Summary and Analysis To the Moon BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

 

Summary

In this short poem, Shelley addresses the moon and asks whether climbing the sky and gazing at the Earth make her pale and weary. He contrasts the moon with stars which are consistent and empathizes with the loneliness of the moon. He wonders about what has set the moon  restless and assumes that there is no object in the sky to keep the moon fixed. The poet identifies with the changing nature of the moon and realizes that his soul is also like the moon, inconsistent and changing. 

Analysis

The poet notes two significant features of the moon. One is the changing nature and the other is loneliness. Though placed in the sky, the moon gazes at the Earth as the earth is an object of desire and the loneliness is a result of not being able to unite with the stars which are of a different birth. It is interesting to note that Shelley is a revolutionary poet and revolutionaries are restless with the world around them and always longs for something better. The changing nature of the moon can be associated with the mindset of a revolutionary who longs to create a better world. The inability of the moon to find something worthy of being consistent is very much true of revolutionaries. The loneliness the moon feels may be connected with the loneliness romantic writers express in their poem. In addition to this, it is common in literature to compare woman with moon.

A Note on Vyanjana (suggestion)

          Professor Kuppuswsamisastri establishes the synthesis between law and liberty and this synthesis is achieved by the judicious use of the elements of Vyanjana (suggestion). The concept of Vyanjana explains how meaning expands far beyond the literal sense. The language of poetry is different from the language of ordinary discourse; It is characterized by “suppression in expression”. Beauty in literature is best generated by the technique of Vyanjana or the suggested meaning. The secret of the force of the charm is that there is an element of novelty in Vyanjana, Some sort of intellectual quest which leads to some conquest and finally creates interest. Vyanjana, essentially an artistic process of expression, is not a worldly process. it is not ‘Laukika’,It is ‘Alaukika’. It involves suppression and gives the readers delight. It is extraordinary or unique. Hence it is ‘Lokottara'. The language of poetry is different from that of ordinary discourse. It is characterized by Vyanjana which adds beauty and glory to the poem. Anandavardhana, therefore regarded Vyanjana as the central principle of art criticism.

Summary and Analysis of Routine by Keki N Daruwalla

Keki N Daruwalla was born in Lahore in 1937. He is a poet of action and his poems feature predatory birds, beasts and soldiers. His poems are preoccupied with power and dominance. He narrates a world in which the jungle law of power rules and victims are shown least sympathy. He explores themes such as power, violence, lust and natural drives without any inhibitions.

Routine

This poem is taken from the collection Apparition in April(1971). The speaker of the poem is a police officer in uniform who is ordered to put down a riot. The poem begins by describing the 'putties'- a strip of clothe police man wears on their calves above their boots- of the police and the poet alludes this to the British raj. The speaker continues to describe the incompatibility of wearing colonial uniform in the hotter climate of India. This alien uniform keeps the police man repulsive, hot-tempered and  detached from the people of their own country. 

This comment can be developed further. So many colonial practices such as the police force are still in place in independent countries. They are the 'after-effect' of colonialism and the failure of the newly freed countries to reorganize these practices often leads to the emergence of the evils of colonialism.

Following the instructions, the police men march towards the angry crowd of young protestors - mostly students- and the latter call them abusive names. The police men do not bother as they are used to it. Karam Singh- a police officer with the same rank as that of the speaker- comments that these protesters are very young and he has children older to them. This shows both his consideration and contempt for the protestors, though nothing stops them from following their 'routine'. 

The violent protesters set fire to tramcars and turns their attention to the police men. The speaker fears that the rioters will burn their khaki skins. As expected, the police repeats their routine of warning the protesters which is lost in fiery slogans and then all the cops except the speaker point their gun at sky and pull the trigger. The speaker points his gun at the agitators and kills one of them. He executes a well rehearsed murder and the rioters disperse. The Salvage Squad takes the dead body to the autopsy room and moves the tram car away. The tension is relaxed and the cops return to their camp. The poem concludes with an ironic statement 'we are marching forward' made by one of the political leaders who might have professed the riot.

Analysis

Like other poems by Keki N Daruwalla, this poem too is a study on the inexplicable aspects of violence. The speaker of the poem offers various reasons for the perpetuation of violence by the police personnel. The uniform imposed on the cops is a lineage of the British raj and is incompatible with the climate of the country. The uniform includes putties, crack-helmet and boots and they are unbearable in summer heat of India. This make the police short tempered, restless and aggressive. The poem also questions the practice of following colonial systems by independent countries.

In another instance, the speaker justifies the act of violence with the aggressive nature of the protesters. The agitators burn tramcars and outnumber the cops. He also mentions that the police is also of the same folk but the crowd of protesters are not convinced of it. Here too the speaker tries to win the reader over to his side. 

In the next part, the speaker shoots at the protesters and one of the youth gets killed. Though he claims to bring the situation under control, it is very much clear that the murder committed by the speaker is rehearsed and intentional. None of his reasons are suffice to explain the cold blooded murder he has perpetuated under the guise of a police man. The speaker's indifference towards the student protesters is contrasted with the genuine concern of another police officer of the same rank, Karam Singh who can compare them with his own children.

The poem concludes with an ironic statement uttered by a political leader who may have professed and exploited the inexperienced student protesters. It is true that political leaders often do nothing for the progression of the country and that keep the country backward. It also true that police men are working under difficult circumstances and they are often deployed to manage violent mobs. None of this can explain the violent murder executed by the speaker and the poem exposes the psyche of a murderer. It is a study on the pathology of violence.

Significance of the Titles of Three Indian English Novels

Significance of the title ‘Cat and Shakespeare’ by Raja Rao.

Cat and Shakespeare was first published in 1959 with the title ‘The Cat’ in Chelsea Review, New York. ‘Shakespeare’ was added in the revised edition in 1965 as an afterthought. The novel explores the relationship between Govindan Nair-a spiritual guide-and Ramakrishna Pai, his disciple. The relation between the two is parallel to the relation between a mother cat and kitten. As per Indian tradition, a disciple has to surrender himself or herself before the mentor in order to be guided by him. In this process, the disciple feels ecstasy just like a kitten experiences absolute joy when the mother holds it by the neck. Though modern man is suspicious of submitting oneself before another human, Indian tradition encourages such acts of obedience. The way a mother cat holds a kitten by the neck is different from the way a big cat holds its prey by the neck. In the first case, the kitten is completely safe whereas in the latter big cats tear off the neck of the prey. The second part of the title ‘Shakespeare’ may represent the mastery over the illusory life of the physical world. The understanding of the real nature of the physical universe as illusory is a key step in a disciple’s journey to realisation. Only spiritually awakened humans are capable of experiencing divine grace and forgiveness. In the last plays of Shakespeare such as The Tempest, the all forgiving Prospero reconciles with his brother who usurped his dukedom.  The ‘The Mousetrap’ episode and the soliloquy ‘to be or not to be’ in Hamlet also finds reference in the novel.

2.     Significance of the title Cry, the Peacock by Anita Desai.

The title of the novel Cry, the Peacock refers to the cry and dance of the bird. The cry of peacock implies intense act of love making and its tryst with life and death. Peacocks are believed to have involved in the dance of life in the end of which they die. Maya lingers on the prediction of the astrologer and is obsessed with thoughts of death. The death cry of the peacocks triggers thoughts of death and intensifies her passion for life.  It is believed that like bees, peahen kills peacock after sexual intercourse. The novel narrates the complex relationship between Maya and Gautam and at the end, Maya kills Gautam.

3.     Significance of the title Serpent and the Rope by Raja Rao.

The title of the novel is taken from a story narrated by Sankaracharya. The snake in the title refers to ‘illusion’ and the rope stands for ‘reality’. Just like we mistake a rope in the dark as a snake, common people mistakes this illusory physical world as real and fails to see the real nature of the universe. The novel narrates the journey of Ramaswamy to enlightenment which equips him to understand reality. One of the most complex and exquisite novels in Indian English novels, Serpent and the Rope is a metaphysical work in which Eastern philosophy meets the Western.

Summary and Analysis of Philosophy by Nissim Ezekiel

Introduction to the Author

Nissin Ezekiel (1924-2004) is a pioneer in modern Indian English poetry. His role as translator, editor, playwright and reviewer has contributed significantly in shaping modernist poetry in India. The modernist movement of 1950s and 60s was known for its precise use of language, well crafted images, ironic stance, treatment of sexuality and male-female relationship. Ezekiel is often described as father of modernist movement and he writes introspective, ironic and humorous poems of self exploration and self formation. He has brought out seven collections of poetry; they are A Time to Change and Other Poems (1952), Sixty Poems (1953), The Unfinished Man (1960), The Exact Name (1965), Hymns in Darkness (1976), and the Sahitya Akademy award-winning Latter-day Psalms (1982).

Outline of the Poem Philosophy

This poem is taken from The Exact Name (1965) and the poet speaks about a place he often goes. This is an involuntary journey on which the poet has no control over.  This place is away from the everyday existence and offers him clear vision over the chaotic physical world. Here, thoughts and ideas flow freely and he says that the ‘mills of God’ are never slow. This may refer to the pristine nature of the place which is not made impure by human intervention and rationality. The creation and growth of the place follows the natural (divine) rhythm. Ideas and thoughts are spontaneously generated.

In the second stanza, the post continues to emphasise the pristine nature of the landscape. Like language in its early stage, the landscape has not gained any fixed form so that it can accommodate all forms of life. From this vantage point, the poet is able to comment on the passage of time and how every historic passion of the humans is reduced to a blink in the sad eye of time. The poet is skeptical of the growth and progress of the species and the evolution of the planet.

In the third stanza, the poet narrates the degenerated condition of the present. He traces the residues of the pristine landscape in the chaotic world that he lives in. Instead of following the clarity of vision (light) offered by the ‘place’, he joins the struggles of the living creatures to attain a formula of light. It is crucial for a poet to give voice to the darker myths (emotions) of human life than offering a formula of light (explanation to life) which is believed to be offered by the philosophers. The poet realises the futility of offering clear explanations to the complexities of human passions and miseries and states that he too rejects the clarity of light which argues off the pangs of existence. This statement hints at his poetic sensibility and deeper understanding of the human nature. It also reveals that he prefers poetry to philosophy.

In the final stanza, the poet identifies the true nature of poetic language. He says that the narration of sensual experiences (mundane language of senses) also creates an interpretation of life which is different from the critical explanation philosophy offers. These sensual experiences are so momentary and transient that any argument against them will die of cold before the truth is brought in.

Eliot’s Theory of Impersonality

In his essay "Tradition and Individual Talent", Eliot elaborates his theory of poetic creation. He questions the existing romantic notion of creativity and suggests that poetry should not be an expression of poets feelings and emotions. The emotion of poetry is different from the personal emotions of the poet. The personal emotions may be simple or crude but the emotion of his poetry may be complex and refined. Eliot rejects Wordsworth’s theory of poetry having, “its origin in emotions recollected in tranquility“ and points out that in the process of poetic composition there is no place for emotion, recollection and tranquility. In the poetic process, there is only concentration of a number of experiences, and a new thing results from this concentration. And this process of concentration is neither conscious nor deliberate; it is a passive one. The difference between a good and a bad poet is that a bad poet is conscious where he should be unconscious and unconscious where he should be conscious. Eliot does not deny the role of poet's personality or emotion but s/he has to depersonalize his emotions. There should be an escape from his personality. This impersonality can be achieved only when the poet surrenders himself completely to the work that is to be done and the poet knows what is to be done, only if he acquires a sense of tradition, the historic sense which makes him conscious not only of the present, but also of  the present moment of the  past, not only of what is dead, but of what is already living.

The Invention of Tradition by Eric Hobsbawm Summary and Analysis Part- 2

Convention/routine is also different from tradition. He says that conventions do not have any significant ritual or symbolic function. These are social practices carried out repeatedly and are insufficient to deal with unforeseen or inhabitual contingencies but are necessitated by industrialisation. Conventions are technical than ideological and are designed to facilitate readily definable practical operations and are abandoned or modified to meet changing practical needs. Conventions turn inert gradually and people who attached to them resist innovation.

Inventing tradition is essentially a process of formalisation and ritualisation characterised by reference to the past if only by imposing repetition. It is easy to trace traditions when they are deliberately invented, and constructed by a single initiator. The tradition of boy scouts initiated by Badem Powell is an example for this. It is very difficult to trace the origin, place and circulation of tradition when it is partly invented, partly evolved in private groups. Traditions are invented in every historic period and they are more frequent when rapid transformations of society weaken or destroy social patterns. New traditions are invented when the old traditions no longer prove sufficiently adaptable and flexible or they are completely eliminated. The high number of invented traditions in 19^th and 20^th century hint at the rapid social transformations occurred during this period. Traditions associated with the old form of community and authority structure are unadaptable and become rapidly unviable. New traditions form from the inability to use or adapt old ones.

Adaptation takes place for old uses in new conditions and by using old models for new purposes. Ancient materials are used to construct invented traditions of a novel type for quite novel purposes. A large store house of materials needed to invent new traditions is available in all society. There are occasions in which new traditions are grafted in old ones. This is illustrated by citing the example of Swiss nationalists who have modified, ritualised and institutionalised existing customary traditional practices such as folksong, physical contests, workmanship etc...for the new national purpose.

As already stated, invented traditions imply historical continuity and it is largely factitious. At times, historic continuity is also invented by employing semi fiction or by forgery. Hobsbawm cautions readers not to confuse the strength and adaptability of genuine traditions with that of invented traditions. He makes it clear as “where the old ways are alive, traditions need be neither revived nor invented”. The failure of 19^th century liberal ideology to provide for social and authority ties resulted in creating gaps which were later filled by invented practices.

In this part, Hobsbawm makes certain general remarks on invented traditions emerged since industrialisation. They are

a) they establish or symbolise social cohesion or the membership of groups, real or artificial communities

b) establish or legitimize institutions status or relations of authority

c) main purpose is socialisation, inculcation of beliefs, value systems and conventions of behaviour.

 

The Invention of Tradition by Eric Hobsbawm Summary and Analysis Part-1

Eric Hobsbawm is a British Marxist historian. His writings combine the breadth of vision with interesting details. His major works are Primitive Rebels (1959), The Age of Revolution (1962), Labouring Men (1964), and Industry and Empire (1968). He has collaborated with Terence Ranger to edit the work The Invention of Tradition (1983) which offers significant insights into the making of traditions in modern society. This is an outline of the introductory essay by Hobsbawm detailing the origin, development and purpose of inventing tradition.

Hobsbawm begins the essay by pointing at the recent origin of the pageantry of British monarchy in its public ceremonial manifestations. This tradition is maintained in such a way that it connects the present monarch with the earliest of the dynasty. Though these traditions may appear or claim to appear old, most of them are quite recent in origin (in this case, the present form of the ceremonial manifestation of British monarch is a product of late 19^th and 20^th century) and sometimes invented. In this introductory article, Hobsbawm discusses issues such as the invention, appearance and establishment of tradition.

The term ‘Invented tradition’ includes both traditions actually invented, constructed and formally instituted and those emerging in a less easily traceable manner within a brief and dateable period and establishing themselves with great rapidity. The author focuses on the appearance and establishment of invented traditions than of their chances of survival. According to him, an invented tradition ‘is a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour, by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past’. It is common that these traditions normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitable historic past. Hobsbawm illustrates this point by citing the deliberate choice of a gothic style for the 19^th century rebuilding of the British Parliament. Bernard S. Cohn cites the example of the introduction of durbars in colonial India to establish British authority by creating a replica of Mughal durbars. Invented traditions imply continuity with the past and this is largely artificially created.

Then the author examines the reasons for the emergence of invented traditions. He states that these traditions are responses to new situations which take references to old situations; otherwise they establish their own past by quasi-obligatory repetition. According to the author, invented traditions are born out of the attempts to structure at least some parts of social life as unchanging and invariant within the constant change and innovation of the modern world.

The author then distinguishes ‘custom’ and ‘tradition’. According to him, customs practiced by traditional societies admit innovation to a point whereas invented traditions are never open to change. While custom is dynamic, tradition imposes fixed practices. Customs require being compatible or identical with precedent whereas tradition requires formalised repetition. Hobsbawm acknowledges the role of custom in giving any desired change the sanction of precedent, social continuity and natural law as expressed in history. It also shows the combination of flexibility in substance and formal adherence to precedent.

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A Solitary Human Voice from Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

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Plato’ s Observations on Drama

         Plato considers dramatic writing as a branch of poetry, so that all the charges he levied on poetry- , twice removed from reality, poetic inspiration, the emotional appeal of poetry and its non-moral character-are applicable to drama as well. In addition to these, he makes three more observations on Drama. They are: appeal to baser instincts, effects of impersonation and tragic and comic pleasure.

      The first one is the appeal to baser instincts. Drama is a performance art so that it is to be staged and multitudes of people are involved in approving and disapproving drama. It is natural that dramatists try to please the audience by adding scenes of fights, quarrels and lamentations, thus catering to base instincts. The second one is the effects of impersonation on actors. According to Plato, sometimes drama reacts unfavourably on the actors. By constantly impersonating evil characters, evil qualities may enter into the actors; it is detrimental to the natural self of the actors. The third is tragic and comic pleasure: tragic pleasure is derived from the excess indulgence in base emotions. Comic pleasure, on the other hand, is deriving happiness from the weakness of a fellow-being and hence undesirable. 

Analysis of ENGLISH, AUGUST: An Indian Story by Upamanyu Chatterjee Part -2

    In the second half of the novel, Agastya returns to his uncle’s home in Delhi for a Diwali break.  Here also the narrator cites examples to show the misuse of power by civil servants. He travels with Kumar in first class. Later, Kumar refuses to accept train ticket charge-450 rupees-and receives a hundred rupees from Agastya as token of friendship. Agastya guesses that Kumar might have assigned a police menial to buy train tickets for them and doesn’t pay him. Perhaps, police man may get the reward as promotion. They catch a taxi from Delhi railway station and quarrels with a taxi driver over fifty rupees. Kumar misuses his power and threatens the driver. But the driver drives off abusing thus “Tell him to get his arse-hole stitched with the fifty rupees”. Agastya plans to drop his job to work for a publishing firm owned by his second cousin, Tonic. His father exhorts him to keep up the profession and his uncle also encourages him to maintain his job by reminding him of the security of a government position. Before he comes back to the Madna, he realizes that Dhrubo is also in preparation for civil service and unlike others of his age, he has no worries about the job hunt and financial insecurity. Yet, he envies them and feels guilty.

Back in Madna, collector Srivastav orders Agastya to guide an English man named John Avery and his Indian wife Sita, who are in search of the spot where John Avery’s grandfather was attacked and killed by a tiger. Later, Agastya is posted as a block development officer in Jumpanna where half of the population (12,000) is tribals. Here, he rides in a jeep with additional district health officer Tiwari to visit Baba Ramanna’s Rehabilitation home in Gorapak. Agastya excuses himself from the revenue meeting enacting like a sick one and writes to the collector that he is going to consult the doctor Multani. Doctor is also greedy for wealth and has no call for the profession.

    Later on, Agastya discovers certain meaning to his profession and works for the benefit of the people. He acts as a responsible officer when he receives a complaint from a tribal woman on shortage of water in Chipanthi. Though the region is notorious for the presence of Nexal militants, he brushes away security concerns and visits the place. His meeting with a Nexalite named Rao equips him to understand the plight of tribals in rural India and the exploitation they suffer from bureaucrats. He also learns from Rao that the forest officer Mohan Gandhi has seduced a tribal woman and the men of her village have cut off his arms as punishment.  Later, District Development Officer Bajaj talks about tribal’s ignorance and points at the fact the mainstream Indian society has not engaged with them since independence in 1947. Measures taken by government has helped only to “ruin distinctive tribal cultures without providing any real compensation”.At last, he gets a post of Assistant Collector, in Koltanga; it is one-tenth the size of Madna without industries and hotels. Shankar has also transferred into Koltanga by greasing the palm of a minister. Agastya affirms that he is not going Koltanga, but he has to go home and think about. Before his recourse, he writes to Dhrubo informing that he is taking a year off to discover himself. He starts his last journey giving “the last false promise” to Srivastav and Kumar.

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Summary and Analysis of ENGLISH, AUGUST: An Indian Story by Upamanyu Chatterjee Part -1

Upamanyu Chatterjee’s debut novel, ENGLISH, AUGUST: An Indian Story (1988) depicts the journey of a young urban Indian to self discovery. The story is told from the view point of an omniscient narrator and the title, ‘English August’ refers the protagonist ‘Agastya Sen’ who is named after a mythological Hindu rishi. His friends anglicize ‘Agastya’ into ‘August’ which connotes the feeling of un-Indian or western in Indian soil and they call him ‘Ogu’, ‘the English type’, hey English’, and ‘hey Anglo’. This multiplicity of naming hints at the fragmented identity and alienation he undergoes. 

The central character, Agastya Sen, is a twenty-four year old civil service trainee and the son of a Bengali father, Madhusudhan Sen, and a Goan, Christian mother. Unlike his friends who have opted for higher studies in western universities, Agastya Sen joins Indian civil service training to satisfy his father’s wish for his son to have a stable government job. He is directionless and finds solace in marijuana, masturbation and the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. The novel brilliantly satirizes the degeneration of Indian bureaucracy and reveals the urban rural divide in India.

A conversation between Agastya and his friend Dhrubo on the inconveniences of joining civil service training marks the beginning of the novel. As the two of them belongs to urban upper class family, they look down at and make fun of going to small towns. He soon joins the Indian administrative training in a small town named Madna which is described as one of the hottest and unhealthiest places in India. The novel is a socio political document as it reveals the transformation of Indian villages from thick forests to industrial small towns. Agastya Sen feels alienated in this hostile climate and culture. During the training period, he has to deal with various district offices and he stays in a government rest house with an unhygienic servant Vasanth and his family.  District collectors enjoy power and prestige in rural India. The novelist spares no chance to crack fun at the expense of these corrupt bureaucrats who take advantage of the veneration of the villagers towards them. 

The comic features of the novel are drawn largely from the portrayal of bureaucrats with their exquisite mannerisms, personal enmity and narrow social life. These officials are scandal mongers, corrupt and willing to defend their interest by any means. The novel throws light on the hitherto unexpressed life of these degenerate civil servants and it also narrates the consequences meted out by those who have tried to break open these impositions. The case of district collector Antony, who is made a scapegoat in a Hindu-muslim riot and is transferred by corrupt politicians, is a perfect example of how genuine officers are paid for their service by the corrupt public servants. The reports in Dainik newspaper, which is famous for its sensational news about the collector, minister and other bureaucrats, shows the stagnation and sterility of the life of people in the small town.

The first half of the novel introduces characters, especially the corrupt bureaucrats, and life in Madna. Agastya is disinterested and disgusted with his job and he lives three life; the official, the unofficial and the secret one in his room. He feels self-alienated, frustrated and dissatisfied. Agastya attends duty at 11 in the morning and works until lunch. He is sensible of the scandal loving people of Madna and tells a number of lies regarding his age and family. He says he is twenty-eight years old in his twenty-four. 

Though discontented with the life, he befriends with Deputy Engineer Shankar, Mr. Sathe who professes yellow journalism, Chief-in Police Kumar, Forest Officer Mohan Gandhi and doctor Multani and keeps in touch with a college mate, Mahendra Bhatia. But, Agastya makes use of these relationships to cover up his alcoholism during work hours. Gradually, readers realize the extent of corruption these officials are delved in and their lack of any commitment to work. His relation with District Collector Srivastav is also hollow as Agastya depends on the latter for delicious lunch or dinner. He is attracted to the collector’s wife, who is a teacher in Janatha College. He “had begun to stone more” in Madna and suffers from insomnia. 

His self alienated, intensely personal life helps him to survive in Madna for the time being but later on it falls apart and life become unbearable in the small town. In the meanwhile, he exchanges letters with his girl friend Neera and also communicates with his father. His notion of marriage tells us the protagonist’s attitude to life.

"Eventually, he knew, he would marry, perhaps not out of passion, but out of convention,     which  was probably a safer thing. And then, in either case, in a few months or years they would tire of disagreeing with each other, or what was more or less the same thing, would be inured to each other’s odd and perhaps disgusting ways, the way she squeezed the tube of toothpaste and the way he drank from a glass and didn’t rinse it, and they would slide into a placid and comfortable unhappiness, and may be unseeingly watch TV every day, each still a cocoon."

The conflict between the intense personal life and the world outside is narrated in this quote. 

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Plato’s Attack on Poetry

        The entire corpus of Plato's criticism on art and literature is built on two key concerns; the role of art in moulding character and promoting the well being of the state. He disapproves art and literature because they are twice removed from reality. In addition to this, he attacks poetry on three grounds. They are poetic inspiration, the emotional appeal of poetry and its non-moral character.  Poetry is a product of inspiration which affects the emotions (heart)rather than reason (Intellect). Beauty of form enhances this influence. As he already stated, art appeals to emotions.The pictures, characters and scenes of art overpower emotions and imprison reason. Since emotions are impulsive, they cannot provide guidance to us like reason does. He quotes instances of weeping and wailing from tragedies of the times and argues that they feed and water passions and pity helping them to dominate and incapacitate reason. When it comes to actual life, people whose pity and passions grew by feeding on the griefs of others would find it difficult to exercise their rational faculty. Plato indicts poetry for its lack of concern with morality. Poetry treats virtues and vices alike.

The Language of Paradox by Cleanth Brooks

   Cleanth Brooks is an American teacher and critic. He is a strong proponent of new criticism and focuses on close reading and structural analysis of poetry. His books like Modern Poetry and the Tradition (1939) and The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry (1947) are highly influential in establishing new criticism as an academic discipline. New criticism ignores the role of reader’s response, historical background, author’s intention, and moral biases in interpreting literary texts.

This approach considers literary texts as an autotelic entity and looks for an organic whole in the text. This wholeness is achieved by analyzing the relation of various parts to each other. Irony and paradox are two key words in new criticism.  Irony refers to “the obvious warping of a statement by the context”, whereas paradox is the tension at the surface of a verse that can lead to apparent contradictions and hypocrisies. It ‘involves the resolution of the opposites”.

Text

Brooks begins the essay by discussing common prejudices on paradox. He says that paradox is often considered as intellectual than emotional, clever than profound, and rational than divinely irrational. He dismisses these notions and argues that ‘paradox is the language appropriate and inevitable to poetry’. He points at the contradictions that are inherent in poetry and states that if those contradictions do not exist, some of the best poetry will not exist today. He illustrates this by citing examples from canonical poems.

Brooks comments that William Wordsworth is a poet who distrusts sophistry and relies on simplicity. Though he will not provide too many examples for paradox, some of his best poems emerge out of paradoxical situations. He quotes from the poem It is a Beauteous Evening and illustrates that the poem is based on paradoxical context. Looking at the evening sky, the poet is filled with worship whereas the girl who walks with him is not at all moved by the sight. The paradox is revealed when the poet says that the girl is deeply devotional because she unconsciously sympathizes with all forms of nature throughout the year whereas the poet’s worship is temporary and sporadic. The self righteous nun like evening sky is contrasted with the innocence of the girl who wears no sign of devotion but is in communion with nature.

 In Wordsworth’s sonnet Composed upon Westminster Bridge, the poet is surprised to see a man made city-London- is able to wear the beauty of morning. The poet used to look at the city as inanimate and mechanical and this morning vision offers him the glory of the city. This paradoxical situation resolves the tension between the mechanical and the organic, and the poet realizes that the city is also part of nature, lighted by the sun of nature. These testify what Wordsworth has stated in The Preface to Lyrical ballad; ‘to choose incidents and situations from common life’ but to treat them that ‘ordinary things should be preserved to the mind in an unusual aspect’. Paradox is employed to evoke romantic preoccupation with wonder and surprise. Neoclassical poets like Alexander Pope invoke irony, though irony and wonder often happen together. The fusion of irony and wonder is found in the poems of Blake, Coleridge and Gray. Paradox unites the opposites and contradictory through the imagination of the poet.

Paradox springs from the very nature of poetic language. In poetic use, both connotation and denotation gain prominence. The poet has to make up his language as he goes. In scientific use of language, terms are stabilized and frozen in strict denotation. The poet has to work with metaphors to express the subtle nature of human emotion. Poetic language involves continual tilting of the planes, necessary overlapping, discrepancies and contradictions. The nature of poetic language forces poets to be paradoxical. In Wordsworth’s Evening sonnet, the evening is described as “beauteous, calm, free, holy, quiet, breathless”. By placing the adjectives calm and breathless-which suggests excitement that upsets the calm and quiet- together, the poem invokes paradox.

Brooks delves into an in-depth analysis of the poem Canonization by John Donne. According to him, this poem provides a concrete example for extension of the basic metaphor into a paradox. In the poem, profane love is treated equal to divine love. The poet has daringly used religious terms to describe two lovers who have renounced the world and have hermitage in each other’s body. By describing the lovers fit for canonization, the poet has produced an effective parody of Christian sainthood.

The double and contradictory meaning of the word ‘die’ for is another instance of paradox. The lovers are willing to die if they cannot live by love.  Here the poet hints at the double meaning of the word. In 16 and 17 century, the word ‘die’ refers to experience the consummation of the act of love. In that sense, it also means their love is not exhausted by lust. At another instance, the poet stresses on the duality and singleness of love. The lovers are compared to phoenix, which dies to be born. Similarly the lovers have renounced life in order to gain most intense life.  He also quotes Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to emphasize the metaphor of love and pilgrimage to the holy land.

Brooks has offered a detailed analysis of the poem and states that the only way the poet could say what canonization says is by paradox. Donne has maintained love and religion and has effectively portrayed the complexity of the experience. According to Brooks, Donne is obsessed with the problem of unity and resolves the contradictory ideas by employing paradoxes. Imagination, according to Coleridge, brings together the opposites such as sameness with difference, general with concrete, idea with image, individual with representative etc…By quoting Shakespeare’s “The Phoenix and Turtle”, he establishes that paradox is the only solution to unite the double/ multiple names of life. He concludes by commenting that the urn in which the ash of the lovers is kept is the poem itself. Like the phoenix it rises from the ashes and we have to be prepared to accept the paradoxes of imagination.

Critical Analysis of A House for Mr Biswas by V S Naipaul - Part 2

Diasporic writing is an essential part of postcolonial literature. Though Diaspora bridges cultures through widening of experience,it  always involves loss and unhappiness. The role of the colonial regime in displacing the colonised people is widely studied. These communities are uprooted from their social settings and eventually move to strange territories. One of the key components of diasporic writing is the search for cultural roots and the realisation that the country of their origin is an illusion they can never get access to. Naipaul himself has articulated this disappointment in this futile attempt to trace the roots of his own past “our own past was, like our idea of India, a dream”(Finding the Centre). The alienation one suffers in a strange place is intensified by the realisation that the country of one's origin is also erased. This hyphenated identity is well articulated in the diasporic literature.

Critical Readings of the Novel

i) Diasporic Novel

One of the striking features of Naipaul’s fictional narrative of the indian diasporic community of Trinidad is his engagement with the descendants of indentured labourers. The indian immigrants in the Caribbean are unskilled labourers and they were displaced by the colonial administration in India.The famine and scarcity of resources force these groups of people to flee from the country and studies have shown that famine was also a result of colonial mismanagement of Indian food grains. The establishment of plantations in the caribbeans is also a colonial enterprise. These groups of people were displaced from their homeland and later employed in the colonial plantations. Thus, it is clear that these diasporic communities are created by the colonial process.

The cultural alienation and the impossibility of returning to home make the life of the diaspora often hard to bear. The first generation of indentured labourers desired to return home as they undertook the voyage as an escape from misery. In the novel Pundit Tulsi, the patriarch of the Tulsi family fails to return home and gradually this is forgotten. It is also significant that there is displacement within a country, for example Mr. Biswas’ journey from Arwacas to Port of Spain brings a change in his fortune. The novel also portrays the migration of second generation Indian Trinidadians like Owad to  European countries for higher studies. The epilogue testifies that Anand spends his time in England and refuses to return even when he is informed of his father's illness. Biswas’ journey from Pagotes to Port of Spain marks the impact of the alien environment on the lives of the migrants.

It is a common feature of diasporic writing that those communities upheld the cultural values of the communities they were part of. Most of the labourers compared their exile from home to that of Rama’ s exile from Ayodhya and believed that they  would return home triumphantly as Rama reclaimed his kingdom. In the novel, people and houses are given names from Indian puranas; for example the Tulsi household is known as Hanuman House, -Hanuman was a close aide of Rama- Mr. Biswas’ father as Raghu andTara’s husband as Ajodha.  In this novel, most of the indian characters attempt to reproduce indian cultural values and rituals in Trinidad. The Tulsi family observes most of the rituals in their everyday life. It is also worth noting that the local community is involved in a ceremony of mounting sticks which is a desperate attempt to cling on certain regional celebrations of north indian villages.

ii) Home as a Motif

The novel records the search and failure of Biswas to create a house of his own expectations. Various factors contribute to this failure; In the first case he is unable to live in the ancestral house of the Tulsis because of the power struggle within the family and number of inhabitants in the family. It is also important that  the house reconciles with him and often helps to recover from illness. The novel also narrates the rise and fall of the ancestral home. In more than one way, this house resembles the brahmanic ancestral houses in India and Biswas desire for privacy and recognition is ignored. The house may represent India as such with its crowded streets and power imbalance in the patriarchal household.

The house at The Chase depresses with loneliness and his inability to cope with the people around. He had to deal with thugs like Mungroo and work with raw men like Seth. His refined tastes meet with the aggressive manners of the local people. In Green Vale, his house was broken by the alien climate of the region. Here again, the strange land he lives makes it difficult to survive. His life at Port of Spain was the best he ever had, though he was thrown out of the house whenever Mrs. Tusi was in need of the house. The house he buys in Sikkim Street is defective but he gradually makes it customised to his requirements.

Biswas’ search and failure mark the helplessness of the diasporic communities to feel at home in countries they were forced to live.

iii) Root and Route

In his analysis of the diaspora, Paul Gilroy introduces these terms. The first one “root” refers to attempts made by migrants to reconstruct from memory a pristine, pure, uncontaminated homeland to which the first generation of immigrants dreamt of returning. In the novel the other term “route” refers to the journey and the historical interactions between masters and indentured immigrants which have forever contaminated the diasporic ethos and meaning, His analysis throws light into the complexity of migration and how their cultural roots are contaminated by the colonial regime

Critics have also studied the impact of long ship voyages on the migrants. The existing social relations were subject to negotiations and many rigid social practices such as caste related rituals were violated. This also led to forming new social organizations such as brotherhood among the immigrants. Unlike many other diasporic communities, the Caribbeans have invented new myths and also have reinvented old ones to suit their present condition.

iv) Struggle over Place

The title itself implies the spatial concern in the novel. A house is a social construct and his engagement with the alien geography of Trinidad leads to his discontentment.It is commonplace that Biswas notion of a home is modelled after colonial notions. His dissatisfaction with Hanuman House is partly because of its joint family system in which individuals are nonentity and everything is shared among the inhabitants. He also resists the collective way of bringing up children in the Tulsi household, and wishes to bring them up with taste which the Tulsis did not permit.

Biswas is also very critical of the inequality of spatial distribution. For example, in the house no one gets enough space except the dominant people in the house such as Mrs. Tulsi, Seth, Owad and Shekhar. They enjoy absolute control over the house and the premise and sons-in-law and widows in the family are denied domestic space. The episode in which a doll’s house gifted by Biswas was broken down by Shama to please the Tulsis indicates the domination of the Tulsis in imagining and distributing spaces.

Critical Analysis of A House for Mr Biswas by V S Naipaul - Part 1

Critical Analysis of A House for Mr Biswas by V S Naipaul - Part 1

Critical Analysis of A House for Mr Biswas by V S Naipaul - Part 1

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    V S Naipaul is a Trinidadian writer of Indian Origin.  He is a prolific writer and his novels are based on the lives  of Indian migrants in Trinidad. He portrays the complexities of the life of people in the Caribbean Islands, which are settlement colonies. In these countries, bulk of the population are immigrants from different parts of the world; for example, there are people from France,Africa, England, America, China, India etc... The Caribbeans do not share a common language, culture, nationality, race and religion, though they are part of a single nation. In other words, the people of Trinidad and other countries in the Caribbean are strangers to themselves. This absence of a collective identity intensifies the search for cultural roots and this is a recurrent theme in the writings of Naipaul. His novels record  the predicament of postcolonial subjects who have lost their country of origin and failed to build a cultural home in the countries they live in. It is reported that Naipaul’s great grandmother  migrated from India to Trinidad at the end of the nineteenth century.

Naipaul and India/ Indians at Trinidad 

        In the 19th century, Indians migrated to countries like Trinidad, Fiji, Mauritius etc...for survival. There were two types of migration; Indentured labourers and free migration. The first group were unskilled labourers from Indian villages who were reduced to penury by the exploits of the colonial government and the later were usually traders from Sindh and Gujarat who left the country to improve their social standing. The indentured labourers signed an agreement with a specific employer to work with him/her for five years at a fixed wage. 

These labourers are free once they complete their five year term and most of them desire to go home. This is never materialised and they continue to live in the colony. They try to reproduce Indian cultural, religious life in the new country; thus becoming a new social group. Naipaul traces his cultural roots in India and is often disappointed by the vast geography and hybridity of India. He desires to have pure ancestral roots in the country but India baffles him with its heterogeneous multitudes of languages, races,cultures and geography. This leads to his ambiguous relation with the home country. He maintains an ironic detachment from his Indian characters

Plot Outline of the Novel

The novel begins with a prologue and ends with an epilogue. In the prologue, the narrator portrays the last days of the protagonist Mr. Biswas. He buys a house in Sikkim Street and is returning home from hospital. Though the house is defective, he is happy to own a home and tries his best to make the house more hospitable. His family also feels anchored in the house.

Part One

The novel is divided into two parts: Part One and Part Two. In part one, the narrator records the life of Mr. Mohun Biswas from childhood to his journey to Port of Spain. Part two begins with his life in the port city and concludes with his life in the Sikkim Street. In the epilogue that follows, the narrator ties the loose ends and offers a glimpse at the future life of his major characters including the death of the protagonist.

In the first chapter of part one titled The Pastoral, readers are taken to the hut of a plantation labourer named Raghu (Mr. Biswas’ father) and his family. His wife Bipti and two sons-Pratap and Prasad- and daughter Dehuti and the youngest Biswas live in the hut. They lead a miserable life; limited resources, quarreling parents,and an alienated life in rural Trinidad. The birth of Mr. Biswas adds to the misery of the family as Pundit Sitaram predicts that the child may harm the life of its father. Raghu, the miser, is restricted from visiting the child before 21 days of its birth. The prediction turns true and Raghu drowns and the family, after offering him a ceremonial burial as per Indian traditions, leaves the hut in the plantation. They seek refuge in the household of Bipti’s sister Tara at Pagotes and they are given a tenement. His brothers work in the plantation and sister Dehuti elopes with Ramchand, a lower caste hindu worker, and Biswas is sent to Canadian Missionary School where people are hostile and a teacher named Lal, a lower caste christian convert, ridicules him for not having a birth certificate. At school, he befriends with Alec who teaches him to write letters exquisitely and later they take up the job of painting signs.

Later, Mr. Biswas lands in Arwacas and Seth, a prominent member of the Tulsi family, hires him to paint the sign board of Tulsi store. During his work in the store, Mr. Biswas falls in love with one of the Tulsi daughters named Shama and writes a love letter to her. The next day, Mrs Tulsi, the matriarch of the house, asks him to come to the magnificent Hanuman House. He is quizzed on his love letter and to his surprise, she offers him Shama’s hand in marriage. He consents, marries and regrets. Nevertheless, he is given a room in the Hanuman House with so many other sons-in-law. He resents the house and the huge crowd in it and describes it as ‘monkey house’ and the two privileged sons as ‘gods’. He insults Owad by spitting and throwing food onto him. He is beaten and is asked to leave the house.

In the next phase, Biswas lives in a remote village named The Chase. The Tulsis offer him a shop they have purchased and a house with two rooms and a kitchen. He feels insecure and lonely at The Chase and develops symptoms of hysteria. Though Shama’s presence provides security and stability to his existence, he fights with his wife and she leaves for Hanuman House. He is left with meager resources and hostility of other shopkeepers. The Chase episode comes to an end when a local thug Mungroo appears at the shop and he buys provisions on credit and never pays him. Mungroo is a self proclaimed guardian of the village who has assembled a group of young people from the locality and they practice stick fighting. They organise a yearly ritual mounting sticks and this is a reproduction of a north Indian village ritual. Mungroo refuses to pay and files a suit against Biswas on damaging his credit and his business turns sour. Meanwhile, Biswas symptoms of hysteria become more evident. He returns to Hanuman House and Seth proposes to insure and burn the shop so that he may be credited with an insurance amount. Biswas agrees to this.

Next, Biswas moves to Green Vale as a driver cum supervisor of the Tulsis. He is provided with a room in the barracks where the plantation labourers are living. Barracks are constructed in a long line to offer only shelter to its occupants; it lacks basic facilities like toilet, kitchen.He finds life tedious and miserable and plans to build a home behind a grove of trees nearby. He gifts Savi with a doll's house, which was broken by Shama to please the Tulsi households. His attempt to claim Savi fails as she refuses to leave Hanuman House and then his attention turns to his son Anand who sticks to him. Using the money he gets from the insuraburn, he builds a house. He lives in the new house with Anand and on a stormy night, the house collapses and they are taken to Hanuman House. He falls unconscious and  rests in the Blue Room and gradually recovers. The Tulsis do their best to improve his condition.

        
Part Two

The Part Two of the novel presents Mr. Biswas walking along the road holding a suitcase. He is determined to start life afresh and has left the family with the Tulsis. He gets into a bus to Port of Spain and lands at the house of Ramchand, his brother in law. He ran into the editor of The Sentinel, Mr. Burnett, who is impressed by Biswas’ story and he is appointed as a reporter of the newspaper with a salary of fifteen dollars per fortnight. He visits his family at Hanuman House and he is warmly welcomed by the members. His wife Shama also respects him and his new role as a popular reporter of the Sentinel. He takes his family to Port of  Spain and they occupy a vacant room rented to them by Mrs. Tulsi. They enjoy life in the port city. Meanwhile Owad leaves for England to study medicine and the family assembles and celebrates; thus initiating new rituals.

A shift in power at The Sentinel leads to fading the glory of Mr. Bisawas. Mr. Burnett is fired and Biswas is directed to factual, dull, and tedious reporting. Later, he is asked to enquire and prepare the list of ‘Deserving Destitutes,’an initiative by the Sentinel to attract public attention by funding welfare schemes. During this period, a conflict of interest leads to the breaking up of the Tulsis; Seth on one side and the rest of the Tulsis under Mrs Tulsi leave for an estate in Shorthills. Mr Biswas joins the Tulsis at Shorthills and builds a house for his family in the estate. This house catches fire and they leave for Port of Spain.

Back at Port of Spain, Biswas shares the house with Shuttles, Govind and Besdai, the widow. As the urge to get educated gains momentum, the widows send their children to the house and the house gets crowded. Biswas’ desire to have a house fades as he is suffering from illness and the overcrowded house suffocated him. His long service as special investigator of Deserving Destitutes helps him to get a new job as Community Welfare Officer. This government  job offers him money and power to pursue his dream. He buys a car, new suits and goes for a holiday to Balandra.

Owad’s return to Port of Spain diminishes the prospects of Biswas’ dreams. He is kicked out of the house and later restored to a single room in the house. An altercation between Mr. Biswas and Owad lead to the ousting of Biswas from the home and hastily he buys a defective home in Sikkim Street. He is late to realise the flaws of the house and later he accepts the flaws and makes it habitable for him.

Critical Analysis of A House for Mr Biswas by V S Naipaul - Part 2