Why are you so fat, Kadiye? Justify this question as youth’s rebellion against abusive religious authority in the play.

 The Swamp Dwellers is a close study of the pattern of life in the isolated hamlets of the African countryside as well as an existential study of the simple folk who face religious of life without any hope or succor. Soyinka tears apart social injustice, hypocrisy and tyranny.

The only priest of the Serpent god or swamp god. He receives sacrifices from the ordinary people and perform all the rituals on behalf of the villagers to satisfy and pacify the god. The swamp people sacrifices the best ones of their production in order to pacify the serpent god so that they can yield a good harvest otherwise they might suffer from loss.

 

The Swamp Dwellers reflects the life of the people of southern Nigeria. Their vocation mainly is agro based. They weave baskets, till and cultivate land. They believe in serpent cult. They perform death rites. They offer grain, bull, goat to appease the serpent of the swamp. Traders from city come there for crocodile skins. They lure young women with money. Alu withstands their temptation. Young men go to the cities to make money, to drink bottled beer. In fact the city ruins them.

 

     The swamp dwellers believe in the infallibility of Kadiye, priest of the serpent of the swamp. Their belief is exploited by Kadiye to the hilt. Igwezu questions Kadiye and his ways. It tells us of the clash between tradition and modernity in southern Nigeria. Rain brings them hope.

The physical feature of Kadiye indicates that he is more like a villain than to be a religious person. He is fat like a blood-swollen insect. He is a monstrous looking person. He is described as a big ,voluminous creature of about fifty.’ He is smooth-faced and his head is shaved clean. He is bare above the waist and at least half of his fingers are ringed. This physical look suggests something ugly about his moral nature. Kadiye is very rich and has a good control over the swamp like a Godfather featured in the western films. Kadiye destroys people wearing the mask of religion.

     As the priest of the Serpent, the Kadiye betrays the trust of the villagers by encouraging them to indulge in meaningless cult which are profitable. The villagers give of their harvest to the Kadiye so he can appease the serpent but unknown to them he is feeding fat on their sweat. No one questions where the goods go, because it is almost blasphemous to do so. But it seems that the dramatist is very critical to the Kadiye and Kadiye’s real nature is exposed through the conversation between the Kadiye and Igwezu.

He takes goats, ores and other sacrifices offered by the simple minded villagers. They offer the sacrifice to appease the God and want protection at their lives and crops. But the priest consumes when Igwezu asks,” Why are you so fat?” He leaves Makuri’s house. 

        In all, the play itself is a symbol of the rots in the society. The rottenness of the era which is part of the origins of poverty is presented in more physical terms by the ugly sight of the swamp where the masses dwell. He has set his eye on Igwezu's money. As a priest he is not bothered about Igwezu's lot. He exploits the villagers knowing full well they are in straits. Soyunka satirizes the corrupt practices all the society living in superstition living in superstition through Kadiya. This all are the justification as youth  rebellion against abusive religious authority in the play.

Analyze the influence of modernity upon an indigenous community with reference to Makuri's comments on young generation

 

The Swamp Dwellers by Wole Soyinka is placed in a backward village of Nigeria in the Delta region. But the characters of the play often have important interactions with the town life. Typical to the people of a poverty ridden village, the town is a place of money, and luxury to the Swamp dwellers. To the older generation of the swamp dwellers however, the town is the symbol of corruption. Here the attitudes to the city life are mainly expressed by Alu, Makuri, Igwezu, and Kadiye. The older generations’ views to the city are expressed through Alu and Makuri.

In the opening scene of the play Makuri says to Alu that Awuchike went to the city because he had got sick of the Swam. Moreover, Makuri says that the young men go to the big town in order to make money. But most of them forget their folk and cut their relation with the roots, . Makuri also says that the city is the place of immortality and corruption.  Makuri further says that the city people are materialistic.

Some of the events confirm Makuri’s views. For example, Desala who had gone to the city with her husband Igwezu left him and went with Auchike who had more money. Gonushi’s son is another example of the victim of city. He also went to the city and cut off his relation with wife and children.

 

 All the Swamp Dwellers believes in that  city is the  right  place to make money. Then  Igwezu returns from city and meets Kadiye. He asks him about how much money you got  from city. Kadiye has one false perception in his mind that Igwezu has enough money to buy entire village. But Igwezu says that he is in financial constrain and by saying this he shows the bitter side of city life. He also talks about the reality that in the city only money that is matter.

 

Thus we see that the Swamp Dweller have mixed feeling about the city. To most of the Swamp Dwellers city is the place of comfort, money and luxury. But there are also some people who hate the city life but is forced to go to the city to make money. ‘The Swamp Dwellers’ focuses the struggle between the old and the new ways of life in Africa. It also gives us a picture of the cohesion that existed between the individual and southern Nigerian society. The play mirrors the socio-cultural pattern, the pang and the sufferings of the swamp dwellers and underlines the need for absorbing new ideas. The struggle between human being and unfavorable forces of nature is also captured in the play.

 

Wole Soyinka’s play The Swamp Dwellers, The Swamp itself is the physical image of spiritual death. The spiritual death by which the young server all family and human ties with the village and indulge in a new kind of life in the towns is one of the main threats to the society of the village. 

 

We can see conflict of tradition and modernity in the play. Village is representing tradition and city as modernity. They both are different from each others. This play is representing those different very well. Soyinka focuses  the influence of modernity upon an indigenous community on young generation.

Illustrate the character of Chillingworth.

 Roger ( Chilling worth is described as a man of small stature, with a wrinkled face which shows a remarkable intelligence in its features. There is a slight deformity in his body, one shoulder of which is slightly higher than the other. He is a man of unusual intellectual gifts, given to much reading so that he may be regarded as a figure of "the study and the cloister." His eyes, which have served him to pore over many ponderous books, possess a strange, penetrating power to read the human soul. It is in his old age that he marries Hester Prynne, a young girl. For him to have married a young girl was a blunder, but he realizes the blunder when it is too late. When he meets Hester in the prison, he tells her that, if he had been wise, he should have anticipated that his marriage with her would prove a failure. Having lived a cheerless and lonely life, he had longed for domestic bliss of some kind and had, for this reason, decided to marry Hester. When Hester murmurs that she has greatly wronged him, he is fair enough to say, "We have wronged each other. Mine was the first wrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my decay.”

 

  During the two years that Roger Chillingworth has spent among the Indians, he has greatly developed his medical skill. His stay among a tribe of people well-versed in the beneficial properties of herbs has made a better physician of him than many with a medical degree. He is able to soothe the screaming child of Hester with one small dose, and with another dose he brings about a considerable improvement in Hester's own condition when she is suffering from nervous excitement in the prison.

 

Roger Chillingworth is able to exercise perfect self-control. When, arriving in Boston, he sees his wife standing on the scaffold, his face darkens with a powerful emotion which, however, he

instantly controls by an effort of his will, so that the convulsion that might have shaken another man quickly subsides in him. His face generally wears a calm and quiet expression whatever the feelings within him. He looks calm, gentle, and passionless even when there is deep malice or hostility in his heart. This man had originally been kindhearted and, in all his relations with the world, "a pure and upright man." But the adulterous action of his wife transforms him into a malicious and revengeful individual. However, his revenge is not in the least directed against Hester. He believes that for Hester, the punishment of having to wear the scarlet letter on her bosom is more than enough.   

 From the time of his interview with Hester in the prison, Roger Chillingworth begins to devote all his energies to the pursuit of revenge. He shows such an inflexible will in this direction that we recall the correctness of Hester's words n comparıng him to the Black Man who haunts the forest. Subsequently Pearl calls him the Black Man who has got hold of the minister and who may catch Hester. Having taken charge of the minister's health, and having intuitively become suspicious about him, he begins to work upon he minister's mind like the very devil. It is not only the physical ailment of the minister that interests him, but he is also strongly noved to look into the character and qualities of his patient.

 

But there are other people who hold a different view about Roger Chillingworth. These people believe, that Roger Chilling worth's countenance has undergone a remarkable change since he started staying with Mr. Dimmesdale. According to them, his expression had at first been calm, meditative scholar-like, but now there is something ugly and evil in his face which they had no

previously noticed. These people have also begun to say that the re in the physician's laboratory had been brought from hell and  is fed with infernal fuel, the smoke from which is responsible for his face becoming darker and darker. In short, the opinion becomes prevalent that Roger Chillingworth is Satan's emissary who bas come to plot against the minister's soul.

 

Having become certain regarding the nature of the guilty secret in the mind of the minister, Roger Chillingworth becomes even more fierce in his revenge. Gradually he acquires a great hold upon the minister's mind. He becomes not a spectator only, but a chief actor in the minister's interior world. He can play upon the minister's mind as he chooses. He has come to know the spring that controls the minister's machinery of thinking, so that he does not merely torment him but frightens him with a thousand phantoms of horrifying shapes, with their fingers pointing at his breast. And he has accomplished all this with such perfect subtlety that the minister, though he has a dim perception of some evil influence watching over him, is unable to understand what that influence is. Roger Chillingworth becomes the arch-fiend who will show not the least mercy to his victim. The former aspect of an intellectual and a studious man, calm and quiet, has altogether vanished, and been replaced by an eager, searching, almost fierce look though he tries to conceal this expression with a smile. He now becomes a striking example of a man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a certain period of time, perform the devil's functions. For seven full years, Roger Chilling worth scrutinizes the minister's tortured heart and. derives his enjoyment from it, adding fuel to the fiery tortures which the minister experiences. Rightly does Hester charge the physician with cruelty and with the spirit of persecution, in the

following words: You tread behind his every footstep. You are beside him sleeping, and waking. You search his thoughts, You burrow and rankle in his heart Your clutch is on his life, and you

cause him to die daily a living death." And yct Roger Chillingworth, who is a great hypocrite, also claims that through his constant efforts he has been instrumental in saving the life of the minister. He says to Hester, "The richest fee that ever a physian earned from a monarch could not have bought such care as I have wasted on this miserable priest! But for my aid, his life would have burned away in torments, within the first two years after the perpetration of his crime and thine” But he admits to her that he has made the minister suffer what no mortal man has ever suffered. He admits that he had once a human heart but that he has become a fiend for the special torment of the minister.  The villainy of Roger Chillingworth does not end with his ceaselessly inflicting mental and spiritual torture on Arthur Dim mesdale. Constantly spying on the minister's movements and on those of Hester, he has come to know of their plans to flee from Boston by ship, and he succeeds in thwarting this plan, though he need not have taken the trouble of doing so because the minister has in the meanwhile made up his mind to make a public confession of his guilt. When he tries to restrain the minister from making his intended confession, it is certainly not for any good that he means  towards the priest but to prevent him from slipping from his hands. Eventually when the minister has made his confession, Chillingwne says to him more than once, “Thou hast escaped me! Thou hast escaped me!" There is no mercy in this villain's heart even at this stage.

 

The premature death of Arthur Dimmesdale is a great loss to Roger Chillingworth. Having been deprived in the pursuit and systematic exercise of revenge, he begins to languish. There being

no more devil's work on earth for him to do, he withers up and dies within a year of the death of the minister. His sin of revenge is greater than the sin of adultery committed by Hester and the minister. In Hester's opinion, Chillingworth's having married her, even though he knew full well that she did not love him, was a greater crime than her own crime of adultery. Speaking to herself about her husband, Hester says, "Yes, I hate him! He betrayed me I He has done me worse wrong than I did him.” The minister, speaking to Hester in the forest, compares the physician's crime with Hester's and his own in the following words: "We are not, Hester, the worst sinners in the world. There is one worse than even the polluted priest! That old man's revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart. Thou and I, Hester, never did so !" However, even this blackest of villains performs before his death, an act that redeems him, though in an extremely small degree, in our eyes. He bequeaths a large part of his property to Pearl!

 

Discuss Santiago's struggle as an 'epic struggle'

 

The Old Man and the Sea is the story of an epic struggle between an old, seasoned fisherman and the greatest catch of his life.

As an adjective, epic has come to describe events that happen over a long period and involve a lot of action and difficulty. examples "It was an epic struggle," or "It was an epic journey. Epic has also come to describe something large.

Santiago suffers terribly throughout The Old Man and the Sea. In the opening pages of the book, he has gone eighty-four days without catching a fish and has become the laughingstock of his small village. He then endures a long and grueling struggle with the marlin only to see his trophy catch destroyed by sharks. Yet, the destruction enables the old man to undergo a remarkable transformation, and he wrests triumph and renewed life from his seeming defeat. After all, Santiago is an old man whose physical existence is almost over, but the reader is assured that Santiago will persist through Manolin, who, like a disciple, awaits the old man’s teachings and will make use of those lessons long after his teacher has died. Thus, Santiago manages, perhaps, the most miraculous feat of all: he finds a way to prolong his life after death.

Santiago’s commitment to sailing out farther than any fisherman has before, to where the big fish promise to be, testifies to the depth of his pride. Yet, it also shows his determination to change his luck. Later, after the sharks have destroyed his prize marlin, Santiago chastises himself for his hubris (exaggerated pride), claiming that it has ruined both the marlin and himself. True as this might be, it is only half the picture, for Santiago’s pride also enables him to achieve his most true and complete self. Furthermore, it helps him earn the deeper respect of the village fishermen and secures him the prized companionship of the boy—he knows that he will never have to endure such an epic struggle again.

 Santiago’s pride is what enables him to endure, and it is perhaps endurance that matters most in Hemingway’s conception of the world—a world in which death and destruction, as part of the natural order of things, are unavoidable. Hemingway seems to believe that there are only two options: defeat or endurance until destruction; Santiago clearly chooses the latter. His stoic determination is mythic, nearly Christ-like in proportion.

For three days, he holds fast to the line that links him to the fish, even though it cuts deeply into his palms, causes a crippling cramp in his left hand, and ruins his back. This physical pain allows Santiago to forge a connection with the marlin that goes beyond the literal link of the line: his bodily aches attest to the fact that he is well matched, that the fish is a worthy opponent, and that he himself, because he is able to fight so hard, is a worthy fisherman. This connectedness to the world around him eventually elevates Santiago beyond what would otherwise be his defeat. Like Christ, to whom Santiago is unashamedly compared at the end of the novella, the old man’s physical suffering leads to a more significant spiritual triumph.  So santiago’s struggle as an epic struggle.

Justify Arther Dimmesdale's sin and redemption

 

Arthur Dimmesdale is fully and painfully conscious of the sin that he has committed. He knows that he has sinned against God against social morality, and against his own integrity as an individual and as a priest. He knows also that he is doubly a sinner in so far as he continues to conceal his sin. His sense of sin not only weighs, but preys, upon his mind ceaselessly. His sin inwardly isolates him from the community, and the deliberate concealment of his sin deepens that isolation. The secrecy which he maintains and the sense of isolation from his professional brethren and from the community in general drives him almost mad.  Apart from his keen awareness of adultery as a sin, he knows that he is a hypocrite and a moral coward. The sense of sin in him is thus heightened and intensified, and allows him no peace of mind.

 

     The public worship by which Dimmesdale is surrounded adds to the torture of Dimmesdale's sense of sin. He genuinely adores the truth and he longs to speak out, from his own pulpit, in his loudest voice, and tell the people what he is. He wants to tell them

that he, their pastor, whom they reverence deeply and trust comp letely, is utterly "a pollution and a lie." More than once, in the course of his sermons, he actually tells his hearers that "he was altogether vile, a viler companion of the vilest, the worst of sinners

an abomination, a thing of unimaginable iniquity; and that the only wonder was that they did not see his wretched body shrivelled up before their eyes, by the burning wrath of the Almighty." But his bearers, instead of tearing him to pieces, begin to show him even more reverence because they attribute his words not to any actual sinfulness on his part but to his spirit of humility and self-efface These people would thus comment on his words: “The godly youth! The saint on earth." And Dimmesdale knew well, "subtle but remorseful hypocrite" that he was, that his vague confession would be viewed in that light, "He speaks to his parishioner the very truth, and yet, transforms it into the veriest falsehood.” And yet, by the constitution of his nature, he loves the truth, and hates the lie, as few men ever do. Therefore, above all things else, he begins to hate his miserable self.

 

    So tormented is Dimmesdale by his sense of sin that be begins to impose upon himself   the severest possible penance. He observes rigid fasts with the object of purifying his body. He keeps vigils night after night in order 'to purify his mind. He lashes himself with a scourge till he begins to bleed. One midnight he mounts the scaffold as another act of penance but, as the author points out, this action is only a "mockery of penitence." He is driven to the scaffold by that remorse which pursues him everywhere. - Poor, miserable

man", says the author with reference to Dimmesdale, What right had infirmity like his to burden itself with crime? Crime is for the iron-nerved, who have their choice either to endure it, or, if it pressed too hard, to exert their fierce and savage strength for a good

purpose; and fling it off at once! This feeble and most sensitive of spirits could do neither...."

 

      And so the minister continues to suffer the tortures caused by his sense of sin and the persecution to which he is subjected by Chillingworth till he meets Hester in the forest. And then this man, who should long ago have confessed his sin, has his second fall". The enchantment of Hester's presence and her words prove too strong for this man of weak resolutions and, without putting up the least resistance, he accepts Hester's plan of flight from Boston. However, soon afterwards the conflict begins again, this time between

his desire to start a new life in the company of Hester and the voice of his conscience urging him to make a public confession of his sin. This conflict, agonising and heart-rending as it must have been, is not described by Hawthorne. We only learn that Dimmesdale's moral sense wins, that he becomes truly penitent, and that he achieves a re-union with the good which enables him to write the Election Sermon, to confess his sin publicly, and to come at the end into a true relation with all the elements against which he has sinned.

The only way of expressing emoting in the from of art is by finding the “ Objective correlative”

 

Objective Correlative- The only way of expressing emoting in the from of art is by finding the “ Objective correlative” in other words a set of objects a situation a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion, such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience are given, the emotion is are given the emotion is immediately evoked.

In this poem “ The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock” Eliot uses different images, symbols and other devices as media for the system of objective correlative.

The opening lines of the poem bombard the reader with a series of images which all depict a drab neighborhood and establish the atmosphere of disillusionment and passivity that suffuse the poem. The conceit in which Prufrock compares the evening to “a patient etherized upon a table”.

Using the phrase patient  etherizes upon a table Eliot indicates the existential crisis of Prufrock. Eliot compare the time of sundown with a patient who is under treatment and getting senseless using a simile to indicate the ending time of Profrock. Profrock self realization is that he is in old age. Thus he needs love to survive in the universe. Through the patent etherized upon a table this phrase is used to depict the scenery of nature and the ending time Profrock like but the speaker is focused more. In this poem, Pruprock takes us inside where man women gather in a party. Again the reader’s expectation is violently broken for he does not delve in to the woman’s world. Instead he depicts them as they are taking about Michael Angelo, a man whose image disturbs the hesitant Pruprock and reminds him of his lack of productivity.

“ In the room the women come and go talking of Michael Angelo”

As a result Profrock escape from this world and goes out.  Again the reader is bombard with even more imagery that conveys Prufrock’s discontentment with his surroundings. He talks about,

“ The Yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windows – Panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window- Panes

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening”

 

The above aforementioned images which are carried out through personification depict two important facts, concerning  Prufrock. The first fact asserts that the women’s world from which he has already escaped is foggy and mysterious and it is difficult for the awkward Profrock to Participate in it’s activities or even to understand it. The second portrays Prufrock as a person who wishes to enter and intermingle in this world despite the fact that is fully aware of his eternal defeat. He metaphorically stands out side, by the window and uses different senses. As the verbs “rubs” and licked” show, Prufrock anain says that

“ Do I dare, disturb the universe”

There is an allusion in this above line because it is taken from a novel named “ The chocolate war” In this novel Jerry was a schoolboy who rejects  the trading of chocolate.

Thus he was neglected by the whole school authority. Here, the speaker think that if he propose the striking beautiful lady, she will definitely reject him, Prufrock thinks that the universe will be disturbed if he dare to take a decision of making a marriage proposal to his beloved. For him taking a decision is a  momentous step like disturbing the universe. 

As the poem progresses, further allusions are introduced Prufrock alludes to Hamlet  in order to convince himself that his mission cannot be carried out in addition to be hesitant and indecisive

“ No! I am not price Hamlet, non was meant to be”

In this allusion, Prufrock excuses himself  for Hamlet was price and his mission was great but he acted decisively  at last that is why he says that he is not prince Hamlet.

So above all, I have tried to explored objective correlative in the poem Prufrock. He arranges these media in a way that shows Prufrock's emotion towards the society he lives in, his surroundings, his defects and  inner life. The poet succeeds in doing so by following a certain poetic technique which is a monologue. Through this technique Eliot makes Prufrock talk about himself openly and reveal his inner feeling concerning himself and things which surround him. He produces a series of images which show much about Prufrock's personality and his view towards life. These images range from discontentment to alienation and debasement and then to death-wish. He also uses some symbols which  are, somehow, textual which participate in revealing some other hidden facts about Prufrock's views towards himself where images cannot express them all. These symbols are all connected indirectly to sex. The most disputable ones are "the peach and hair" which play a vital role in showing Prufrock's shyness and impotence. Other devices such as allusions, repetitions and the use of the present tense, explain Prufrock's hesitation, indecision and his motionlessness in a constant mobile world. All these techniques are carried out with the help of the web of the objective correlative.

Compare and contrast between Gerontion and Prufrock.

 

We find many compare contrast between Gerontion and Prufrock poems. They are discussed below:

The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a poem written by T.S Eliot. The epigraph of this poem is a six-line quotation from canto 27 of the inferno by the Renaissance Italian poet Dante. Thus suggesting that the ensuring poem will depict a kind of dark, hellish experience.

And Gerontion is a poem by T.S Eliot. The poem takes as an epigraph lines from Act-iii of Shakespeare’s play “ Measure for Measure” from a speech that is an extended meditation on old age and death. In the poem “ The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock” where Prufrock says that “ Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions”. Prufrock think that both he and his lady love will get time for a hundred indecisions, hundred visions and for a hundred revisions. Prufrock is a man of indecisive nature. Here the grandiloquent style is used for a trifling matter, like the making of a marriage proposal.  It has an ironic effect.

On the other hand “Geronation” by T.S Eliot. The Speaker begins by locating himself and giving the reader a few details about who he is. He’s old and living through a “dry mouth” He is in a liminal space in which he is waiting for death, because he has no time to choosing decision or revision. Here we find compare between both of poem idea of time. Prufrock is unable to take any decision. He thinks that he will get enough time for it. But the speaker of Gerontion poem he won’t get enough time.

Prufrock is more focusing on the future but Gerontion is more focusing on the past. Prufrock says that -

“ Do I dare disturb the universe”

Here, the speaker thinks that if he propose the striking beautiful lady. She will definitely reject him. Prufrock thinking is that he can exist without the love, but if he makes a proposal toward girl then the whole world will stand against him. Thus should he dare to disturb the universe? He is raising this question. He is a man who is confused and lacked of courage. And the speakers of “ Gerontion” Poem He says that

“ Neither fear nor courage saves us”

Here, the speaker says that if we fight then they are going to die. Here also we find a lack of courage. So this is a contrast of both of the poem Gerontion and Prufrock by T.S Eliot, ” Gerontion” The poem is lamenting and depressing. It is hopeless the old man laments his age, his inaction and the direction the humans are going. He has no hope for them nor for himself. And Prufrock is also hopeless. He says that

“ I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think they will sing to me”

 

He wants to wear trousers of the latest fashion in order to hide his old age so that he can be acceptable to his lady-love. But in the very moment he decides to take a walk on the sea-shore in order to escape the hard realities of life, and the unpleasant duty of making a decision. While walking on a beach, in his fancy, he remembers the story of mermaids. "Mermaids" are mythical sea-creatures, half women and half fish. Prufrock has heard the mermaids singing, each to each, but he thinks that they will not sing to him. In ancient mythology, Ulysses and his sailors are said to have heard the mermaids singing. But Prufrock cannot rise to the level of Ulysses who was a great hero. Prufrock is not brave and adventurous lie Ulysses. He is timid and cowardly and therefore unfit to listen to the music of mermaids.

 

Mermaids" here are used as a symbol of romantic visions. Prufrock's life is so dull and boring that he cannot hope to see romantic visions. So both of them are hopeless.

 

This is the main compare and contrast between "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufork" and "Gerontion" poems.

 

How has the theme of paternity been crisscrossed by the poem "Marina" and its epigraph?. Explain

 

The theme of paternity:

The poem explores the theme of paternity by focusing on the rediscovery of his lost daughter of William Shakespeare’s Pericles. Marian is the name of the daughter of Pericles who has not seen her right from the birth as he was running away from his enemy facing miseries and threats on land and sea. It is in Act V of Shakespeare’s play, Pericles, Prince of Tyre that Pericles finds out that the dancer and singer performing before him is none else but his daughter. The dancing girl reminds him of his wife Thaisa, he talks to the girl, and is overjoyed to find that Marian is his daughter. Christ is the one being spoken about in "He who was living is now dead". We modern folks are in a similar position as Christ, but instead of being dead, we live in a sort of half-death, as "We who were living are now dying With a little patience".

Epigraph:

The poem takes as an epigraph lines from Act III of Shakespeare's play Measure for Measure, from a speech that is an extended meditation on old age and death. The narrator of Eliot's poem is himself close to death and reflects on his own mortality in terms of the decay of civilization. As in "The Wasteland," Eliot uses imagery of dryness and withering to link the image of the aging fisher king to the decline of the fertility of the kingdom and land. The old man is waiting among the ruins of his own life and western civilization, hoping for a sign of renewal, which is identified with rain. Christ appears as an ambivalent figure, who may be part of both the old world that is fading and the world that might be reborn. Christ is part of the youth of the world, but the present of the poem is one of old age; the second coming of Christ is a distant and uncertain possibility in the poem, that might bring destruction or renewal, the narrator, though, has lost faith, hope, and the strength needed for renewal:

“I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it

Since what is kept must be adulterated?

I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch . . .”

 

Instead, any potential hope for the future must rest in a new generation that can somehow transform or thrive in the fragmented post-apocalyptic modern world. The old man who narrates the poem, though, cannot see forward to the future but only sees the fragments of the past and the deceptions and melancholy lessons of history.

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.