of failed cosmopolitanism. She denies any importance to the role of imagination to produce her own version of imagined community. Her psyche is shaped by the ‘world -wide string of departure lounges.’ Though she had the wherewithal to travel to many places crossing the borderlines she did not use this opportunity to invent her version of borderlines. That is why Tridib and the narrator criticise her:

I could not persuade her that a place does not merely exist, that it has to be invented in one’s imagination; that her practical, bustling London was no less invented than mine, neither more nor less true, only very far apart. It was not her fault that she could not understand, for as Tridib often said of her, the inventions she lived in moved with her, so that although she had lived in many places, she had never travelled at all. (Ghosh, 21)

Shrieking any association with India she becomes enamoured of western cultures. Her choice of Nick as husband also shows her penchant for imbibing westernized values. In order to give validity to her life she holds on to other people’s invention. She becomes obsessed with the idea of getting recognition in the western world. She is ineffectual to bridge these two systems into an association and ends up prioritising the western enlightenment as a superior system.

The ugliest feature of nationalism is its communal frenzy. Some fanatical zealots, mistakenly constructing the idea of nation along religious lines, indulge in torturing the people of other religions. Public archives are generally silent in documenting such shameful incidents lest the idea of nationhood promoted by the state should receive a setback. That is why the death of Tridib in communal riot received hardly any mention in the leading newspapers at that time. The narrator experienced a fearful traumatic moment of having his school bus attacked and being pursued by the crafty mob. Ghosh excavates such buried stories annihilated under the Juggernaut of nationalism.

Through various episodes of the novel Ghosh deconstructs the doctrine of nationalism by calling into question the statist version of history upon which the idea of nationalism is ensconced. To avoid the pitfalls of nationalism Bill Ashcroft proposed the concept of ‘Transnation’ that exposes the difference between the inhabitants of the nation and the administrative structures of the nation which is called the state. Transnation, according to Ashcroft, is the process of transgressing outside of the state that starts with the nation. Ghosh in his novel similarly advocates a transnational identity for the individual to overcome the circumscribed boundaries of nation state. Through Tridib’s notions of space and the illogical nature of arbitrary lines Ghosh enjoins upon the architects of states with boundaries to rise above centripetal outlook, fanaticism and parochialism and envision a world sans any border, a world where would be no division between the self and the other. Moreover, Ghosh’s narrative overcomes the ‘anxiety of Indianness’ (as Meenakshi Mukherjee uses the term) by not presenting a simplistic, all-encompassing, homogenized idealization of nationalism as a compensation for writing in English, the language of the coloniser. On the contrary, by delineating the ‘temporality’ and ‘locality’ of culture, as Homi k Bhabha advises, the novelist prioritizes the small narratives over grand narratives to reconstruct a national consciousness not defined by the entrenched representation of statist ideology.

CHALLENGING LINGUISTIC IMPERIALISM: R.PARTHASARATHY’S ROUGH PASSAGE

2017-09-24T09:56:00.000-07:00

Language and empires exist in close proximity to regularise the project of colonisation which requires not only political, legal control over other countries but also a cultural genocide. Thomas Babington Macaulay’s speech in 1835 on the Government of India is indicative of this process of linguistic imperialism where he justifies the supremacy of the English language thus:

Whoever knows that language has ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth, which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded in the course of ninety generations. It may safely be said, that the literature now extant in that language is of far greater value than all the literature which three hundred years ago was extant in all the languages of the world together. (Ashcroft 428)

This avowed superiority of English language is not only a pretext to make semi-educated interpreters but also a superstructural imposition on the natives to annihilate the cultural legacy of the native people.

Postcolonial writers harbour a love-hate relationship with the language of the erstwhile rulers. Some thinkers like Ngugi Wa Thiong’o called for complete relinquishment of the English language. In Decolonising the Mindhe notes how the colonial rulers in Africa prohibit the use of native language Gikuyu in school and introduce English language to culturally remodel the natives. Ngugi writes categorically that the choice of a language defines the cultural life of people and it is through the device of language that the colonial power operates and hegemonizes the native Africans. That is why he articulates that language and culture have a symbiotic relationship. But for a colonial mind this link between culture and language is always in a state of jeopardy as the colonial rulers unleash the ‘cultural bomb’ to wipe out the innate harmony. As a form of counter-discourse Ngugi demanded the use of Gikuyu language. Bhalchandra Nemade also championed the use of native language against foreign language when imported customs and languages play havoc with native culture.

This dilemma of linguistic choice haunts the poetry of Rajagopal Parthasarathy. As a postcolonial poet he finds his inner psyche oscillating between two choices of language. During his early years in life he was attracted by the glory of English language that resulted in a cessation of ties with his native roots. He imbibed the foreign culture and language and became a British Council scholar at Leeds University. However, his journey to England was punctuated by sheer disillusionment. He found contemporary England defiled by racist prejudices and felt himself like a fish out of water. The erroneous choice of language and the resultant hankering after English culture created in him a deep remorse which occasioned the writing of Rough Passage, a semi-autobiographical poem that charts the spiritual journey of the poet’s mind.

Rough Passage is collection of thirty-seven poems. Like T.S.Eliot’s epic poem The Waste Landthe thematic similarity provides unity to the work. In his preface to the volume the poet writes:

This is a book where all the poems form part of a single poem, as it were. By revision and elimination –so that more than one text of the poem exists- I have at last composed, but not completed it. Rough Passage is that book. It should be considered and read as one poem. In it twenty years’ writing has finally settled.

In course of the book the poet tries to overcome the dilemma of using the colonizer’s language and resurrect the annihilated cultural ethos of his Tamil community. Through the tripartite structure of the volume (Exile-Trial-Homecoming) the poet undergoes a journey from self-imposed exile through manifold ordeals to reach a native space where he can commune with his own culture. In his essay ‘Whoring after English Gods’ Parthasarathy documented unequivocally his fascination for English culture and language and the resultant tempestuous encounter with English.

The first section ‘Exile’ which comprises 8 poems juxtaposes the culture of England with that of India revealing the heinous aftermath of the British rule on India. Having spent thirty years of his life in England the poet introspects into his inner self and finds his psyche traumatized by the clash of two cultures. His guilty feeling is found manifested in the following lines:

That language is a tree, loses colour

Under another sky. (15)

We are reminded of an incident from Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Manwhere Stephen articulates the burden of using the language belonging to another culture:

The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. How different are the words home,Christ,ale,master, on his lips and on mine! I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit. His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language. (Joyce189)

Despite his endeavour to overcome colonial hybridity in the poems of the first section the poet is unable to triumph over his exilic condition.

The creation of a persona helps the poet look at the burdensome journey with an objective stance. The poet reveals his return to his own culture through the image of a man returning to his lover. The following lines indicate his deep sense of attachment to his native culture in terms of sensual images-

All night your hand has rested

On her left breast.

In the morning when she is gone

You will be alone like the stone benches

in the park, and would have forgotten

her whispers in the noises of the city. (15-16)

Despite his endeavour to overcome colonial psychosis the poet, in the first section of the poem, is unable to triumph over his exilic condition as ‘Nothing can really/ be dispensed with. The heart needs all.’ Though he is returning to his beloved Tamil like a jaded traveller, the smell of ‘gin and cigarette ash’ still casts shadow over his mind. Having wasted golden years of his life craving for western culture he has gleaned a shaft of wisdom and like Coleridge’s the ancient Mariner, has become a sadder and wiser man. With this wisdom the poet is ready to ‘give quality to the other half’ of his life. Thus, unlike an average man who generally settles himself within the age of thirty, the poet is eager to undergo trials and tribulations to expiate for his mistakes.

In the second section (Trial) the poet shows development as the persona created by the poet goes through ordeals and charts different periods of growth. This section, as Bruce King observes, ‘covers approximately the next fifteen years, from the age of thirty to forty-five, picks up some of the previous imagery while giving more emphasis to the fingers, smell, taste, breast, tongue as symbols of the senses achieving oneness with another, the closeness missing in exile which he will seek in ‘Homecoming’ through a return to the culture and language of Tamil Nadu and the senses of his childhood.’
(King 240) The opening poem describes the vulnerability of the protagonist:

Mortal as I am, I face the end

With unspeakable relief

Knowing how I should feel

If I were stopped and cut off.(29)

The subsequent poems of this section are replete with intense scenes of love-making. Through sensuous love scenes the poet allegorises his identification with Tamil. The language of love offers him momentary bliss and a creative space to transgress the circumscribed zone of aridity. The abundance of sensual images speak volumes for his connectedness to his traditional culture. The comparison of his love to the ‘stones of konark’ lends a primitive touch to his cultural inheritance. The poet acknowledges that his penchant for foreign culture is over-:

in a corner, an umbrella

now poor in the ribs. (37)

The umbrella is a metaphor for his earlier craving for the British inheritance which, though once found useful, now stands in a dilapidated condition. However, he is sharply aware of the fact that he cannot totally do away with his colonial legacy which reasserts itself sporadically. The events of the past ensnare him alike an octopus giving him little room to utilise his present condition.

In the final section, Homecoming, the poet treats the theme of language and culture point-blank. Gone are his earlier hesitations which hitherto stopped him from embracing his traditional culture. The opening poem sets off by making a comparison between two cultures:

My tongue in English chains,

I return, after a generation, to you. (47)

As Bijay Kumar Das aptly points out, this worry about language is reminiscent of Eliot’s inability to master the use of words as seen in the following lines:

So here I am, in the middle way, having had

twenty years—

Twenty years largely wasted, the years of

l'entre deux guerres—

Trying to learn to use words (East Coker 172-174)

However, his homecoming is not at all easy as the poet faces rough ambience in his native world. He finds classical Tamil defiled by films:

Now, hooked on celluloid, you reel

Down plush corridors. (47)

Tamil language which had its heyday in the time of Nammalvar and Valluvar now exists in a decaying state. That is why Parthasarathy’s condition is more complex than that of Michael Madhusudan Datta who also, having undergone hostile treatment in England, repudiated English language in favour of his native language. Unlike Parthasarathy, Madhusudan on returning home did not have to face the degenerated condition of his native language and found the ambience conducive to his poetic taste. But Parthasarathy encountered equal degeneration is his native culture that has vilified his native language. Therefore, he writes:

I fear I have bungled again.

The last refinement of speech

terrifies me. The ballon

of poetry has grown red in the face

with repeated blowing. (61)

Therefore the poet realizes the fatuousness of employing ancient Tamil for his poetic creation and the effectiveness of ‘humble newspaper’ to carry out his creative urge. He will have to invent a new language out of the remnants of an emasculated literary tradition and redefine his traditional heritage that will not play a second fiddle to western culture operating through the hegemony of language. Sivaram Krishna in his essay ‘That Last Refinement of Speech’ writes:

Rough passage is in this sense a departure from the usual stance perceptible in contemporary Indian poetry in English – for it suggests that the discovery of cultural roots is inextricably linked not with the choice of one’s language but also with the corresponding responsibility, as a creative writer of cleaning the language of his tribe.(163)

The ending tone of the poem does not suggest that the poet will give up writing in English for Tamil as some critics have expressed. He wants to acclimatize his native language to the English language creating a mode of resistance that will not imitate the foreign language but create a language imbued with native flavour. He takes inspiration from the poems of A.K.Ramanujan who, earlier, tried to fuse Kannada and Tamil tradition with the English. His poem ‘A River’ stands as a supreme achievement of this exquisite confluence. Parthasarathy’s Rough passagealso becomes a manifesto for tolling the death-knell of linguistic imperialism and parading a rich cultural tradition that will not lose colour under another sky.

In a postcolonial country like India, thus, complete disavowal of English, the lingua franca of the world is hardly feasible. In order to challenge the linguistic imperialism Raja Rao attempted an indegenisation of the English language by infusing local colour which found culmination in Kanthapura. R.K.Narayan also endorsed his concept of a Bharat brand of English which will evince a swadeshi stamp. Parthasarathy,too, tried to indegenise English by channeling the exilic condition into an ensconced place of belonging. In his essay ‘Whoring after English Gods’ Parthasarathy articulates his vision clearly:

One of the basic problems for the poet is to find an adequate, and above all a personal language. In spite of one or two commendable efforts, it has not been possible to extend the resources of the English language or even indianise it, although it is used with distinction for literary purposes. (81)

Works cited

1. Philip, Marlene Nourbese. She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks. Prince Edward Island: Ragweed, 1989. Print

2. Ashcroft, Bill et al. The Post-colonial Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 1995. Print

3. Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1916. Print.

4. King, Bruce. Modern Indian Poetry in English. New Delhi: Oxford, 1987. Print.

5. Sivaramkrishna, M. ‘That Last Refinement of Speech-The Poetry of R. Parthasarathy’. The Literary criterion,xii:2, 1976. Print

6. Parthasarathy, R. ‘Whoring After the English Gods’ in Writers in East-West Encounter. Hong Kong: Macmillan, 1982. Print.

7. Das, Bijay Kumar (ed.). Perspectives on the Poetry of R.Parthasarathy. Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 1983. Print.

8. Parthasarathy, R. Rough Passage. Delhi: Oxford, 1977. Print.

TECHNICAL INNOVATIONS IN THE POETRY OF E.E. CUMMINGS

2017-09-24T09:40:00.004-07:00

The most conspicuous quality of Cummings’s poetry is their technical originality. It has been pointed out by numerous critics that among the American poets, with the exception of Vladimir Nabokov, Cummings has most effectively expanded the domain of diction and syntax. His jugglery with words is almost unparalleled. It is mainly as a result of his technical improvisation that he is called an ultra-modern poet. Cummings once remarked, ‘The artist’s country is inside him.’ It shows that he would abide by his own rules rather than letting his verse be governed by traditional, jargon-ridden features. His innovative experimentations with language does not aim at bewildering the readers but to evoke a proper setting for his message.

Among his experimentations the most important is the use of the lowercase i. Critics have split upon rocks to come to a unanimous thought about the employment of lowercase personal pronoun. Some critics consider it as Cummings’s desire to turn conventional vocabulary and syntax upside down. Some claim that it was his protest against the self-exhibiting whim of the people. Some critics tell that Cummings was imitating the handyman his father employed to take charge of their summer home.

Some of Cummings’s poems make use of the ‘pattern poetry’ where no adherence to rhyme or meter is maintained. They are arranged according to the thought of poet’s mind. This pattern was in vogue during the Elizabethan time. Cummings reintroduced this trope in the twentieth century. His poem ‘Little Tree’ suggests the shape of a Christian tree.

Another noticing feature is his gift of word-coinage. Sometimes Cummings found the available words ill-equipped to describe his thought pattern. Therefore he adds new suffixes to existing word. His new words with novel suffixes such as ‘riverly’, ‘birdfully’, ‘downwardishly’ produce an intensity of perception. This novel usage also suggests his attempts to transgress the boundary of the mundane world and reach a transcendental world.

Cummings played with typographical rhetoric. He introduces spaces within single word to add density to his thought. Sometimes he did not give space between two words to suggest the association of thought.

Cummings’s various uses of parentheses are worth noticing. They are used sometimes for an interpolated comment or for the purpose of splitting words. In his ‘go(perpe)go’ (in No Thanks) we see a typographical juxtaposition. The parenthetical sentence is a surrealist collection of ‘perpetual adventuring particles’ showing the action of a muddled ant heap and an anteater getting his dinner. In his poem ‘Memorabilia’ we see the last two lines within parentheses that shows the poet’s separation from the materialistic society.

Another technical innovation of Cummings’s poetry is his emphasis on the role of the reader. Much before the advent of Reader-Response school his verse evinced the way for getting the reader’s response. For example, his poem ‘in Just-’ invites the response of the reader to fill in the missing gaps.

Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain as a Postcolonial Play

2017-09-24T09:38:00.003-07:00

The question of identity has plagued the characters in the postcolonial world. The colonial context inevitably gives birth to the notion of identity. The confrontation between the coloniser and the colonised ends up damaging the cultural and material heritage of the colonised. It also destroys the mental equilibrium of the colonized. The assertion of power is not always coercive and violent but at times interpellative too. As a result of different techniques of domination, the native finds himself enmeshed in an existential crisis and suffers from an identity complex. It has been the task of postcolonial writers to reveal the effect of various forms of domination. However, writers like Derek Walcott, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka not only explore the various facets of this crisis but also endeavour to infuse the dominated people with courage so that they can overcome this colonial hangover.

Constructing identity is an uphill task in the Caribbean world. Bill Ashcroft and others have written in The Empire Writes Back:

        In the Caribbean, the European imperial enterprise ensured that the worst features of colonialism throughout the globe would all be combined in the region. (1989:144)

Within a span of 25-30 years after Columbus’s arrival the aboriginal population comprising Caribs and Arawaks was all but exterminated. Their legacy was zeroed in by the Spanish colonizers. With the introduction of sugar trade, a demand was created for a large number of labourers. As a corollary, black people from Africa were imported to be used as labourers. Even the situation did not improve after the abolition of slavery in the 1800s. New forms of domination sprouted in the name of indentured labourers who were imported from India and China. This variegated forms of domination annihilated the true culture of the Caribbean and made it a place virtually sans history.

Dream on Monkey Mountain is a representative play by Walcott that projects the emasculated psyche of the black Caribbeans living in a world where identity, in Lacanian term, is an ever- elusive signified. This play unfurls before our eyes various ramifications that arise from long history of colonial domination. In his "Note on Production," Walcott says that 'The play is a dream, one that exists as much in the given minds of its principal characters as in that of its writer, and as such, it is illogical, derivative, contradictory. Its source is metaphor and it is best treated as a physical poem with all the subconscious and deliberate borrowings of poetry’ (1970:208). This intermingling of dream and reality helps Walcott delineate the colonial psychosis and the way to get over this psychosis. In his epic poem Omeros Walcott has given the Homeric epic a postcolonial twist to establish an identity for the oppressed people. This journey motif is also dominant in Dream on Monkey Mountain.

A cursory glance at the storyline of the play reveals that the plot is simple enough to comprehend. Makak, a charcoal burner, is arrested on a charge of vandalism and put to prison. In his dream he sees the apparition of a white woman who tells him that he is the king of Africa. Towards the end of the play he realizes that he cannot form an identity of his own until he kills the white apparition. As soon as he kills the apparition of a white woman Makak wakes up and realizes that he has called up his real name.

Under the apparent simple plot line are entwined a number of complex key themes related to the issue of identity in a postcolonial world. The opening scene of the play shows the crisis of identity as a result of colonial subjugation. When Corporal Lestrade enquired Makak of his race, he replies, ‘I am tired’. This reply is suggestive enough of his fractured identity which is a corollary of long subjugation. Makak wants to bypass the question of race as he wants to take shelter in the realm of oblivion that can only offer him some solace amidst the ossified existence. Colonialism not only plunders wealth but also robs the colonized of his true self. It is therefore an emasculating enterprise too. Colonialism has uprooted Makak from any sense of belonging and creates in him an inferiority complex. He is assigned the name of an animal (‘Makak’ stands for monkey) and is downgraded in the rank of the Great Chain of Being. Fanon in his opening chapter (‘Concerning Violence’) of The Wretched of the Earth speaks about this dehumanising aspect of colonialism:

In fact, the terms the settler uses when he mentions the native are zoological terms. He speaks of the yellow man’s reptilian motions, of the stink of the native quarter, of breeding swarms, of foulness, of spawn, of gesticulations. (1967: 32-33)

What is most noteworthy is that Makak has internalised his subordinate position and as a result, tries to hide his identity. Lakoff and Johnson in their book Metaphors We Live By have shown us that life is not what we construct but it is shaped by manifold societal constructive norms. And in this construction metaphors play a pivotal part. In Dream on Monkey Mountain the metaphor of blackness has constructed a world for Makak where to be a black signifies to be devoid of identity.

           Walcott shows in detail how colonialism has fractured the identity of Makak. He loathes his own image. He tells Lestrade that he has not seen self-image in the mirror for thirty years. Moreover, he also refuses to see his reflected image in water:

Not a pool of cold water, when I must drunk,

        I stir my hands first, to break up my image. (1970:226)

Makak sees his own image from the perspective of a white coloniser. Patrick Colm Hogan rightly observes:

       He is, in effect, a metaphor for those legacies of colonized subjects who, in Walcott’s words, ‘looked at life with black skins and blue eyes’ (“What the Twilight Says” 9), suffering the ‘contradiction of being white in mind and black in body. (12)’ (1994:108)

The Manichean compartmentalisation of the world into the black and the white reduces the colonized to an extent that he becomes enamoured of whiteness. A classic example of this aspect is the case of Pecola Breedlove in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Under the prevalent hegemonic ethos, Pecola pines for blue eyes like those of white children because she has internalised the rhetoric of colonial master that makes her adulate whiteness. In Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Condition Nhamo refuses to come back at home during his vacation from the mission as he has taken up the white value as an apotheosis of culture and now loathes his native existence. In Dream on Monkey Mountain Makak also longs for whiteness. This aspect of psychosis is clearly hinted by the epigraph of the play which is culled from Sartre’s Preface to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth:

Thus in certain psychoses the hallucinated person, tired of always being insulted by his demon, one fine day starts hearing the voice of an angel who pays him compliments; but jeers don’t stop for all that; only, from then on, they alternate with congratulations. This is a defence, but it is also the end of the story. The self is dissociated, and the patient heads for madness. (1970:211)

When Makak is arrested in prison, he is said to have carried a white mask; a literal symbol of his desire for the west. His quest for identity is supported by the apparition of a white woman who acts as a kind of muse figure to Makak. Makak feels elated by her message, ‘She say that I come from the family of lions and kings’ (236). Corporal rightly diagnoses the malady as ‘rage for whiteness that does drive niggers mad’ (228). However, it must be noted that Lestrade also suffers from this kind of complex. He is a mimic man for whom salvation lies in imitating the white world. It is proved by his remark to Souris:

        I am an instrument of the law, Souris. I got the white man work to do. (1970:279)

His desire is representative of the departure syndrome that bedevils the Caribbean society. In this way both Makak and Lestrade are the two sides of the same coin. Both try to escape from an overwhelming feeling of non-entity in different ways.

Walcott not only describes the psychological emasculation of the colonized but also affirms the dignity and identity of the colonized through decolonisation of the mind. By dint of various dream sequences the playwright shows the way for the redemption of the black Caribbeans. The vision Makak sees helps him shake off his Eurocentric vision that invaded his inner space. The visionary experiences help him regain his true identity unencumbered by the dictation of the West. Makak undergoes a complete journey in his dream. He finds his true abode in Africa where he becomes the king of his tribe and passes judgement on others. In his dream he embraces an alternative world where he finds a ground beneath his feet. The make-believe world of dream proves more substantial than the real world. In scene one of the first part Walcott shows Makak healing the sick people with his magical power in a dream. This is the first tentative step he takes towards achieving the emancipation from colonial bondage. He is accurate in diagnosing the psychological disease of the first peasant when he says, “Remember, is you all self that is your enemy” (1970:249).

In the opening scene of part two we find Makak, in the course of his dream, stabbing Corporal Lestrade and then running into the forest along with Tigre and Souris. Tigre and Souris join Makak only for personal profit. They want to steal the money from Makak and are not concerned with his vision. Here Walcott pokes fun at the dishonest national leaders who only think of hoarding wealth under the façade of mass regeneration. In the forest episode we find an alternative kingdom by the blacks where conventional Eurocentric norms hardly get validity. Corporal Lestrade also undergoes a parallel journey to reclaim his identity. His encounter with Basil, a black apparition the concept of which is culled from Haitian mythology helps him regain lost identity. This confrontation scene reminds us of Simon’s hallucinated encounter with Beelzebub in Golding’s Lord of the flies that brought epiphany to him. In Dream on Monkey Mountain Lestrade imbibed the mimetism of the white denying his own identity. The following conversation between Lestrade and Basil is instrumental in bringing out the hollowness of this slavish imitation:

Corporal: My mind, my mind. What’s happened to my mind?

Basil: It was never yours, Lestrade.                 (1970:297)

This encounter helps Lestrade get back his lost self and like Milton’s Samson, he begins to feel rousing motion within himself. Elated by his new found identity he makes an address to Africa of the mind that becomes indicative of his recovery of self:

I kiss your foot, O Monkey Mountain…I return to this earth, my mother. Naked, trying very hard not to weep in the dust. I was what I am, but now I am myself…Now I feel better. (1970:299)

In scene three of the second part (Apotheosis scene) we see an application of anti-colonial views. Walcott presents in detail various cultural practices of the tribal community. Protesting against the racist vilification thrusted upon the black people, Walcott celebrates precolonial ethos. However, it must be remembered that the precolonial ethos is not described in idealistic terms but along with its pros and cons. Walcott describes the setting thus:

Bronze tropies are lowered. Masks of barbarous gods appear to a clamour of drums, sticks,the chant of a tribal triumph. A procession of warriors, chiefs and the wives of Makak in splendid tribal costumes gather, chanting to drums. (1970:308)

We find Shakespeare, a representative figure of European cultural sobriety deployed by the political masters for political reasons, tried and hanged for having committed injustice to humanity. This scene culminates in the beheading of the white goddess whose image obsessed Makak in such a way that he forgot his real name and lineage. That is why Corporal remarks accurately:

She is the wife of the devil, the white witch. She is the mirror of the moon that this ape look into and find himself unbearable. She is all that is pure, all that he cannot reach. (1970:319)

It is only after beheading the apparition of the white woman that Makak is finally restored to the status of man. Makak calls up his original name which is Felix Hobain. We are reminded of the case of Bertha in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea when she realizes that her real name is not Bertha but Antoinette Cosway:

     Names matter, like when he wouldn’t call me Antoinette, and I was Antoinette drifting out of the window with her scents, her pretty clothes and her looking glass. (1977:147)

It is true that Walcott is advocating, like Fanon, violence to uproot the colonial regime and unify the oppressed people. Fanon in his The Wretched of the Earth tells unequivocally:

   At the level of individuals, violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his superiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect. (1967:74)

To conclude, we can say that Walcott in his Dream on Monkey Mountain tries to hold up an alternative world for the black Caribbeans; a world free from the influence of the colonisers. It is true that at the end of the play Makak is harked back to the real world where nothing is found to have changed. But it does not suggest the futility or fatuousness of his vision. Like Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale this play gives us a glimpse of the fact that the other world is possible. Edward Baugh aptly remarks that, ‘The dream is purgatorial, bringing him to self-acceptance and psychic wholeness .(2006:85)’It is only as a result of that visionary dream that Makak is able to regain his lost identity that elevates him from the derogatory status of an animal to a man.

Works Cited

Ashcroft, Bill, et al. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. London: Routledge, 1989. Print.

Baugh, Edward. Derek Walcott. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Print.

Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. New Delhi: Penguin, 1967. Print.

Hogan, Patrick Colm. “Mimeticism, Reactionary Nativism, and the Possibility of Postcolonial Identity in Derek Walcott's ‘Dream on Monkey Mountain’.” Research in African Literatures Vol. 25, No. 2 (summer, 1994): Jstor. Web. 26 November 2013.

Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. New York: Penguin Books, 1977. Print.

Walcott, Derek. Dream on Monkey Mountain. Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays. New York: Noonday P, 1970. Print.

_____."What the Twilight Says: An Overture." Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays. New York: Noonday P, 1970. Print.

DOVER BEACH AS A VICTORIAN POEM or NOTE OF SADNESS IN DOVER BEACH

2012-11-19T08:24:00.001-08:00

The age in which Arnold was born was a crisis ridden period in English history.The growth of materialism and scientific inventions ,social and political theorising by J.S.Mill and Spenser ,Darwin’s Origin of Specis and the rapid spread of Marxism thoroughly jerked and shook the minds and beliefs of the commonly rational Victorian public.This internal conflict was reflected in the poetry of the Victorians ,who were utterly obfuscated and exasperated by two different ideals – one wholly traditional ,the other extremely modern ,intending to severe all traditional norms and values so as to usher in the advancing civilisation.

Many writers of this period showed their disgust towards the growth of materialism and loss of traditions ,through their works.Matthw Arnold was one of the leaders in this respect.His poetry,especially Dover Beach ,signifies this spirit of scepticism ,bemoaning the sudden retreat of traditional faiths and values of morality.

The poem sets off with a beautiful description of a night- a night bright with moon light falling on everything ,the calm sea ,the sweetly scented air and the tranquil bay .The serenity of the surrounding is only broken by the wave lashing against the shore,sucking pebbles and then again retreating .This provides an appropriate setting for the reflection of human life.The continuous breaking of waves and their withdrawal from the sea shore bring in the eternal note of sadness –

“At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.”

In the second stanza ,Arnold refers to the great Greek tragedian Sophocles .He had also heard the waves in the Aegean sea and this had brought into his mind the ebb and flow tide of human misery .The poet,in the third stanza,thinks of the sea of faith which once encicled the earth and humanity like a halo .As long as there was faith ,there was peace and solace.But now all that is lost.The world is now devoid of spiritual consolation .In the midst of the retreat of the sea ,the poet discerns the retreat of religious faith .In the final stanza Arnold urges his beloved to be true to one another always because that is the only and one consolation.Drawing an analogy between the pelopponesian war and the present situation he writes-

“And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.”

Dover beach in many ways reveals the mind and inner self of the poet and becomes a period piece.

Symbolism in Synge's Riders to the Sea.

2012-10-14T19:12:00.001-07:00

J.M.Synge's Riders to the Sea is fraught with numerous symbols elevating the domestic tragedy to the position of a universal tale of suffering.Most of the symbols used in the play are archetypal in keeping with the classical spirit of the play .The most powerful symbol is that of Sea, the giver and taker of life.The islanders depend on it for their sustenance but it also snatches the live that it gives.Synge makes use of the popular belief that the flood tide induces birth while the ebb tide causes death,reminding us of shakespeare's treatment in Henry V.Like Shelley 's West wind,it is at once destroyer and preserver of life.The sea symbolizes the tragic destiny of the aran islanders.The sea is a supernatural entity over which even the Almighty God of the christians has no control.That is evident from Maurya' s rejection of the'young ' priest

Another archetypal symbol is the Riders.The menfolk of the island are all riders who ,in order to keep the family wheel a going, ride on the sea.Like Santiago,they venture into the sea only to be defeated reminding us of eternal human predicament.

There are several symbols associated with life and death.They exist side by side.Mention may be made of the red mare of Bartley and grey pony of Michael .While red stands for viriliy, grey symbolizes death .Bartley also sets out his fearful journey in the shirt that his dead brother left at home.,

The use of number nine is another important symbol derived from mythology.It is a triple trinity and therefore a perfect number.There is no news of Michael for nine days and Maurya weeps for her lost son for nine days.

Maurya's turing of the empty cup mouth downwards is another significant symbol suggesting a failure of christian solace and showing the pagan theme of suffering and renunciation. Thus, the symbols employed here bring out the tragic scheme of the play

Treatment of love and time or interplay of love and time in Shakespeare's sonnets

2011-03-17T23:02:00.000-07:00

The sonnets written during the Elizabethan period were based on the impact of time,love,beauty and mutability on the lives of human beings. Being a poet of this time Shakespeare uses all these themes in his 154 sonnets ,but he uses them in his own way. They unlock the fathomless soul of the genius. However, they are not overtly autobiographical for Shakespeare adds a ray of fancy to render them in an objective way that elicits our praise. Time appears as an arch-enemy in the world of Shakespearean sonnets which tries to siphon off the cream of life and hurl men to nothingness. In them we find a poetic tug-of-war with the onslaughts of Time.
Dympna Callaghan remarks, "Shakespeare’s treatment of time in the sonnets essentially rehearses fundamentally Ovidian themes, namely the progress of mutability, loss, grief, and death that constitute the central themes of Ovid’s great mythic work, the Metamorphoses. In Ovid, metamorphosis is the mythic equivalent of the movement, the shifts and changes that occur over the course of time, to bring about decay, death, and, ultimately, the disintegration of form that is the fate of all organic matter. The changes Ovid describes invariably involve a diminished rather than enhanced human identity – healthy and attractive young people are regularlyturned into plants and animals, far less glorious renditions of their
former selves."
Shakespearen sonnets are an attempt to immortalize love in a mortal world which is constantly threatened by the ravages of time.In sonnet no 18 ,shakespear is frank in his admission about how time wrecks different natural elements .The "darling buds of may" are shaken ,where as "summer's lease hath all too short a date."The gold complexion of the sun even dims.The power of this time is also estabilshed on the other sonnet Let me not to the marriage of true minds.Here ,again the poet shows how time kills rosy lips and cheeks.In fact,there is no effort by the poet to deny the grim fact that time desoys all things.The ravages caused by the time is also felt by the poet in his personal life.He perceives how time has played on him and anticipates aptly in the sonnet That time of year the decay that will nring to him ere long.
Yet,Shakespeare's sonnets are not only useless mourning over that which cannot be averted.He is quite assured that love is not time"s fool.In Sonnet no73,the poet refers to the restorative power of love amidst the destructive forces of time.He hopes to immortalise his love, -"So long as men can breathe ,or eyes can see.So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.'

BHARATTIRTHA [THE INDIAN PILGRIMAGE]: a thematic analysis

2011-03-01T06:51:00.000-08:00

“As the mission of the rose lies in the unfoldment of the petals which implies distinctness,so the rose of humanity is perfect only when the diverse races and nations have evolved their perfect disinct characteristics but all attached to the stem of humanities by the bond of love.” In search of spiritual commonwealth:Tagore.
In the poem Bharattirtha ,Tagore envisioned an India imbued with the noblest of her ideals:that of tolerance,acceptance,exchange.The poem depics the soul of both Indian philosophy,culture, tradition ,The poem is the string of garland around which the flowers of poesy is imitated and established successfully.
The poet hails motherland as the land of great births .According to him, the land is so pious and honourable to be worshipped whole heartedly.India is the land which welcomes every individual human race,tribe with same warmth of heart.Tagore’s words echo the same as saint Tulsidas viewed that the Indian culture is the garland of various flowers of distinctive cultures.It is a unique quality of mother India that she never closed her door over any one, enduring immense pain. -”Nobody will go empty handed from the sea shore .”
Tgore calls for universal brotherhood and spiritual awakening from bondage,tyranny .Until and unless the soul is awakened ,it cannot resist attacks on its culture.We know that tagore was a believer in an interactive,dialogic world ,given to a deep sense of sympathy,generosity and mutuality , and in which nations wouldnot be parochial ,xenophobiac and cemtripetal but poised towards a morally ,spiritually enlightened community of nations through the espousal of centrifugal outlook,multilateral imagination ,principle of universality.This belief is got embodied in the beautiful lyric Bharattirtha.

CHARACTER OF CLYTEMNESTRA IN AGAMEMNON

2010-11-17T03:01:00.000-08:00

Of the characters of Aeschylus which has been wrought with the greatest care , and which leave the most profound impression on the memory,is clytemnestra.It is to the delineation of this character that our dramatist has devoted maximum care.
she is an accused wife,pitiless and contemptuous,but resolutely bent on revenge.The virile masculinity of purpose gets a reference when the watchman says, "victory!Great news for clytemnestra ,in whose woman's heart/A man's will nurses hope."
Clytemnestra possesses a power of intellect which reigns throughout her speeches-she prepares an elaborate welcome for Agamenon.Her next insistence most famously known as the carpet scene ,displays an excessive zeal in giving Agamemnon a welcome that is unexpected.In an instance of irony she adds after her instructions to the slaves to spread the silk tapestries beneath his feet-"Justice herself;/shall lead him a home he never hoped to see."
She has often been compared to Lady Macbeth.But the comparison is too far fetched.Lady Macbeth provoked a lot but did the task of an accomplice while clytemnesta executes the act herself.
In a masterly fashion ,Aeschylus has drawn the portrait of clytemnestra.She is not merely a bad woman who has an adulterous intrigue ,she is an outraged mother.

"Silence! The court is in session "as a drama of protest: a critical overview

2010-08-11T10:07:00.000-07:00

Vijat Tendulkar, ”the angry young man of Marathi theatre”, protests against the various problems of his contemporary society.He once said-“As a social being,I am against all exploitations,and I personally believe that all exploitations must end”. His plays, such as “sakharam binder”,”kamala”,etc, are all violent attacks on the society with its cockroach –ridden customs and prejudices.In Silence! The Court is in Session, Tendulkar has depicted the plight of a young woman, who is betrayed by the male dominated society. A traditional male dominated society cannot relinquish its paralyzed values and customs. The society does not like to perceive or receive any social change. Tendulkar presents a treatment of those ugly ways of society in this play. It is a bitter satire against the social ills and an interesting attempt to criticize the follies that prevail in our society.Here,multiple themes are woven in the texture of the drama.
Benare,,a lively sportive woman,is subjected to different atrocities.From the outset, Benare is presented as a happy, communicative woman. She cultivates the acquaintance with samant as soon as she arrives at the village for the show. As a school teacher she is very punctual.she takes part in a play concerning the trial of president Johnson. But as they have plenty of time berore the drama, they decide to stage a mock trial.Benare is singled out as a culprit who is to be tried.she is charged with infanticide and unmarried motherhood. Benare gets dumb at the change of situation.Witnesses after witnesses heap charges against her, as they would peel the layer of an onion. The accusations against her are based on conjectures and hearsay,but they strike home.The accuser and the accused become one.The judge verdicts that the child in Benare’s womb should be destroyed.They spare Damle who exploits the gullibility of Benare and her body.
Tendulkar also hammered the contemporary judicial system.A judicial court is supposed to be a seat of Justice, seriousness and decorum. Through this play, Tendulkar also makes a review of the present day court procedures, and points out the problem of degradation and the loss of the dignity of the court. It is a matter of fact that a witness has to take an oath keeping his hand on the Gita or some such religious scripture, during the court procedures.In the play, the witnesses take oath touching the Oxford English Dictionary. What is more, Mr. Kasikar, the judge, also jumps into the witness box in violation of all court procedures and decorum, and declares his personal views from the witness stand: "A sinful canker on the body of society- that's my honest opinion of these grown-up unmarried girls."5 It reminds us the words of Lord Bryce,-“If the lamp of justice goes out in the darkness, then how deep is that Darkness.”
Tendulkar has criticized the middle-class morality that throttles the tender desires of Benare, a middle class woman, to mother a child in the play. Tendulkar seems to leave the play without suggesting any solution to the problem. None in the play is ready to sympathize with Benare. Only Mr. Kashikar, the judge, feels that they are going too far in their mock-trial but, then, he immediately silences his conscience. After all the Court is in session, and everyone is expected to keep silence! Tendulkar covertly pleads for sympathy for the victims of the society through this flash of humanity for a moment in the heart of Mr. Kashikar.

SYMBOLISM IN TAGORE'S "THE POST OFFICE"

2010-07-23T05:30:00.000-07:00

Symbolism denotes something that stands for something else.It has two meanings; apparent and hidden.In post office,Tagore uses differnt phrases,words,characters symbolically.
On the surface leve,the play is the story of pain and agony of human condition.It is the story of an orphan boy amal who has been adopted by madhav.Amal is suffering from some fatal disease and is restricted by the physician.Amal expects a letter from the king .So it is the story of agony of a child.
But beneath the natural level,the play symbolizes man's yearning for the union with God.Human being,the finite,seeks fulfillment with the God,the infinite.And he is elated whenever the union takes place.This is illustrated through exquisite symbols.
AMAL: See that far away hill from the window. I often long to go beyond those hills and right away.
MADHAV: Oh! yoy silly!As if there is nothing more to be done but just get up to the top of the hill and away.
The conversation shows the difference between the materialist and a spiritualist. Unlike a materialist, a spiritualist believes that there is another world beyond this world.The post office is therefore a symbolic representation of two currents of thought.The post office itself provides a symbolic background.It is a sort of bridge between the known and the unknown.
The king's letter is a suggestive symbol .It comes from a distant,mysterious world bringing a message from someome whom we hold very dear ro us.It is an invitation to leave the world of pain and enter into the world of eternal bliss.Time is an essential symbol, played by the watchman.we are bound by time ,but we can conquer it.It calls for great suffering and pain.Amal's deliverance suggests the note.
The symbol of death is also praiseworthy. Death is suffused with a great aura of liberation.It comes always at the moment when the self of a man,seeking no longer for personal gains, is able to say ;all my work is thine. we know that amal is sleeping, but when he will awake,he will find himself in a world of eternal freedom.We are reminded of DONNE:
"One short sleep a spent,we wakw eternally,
And death shall be no more,death thou shall die."
The character of sudha also contributes much to the symbolic structure of the play.The word sudha is both connotative and denotative.Sudha means nectar.W hen she asks the physician to tell amalthat sudha has not forgotten him,we understand that amal is not dead,because he has with him sudha,the drink of immortality.
Thus,the play has several symbolic meanings.Amal represents the soul or atma.The king represents the God.Dr.Iyenger talks of these symbols very well; " One of the deeply significant plays ,which a child could read and understan,though it might intrigue the grown ups".

TAGORE AS A SHORT STORY WRITER:AN EVALUATION

2010-07-13T08:31:00.000-07:00

R.N. TAGORE is an outstanding figure in the realm of short story genre. His multi-dimensional vision of life is discernable in his 61 short stories, telescoping man’s relationship with nature and social milieu. Endowed with boundless love for human beings, he emerged as a singer of the weal and woe of common life .
As a short story writer, Tagore was a practitioner of psychological and spiritual realism. What Tagore did was to record certain moments in the lives of the common people. CABULIWALLAH is study of peculiar bond of relationship between the people despite the vast hiatus of ages. Here love transcends social barrier and makes us sympathize with a poor cabuli fruit seller.
Tagore saw that while the privileged persons were enjoying in the cosy inn, others were “wallowing in the mud”. Tagore defied the class barrier between the haves and have- nots. He represented the ordinary mass who were neglected.
Tagore believed that man can upgrade morally and spiritually if he lives a life in close contact with nature. THE HIDDEN TREASURE is an apt illustration of that. Fatik, the protagonist of THE HOME COMIG ,is a child of naure. The delirious talk of the boy with his ultimate welcome of holiday is heart rendering.
Tagore hated the prevailing education system which cramped the personality of the children.Problems faced by the wards by their teachers is mirrored in HOUSEWIFE .In THE EXERCISE BOOK the agony of a child is presented. Tarapada is after his heart, a settled life is not for him.Balai clings to his flowers.
Hardships of Bengali women due to unhealthy customs is seen in many of his stories.In NUMBER ONE a woman suicides to get rid of biases.THE LIVING OR DEAD deals with the same thing.In PUNISHMENT a man kills his wife to save his brother.Extraction of dowry from marriage leads to the stoppage of marriage in THE UNKNOWN.In DEBITS AND CREDITS the evils are scathingly castigated.
Thus we see that Tagore sings the saga of the pathos of common life from the standpoint of a sympathetic humanist.He envisions a better future for mankind despite its present woes.His stories are universal and eternal in their appeal as Tagore himself feels excited “ If I do nothing but write stories, I am happy….my characters are with me when I am shut up in my room.”

THOMAS HARDY'S DARKLING THRUSH ;AN ANALYSIS

2010-06-02T07:38:00.000-07:00

Thomas Hardy's (1840-1928) "The Darkling Thrush" was published in 1901, New Years Day. It refers to the beginning of a new year, a new century and the uncertainty of change. The rhyming scheme is formulaic ababcdcd, the tone is pessimistic and yet there is something that resonates long after the poem has been read.
In the first line the narrator says,
"I leant upon a coppice gate"
This refers to a gate leading to a wood. Woods are often dark and gloomy. Normally a door or a gate leads to new beginnings but in this case it doesn't seem hopeful. He leans upon it, which suggests reflection but also tiredness. The season reflects the mood. It is winter and frosty, which reminds us of a coldness of emotions. He is alone taking in his surroundings.
The descriptive language about the frost being "specter-gray" highlights the bleakness of the environment. Gray isn't an interesting color. There is a tremendous sense of loneliness in the following lines:

"And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day."
For some people this time of year is a desolate time when others are surrounded by families. The word "dregs" suggests distaste; the last of something. There is a musical quality to the rhythm of this poem and even the following lines reflect this:
"The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres, (lines 5 and 6)"
The imagery unfolded by the above two lines could refer to the score of music and related to the words "strings" and "broken lyres". Broken strings would make an unpleasant sound, which reflects the narrator's mood. Score can also mean to cut something. It is as the stems are cutting into the sky. The coldness has meant that people have hurried inside to warm up by "their household fires" (line 8)
If the first stanza is about loneliness, the second one reflects the death of the century.
The imagery of death is used with words such as "corpse;" it is the death of not just a year, or a decade but a whole century. For Hardy, who would have been in his 50s, change would have felt harder to deal with. The world has "sharp features" not only physically but perhaps surrounding him with change. Even the wind reflects the mood of the poem it is described as a "death-lament."
Hardy concludes his second stanza with:
"And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I."
There is stillness. If "fervor" suggests excitement and energy then "fervourless" suggests Hardy, like nature is lacking. He has no enthusiasm for change. It is the third stanza
that will alter the mood of the poem slightly making it less pessimistic.
Even if the whole of the surroundings appear bleak, a thrush will sing breaking the spell of the quietness. It has "joy illimited." There is reference to religion with the words "evensong" as if the thrush is in touch with his creator. The thrush can bring some joy with his voice in the gloomy circumstances. This is a turning point in the poem; there is some hope that makes the narrator think. He is momentarily distracted with the noise.
The final stanza is controversial. It can be interpreted that the thrush brings hope to the narrator and ends the poem on a positive note. We are told how the bird has "such ecstatic sound" (line 3) when there was no reason for it, "so little cause for carolings" (line 1). Nature has found a secret source of hope the narrator is not familiar with and so the narrator feels a sense of peace.
Or it can be perceived that whilst the thrush is happy, the narrator is still not convinced. In the final two lines the narrator says,
"Some blessed hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware."
The narrator isn't aware of feeling anything positive. It is simply the bird who is content. The narrator still feels sorry for himself and a sense of despair.

how to analyze a poem

2010-06-02T07:21:00.000-07:00

Critical Analysis of Poetry
The process of analyzing a poem
The elements of analysis discussed below are designed to help you identify the ways in which poetry makes its meaning, especially its 'parts'; they do not give a sense of how one goes about analyzing a poem. It is difficult to give a prescription, as different poems call on different aspects of poetry, different ways of reading, different relationships between feeling, i mages and meanings, and so forth. My general advice, however, is this:
1. look at the title
2. read the poem for the major indicators of its meaning -- what aspects of setting, of topic, of voice (the person who is speaking) seem to dominate, to direct your reading?
3. read the ending of the poem -- decide where it 'gets to'
4. divide the poem into parts: try to understand what the organization is, how the poem proceeds, and what elements or principles guide this organization (is there a reversal, a climax, a sequence of some kind, sets of oppositions?)
5. pay attention to the tone of the poem -- in brief, its attitude to its subject, as that is revealed in intonation, nuance, the kind of words used, and so forth.
6. now that you've looked at the title, the major indicators of 'topic', the ending, the organization, the tone, read the poem out loud, trying to project its meaning in your reading. As you gradually get a sense of how this poem is going, what its point and drift is, start noticing more about how the various elements of the poetry work to create its meaning. This may be as different as the kind of imagery used, or the way it uses oppositions, or the level of realism or symbolism of its use of the natural world.
Reading poetry well is a balance among and conjunction of qualities: experience, attention, engagement with the qualities which make the poem resonant or compelling, close reading of structure and relationships. It's an acquired talent, you have to learn it. When you do, however, more and more meaning, power and beauty start leaping out at you.
Elements of analysis
Here then are some questions to apply to your analysis in order to see how the poem is making its meaning: they cover
genre, the speaker, the subject, the structure, setting, imagery, key statements,
the sound of the poetry, language use, intertextuality,
the way the reader is formed by the poem, the poem's historical placement, and
ideology or 'world-view'
1. What is the genre, or form, of the poem?
Is it a sonnet, an elegy, a lyric, a narrative, a dramatic monologue, an epistle, an epic (there are many more). Different forms or genres have different subjects, aims, conventions and attributes. A love sonnet, for instance, is going to talk about different aspects of human experience in different ways with different emphases than is a political satire, and our recognition of these attributes of form or genre is part of the meaning of the poem.
2. Who is speaking in the poem?
Please remember that if the voice of the poem says "I", that doesn't mean it is the author who is speaking: it is a voice in the poem which speaks. The voice can be undramatized (it's just a voice, it doesn't identify itself), or dramatized (the voice says "I", or the voice is clearly that of a particular persona, a dramatized character).
Identify the voice. What does the voice have to do with what is happening in the poem, what is its attitude, what is the tone of the voice (tone can be viewed as an expression of attitude). How involved in the action or reflection of the poem is the voice? What is the perspective or 'point of view' of the speaker? The perspective can be social, intellectual, political, even physical -- there are many different perspectives, but they all contribute to the voice's point of view, which point of view affects how the world of the poem is seen, and how we respond.
3. What is the argument, thesis, or subject of the poem
What, that is to say, is it apparently 'about'? Start with the basic situation, and move to consider any key statements; any obvious or less obvious conflicts, tensions, ambiguities; key relationships, especially conflicts, parallels, contrasts; any climaxes or problems posed or solved (or not solved); the poem's tone; the historical, social, and emotional setting.
4. What is the structure of the poem?
There are two basic kinds of structure, formal and thematic.
Formal structure is the way the poem goes together in terms of its component parts: if there are parts -- stanza's, paragraphs or such -- then there will be a relation between the parts (for instance the first stanza may give the past, the second the present, the third the future).
Thematic structure, known in respect to fiction as 'plot', is the way the argument or presentation of the material of the poem is developed. For instance a poem might state a problem in eight lines, an answer to the problem in the next six; of the eight lines stating the problem, four might provide a concrete example, four a reflection on what the example implies. There may well be very close relations between formal and thematic structure. When looking at thematic structure, you might look for conflicts, ambiguities and uncertainties, the tensions in the poem, as these give clear guides to the direction of meanings in the poem, the poem's 'in-tensions'.
5. How does the poem make use of setting?
There is the setting in terms of time and place, and there is the setting in terms of the physical world described in the poem.
In terms of the physical world of the poem, setting can be used for a variety of purposes. A tree might be described in specific detail, a concrete, specific, tree; or it might be used in a more tonal way, to create mood or associations, with say the wind blowing mournfully through the willows; or it might be used as a motif, the tree that reminds me of Kathryn, or of my youthful dreams; or it might be used symbolically, as for instance an image of organic life; or it might be used allegorically, as a representation of the cross of Christ (allegory ties an image or event to a specific interpretation, a doctrine or idea; symbols refer to broader, more generalized meanings).
Consider this a spectrum, from specific, concrete, to abstract, allegorical:
concrete --- tonal -- connotative -- symbolic --- allegorical
6. How does the poem use imagery?
"Imagery" refers to any sort of image, and there are two basic kinds. One is the images of the physical setting, described above. The other kind is images as figures of speech, such as metaphors. These figures of speech extend the imaginative range, the complexity and comprehensibility of the subject. They can be very brief, a word or two, a glistening fragment of insight, a chance connection sparked into a blaze (warming or destroying) of understanding; or they can be extended analogies, such as Donne's 'conceits'or Milton's epic similes.
7. Are there key statements or conflicts in the poem that appear to be central to its meaning?
Is the poem direct or indirect in making its meanings? If there are no key statements, are there key or central symbol, repetitions, actions, motifs (recurring images), or the like?
8. How does the sound of the poetry contribute to its meaning?
Pope remarked that "the sound must seem an echo to the sense": both the rhythm and the sound of the words themselves (individually and as they fit together) contribute to the meaning.
9. Examine the use of language.
What kinds of words are used? How much and to what ends does the poet rely on connotation, or the associations that words have (as "stallion" connotes a certain kind of horse with certain sorts of uses)? Does the poem use puns, double meanings, ambiguities of meaning?
10. Can you see any ways in which the poem refers to, uses or relies on previous writing?
This is known as allusion or intertextuality. When U-2's Bono writes "I was thirsty and you kissed my lips" in "Trip Through Your Wires," the meaning of the line is vastly extended if you know that this is a reference to Matthew 25:35 in the Bible, where Jesus says to the saved in explanation of what they did right, "I was thirsty and you wet my lips."
11. What qualities does the poem evoke in the reader?
What sorts of learning, experience, taste and interest would the 'ideal' or 'good' reader of this poem have? What can this tell you about what the poem 'means' or is about? The idea is that any work of art calls forth certain qualities of response, taste, experience, value, from the reader, and in a sense 'forms' the reader of that particular work. This happens through the subject matter, the style, the way the story is told or the scene set, the language, the images, the allusions, all the ways in which we are called by the text to construct meaning. The theorist Wayne Booth calls the reader as evoked or formed by the text the "implied reader."
12. What is your historical and cultural distance from the poem?
What can you say about the difference between your culture's (and sub-culture's) views of the world, your own experiences, on the one hand, and those of the voice, characters, and world of the poem on the other? What is it that you might have to understand better in order to experience the poem the way someone of the same time, class, gender and race might have understood it? Is it possible that your reading might be different from theirs because of your particular social (race, gender, class, etc.) and historical context? What about your world governs the way you see the world of the text? What might this work tell us about the world of its making?
13. What is the world-view and the ideology of the poem?
What are the basic ideas about the world that are expressed? What areas of human experience are seen as important, and what is valuable about them? What areas of human experience or classes of person are ignored or denigrated? A poem about love, for instance, might implicitly or explicitly suggest that individual happiness is the most important thing in the world, and that it can be gained principally through one intimate sexually-based relationship -- to the exclusion, say, of problems of social or political injustice, human brokenness and pain, or other demands on us as humans. It might also suggest that the world is a dangerous, uncertain place in which the only sure ground of meaningfulness is to be found in human relationships, or it might suggest on the other hand that human love is grounded in divine love, and in the orderliness and the value of the natural world with all its beauties. What aspects of the human condition are foregrounded, what are suppressed, in the claims that the poem makes by virtue of its inclusions and exclusions, certainties and uncertainties, and depictions of the way the natural and the human world is and works? For a brief elaboration of the concept of ideology, see my page on the subject.