Discuss the laboratory from Laputa

Laputans are the inhabitants of the flying island called Laputa. The Laputans have prostituted science by fixing on knowledge for knowledge’s sake, instead of putting intellectual theory to practical use. Where Scientists, in Swift’s send-up, would make poor rulers. Even Bacon, whose New Atlantis was the first scientific utopia, implicitly recognized this; while Bensalem’s key institution is Solomon’s House, it is not the sole governing body. One reason why Bacon thought scientists should not rule alone is that, while scientists pursue knowledge as an end in itself, politicians seek to use such knowledge as a means for other ends. The realities sought and delivered in the laboratory, in other words, are a different kind from those sought and delivered in the political arena.

The activities of the members of the Academy of Projectors, though they involve experiment, are yet related to the abstract thinking of the King. For the most part, they are based on some wrong-headed abstract conception, and are really examples of reasoning downward, taking "the High Priori Road" They are aspects, therefore, of the modern tendency to ignore "the old forms" and to rely on a spider-like spinning of thought, By blending experiment and High Priori reasoning in the Academy at Lagado, Swift is able to show scientific "projects" as yet another example of the kind of thinking which leads away from the methods of a Christian and humanist tradition. Indeed one of the projects is an exact allegorical equivalent of the process of reasoning downward to the foundations of plain experience. There is a most ingenious architect who has contrived a new method of building houses, by beginning at the roof and working downwards to the foundation, which he tries to justify by the practice of those two prudent insects-the bee and the spider. Again. the notion of ploughing the land with hogs to save the charges of ploughs. cattle. and labour results, upon experiment, in no crop and a good deal of trouble and expense.

Such projects leave an impression of uselessness, dirt, temporariness, or death. An eminent member of the Academy has been busy for thirty years converting things into their opposites. Air has been made tangible and marble has been made soft; land is sown with chaff, and woolless sheep have been reared; the hooves of a living horse are petrified. In short, the projects are conducted in an atmosphere of aimless activity, distorted values, and a perversion of things from their proper purpose. While the general effect of the  images we associate with Lilliput and Brobdingnag is of man and other animals as vigorous physical beings, the effect of Laputa and its subject Kingdom of Balnibarbi is of a deliberate giving up of the physical and the vital for the abstract, the mechanical, and the unproductive. The prevailing images in Laputa and Balnibarbi are not of real people and animals, but of ruins, mechanical constructions, men who look like allegorical figures and women who are thought of in geometrical terms. Animals are only negatively present, as in the pathetic horses and sheep of the Academy. Laputa itself is a mechanical device, because the flying island expresses not only the Laputans’ desertion of the common earth of reality but their conversion of the universe to a mechanism, and of living, to a mechanical process.

Academy of Lagado, Gulliver meets a culture completely dedicated to the sciences. Swift lampoons his era’s enlightened thinkers by directly parodying their own experiments, this time implementing a different body part. One of the academy’s most famed physicians claims to be able cure illnesses by inserting objects “eight inches up the anus.” Another hopes to “reduce human excrement to its original food.” Guided by real-life research, Swift ridicules philosophers with common sense, showing that even the world’s most brilliant minds are still capable of humbling mistakes.

 In his poem, “The Lady’s Dressing Room,” Swift moves from satirizing the sciences to poking fun at the arts. He attacks romanticized ideals of femininity by once again focusing on their bodily functions. Imitating the epic illusions used by his literary peers, Swift compares Celia’s chamber pot to Pandora’s Box and Paradise Lost. After further deconstruction of the feminine ideal, Swift’s male protagonist reaches the disturbing conclusion that his darling “Celia shits!” This crude discovery grounds both genders in reality and parodies any poem portraying women as anything other than eating, breathing, pooping characters.

 Academy of Lagado, Gulliver meets a culture completely dedicated to the sciences. Swift lampoons his era’s enlightened thinkers by directly parodying their own experiments, this time implementing a different body part. One of the academy’s most famed physicians claims to be able cure illnesses by inserting objects “eight inches up the anus.” Another hopes to “reduce human excrement to its original food.” Guided by real-life research, Swift ridicules philosophers with common sense, showing that even the world’s most brilliant minds are still capable of humbling mistakes.

While readers typically focus on Swift’s mastery of bathroom humor, his critical portrayal of accepted governmental, scientific, and artistic standards remains applicable to today’s society. Instead of using bodily fluids as a crutch, Swift strategically hides his highbrow social attack within the bladders and bowels of his characters.  From vain politicians to irrational logicians to idealized women, he humanizes the social elite and unifies the world through one of our few shared experiences – the restroom. All of the above discussion about the Laboratory from Laputa.

Jimmy's Relationship with Alison and Helena.

 

Jimmy's marital life and his relationship with wife Alison is one of the chief concern of the play, Although Jimmy and Alison had a love marriage, their marital life was full of tension. Alison's parent's apposition to the marriage due to Jimmy's low 80cial status enraged Jimmy. He could never forgive Alison's family members for their disapproval of him and constantly bullies his wife in a way to get back to them. He treats her in a callous manner attacking and abusing her parents, her brother in a ruthless manner. le finds fault with her for her endless ironing of clothes, for being devoid of animation and enthusiasm, of being silent when he expects her to retaliate to his attack, for being "pusillanimous", for having the passion of a python, for coming under the influence of Helena, for being indifferent to the ailing Mrs. Tanner and so on. He shares some occasional moments of tenderness with her and plays the bears-and-squirrels game, thus escaping to the world of fantasy and shower their uncomplicated love for each other. But otherwise his attitude towards her is of scorn and contempt. He humiliates her in front of Cliff by comparing her sexual passion to that of a python. He cares little not to hurt her feeling while criticising her family members. In fact he deliberately tries to bully her by ridiculing her parents and brother and attacking them with harshest possible language. Alison rightly says to Helena that he treats her like a hostess of the middle class against whom he is waging war Jimmy considered Helena as one of his "natural enemies" when she is first introduced. There is no love between them and he does not even spare her from his ruthless verbal assault. His behaviour with her is very un-gentleman like. After the kissing incident, she becomes his mistress and he shares a good report with her. In her Jimmy finds a good soulmate. She replaces Alison completely in the Porter's household. She takes over Alison's work on the ironing board, ceaselessly ironing clothes wearing one of Jimmy's old shirt.

Though Jimmy does not play the bears-and-squirrels game with her, yet he shares some tender moments expressing their love for each other. On Alison's return when Helena decides to leave her, he is hurt. He accuses her of hypocrisy for trying to lead a saint's life. He also accuses her of trying to escape the pain of being alive. After her desertion he is so distressed that he bangs his fist against the window frame. 

 

  The premise of the play is that Jimmy is lower-middle-class, both Helena and Alison are upper/middle-class, and most of their problems stem from this difference. Alison is less excitable and doesn't stir up as much trouble as Helena. The two women appear to be aligned in many ways and are supposedly friends, but Alison is more practical and is willing to walk away from Jimmy, whereas Helena seems willing to put up with his poor behavior. Alison betrays Jimmy by leaving him, but Helena betrays Alison by taking up with Jimmy. Where Alison is discouraged by the abuse she endures from Jimmy, it lights a fire in Helena. For example, once Alison has gone home with her father, the fight between Jimmy and Helena crosses the line, and they end up getting romantically involved.  When act 3 begins, Helena has taken on Alison's role, and she is only able to see the error of her ways when Alison returns to see Jimmy. Neither of the women is especially important to Jimmy, as he isn't sad to see Helena leave and does not seem especially glad to have Alison return. They are similar in their station in life but different in how they handle Jimmy's behavior. Alison and Helena both end up living with Jimmy Porter, Allison as his wife and Helena as his mistress.

Allison and Helena are both upper-to-middle class, something that drives Jimmy crazy. In a way, both Alison and Helena rebel against their families by taking up with Jimmy, but Alison, it seems, actually loves him.

Use of Irony and Humour in The Playboy of the Western World

 

The Use of Irony

At the outset, Christy is a poor sort of creature and his deed is reprehensible by any code; yet he progresses to become a proven hero in the end of all." Within this ironic frame-work, irony is piled upon irony as the audience rejects Christy, and then lends him grudging admiration, rejects and then approves the attitudes of those in the Mayo shebeen. By his mere presence, the snivel-

ling coward, Shawn Keogh, Constitutes a sarcastic comment on the situation, since for Pegeen's life-partner he is the only alternative to a parricide. The miserable Shawn with his false piety is also apparently the Church's only answer in lieu of the presence of Father Reilly and the saints of God, all kept well off-stage. When Pegeen's father, Michael James, tries to prompt Shawn to claim Pegeen for himself, Shawn can only grumble that he is “afeard to be jealous of a man did slay his dad". This, for the audience, is reasonable enough, but no less vexing all the same.

Old Mahon himself is a second ironic presence lurking throughout the play, constantly undercutting Christy's heroic image by obstinately refusing to be dead. The audience is ready enough to grant the playboy some of the stage glory he has acquired by Winning races on the beach, flaunting his colourful jockey silks, and attracting all the young women in their bright fed dresses (as authentically worn by the Aran peasant girls). He even pleases us by threatening Shawn's skull with another spade. But in the latter part of the play old Mahon's sly presence is planted like a warning, threatening to thwart our pleasures. Nevertheless, Michael James himself accepts the idea that a daring fellow is the jewel of the world, even though he did split his father's middle with a single clout, and presumably may well do it again to a father-in-law;

and so it seems, by dint of Synge'sironic stage-craft, that Christy's heroic image is solid and complete. When, therefore, Christy is finally chased off, threatening to kill his father a second time if necessary, the audience, as much as Pegeen herself, feels the pain and annoyance of self-deception.

 

Humour :

The dialogue in the play too is a source of rich comedy. Leaving aside a few speeches which . may momentarily depress us or put us in a serious mood, the rest of the dialogue amuses us greatly. The verbal duel between Pegeen and Widow Quin is one of the comic highlights of the play. Widow Quin slanders Pegeen by saying that the latter goes "helter-skeltering” after any man who winks at her on a road, and Pegeen accuses the widow of having reared a ram at her own breast. Then there are the satirical remarks Pegeen makes to Shawn. She tells him that he is the kind of lover who would remind a gril of a bullock's liver rather than of the lily or the rose. And then she ironically advises him to find for himself a wealthy wife who looks radiant with “the diamond jewelleries of Pharaoh's ma". Widow Quin, speaking to Christy, says that Pegeen

is a girl “itching and scratching" and one who stinks of stale whisky. These are examples of conscious wit and humour, but we are also greatly amused by the unconscious humour of many of the speeches of Michael, Old Mahon, Philly, and Jimmy. Michael's way of describing the wretched life of a man who has never married is very funny. Old Mahon's use of words and phrases to describe Christy's shyness and his incapacity to drink or to smoke is highly entertain-

ing, while Philly and Jimmy amuse us by their talk about the exhibition of skulls in the museum in Dublin.

The above has been discussed about irony and Humour  of “The Playboy of the Western World” in detail.

What is kitchen sink realism? Analyze the character of Jimmy Porter as an epitome of an 'angry young man'.

 

'Kitchen Sink' is the term given to a particular type of drama, which focuses primarily on the trials and experiences of the urban working class. It stems from the wider 'Kitchen Sink' movement of social realism in art.

  Kitchen sink realism (or kitchen sink drama) is a British cultural movement that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film and television plays, whose protagonists usually could be described as "angry young men" who were disillusioned with modern society. It used a style of social realism, which depicted the domestic situations of working class Britons, living in cramped rented accommodation and spending their off-hours drinking in grimy pubs, to explore controversial social and political issues ranging from abortion to homelessness. The harsh, realistic style contrasted sharply with the escapism of the previous generation's so-called "well-made plays".

  Perhaps the first, and most notable, characteristic of these Kitchen Sink dramas was the way in which they advanced a particular social message or ideology. This ideology was most often leftist. The settings were almost always working class. The previous trend in Victorian theater had been to depict the lives of the wealthy members of the ruling classes. These classes of people were often conservative in their politics and their ideologies. This was not the case for Kitchen Sink theater. The Kitchen Sink drama sought, instead, to bring the real lives and social inequality of ordinary working class people to the stage. The lives of these people were caught between struggles of power, industry, politics, and social homogenization.

  Another chief characteristic of the Kitchen Sink drama was the way in which its characters expressed their unvarnished emotion and dissatisfaction with the ruling class status quo. This can be seen clearly in the play considered to be the standard bearer of this Kitchen Sink genre: John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger. In Osborne’s play, Jimmy Porter plays the role of the Angry Young Man. He is angry and dissatisfied at a world that offers him no social opportunities and a dearth of emotion. He longs to live a “real life.” He feels, however, that the trappings of working class domesticity keep him from reaching this better existence. His anger and rage are thus channeled towards those around him. Osborne’s play is a study in how this pent up frustration and social anger can wreak havoc on the ordinary lives of the British people.

   Some critics have noted the irony in the term “Kitchen Sink drama.” The domestic world during this time was believed to be the domain of the feminine. Almost all of the major Kitchen Sink works which take place in the mid-twentieth century, however, are centered around a masculine point of view. These plays rarely centered around the emotions and tribulations of its women characters. The power dynamic between male and female often assumed to be masculine and is an unexamined critical component in many of these plays. Women are often assumed to serve the men of their household and, when conflicts do arise, it is often the man who is portrayed as the suffering protagonist. Women’s suffering is always a result of the suffering of the male.

  Though Kitchen Sink dramas gained notoriety in twentieth century British culture for their unflinching anger and criticism directed towards the social, political, and economic establishment, the plays were also significant for the way they depicted the most intimate aspects of domestic life.

  So the play as an embodiment of  kitchen sink realism because  The Angry Young Jimmy Porter as an epitome Kitchen Sink Realism in John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger" and its relevance in the twenty-first century society.

Analyze the major themes of The Playboy of the Western World.

The major themes of  " The playboy of the western world ":     Various themes are found   in the john Millington Synge’s play "the playboy of the western world ". Some majors themes are going to be discussed below :

Darkness: The Playboy of the Western World approaches the question of darkness from several different angles. At the top of the play, the literal darkness of the nighttime creates the first conflict: Pegeen has been left alone to mind the alehouse at night. She would like company and protection. Shawn's character is quickly established when he is unwilling to protect her from the darkness for fear of upsetting Father Reilly. However, even Michael James is perturbed by the dark, as he doubles back before arriving at the wake because of it. All the characters realize that in darkness lies a litany of threats, including: ghosts, drunken farmhands and violent militiamen. The real threat, however, lies just outside in a ditch: Christy Mahon.

 

Offering shelter to this stranger invites a different and more profound darkness: the darkness of the human capacity for violent, subconscious desire. Part of what incensed contemporary audiences about Synge's play is that the play reveled in this dark behavior, but we may understand the villagers' celebration of Christy's patricide as an expression of their own subconscious desire to relish in their dark impulses and thereby upset the reigning moral order. Christy’s tale offers them a chance to imagine their own violent liberation from the stifling village life. But when Christy’s father appears, providing Christy a chance to kill him once and for all, the crowd turns on him. Darkness is easier to imagine than to confront directly, and so the village ultimately choose to keep their violent desires locked away, in the figurative dark. Overall, Synge uses his wild comedy to ask questions about what humans do in confronting their dark desires.

 

  Religion: Religion in The Playboy serves as the reigning moral order of village life. However, Synge's depiction of it is quite nuanced, since characters frequently subvert religious expectation for the sake of self-interest. Shawn Keogh prefers to leave Pegeen alone in the dead of night with a madman abroad than risk censure for spending unchaperoned time with her. Meanwhile, these 'religious' villagers immediately celebrate Christy for his horrific patricide. The worse Christy's tale becomes, the more do the villagers grow enamored of him. What is implied through Pegeen's tale in particular is that freedom from religious restraint allows for freedom from the stifling nature of village life. Christy's crime allows her to imagine a life of self-realization, away from religious restraint. Though Synge never makes an explicit attack on religion in the play, it is posed as something antithetical to human freedom and individuality, and this conflict forms the center of the story.

 

Fathers:  The theme of fathers is reflected everywhere in [The Playboy]. In general, fathers are presented in terms of authority. They demand obedience, which then poses a challenge to their children: do they obey, or revolt? There are three “fathers” within the play: Michael James (Pegeen’s father), Old Mahon (Christy’s father) and Father Reilly, the village priest. Each of these men is defined by the obedience he demands of his children (whether literal or figurative).

 

The most uncomplicated relationship is that between Father Reilly and Shawn Keogh. Father Reilly never appears in the play, but Shawn refers to him incessantly. Shawn, an orphan, frets over Father Reilly’s approval, and commits no action that might be censured. Shawn grants total obedience to Father Reilly, so much so that his obedience swallows his identity. It absolves him of having to make any difficult decision.

Headstrong Pegeen mostly obeys her father Michael James, but she never fails to argue her own point of view where it differs from his. Her most stunning act of disobedience is to insist upon marrying Christy instead of Shawn. Interestingly, her father's initial anger is overcome by her strength, until he eventually blesses the union. Of course, this blessing only lasts so long before Pegeen again makes herself subservient to him. By the end of the play, we see that Pegeen remains Michael's property, reliant on the life he provides, even despite her fiery personality. She is not willing to entirely repudiate him and run away.

Of course, it is relationship between Christy and Old Mahon that takes center stage. Though initially like Shawn in his life, obeying his father without a hint of rebellion, Christy eventually comes to distinguish himself as a revolutionary against his father's authority. He murders the man once by accident and again on purpose, so that even when Old Mahon survives, Christy demands the power. By the end, Christy has gained the authority, because he was willing to entirely repudiate his father. The sense is that we must be willing to destroy authority if we are to subvert it, something Pegeen has a sense of but is unable to entirely do.

 

 Social Expectations: Christy’s murder of his father incites the action of The Playboy. This murder is both literal and metaphorical - in terms of the former, Christy does actually (try to) kill his father; in terms of the latter, he is celebrated not for striking an old man, but for representing an act of rebellion against social expectation in general.

There is an interesting interplay between the concepts of patricide — the literal killing of one’s father — and parricide —the murder of a family member. It seems that literal patricide shades into a more general category of parricide, since the murder has a greater metaphorical significance. In addition to striking his literal father, Christy strikes his 'family,' meaning the many aspects of society that attempt to define and limit people. What Christy 'kills' has great weight for the villagers because it represents a greater murder: of Church, law, village, country, of general subservience to social expectation. Christy's attempt at patricide enables him to represent a great liberator to the villagers. That they are shocked by his literal attack in the final act reveals that the villagers have turned his act into a symbol of defiance, one that allowed them to imagine destroying much greater concepts than an actual flesh-and-blood man.

Poetry: In many ways, what distinguishes Christy as a hero is less his actions and more his ability to represent those actions through language. Throughout the play, Pegeen and company are struck by Christy's verbal brilliance. In her first exchange with him, Pegeeen compares him to the great poets. Despite his limited education, Christy discovers a rhetorical skill as he articulates the subconscious desire to subvert authority, one that all of the villagers secretly share. As his own self-image strengthens, so does his language grow richer. It is telling that the prizes he wins in the sports competition symbolize a traditional Irish bard. Christy turns word into flesh, and language becomes one of the most important actors in the play. The sense is that we define ourselves not only by what we do, but also by how represent ourselves to others.

 

The Playboy: The concept of "The Playboy" is undoubtedly central to the play, considering its prominent place in the title. What is intriguing is that the concept shifts throughout the story. The Playboy is initially understood as a flirtatious man who attracts women. This aptitude is largely based on his mastery of language. Therefore, a playboy is one who can 'play' with words. And yet Christy drives this concept into a greater place, as his language and storytelling inflate his self-image. His identity grows to match the hyperbole of his language. As a result, he becomes a sports champion, suggesting that the Playboy is also an athletic specimen. By the end of the play, when Pegeen laments losing the "playboy," we understand that she does not regret losing a libertine, but rather a master of self-identity. The Playboy has come to represent not just a master of language or athletics, but in fact a master of himself and his own identity.

 

Marriage:  Marriage is obviously central to a world centered around Church expectations, as the Irish countryside of his play is. However, it is also represented as a contentious, potentially violent, subject matter. Throughout the play, 'fathers' force marriage upon their 'children,' inspiring intense acts of rebellion or submission. Because marriage does not represent love, but rather economic convenience, characters must decide whether to submit to expectation or declare their identity in the face of these expectations. The catalyst to Christy’s initial attack on his father was the latter's attempt to marry him to someone he did not like. Father Reilly controls Shawn’s fate through deciding whether to grant the dispensation. Most of all, the relationship between Christy and Pegeen reflects the way marriage stands in contrast to personal identity. Pegeen declares her own strength when she insists upon marrying Christy despite her father's intentions, and then later repudiates him of her own will. Similarly, Christy finally discovers his true potential when he repudiates Pegeen in turn, announcing his decision to "romp" forward, using woman as he pleases. Whether Pegeen will eventually submit to marrying Shawn is uncertain, but what is certain is that she has  that true freedom is stifled by social expectations like marriage.

The Free bondsman

 

In the play character of the beggar as a free bondsman is most wise, optimistic, hard working and the one who do not believe in any superstitions at all. Through the character of the beggar Soyinka has also given the culture of the Nigerian society that guests are treated as god.

      The crops that had been left by flood water have also been ruined by oil.Igwezu  returns  from  the  field  greatly  disappointed  by  the  destruction  of  his  farm  due  to flood. The begger consoles  him promising that his  farm will once again  stand, and  he will give himself as his bondsman.  The tells him that he is a wanderer, a beggar by birth and fortunes. The beggar also tell to Igwezu that  he has stood where soil is good and cleaves to the toes like the clay of bricks in the mixing; but it needs the fingers of drought whose skin is parchment.

    The Bondsman is presented as Christ like figure. He is a spiritual man, he is full of hope, and he is moral and advises people in right way. He is symbol for salvation. The Bondsman also gets treatment as he is God. In Yoruba Custom, stranger is considered as god. The character of beggar introduce by Soyinka as “Christ figure who introduce a completely new force, a new way of thinking into the hidebound society of the village”. It is the reason beggar gets the special treatment from the Old Couple,

“Alu squats down and washes his feet. When this is finished, she wipes them dry, takes a small jar from one of the shelves, and rubs his feet with some form of ointment.”

       The bondsman who represented as the blind beggar  is a thinker. He does not believe in whatever. He questions the wrong ideas and persuades others also to question. He is the only person in the play who questions Kadiye and his ways. He tries to explain people not to believe in Kadiye.

 

 Thus, The bigger as a Bondsman is not minor character in the play. He has very much importance. He is symbol of new thinking, spirituality, morality, hard work, hope and brotherhood. Through his character Soyinka tries to say many things to reader.

The Serpent of the swamp

 The people of the swamp believe animism.  The term animism is derived from the Latin word anima meaning breath on soul. Animism is the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence.  Potentially, animism perceives all things animals planets, rocks revers, weather systems human handiwork and perhaps even words—as animated and alive.

As swamp suck people in, The whirlpool of ignorance, superstition and frustration continues to drag villagers deeper and deeper.  People living in village believe in superstitions, have traditional thoughts.

They are believe in  the Serpent 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 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 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 consummate their wedding at the bed where the rivers meet. They consider the river bed itself as the perfect bridal bed. Sudden flood ruin the crops throwing life out of gear.

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!