Monday, July 12, 2010
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Endless questions-NIGHT OF THE SCORPION
When I asked a few villagers about the practice of keeping a scorpion still, they told me that if a scorpion stings some one, they would catch hold of it and hang it in front of the house so that it doesn't move.
A) "Peasants came like swarms of flies". Why "flies"?
1. It was raining and flies are attracted towards the candle and the lantern light
2. The peasants were buzzing the name of God like the buzzing sound of the flies.
B) Why the world is called “unreal”?
Religion holds that this world is just a preparatory ground for the real world which we enter after death. So, this world will have good and bad in equal proportion whereas the real world has got only good and no evil.
C) Don’t you think the narrator in the poem is very passive, only reporting what goes around and never does anything to change the situation? The narrator is assumed to be a child but is there a mention of his age? So, don’t you think the narrator too must be blamed for not helping his mother?
A) "Peasants came like swarms of flies". Why "flies"?
1. It was raining and flies are attracted towards the candle and the lantern light
2. The peasants were buzzing the name of God like the buzzing sound of the flies.
B) Why the world is called “unreal”?
Religion holds that this world is just a preparatory ground for the real world which we enter after death. So, this world will have good and bad in equal proportion whereas the real world has got only good and no evil.
C) Don’t you think the narrator in the poem is very passive, only reporting what goes around and never does anything to change the situation? The narrator is assumed to be a child but is there a mention of his age? So, don’t you think the narrator too must be blamed for not helping his mother?
THE FROG AND THE NIGHTINGALE-creative freedom
The frog in Vikram Seth's poem is a symbolic representation of music or art patrons who thrive at the cost of others' talent. Vikram Seth doesn't have the creative freedom to pin point such people in the society. So he makes animals as characters in his poem. Most of the fables we have read since childhood all contain valuable social messages. The lion that dictates other animals to be his food every day and is fooled to jumping into the well is worth mentioning here. Read the famous novel by George Orwell "Animal Farm". So, the frog and the nightingale are fable versions of people around us. It is our moral duty to identify such frogs and set them right.
Breaking the fetters- A CHRISTMAS CAROL
Do you know that "scrooge" means "MISER" in dictionary?
Scrooge becomes a true christian at the end of the play. The ghosts who visit him are not real. They are all in his mind. They show his deeds in the past, present and what would happen in the future. Future is nothing but an extension of the past. If you want to alter the future, alter the present. To get out of the vicious cycle of sin and punishment, one has to do "mankind's business".ie, charity, mercy,love etc. All the characters in the play are instrumental in bringing about a spiritual metamorphosis in Scrooge. Travelling in time is another aspect of interest in the play-The TIME MACHINE theme.
Scrooge becomes a true christian at the end of the play. The ghosts who visit him are not real. They are all in his mind. They show his deeds in the past, present and what would happen in the future. Future is nothing but an extension of the past. If you want to alter the future, alter the present. To get out of the vicious cycle of sin and punishment, one has to do "mankind's business".ie, charity, mercy,love etc. All the characters in the play are instrumental in bringing about a spiritual metamorphosis in Scrooge. Travelling in time is another aspect of interest in the play-The TIME MACHINE theme.
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