Define the moral lesson that you have got from The Rape of the Lock.

 Some of Pope's contemporaries, like John Dennis found The Rape of the Lock immoral and distasteful. According to them it lacked true wit and judgment. Dennis's remarks on Mr. Pope's The Rape of the Lock severely criticises the poem for deviating from the rules of the epics. His charge was that Pope dealt in trifles, without moral, in his mock epic. However, most critics feel that Clarissa's speech at the opening of Canto V sets the moral tone. As Warburton put it, Pope introduced Clarissa's speech "to open more clearly the moral of the poem." Pope knew that a moral was thought by critics to be important to an epic. From the very beginning, The Rape of the Lock had a moral motive. His aim was to teach the lesson of "concord" and good humour between two quarrelling families. But satire in Pope is so finely chiselled by wit, that it is rarefied into pure humour. Thus, in such a scheme of poetry there is not much scope for serious moral lessons. Even the moral lesson that is there in Clarissa's speech is one more facet of Pope's consummate wit and humour. Even so what can we call these lines of Clarissa as setting a strict moral standard for the 18th century ladies:

But since, alas! frail beauty must decay,

Curl'd or uncurl'd, since Locks will turn to grey;

Since painted, or not painted, all shall fade,

And she who scorns a Man, Must die a Maid;

What then remains but well our Pow'r to use,

And keep good Humour still, whatev'r we lose?

It would not be wrong then to say that Pope did have a moral pre-occupation, even if it is covered in a veneer of wit and humour.

    A true satire is purposive and instructive. In fact, the real end of satire is "the amendment of

vices by correction. The Rape of the Lock is a perfect specimen of satiric literature, and its moral tone is quite patent. Here comes the element of the criticism of life in Pope's mock-heroic satire. The Rape of the Lock contains a good deal of the poet's critical evaluation of the English social life of the eighteenth century. Pope's subject of study here is the showy, artificial and frivolous life of the aristocratic, fashionable society of his own time. He ruthlessly exposes here the gay and thoughtless belles and the idle and vain beaux of the time. He misses no chance to  hit hard at all that characterises that shallow, artificial age – its affectation and vanity, its coquetry and frivolity, its gay foppery and spineless morality.

 

      A particular incident in the battle scene of Canto V shows Pope’s. mystery in reducing to size the pompous men and women of his age. It is the scene where Belinda vanquishes the Baron with a pinch of snuff:

 

Just where the Breath of Life his Nostrils drew,

A Charge of Snuff the wily virgin threw;

 

Sudden, with starting Tears each Eye O'erflows,

And the high Dome re-echoes to his Nose.

 

What a sorry figure the Baron cuts! And what scandalous behaviour on the part of an aristocratic lady! In one stroke Pope has demolished the pompousness of his vainglorious characters.

 

 

Pope's pointed and critical survey of his age is amply evident in his descriptions of the toilet of Belinda, the strange alter raised by the proud Baron and the 'nice conduct of Sir Plume and his 'clouded cane.' Belinda's long and laborious toilet clearly demonstrates her vanity and pride which are certainly unfortunate sins. Pope brings out forcefully the obdurate female pride as well as vanity of his age through his portrait of Belinda and her conduct.

 

And now, unveil'd the Toilet stands display'd,

Each Silver Vase in mystic Order laid.

First, rob'd in White, the Nymph intent adores

With Head uncover'd the Cosmetic pow'rs.

A heav'nly Image in the Glass appears

To that she bends, to that her Eyes she rears;

Th' inferior Priestess, at her Altar's side

Trembling begins the sacred Rites of Pride.

 

And how ridiculous the Baron looks when he,

 

But chiefly Love-to-Love an altar built,

Of twelve vast French romances neatly gilt.

They lay three garters, half a pair of gloves;

And all the Trophies to his former Loves

With tender Billet-doux he lights the Pyre,

And breathes three am’rous Sighs to raise the Fire,

Then prostrate falls and begs with ardent Eves

Soon to obtain, and long possess the Prize:

The Baron's conduct too is, indicative of the moral depravity of the age. Sir Plume stands for the shallow lazy punctilio of the age that has no strength of character or force of morality.

Moralising Tone of Clarissa. But Pope's criticism is not negative. He strikes mightily with his sweeping banter. But he instructs and advises, too, for the cure of the moral degeneration of his age. The poem has a moral purpose, and this constitutes the constructive aspect of Pope's criticism of life. The long speech, given to Clarissa, at the beginning of Canto V chiefly contains his unambiguous instruction to his age, particularly to the ladies of fashion and rank of his time. Through this lecture, Pope tries to enlighten and rectify the frivolous society of his time. He gives his wise counsel here to the gay and silly pursuers of pleasures and vanities, about the transience of all fashions and show, and the triumph of the quality of character. After all, beauty,

with all its charms and allurements, must pass away ere long, and can gain nothing, in the ultimate analysis without the virtue of heart.All the female charms of a lovely belle would seem meaningless, unlessa good and loving husband brings out the best in her :

And trust me, Dear! good Humour can prevail,

When Airs, and Flights, and Screams, and Scolding fail.

Beauties in vain their pretty Eyes may roll;

Charms strike the Sight, but Merit wins the Soul.

It's this ‘merit' - the 'good humour' which wins the soul; that Pope wants his ladies to imbibe and not merely the 'charms' that only 'strike the sight.' And all through this mock-epic poem Pope sets himself to poke fun at this terrible and excessive obsession with one's beauty. The women spend most of their time with their 'toilet' and in reading letters and the men with writing these obnoxious love-letters replete with conventional romantic phraseology. 

    But Clarissa is not at all a prude as the lines quoted above might Convey. Hers is the one sane voice advocating a sense of good humour So as to preserve all the achievement of the beauty and charm of her Sex. Even in her view beautification is not undesirable.

Say, why are Beauties prais'd and honour'd most,

The wise Man's Passion, and the vain Man's Toast?

 

Why deck'd with all that Land and Sea afford,

Why Angels call'd, and Angel-like ador'd?

To her even the amorous supplication of the fashionable youth is highly desirable:

Why round our Coaches crowd the white-glov'd Beaus,

Why bows the Side box from its inmost Rows?

But she cannot resist from giving a warning and stating the disadvantages of shunning morality:

How vain are all these Glories, all our Pains,

Unless good Sense preserve what Beauty gains:

That Men may say, when we the Front-box grace,

Behold the first in Virtue as in Face!

In fact, Pope cannot resist revealing Clarissa's hypocrisy either Even Clarissa forgets her sense of morality and perhaps out of envy towards Belinda or simply out of goodwill towards the Baron aids him in his heinous crime of 'raping' the lock of Belinda.

But when to Mischief Mortals bend their Will,

How soon they find fit Instruments of II!

Even Clarissa is tempted towards evil and she aids the Baron in his evil designs:

Just then, Clarissa drew with tempting Grace,

A two-edg'd Weapon from her shining Case:

So Ladies in Romance assist their Knight,

Present the Spear, and arm him for the Fight.

Pope's Attitude is Impersonal in "The Rape of the Lock." The Rape of the Lock is a triumph of English satire, although it is not a personal satire, like The Dunciad or Mac Flecknoe. Its moral purpose is directed not to any individual in particular, but to society, specially the polished society of Pope's age. In his Dedicatory Epistle to Miss Fermor, Pope writes of the purpose of his poem : "It was intended only to divert a few young ladies who have good sense and good humour enough to laugh not only at their sex's little unguarded follies, but at their own." The poem, indeed, is a refined, playful satire on the universal follies and foibles of the fashionable people of all ages, particularly those of England of the eighteenth century. The superior of the poem as a satire is patent, in no less measure, in the moral aspect.

 

  Actually Pope's satire is a double-edged sword; it cuts both way. At the very moment when he is using Clarissa, a sort of mouth piece of his, to lay down the moral tenets for his age (itself of a

flimsy nature as is the subject of his mock-epic) he is making fun of her and revealing her weakness and hypocrisy. He leaves none unscathed. So strong is the vanity and the deep-rooted rottenness of their nature that their shortcomings stick with them even after their death:

Think not, when Women's transient Breath is fled,

That all her Vanities at once are dead:

Succeeding Vanities she still regards,

And tho' she plays no more, o'erlooks the Cards,

Her Joy in gilded Chariots,when alive,

And Love of Ombre after Death survive.

For when the Fair in all their Pride expire,

To their first Elements their Souls retire.

Even the men turn to gnomes after death, with all their vices. But of course Pope does all this 'beating' in good humour and tries to laugh off the vices in men.

    In the opinion of Matthew Arnold, poetry is at bottom a criticism of life. This criticism, however, should not be merely critical. It must be constructive and instructive too. It must imply a contrast between what life is and what life ought to have been. Judged from this criterion The

Rape of the Lock is a satisfactory work by Pope. It is not merely a scathing satire but a criticism of life in the true sense of the term and it is in a style which is witty and humorous.

Explain the treatment of nature by Thomas Gray.

 

 Thomas Gray, in Elegy Written in a Country Courtyard, treats nature with the utmost respect. According to the poem, nature holds all of mankind at the same level.

With elements of Romanticism in his poem, Thomas Gray's first four stanzas express a communion of nature with the souls of the dead country people.  For instance, the words descriptive of nature, "the world  to darkness," "the solemn stillness of the air," "the "moping owl," and the "moldering heap" of turf in the first four stanzas connote death, its darkness, and its immobility.

The speaker considers the fact that in death, there is no difference between great and common people.

Based upon this, nature is very different from mankind. Mankind draws lines, makes excuses, and believes itself to be (sometimes) all-powerful. Nature, in the end, has the last say--all will die and return to the ground.

 Thomas Gray glorifies common men by making them equal to men who once had possession of power and heraldry. Gray points out that in death, there is no difference between the poor and the wealthy.

  Gray describes the "useful toil" of common people such as harvesting, driving their teams of farm animals, plowing fields, and chopping trees in a positive way. He also highlights their "homely joys" of warm fires, housewife's care, and loving children. He cautions that "grandeur"—in other words, the rich—should not distain the simplicity of the poor.

 On the other hand, Gray emphasizes that the seeming advantages of heraldry, power, beauty, and wealth that the rich seem to have are all lost at death, saying, "The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Gray glorifies common men by comparing their lives with the lives of the rich and privileged. His says is that the poor live simple, honest, and honorable lives, while the lives of the rich and privileged are deceitful and hypocritical because ultimately, they will lose all that they possessed that they thought set them apart and made them better.

  In a further comparison, the lives of the poor, country people who are buried in this obscure churchyard have been unfulfilled just as parts of nature are ignored. As the narrator visits the graveyard of a country church, he muses on the people who lie buried there. He speaks of them as poor, hard working people who have lived and died without wealth or political power, missed and mourned only by their families.   In his poem, Gray suggests that country folk be remembered and appreciated. “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” was among the first poems to provide a realistic portrayal of the countryside. In speaking of these country people, he contrasts their lives in the country with the lives of those in the city. The contrast is developed primarily in lines 45-75.

  Although the narrator stands in the quiet, beautiful natural surroundings, he notes that those who lived in the country led limited, uneducated lives. Because of where they lived, their potential could not be fulfilled. "Full many a flower is born to blush unseen / And waste its sweetness on the desert air." He wonders how many potentially great, but never realized, poets and political leaders might lie beneath his feet. However, he then acknowledges that the limited country life also stifled any potential to do harm, "their crimes confined." The narrator finally concludes that the city is the place where the "madding" crowd lives in "ignoble" strife, while the country is "the cool sequestered vale of life."

  The narrator finds positive and negative aspects both in city life and in country life. The country offers a peaceful but limited existence. The city offers education and opportunity, but the atmosphere is frenzied, maddening, and less than noble

 Throughout the poem, Gray shows his honor of nature by constantly admitting to the power of nature. Therefore, Gray treats nature with the utmost respect given that nature, unlike mankind, does not prejudice. Instead, the fact that, through nature, the common man is elevated shows the great power which nature has.

A youth to Fortune and Fame unknown

 

These are the opening lines of the epitaph that poet writes at the end the poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. The poet writes this epitaph in the hope that someday when he would die, his body will lie in the same graveyard with that epitaph inscribed on his tombstone. These lines of epitaph indicate that in this grave is buried a young man who was neither famous nor achieved any financial success.

  The speaker calls himself a young person who is unknown both to Fortune (i.e., good luck or wealth—it could mean either) and to Fame. In other words, he was of humble birth. But at least he was no stranger to knowledge, or science, in spite of his humble origins. He was a scholar and a poet!

  An epitaph is a tribute written to someone dead. The epitaph of "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is often taken to refer to Gray himself and what he thinks might be written about him after he dies. So It states: A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown. But the verse is also sometimes interpreted to simply be the epitaph to an anonymous poet. Therefore it is a riddle.  However, if it refers to Gray, it is significant because it shows that he identifies with all the humble, unknown souls lying in the country churchyard. He is not setting himself above them, but states he is equally obscure. Like them, he has not been born to fortune, which would be high rank or money.

However, given that he is praising these simple people for their worthy if unsung lives, he would appear to be equally praising himself in his epitaph. If he is praising himself for his obscurity, it is ironic, because he has become a famous poet, still read centuries after his death.

Explain the following extract with reference to the context: " Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul."

 

These line occur in "The Rape of the Lock" composed by Alexander Pope. Here Clarissa imparts a piece of counsel to Belinda who had become so much exasperated over the rape of her lock by the Baron. This lines means that physical charm of things—animate, inanimate, does strike the sight of an onlooker. Man cannot remain uninfluenced by the outer charm of things. If one looks at a beautiful human face one is impressed by the sparkling beauty. That is the weakness of man.

 

    Clarissa is the mouthpiece of Pope. Through her, he comments on the general truth about the life of a woman. She moralizes over the decay of human beauty, particularly feminine beauty. She states that beauty is short-lived and must decay one day. Locks of hair, whether formed into ringlets or left uncared for, must ultimately turn grey. A face, whether painted or not, must fade and wither with the coming of age. Not only that, a scornful woman who rejects all eligible suitors cannot gain a husband and must, therefore, die a maid (unmarried). So, the most sensible thing for women to do is to make the best use of their good humour whatever their loss may be. Clarissa is confident that it is only good humour that succeeds in the long run in winning love from men. A beautiful woman may not succeed in love making by casting amorous glances at men because the physical charms of a woman only appeal to the eyes of men, but the hearts of men can be captured by the beauty of mind alone. So, Clarissa asks Belinda to exercise her powers and charms over the Baron, keep up her good humour instead of being so much enraged and try to win over him to a successful marriage.

 

Explain the features of poetry and poet in relation to the poem "In Memory of W. B. Yeats".

 W. H. Auden was admired for his unsurpassed technical virtuosity and ability to write poems in nearly every imaginable verse form; his incorporation of popular culture, current events, and vernacular  speech in his work; and also for the vast range of his intellect, which drew easily from an extraordinary variety of literatures, art forms, social and political theories, and scientific and technical information.  The poet says that-

“In the deserts of the heart

Let the healing fountain start

In the prison of his days

Teach the free man how to praise.”

Here Auden tells about the function of the poet. When Europe is in the grip of the terror of war, nations are isolated by mutual hatred. People have no fellow feeling or sympathy At that time, the poets generally pursue the hidden truth, to explore the subliminal depths. With the gift of his poetry, of saying things in a powerful manner he can persuade mankind to rejoice even in the face of the curse of war. The great poetry can turn a curse into a blessing. It is great poetry that can illumine and transform the human soul, and make the fountain of love and sympathy gush out of it. The poet's own acceptance of life, and zest for it, alone can fertilize the human soul, and teach it to accept life and rejoice in this great gift of God. Thus poetry can have a transforming and ennobling influence on the human soul. He further says that-

“For poetry makes nothing happen; it surveys

In the valley of its making where executives

Would never want to temper, flows on south

From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs

Raw towns that we believe and die in, it survives

A way of happening, a mouth.”

 Here Auden launches into an attempt at relationship between outer landscape and inner states. Auden says that poetry makes nothing happen. The poetry of W. B Yeats could not change the destiny of the Irish people. Despite the great poetry of Yeats Ireland has remained the same. The people of Ireland still have their madness and their weather. His poetry fails to produce any revolutions or to make change in society. The poet is dead. But what lives after him is his style. It survives the death of the poet not for what the poet has said, but for the way in which he said it. It is the language, art and the manner of his poetry, which come to dwell in the sublime depths of human mind. It is the language, the way of saying, the style, survives as a voice as a way of expressing the human condition that is its real significance. 

Poetry is here compared to a river, which can fertilize only the soul, it cannot affect the outside world.

 

Finally poetry is described as ‘the healing fountain’, the water that nurtures our souls. Nightmares and barking dogs and hitting the rock bottom are some images of death, destruction and doom, which are all expected in an elegy.  Rhyme, form and meter are the poem’s blueprints. Each of the three sections of the

poem has unique formal characteristics. Auden uses the traditional elegy form, simple rhyming couplets as well as free form. Yeats himself was a master of form. He played around with everything from traditional Irish limericks and lyrics to epics. Auden’s poetic tribute alludes to Yeats’ technical skill.

 

In this poem the speaker is very close to the poet. The setting reflects the tone of the poem. The first section gives the grim details of dying in a hospital. However apart from the setting of Yeats’ actual death, the whole landscape of his life including Ireland is  depicted. The setting expands to include the world in 1939. Auden paints a vivid picture  of a world built of isolationists and the nightmarish oncoming of World War II. The three settings of the poem cover the mundane details of life even as it philosophizes on the  state of world affairs and the value of poetry.

 All of the above features the poet explain in relation to the poem” In Memory”.

How is the modern shield in "The Shield of Achilles" different from the classical shield? Explain.

 In “The Shield of Achilles”, Auden uses the image of Achilles’ shield being forged to comment on the effects that modernity has had on nature. Auden presents modern society as bleak and meaningless, constraining nature or creating perverse hybrids of the natural and the man-made, as well as humans and landscapes. By the final stanza the opposition set up between the classical age and modern society collapses through Auden’s association of the classic hero Achilles with modernity. Therefore, the poem presents modernity and this destruction in a negative and hopeless way, as it is an inevitable, natural progression from the classical age. The poet tells about the shield of Achilles who was according to Greek mythology, one of the Greek heroes of the Trojan War.      

 

At the beginning of the poem, Auden has described the Homeric shield of Achilles, on which the brightness and beauty of the Greek world has been inscribed. That is, the mother of Achilles, looks at the shield hung over the shoulder of her son. This shield was specially made for him by Hephaestus, the blacksmith of the gods. On the shield the artist Hephaestus had carved beautiful scenes depicting orchards, well governed cities with marble statues and calm seas with beautiful ship sailing on them.

 

  The shield of Achilles was much decorated with beautiful scenes mirrored Greek and sights carved upon it. In this way the shield mirrored Greek culture and way of life. The shield here is a symbol of art.

 

  Auden describes the classical shield of Achilles, on which beautiful scenes are carved. Then the poet describes the modern shield made by a modern blacksmith, and the scenes carved on it,

“ But there on the shining metal

His hands had put instead

An artificial wilderness

And a sky like lead.”

 

In these lines the past is contrasted with the present, and contemporary ugliness is stressed by means of a mythical technique.  Here the poet comments on the modern condition.

 

 

The scenes carved on it refer to the contemporary wasteland in which life is artificial, and people are the spiritually dead. It is all a spiritual desolation, and life is unnatural, empty and hollow. This symbolizes the ugliness of the contemporary urban-industrial civilization.

“A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,

Loitered about that vacancy; a bird

Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone;

That girls are raped that two boys knife a third,

Were axions to him, who’d never heard

Of any world where promises were kept,

Or one could weep because another wept.”

Here the poet tells about modern shield in  different from the classical shield. In the poem we are told that on the classical shield were carved pictures of athletes busy in their games, and men and women dancing rhythmically and sweetly On the modern shield, on the other had, there are no dancing floors or playgrounds but only weed choked fields. There are no sportsman but only a tattered boy callously throwing stones at birds, or girls being raped, or boys quarrelling among themselves and knifing each other. Life is brutal and beastly here, entirely lacking in the sympathy, love and friendship, which characterized life in the past.

 

In this way the poet tried to make difference between the modern shield and the classical shield which the poet has highlighted in the poem.

 

Explain the new kind of revealation in retaion to the poem "The Second Coming"

 The title refers to the Second Coming of Christ, as predicted in the Book of Revelation in the New Testament of the Bible. It depicts the return of Christ to conquer Satan and the forces of evil, before presiding over a thousand-year reign of peace on Earth.

  The lyric opens with a typical Yeatsian image: a falcon flying in ever-widening circles (the pattern of a gyre), now tracing its widest circle and thus least subject to the control of the falconer, a symbol of the breakdown of society and order.   The phrase "the ceremony of innocence" appears several times in Yeats' poetry and generally refers to the rituals and symbols by which we live that give meaning and stability to our lives.

  The vision the speaker sees is an end of an era, the Christian era that culminated in a scientific rationalism.  A new era is at hand (they come, in Yeats’s view every 2000 years).  Appropriately the speaker describes the new era as the Second Coming, a term from the Book of Revelation that refers to the return of Christ after a time of great upheaval and disorder.  But this advent is not of Christ but of an anti-Christ–a Sphinx that presumably held sway during the twenty centuries before the birth of Jesus.  Christianity is finished, the poem says, and it will be replaced by some “pitiless” force that slouches toward Bethlehem to be born.

The Sphinx has been sleeping for the twenty centuries of the Christian era, the era that began with a “rocking cradle” at Bethlehem. Now that rocking cradle is the Sphinx’s and has vexed him to nightmare.  The Sphinx awakens and will replace Christ as the dominant force for the next historical period; its pitiless and blank gaze, its roughness, its slouch suggesting the quality of the next two thousand years, a  nature completely antithetical to the values we currently hold dear.

Many Yeats scholars believe that this poem is specifically about the Russian Revolution of 1917, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, which resulted in a bloody seven-year war that paved the way for the rise of the Communist party in Russia; it also certainly has echoes of World War I, which rocked the world to its core. But perhaps Yeats could see even further. Perhaps he could somehow sense the coming of further wars and violences—World War II, the atomic bomb, technologies that would reshape the world from the ground up. He knew the world would never be the same after the 20th century, and it certainly is not.

Yeats gives a name to this whole series of events, placing them under the umbrella of a "Second Coming." But instead of a second appearance of Christ, this event will be a birth of a creature as significant as Christ, who will completely alter the state of the world just as Christ did—but who will operate in a completely different way than the world has been operating since Christ arrived and civilization began to form.

So the second coming means the second coming of Christ. The state of the world points to the possibility that some revelation, the Second Coming, a supernatural invasion, is impending. Literally speaking revelation means the truths which man knows only from God, The poet contemplates a revelation heralding the coming of an age which will reverse all the achievements of the Christian era.

Justify the title of the poem "No Second Troy".

 

There is an allusion in the poem title ” No Second Troy ” because W.B. Yeats brings out the Greek mythological beautiful striking lady ”Helen of Troy” for making a comparison with his beloved Maud  Gonne. From the Greek mythology, we know that Helen was taken to troy from Greek by Paris. Therefore, the long lasting fierce 10 years Trojan War broke out,  and the city of troy destroyed devastatingly by this war. So the beautiful Helen becomes the reason of destructive troy.

 

Like Maud Gonne, Helen, a legendary character from Homer's Iliad, was considered to be one of the most beautiful women of her age. She was also partly responsible for starting the Trojan War, which eventually led to the burning of the great city of Troy.  A fiery beautiful revolutionary women in Irish national movement . She rejected the poets love proposal and filled him with misery. Her beauty is said to be like a tightened bow. Her mind is made simple as a fire of nobleness. Maud Gonne holds a different personality which is contradictory to Helen while talking about the terrifying beauty of Maud Gonne yeats says,

That nobleness made simple as a fire with beauty like a tightened bow.

Yeats proposed Maud Gonne several times, but his love was not answered by Maud Gonne.

He cannot blame her for tormenting his soul. He mention it in the poem “ No second Troy”.

 

“ Why should I blame her that she filled my days with misery”

Or that she would of late have taught to ignorant men most violent ways”

 

Yeats further says, a women who is taking the ignorant Irish men to the way of revelation for their freedom. And leading from the front in the strike of revaluation the actually cannot blame her for not accepting his love making proposal.

 

Poet is asking the question for Maud Gonne will it be another Troy to burn. The poet alludes it at the end of the poem. What could she have done being what she is? Was there another troy for her to burn?

Finally the author says, there is no chance to burn another Troy for Maud Gonne because Maud Gonne because Maud Gonne is unlike Helen is nature, likewise Paris, Yeats does not have a courageous brother as Paris had Hector and Irish people are coward thus they will not fight 10 years as the Trojan Warriors did for Paris.

 

Yeats final remark is though his beloved Maud Gonne is a fearless dame, whose knowledge and beauty is incomparable to others, and he loves her from the bottom of his heart. But for this very reason there will not be second troy to burn even though his beloved furious beauty and strong personality has been the reason of burning his heart.

 

Thus, the title “ No Second Troy” is significant for expressing poet fascination and deeper love toward Maud Gonne.

What are the significances of the characters of Vladimir and Estragon? Describe how these two friends try to commit suicide.

 The significances of the characters of Vladimir and Estragon are describe below: Vladimir and Estragon are the main protagonists of the play, Waiting for Godot. In hearing the play read, even the most experienced theater person will often confuse one of the characters for the other. Therefore, the similarities are as important as the differences between them.

Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for Godot: some indication that life is meaningful or an escape. Both are tramps dressed in costumes which could be interchanged - big boots which don't necessarily fit, big bowler hats, baggy and ill-fitting suits. Their costumes recall the type found in burlesque or vaudeville houses. The opening scene with Estragon struggling with his boots and Vladimir doffing and donning his hat to inspect it for lice could be a part of a burlesque routine. Such comic episodes continue until the characters — and the audiences — are bored with it.

Vladimir would be the equivalent of the straight man in burlesque comedy. He is also the intellectual who is concerned with a variety of ideas. Of the two, Vladimir makes the decisions and remembers significant aspects of their past. He is the one who constantly reminds Estragon that they must wait for Godot. Vladimir seems to know more about Godot. Vladimir often sees religious or philosophical implications in their discussions of events, and he interprets their actions in religious terms; for example, he is concerned about the religious implications in such stories as the two thieves who were crucified on either side of Jesus. Vladimir correlates some of their actions to the general concerns of mankind. In addition to the larger needs, Vladimir also looks after their physical needs.

In contrast, Estragon is concerned mainly with more mundane matters: He prefers a carrot to a radish or turnip, his feet hurt, and he blames his boots; he constantly wants to leave, and it must be drilled into him that he must wait for Godot. He remembers that he was beaten, but he sees no philosophical significance in the beating. He is willing to beg for money from a stranger (Pozzo), and he eats Pozzo's discarded chicken bones with no shame. Estragon, then, is the more basic of the two. He is not concerned with either religious or philosophical matters. First of all, he has never even heard of the two thieves who were crucified with Christ, and if the Gospels do disagree, then "that's all there is to it," and any further discussion is futile and absurd.

Estragon, however, is dependent upon Vladimir, and essentially he performs what Vladimir tells him to do. For example, Vladimir looks after Estragon's boots, he rations out the carrots, turnips, and radishes, he comforts Estragon's pain, and he reminds Estragon of their need to wait for Godot. Estragon does sometimes suggest that it would be better if they parted, but he never leaves Vladimir for long. Essentially, Estragon is the less intelligent one; he has to have everything explained to him, and he is essentially so bewildered by life that he has to have someone to look after him. Vladimir is more masculine and contemplative and Estragon is more feminine and emotion-driven of the duo.

The relationship of Vladimir and Estragon is contrasted with that of Pozzo and Lucky, who represent the antithesis of friendship. Theirs is also a relationship of intertwinement and dependence, but one of servitude, inequality, and dominance.

Worse than waiting is waiting alone, and loneliness is a form of blindness and invisibility, not seeing or being seen. The play emphasizes the fact that the minimal unit of the human is not the one, but the two, and though the picture is a bleak, unsettling, and painful meditation upon our shared loneliness in the absence of Godot, the fact that we share this loneliness, this eternal waiting, with our friend is what can possibly turn our cries into laughter and our ontological loneliness into love.

Two friends try to commit suicide:  A tragic effect is produced also by the constant repetition by Vladimir of the fact that he and Estragon are “waiting for Godot.” The first time we learn that the tramps are waiting for Godot, Vladimir’s remarks hardly produces any effect on us. But thereafter whenever Vladimir says that they cannot leave because they are waiting for Godot, the effect is one of pathos because Vladimir's wards are a repeated reminder to us of the two tramps state of hopelessness or vain expectancy. Estragon's nightmares and his fear of the “Others” add to the poignancy of the situation. The “Others” are the Unknow, mysterious persons who have been beating Estragon and of whom he feels terribly afraid, with Vladimir being the only one to provide him consolation and protection. In fact, we learn this fact about the beatings at the very opening of the play when Estragon says that he spent the night in a ditch and was beaten by the same lot of persons. On three occasions-at the outset, at the end of Act I,  and at the close of Act II-the tramps plan suicide. The attempted suicide proves abortive but their very thought of it makes them pathetic characters. We are also informed that once, in days gone by, Estragon had jumped into the Rhone to drown himself and that he had been rescued by Vladimir. Vladimir's speculations about the thief who was “damned” and the one who was "saved” have also an ominous ring. There is Something pathetic about Estragon's lament: “Nothing happens, nobody comes. nobody goes, it's awful," and "All my lousy life I ‘have crawled about in the mud !And you talk to me about scenery

 The general or over-all 
impression that the play produces in us is one of helplessness and the boredom
which human beings have to experience in life. The author effectively conveys
to us the pointlessness of human lite in our times. Human existence is devoid
of meaning and purpose. Thus a feeling of despair dominates the play, and this
is in itself tragic even though farcical situations are employed to suit the
author's design of a tragi-comedy.

 

 Certain elements in the play have a dual character: they are simultaneously tragıc and comic. Such is the attempted suicide of the tramps. The possibility of their deaths is tragic, but their failure to commit suicide is comic: on one occasion they feel that the tree is not strong enough; on another occasion they do not have a suitable rope for the purpose. Then there is the monologue of Lucky-horrifying because it foretells mankind's extinction but funny because of its incoherence and disconnectedness. It is amusing also to find that Lucky can “think" only when he puts on his hat, so that when he has to be stopped from continuing his rhetonic, his hat has to be snatched away from him. The decision of the tramps to go away at the end of both Act I and Act II and their immobility in spite of this decision are likewise tragic and comic at the same time.

What is an absurdist play? Evaluate Waiting for Godot as an absurdist play.

 

A form of play that emphasizes the absurdity of human existence by employing disjointed, repetitious, and meaningless dialogue, purposeless and confusing situations, and plots that lack realistic or logical development.

 

Martin Esslin wrote a book titled “Theatre of the Absurd” that was published in year 1961. It dealt with the dramatists who belonged to a movement called “Absurd Theater” though it was not regular. Samuel Beckett was one of those dramatists who had largest contribution in “Absurd Theater”. His play “Waiting for Godot” also belonged to the same category and was called absurd play.

 

   The Theatre of the Absurd is a designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1950s, as well as one for the style of theatre which has evolved from their work. Their work expresses the belief that human existence has no meaning or purpose and therefore all communication breaks down. In an absurd drama human condition is shown as meaningless. There are disjoined, meaningless dialogue, and incomprehensible behavior. In an absurd drama plot has no logical or realistic development.

 

  Beckett's Waiting for Godot is an allegorical absurd play. There is no particular time and place in the play. It reveals the despair, nothingness, frustration of the post-war generation and its appeal becomes bitter as the plots are established on a false imagination. The play actually is full of nothingness, restless tiredness and  childish fun. The for-nothing waiting of the characters and their activities give the play a rich tone of absurdity.

 

  An absurd work is a frightening one. It has in itself no norms, no absolutes, no consoling certainties and no direction, It simply exists. Nothing and nobody living in it has any pre-ordained scene or purpose. The absurd dramatists are all concerned with the failure of communication of the modem humanity which leaves man alienated. They are also concerned with the lack of individuality and the over emphasis on conformity in our society.

 

  Characterization and characteristics of a play are not drawn and seen in Waiting for Godot. Conflict and collision of characters, psychological and inner suffering and developments of characters, turning point of any particular event and fascinating dialogues are the important characteristics of a play which are not found in this play. Instead of it, the play goes through nothingness with false wish which is a new trend in drama and it is absurdity.

 

  The play starts with the waiting for Godot. We do not know what or who the Godot is. Two passers-by - Estragon and Vladimir wait for Godot when the play comes to an end. The time-difference of the play is just one day and there are two acts in it. But it seems to us that time has become stopped; the including characters cannot remember anything; even, they cannot identify the same place. This absurdity, uncertainty and the destruction of time and place show the meaninglessness of human existence. The opening statement of Estragon is very significant: "Nothing to be done."

  

   In Waiting for Godot, we observe the use of symmetry in the incidents. We meet Pozzo and Lucky in each of two acts before the presence of the boy. In every case, we get the boy-messenger who says that the Godot will not go that day; he will go the day after. Symmetry is everywhere in the drama- inwardly and outwardly - which is an important characteristic of an absurd play. The stage itself is divided into two parts and the tree is in the middle. Symmetry is also presented as an opposite ideology in the play. In Act-I, we hear a long lecture of Lucky; hard to get, but suggestive And in Act-II, we get Lucky as disabled, he can't speak.

    The use of language is very remarkable in the play and it serves Beckett's purpose significantly. The nothingness of life and the impatience mentality of human being are sincerely expressed by Beckett's own language skill.

  In the play, we see another absurd feature, the half comic-grotesque. Comic tone is heard from the very beginning i.e. to catch the boot, to see something by the cap etc. In the last scene the falling down of Estragon's trouser is very comic though the desire is to commit suicide where there is no scope of fun.

 From the above discussion, we may conclude that Waiting for Godot is an absurd play because of its absurd characters, their meaninglessness of life, language, repetitiveness etc.