Department of English

UNIVERSITY OF KARACHI
M.A Previous (Evening Programme)

Name: Tabinda Sahar Siddiqui

Student Account # 200438/19
Seat Number: EP 19591032
Department: English
Teacher: Sir M. Babur Khan Suri
Course: Fiction (542)
Q.no1)
b) Discuss, how the setting of the novel Sons and Lovers (a mining town), influences the
psychologies of the main characters.
Answer:
D.H. Lawrence through the setting a mining town represents the nature and the world to the
central lives of the characters in his novel Sons and Lovers, suggesting that human beings are
not separate from the natural world but rather extensions of it. The spiritual wellbeing of
characters in the novel is connected to nature. Being a 20th-century novelist Lawrence
powerful realism in the novel shows the atmosphere of English industrial working-class life
and how it influences their psychologies i.e. the disintegrative, dehumanizing effects of
industrialization upon human lives. Moreover, he uses nature in the novel as a salvation force
against the industrial distortion of human nature. The characters live in an industrial
civilization, meaning their livelihoods are tied to technology, machines, and the exploitation
of natural resources.

The novel begins with a description of the bottoms, the coal pits, and what man
has done to nature. It signifies how man’s activities spoil nature and created conflict. Men are
likened to donkeys and ants burrowing down into the earth (p. 1). The description of the men
with animals represents their liveliness which is going to be ruined by industry. The images of
donkey and ant represent the dehumanizing effects of the industry. Because of the industrial
development, the beautiful countryside view has been destroyed. “Corn and meadows” are
destroyed to make place for coalmines. People’s labour has lost its dignity. Under the impact
of industrialism and rapid urbanization human mind loses its fertility, becomes barren as a
desert. It profoundly affects the family life of the lower-class working people who work in coal
mines. The entire life of the mining community depicted in the novel depends upon the coal-
pits which stand on the horizon. The coal-pits are not indispensable for a better
understanding of the novel but they have their own representative significance. Accurately,
they may be coat-pits but they are representative of a particular attitude towards life. Morel,
with his irrational life principle, has a close association with them. The work in the mine
extracts every bit of energy out of the coilers. What is more is that working in the mine dull
the minds and the sensual desire of the coilers. As a result, mutual communication between
man and woman, which is the central clue to all other relations, cannot happen in its normal
level. In Sons and Lovers, the mutual communication cannot succeed in the Morel family. Mr.
Morel is always too tired and frustrated by his wife’s taste in tidying the house. Mrs. Morel’s
pride and knowledge prevents her from understanding her husband’s insensitivity. Harmony
in their relationship is destroyed soon after their marriage, and hot and cold wars begin to
take place between them which obviously effect their and their children lives psychologically.
We come to realize that the material commercial world is a world without love.
Consequently, the father Mr. Morel yields to the conservative male-controlled role forced on
him, and gradually loses his natural sense of humor. The mother Mrs. Morel, deprived of her
husband’s love, is forced to center all her love and hope on her sons, and eventually
suffocates their life.

Hence it is concluded that, the members of the Morel family are contaminated by
the industrialized values. They hold a distorted love concept on their beloved ones. Thus,
industry suffocates their dream, their love and their life, rather than it helps them prosper.
The modern world was heavily impacted by the much-hyped Industrial revolution. Sons and
Lovers is an extraordinary novel that explores this extraordinary theme with effect to human
relationships and its psychological effects.
Q. no 2)

b) “His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to
them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living
thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink.” 
Critically comment on the passage from Lord of the Flies given above.
Answer:
The above passage is taken from chapter 4 of the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding.
This novel depicts a world of violence and moral desolation. The plot shows a process of
events that finally leads to death and devastation. The boys go through gradual degradation
into the abyss of unhuman conduct. They take off the mask of socially organised English guys
and replace it with wild nature. They go through changes as they gradually embark on a new
life free from social restrictions and punishment. The transformation is particularly observed
in the three major characters of the novel; Ralph, Piggy and Jack. The passage above
describes Jack’s mental state in the aftermath of killing his first pig, another milestone in the
boys’ decline into savage behavior. Jack exults in the kill and is unable to think about anything
else because his mind is “crowded with memories” of the hunt. Jack’s excitement stems not
from pride at having found food and helped the group but from having “outwitted” another
creature and “imposed” his will upon it.
Exploring Jack's status after killing his first pig on the island, he says they need food,
but we already know there were coconuts on the island, and it probably wouldn't be too
difficult to construct a net or rods to catch a fish from the teeming oceans - so was it
really quite a requirement for food:, his excitement stems not from his pride of providing
food but from the very fact that he outsmarted the pig and imposed his will upon it. This is
often worrying for the boys on the island as Jack a prominent leader on the island is realising
his savage capabilities. Golding explicitly connects Jack’s exhilaration with the emotions of
power and superiority he experienced in killing the pig. Earlier within the novel, Jack claims
that hunting is very important to supply meat for the group; now, it becomes clear that Jack’s
obsession with hunting is because of the satisfaction it provides his primal instincts and has
nothing to try to with contributing to the common good. Golding believed everyone has the
capacity for inhumanity and evil. Because as the novel proceeds, it's easy to forget that the
oldest of the protagonists is barely 12 years old. they're mere boys. Jack,
who involves epitomize savagery, is seen as "a little boy" by the military officer who finds
them. The boys' youth gets lost in their horrific actions. One might think a toddler would
never do such awful things. However, everyone, children included, has evil within. Even the
littluns, who are as young as six, show this propensity toward evil. after they gather among
themselves, they show the capacity to act cruelly to every other and also the land around
them.
Indeed, that the characters are boys’ underscores Golding's attempt to portray their
decline into savagery as fundamentally representative of human nature. They are not adults
who have been fully socialized and can blame their evil on that socialization. Instead, they act
on natural human impulses. As the Lord of the Flies, which represents this evil, says to Simon,
you can't kill the evil within because it's part of you. The events in the novel imply a basic
message: evil is in all of us and can be brought out under the right circumstances. The boys
are not able to maintain a civilized society; it spirals out of control as the evil takes over all
but a few of the boys.
Q.no3)

(b) Critically analyze the following passage.

“A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to sea. She seemed like
one whom magic had changed into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird. Her long
slender bare legs were delicate as a crane’s and pure save where an emerald trail of
seaweed had fashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller and soft-hued as
ivory, were bared almost to the hips, where the white fringes of her drawers were like
feathering of soft white down. Her slate-blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and
dovetailed behind her. Her bosom was as a bird’s, soft and slight, slight and soft as the
breast of some dark-plumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and
touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face.
She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his presence and the worship
of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze, without shame or
wantonness. Long, long she suffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his
and bent them towards the stream, gently stirring the water with her foot hither and
thither. The first faint noise of gently moving water broke the silence, low and faint and
whispering, faint as the bells of sleep; hither and thither, hither and thither; and a faint
flame trembled on her cheek.
–Heavenly God! Cried Stephen’s soul, in an outburst of profane joy.
He turned away from her suddenly and set off across the strand. His cheeks were aflame;
his body was aglow; his limbs were trembling. On and on and on and on he strode, far out
over the sands, singing wildly to the sea, crying to greet the advent of the life that had cried
to him.
Her image had passed into his soul forever and no word had broken the holy silence of his
ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had leaped at the call. To live, to err, to fall, to
triumph, to recreate life out of life! A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal
youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an
instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory. On and on and on and on!”
Answer:
The above passage is taken from chapter 4 of the novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man by the Irish modernist writer James Joyce. It follows the intellectual, moral and spiritual
development of a young Catholic Irishman, Stephen Dedalus, and his struggle against the
restrictions his culture imposes. A caterpillar must crawl, inch by inch, across the world before
it can mature, grow wings, and soar beautifully above the land within which it had been born.
So too, in James Joyce's A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man, must the central character,
Stephen Dedalus, live a terrestrial life as that young man before he can take the skyward
route of the artist. within the above passage, Stephen makes the entire transformation from
religious piety and hating himself to loving himself and appreciating beauty without shame.
The epiphany he experiences enables Stephen to require the primary steps in becoming the
artist he's meant to be.

The above passage comes after Stephen's period of deep religious devoting and
discipline.  No longer able to wait for his father and the tutor to decide if he has any chances
of attending a university, Stephen walks to the beach where he sees old teachers and
classmates.  While watching a young woman wade in the water, Stephen rediscovers beauty
and realizes how much he values seeing it in the world.  It is beauty, not necessarily
innocence, that consumes and satisfies Stephen.  It demonstrates Joyce's contention that
becoming a true artist involves a calling, not a conscious decision the artist can make himself.
These thoughts fly through Stephen's mind just before he sees a young girl wading at a beach.
The sight of her image leads to one of the most important epiphanies in the novel. Stephen
sees her not long after he has refused the priesthood, a time when he is unsure of what to do
now that he has relinquished his religious devotion. At this moment, Stephen finally feels a
strong calling, and determines to celebrate life, humanity, and freedom, ignoring all
temptations to turn away from such a celebration. He has already succumbed to temptation
twice: first, a "dull gross voice" causes him to sin deeply when he succumbs to the squalor of
Dublin; second, an "inhuman voice" invites him into the cold, dull, unfeeling world of the
priesthood.

Hence, it can be concluded that Both of the temptations, as well as the calling to
become an artist, are forces through which the outside world acts upon Stephen. In this
context, the passage suggests that it is as much fate as Stephen's own free will that leads him
to become an artist. At this point, Stephen has just rejected the priesthood but has yet to fully
discover his inner artist. He is beginning to think for himself. The idea of flight and freedom
allows him to make his own decisions, live his own life, and not be suppressed by Ireland or
the traditions of his family or any religion. It is incredible that Stephen can actually see this
freedom in her, whereas earlier in the novel he was trapped also by women.