Poetry and Drama - III

EG-05
VARDHAMAN MAHAVEER OPEN UNIVERSIY, KOTA

UNIT-1
T. S. ELIOT : RELIGIOUS POEMS
UNIT-2
W. B. YEATS : TO A SHADE
UNIT-3
TED HUGHES : HAWK ROOSTING
UNIT-4
PHILIP ARTHUR LARKIN : TOADS
UNIT-5
E. E. CUMMINGS : THY FINGERS MAKE EARLY FLOWERS
UNIT-6
AMY LOWELL: (I) THE SISTERS (II) THE WEATHER-COCK POINTS SOUTH
UNIT-7
WALLACE STEVENS : (I) SUNDAY MORNING (II) THE ANECDOTE OF A JAR (III) EMPEROR OF ICE-
CREAM
UNIT-8
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS : (I) THE RED WHEELBARROW (II) LANDSCAPE WITH THE FALL OF
ICARUS
UNIT-9
NISSIM EZEKIEL : ENTERPRISE
UNIT-10
NISSIM EZEKIEL : IN INDIA
UNIT-11
K.N.DARUWALA : (I) CROSSING OF RIVERS (II) THE MISTRESS
UNIT-12
KAMALA DAS : (I) AN INTRODUCTION (II) GHANSHYAM
UNIT-13
AFRICAN POETRY: JAMES BERRY & WOLE SOYINKA
UNIT-14
JAYANTA MAHAPATRA : (I) GENESIS (II) HER HAND
UNIT - 15
T.S. ELIOT : THE POETIC DRAMA
UNIT-16
T.S.ELIOT : THE FAMILY REUNION
UNIT-17
GIRISH KARNAD : HAYAVADAN (I)
UNIT-18
GIRISH KARNAD : HAYAVADAN (II)

Price : 180
 UNIT-1
T. S. ELIOT : RELIGIOUS POEMS, THE POETIC DRAMA, THE FAMILY
REUNION

Q.1. When was T.S. Eliot born?

Ans. Thomas Stearns Eliot was born on 26th September, 1888 at St. Louis, Missouri, an industrial city in the center of the
U.S.A.

Q.2. Where did Eliot get his school education?

Ans. Eliot completed his school education in 1905 from St. Louis day school where he was considered a brilliant student.

Q.3. Which poems was published between 1927 to 1930?

Ans. A Song for Simeon, Animula and Marina, which were published between 1927 and 1930

Q.4. On which theme “A Song for Simeon” poem is based?

Ans. A Song for Simeon is based upon the ‘Nunc Dimittis’.

Q.5. Explain the phrase Roman hyacinths?

Ans. A hyacinth (Hyacinthus orientalis albulus) with loosely flowered spikes several of which grow from one bulb.

Q.6. Explain the tern 'Martyrdom'?

Ans. The meaning of ‘Martyrdom’ is the suffering of death on account of adherence to a cause and especially to one's
religious faith.

Q.7. What does the poet want to suggest by the new ships?
Ans. The poet wants to suggest us to always look for something good in something bad.

Q.8. What is Mundane?

Ans. It means ‘worldly’ or materialistic.

Q.9. What is Expiation?

Ans. It means repentance or remorse to neutralize one’s sin(s)

Q.10. What is Prologue?

Ans. It is the opening speech in the play. It may be spoken by the Chorus, too.

Q.11. What is Libido?

Ans. It refers to the sex-impulse which motivates all human conduct.

Q.12. What is Existentialism?

Ans. It is a school of thought. It propunds the idea that Man is subjected to over whelming callous forces in the world.
French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre is one of the greatest intellectuals to expond this philospphy.

Q.13. What is The Grail?

Ans. The holy grail is the bowl from which Jesus Christ and his disciples drank at the Last Supper.

Q.14. What is Tiresias?

Ans. Tiresias is the blind prophet who was neither male nor female.Though physically blind, he was endowed with great
prophetic powers.He could see in past, present and future. He appears as a character in Sophocles’s play Oedipus Rex. T.S. Eliot
refers to him in The Waste Land.

Q.15. What is Verse libre?

Ans. It is a French term for free verse. It has irregular line strength and has no rhyme.Walt Whitman used free verse in his
Leaves of Grass. Eliot is one of the masters of free verse. E.E. Cummings has earned a lot of notoriety with free verse.

Q.16. What is Genre?

 Ans. It is a French term in literary criticism to refer to a literary form or species. For example, tragedy, comedy, epic,
satire, novel, essay, biography are literary genres.

Q.17. What is Conceit?

Ans. It means ‘image’ or ‘concept’. It has become a sort of figure of speech which strikes a parallel between apparently
dissimilar things or situations John Donne is the master of metaphysical conceits.

Q.18. What is dowager?

Ans. A rich lady who is a widow and looks after the estate in the event of her husband’a death Lady Amy Monechensey is
a dowager who manages the estate at Wishwood Country183 House in North England.

Q.19. What is Irony?

Ans. Irony is a subtle figure of speech. The meaning conveyed by words in just the opposite of what really happens.
There are ironical circumstances in T.S.Eliot’s verse play The Family Reunion.

Q.20. What is Classicism?

Ans. Classicism is a blanket term for the principle of the beauty of form, good taste, restraint, clarity in a work of art. As a
literary/artistic attitude, it insists upon a sublime theme, a disciplined play of imagination, chaste language. It goes in favour of
elegance, refinement, decency and decorum. Classicism is the product of the ancient Greek and Roman artists.

Q.21. What is Aristocratic?

Ans. The adjective ‘aristocratic’ refers to the life-style of nobility. The royal families had rich estate to manage and lived
apparently luxuriously. Lady Amy Monchensey belongs to an aristocratic family.

Q.22. What is Oedipus Complex?

Ans. It is a term which occurs in Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis. He holds that the son is more attached to his mother
and the daughter is more attached to her father.
Oedipus is a character in the trilogy of Sophocles.

Q.23. What is Chorus?

Ans. Among the ancient Greeks the chorus was a group of singers who sang verses while performing dance like
maneuvers at religious festivals.Chorus played its role in the plays of Sophocles and Aeschylus. The Chorus served the function of
the commentator on the action which represented moral, religious and social ideas. Later on, Chorus assumed primarily the
lyrical function. To mention only a few, Seneca, Milton in Samson Agonistes and T.S.Eliot in Murder in the Cathedral employed
the chorus. Christopher Marlowe in Dr. Faustus, Eugene O’Neill in Mourning Becomes Electra employed it, too.

Q.24. What is Renaissance?

Ans. Literally the term means “re birth”. It is a historical term which refers to the period of European history following
the Middle Ages. It is commonly said to have begun in Italy in the late fourteenth century and to have continued in western
Europe through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It refers to all round excellent development in the field of art, sculpture,
architecture, literature. It stands for the revival of humanistic values, new scientific discoveries of Galileo and Copernicus. In
common parlance the word stands for progress and enlightenment.

Q.25. What is Symbolism?

Ans. The term ‘symbolism’ means the practice of representing ideas or things by attributing symbolic meanings to words,
signs and objects. Generally a symbol represents an abstraction. For example the lion is the symbol of courage; the lamb is the
symbol of innocence.
The olive branch is the symbol of peace. The cross is the symbol of Christianity. A symbol is employed to present to the
mind an image or idea of an abstraction. In The Family Reunion, the Furies or the Eumenides are symbolic projections of Harry’a
guilt complex.

Q.26. Write a short note on poem Marina?

Ans. T.S. Eliot’s poem, ‘Marina’, belongs to the group of poems which have been designated as “The Arial Poems”
composed during 1927 and 1930. After his conversion to Anglicanism in 1927, Eliot began to write a new kind of poetry which
“seems to represent a withdrawal from the outer world and an exploration of the inner life under the guidance of Christianity.
“Published in 1930, Marian is Eliot’s touching personal poem. 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 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 and her mother had died while giving birth to her.

Q.27. Describe the story of ‘The Family Reunion’.

Ans. Eliot’s play The Family Reunion is about a widow Lady Amy Monchensey who has three younger sisters - Ivy, Violet
and Agatha. It happens to be her birthday. Her eldest son Lord Monchensey (Harry) is returning home after eight years. His
mother wants to marry him off to a girl of her choice and pass on her estate to him. The coversation among the guests reveals
that Harry had married a beautiful lady against his mother’s wish. Unfortunately she had expired. When Harry arrives he
discloses that he had pushed her off the railings of the ship and she was drowned to death. His heart, later on, was filled with
grief and remorse.His aunt Agatha told him that his father had also attempted to kill his mother Lady Amy Monchensey. His
sense of sin was related to his father’s sense of sin and remorse. It was therefore advised by his aunt Agatha that he should
proceed on a long journey to suffer for his sin. Aunt Agatha’s advice clicked and he declared his intention to leave Wishwood.
The shock and disappointment become the cause of Amy’s death.

Q.28. Explain Eliot’s classicism in detail.

Ans. During the period of Renaissance in England, the great works of Greek and Roman literature were given extra
ordinary importance. To the Renaissance Englishmen of letters, classicism meant the revival of ancient forms and traditions.
Scholars identified formal perfection, humanitarian spirit, universal appeal, good taste, discipline/ decorum and clarity as the
salient features of classicism. Eliot was well-versed in the classics. Dante appealed to him. He evolved a theory of impersonality
in poetry in his famous essay- Tradition and the Individual Talent. He appreciated the sense of history or tradition rather than
impassioned personal experience. He tilted the balance of his critical thinking in favour of objectivity and rejected subjectivity.
What he meant was that a competent poet transformed his personal emotion into universal, impersonal and objective
expression. The poet, thus, generalized his emotion and stripped it off ‘accidental historical impudence’. Eliot asserted his
classicism in the subtle aesthetic way. He regarded the poet’s mind as a catalytic agent which tranformed the
personal/subjective experience into universal expression. His poetry as well as drama depicts ironically and epigrammatically the
little anxieties, social embarassments and unacknowledged vacuity of polite society in Boston and London. He thundered in
Murder in the Cathedral.
“Man’s life is a cheat and disappointment;
All things are unreal’
Unreal and disappointing;
The Catherine wheel, the pantomime cat.”
He gave neat and clean expression to universal human spirit which is disillusioned

Q.29. Write an essay on Eliot’s mythopoeic approach and christian overtones with reference to ‘The Family Reunion’.
Ans. In the Greek legend, the Oracle at Delphi advises Orestes to expiate his sin by bringing to Greece a statue of Artemis
from the Taurie Chersonese. Likewise, Agatha advises Harry to expiate his sin by consuming his soul in the fire of remorse and
repentence on a long journey, as a missionary.
The Furies which had been chasing him all along appear to him as the benevolent angels and seem to motivate him to
seek purification and salvation as the advice of Agatha is accepted by Harry who would redeem the family from the curse which
had befallen the family: He would suffer vicariously for the sins of others also. The Christian background underlines four christian
theological doctrines.
1) The doctrine of the Original Sin: It is suggested in the play that a person must make amends for the sin of his
father/mother or both. Harry chooses to expiate his father’s sin.
2) The doctrine of Sin and Expiation: It is suggested in the play that the sinner’s soul shall be condemned and cast into
hell. Therefore,a sinner ought to repent through suffering to attain salvation. A sinner would be forgiven as God is
kind and merciful.
3) The doctrine of Choice: The sinner must choose the path of suffering through his free will without any pressure or
sorrow.
4) Christ as redeemer: Christ redeems a sinner from his sin and hellish fires. Faith in Christ must be genuine and deep.
After Harry’s departure, the death of Lady Amy overshadows the spiritual moral of the play.
 The Myth of Orestes-a Greek legend- is very subtle. Agamemnon was the king of Argos. On his return from The Trojan
war, he was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her paramour, Agesthus. Agmemnon’s son Orestes was a little child at that
time. When he grew up, the goddesses of revengethe Furies- began to pursue him. They made him miserable for his mother had
murdered his father. The story goes that he murdered his mother and her paramour by way of revenge for his father’s murder.
Harry was chased by the Furies as Orestes was chased. The myth of Orestes is the inner plot of The Family Reunion.
In the Greek mythology the sin of an ancestor descends upon the heads of the children.

Q.30. Discuss T. S, Eliot’s ‘The Family Reunion’ as a drama of sin and expiation.
Ans. The word ‘theme’ refers to the content/subject- matter: it is central to the fabric of a work of art. The theme of The
Family Reunion has apparently two levels: It is concerned with the return of Harry, a young nobleman to his ancestral home
after eight years. But he embarks on the long journey for suffering the very evening he happens to arrive at home. At the
superficial level, it is about the death of a doting mother who fails to transfer the responsibility of maintaining the estate to her
son and dies of shock. At the inner levels, it is the drama of sin and expiation. Eliot has woven several minor themes in the very
texture of dialogues. These themes refer to time, isolation, loneliness and existential despair of man etc.
Harry comes back home and startles everybody as he is upset. He discloses how and why he is undergoing remorse and
he is being chased by the Eumenides. They are staring at him from behind the window over there. The members of the the
family wish him to be examined by the family doctor.
Agatha observes that the family is under a curse. Even when Harry was in his mother’s womb, his father had tried to
murder Lady Amy. Since then the curse has cast its spell. It is responsible for Harry’s guilt complex and, therefore, he must set
out on a journey to expiate his and his father’s sin. Lady Amy, hearing the news that Harry is leaving, dies of shock. The clock of
her heart stops in the dark.
Lady Amy believes that man can forget his past and build his future on the present through his endeavour. What she
means is that Harry would forget the event of death of his wife after his marriage with Mary and live happily ever after. But
Agatha expresses the belief that one’s future is built on the real past: Man is predestined. Harry’s suffering is rather
incomprehensible to other members of the family. They regard him a psychic case and have little notion, except Agatha, that his
unendurable anguish is caused by isolation and existential despair in the materialistic world.

Q.31. Write a detailed note on the use of Irony in ‘The Family Reunion’.
Ans. T.S.Eliot’s verse play The Family Reunion is different from the religious setting of The Rock (1934) and Murder in the
Cathedral (1934). The setting of this play is an English country house life.
The plot is about the return of a young nobleman Harry to his acestral home after eight years. The occasion happens to
be the birthday of his widowed mother Lady Amy. The dowager is keenly waiting for the return of her son at Wishwood in North
England. Her sister, Iry, Violet and Agatha- have already assembled. Her deceased husband’s brothers- Charles and Gerald- have
also arrived. The three sons are likely to arrive by the evening. Thus, all the members of Lady Amy’s family are supposed to
assemble at Wishwood in the evening. It is going to be her family reunion. But what happens is bitterly ironical.
Harry does arrives but he is apparently disturbed. He has an inner anguish which is getting rather unendurable. He tells
the company that his wife was drowned to death into the ocean as he had pushed her off the railings of the liner. Since then the
sense of guilt has been chasing him. Agatha tells him that his sin is associated with his father also. He had tried to kill his mother-
Lady Amy. Only expiation and remorse can help him attain spiritual salvation. Harry is convinced of Agatha’s argument and
makes up his mind to undertake a long journey of remorse and expiation. On hearing the news, Lady Amy dies of shock. What
kind of family reunion is this ! Harry doesn’t stay to attend the birthday celebration of his mother who dies the same evening.
The birthday celebration coincides with the funeral rites. Lady Amy’s sons- Gerarld and Arthur- are injured while driving to reach
Wishwood.
Amy’s sister and her deceased husband’s brothers are to leave shortly. The day of family reunion turns out to be the days
of family disunion and split. The title, thus, has the implication of subtle irony. Irony means communication of meaning but the
words mean just the opposite looking to what really happens. It has sharply dramatic element which makes the characters
mocked or scandalised by fate. Lady Amy regards her birthday to be an auspicious occasion for the family reunion but it proves
to be otherwise. The very title is ironical.

Q.32. What is Eliot’s scientific attitude to life and literature?

Ans. T.S. Eliot as a poet - critic relied heavily on scientific treatment of literary issues. Eliot was a rationalist, sceptic and
existentialist in his approach. Eliot perceived his age as an age of ideological and political clashes. He realised how the forces of
imperialism and nationalism had led to the First World War. The victors had exploited Germany rather too much.
 On the other hand the working classes stood united under the banners of Socialism and Marxism. The U.K. was disturbed
by the Trade Union and Socialist movements. The Labour government came to power under the leadership of Ramsay
Macdonald. The general strike in England toppled the government. The rise of Hitler in Germany and that of Mussolini in Italy
shook the very balance of power in Europe. Eliot who was an American born scholar became a naturalised citizen of Britain in
1927 but he kept off politics, though he did describe himself a royalist in politics. Both Nazism and Fascism were fire-brand
modes of governance characterized by extreme nationalism, regimentation, chequered individual freedom. The Nazis and the
Fascists had a strong nexus to hold Europe under their grip. The writers like T. S. Eliot disapproved of the Nazi-Fascist attitude of
curtailing individual freedom. T.S. Eliot turned to examine Christian theology if it could reestablish peace and harmony in war-
torn Europe. Eliot was very sensitive to social, economic, political dovelopments which were taking place in western Europe in
1920s and 1930s. At the intellectual level he identified them as offshoots of rationalism, sexualism, Freudian psychology and
scientism. His immediate milieu was marked by trade union movements, strikes, large-scale unemployment. There was bitter
conservative reaction against socialism, Marxism, Communism,.....etc. Kierkegard’s existentialism appealed to the learned and
there was a fanfare of Christian theology and Roman Catholicism. T.S.Eliot championed Roman Catholicism. His play Murder in
the Cathedral manifested his thinking of Christianity. The Rock was his first play to manifest his religious temper. Eliot was a
profound Christian critic of his contemporary society.

Q.33. Describe the critical analysis of a poem ‘A Song for Simeon’.

Ans. A Song for Simeon, published in 1928, is the second of the four “Ariel Poems”. Simeon, a biblical character, is an old
and devout Jew of Jerusalem who is waiting for the incarnation because he has been told by the Holy Ghost that he is not to die
until he has seen Christ. He has been led to the temple, where child Jesus had been taken by his parents. Taking the child Jesus
in his arms, Simeon said: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen
thy salvation…”
A Song for Simeon is built on the event of a new birth. In the poem, there is no sense of triumph or ‘rejoicing with great
joy’ for Simeon. On the contrary, there comes the knowledge of the suffering to Simeon. But to Mary, mother of Christ, he
prophesied suffering: “Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”
Eliot wrote A Song for Simeon, not of Simeon. The poem can be read as a song for Simeon to sing, or as a song to be sung
for Simeon. There are two possibilities: we may imagine ourselves, hearing either Simeon’s prophetic voice, or the voice of a
poet singing on Simeon’s behalf or in his honour from a later age and with viewpoint and insights denied to Simeon himself. As
the poem opens, we see, that it is Simeon’s own voice and words that we hear in the poem. The plea repeated twice in the
second and the third paragraph— ‘grant us thy peace’— comes from Simeon himself. In the end of the poem the words ‘not for
me the ultimate vision’ could be spoken by none other than Simeon.
The poem begins with the Roman hyacinths blooming in the bowls. Hyacinths were named after Hyacinthus, the
beautiful youth accidentally killed by Apollo. The place where Christ was born was then under the Romans. Hence ‘Roman
hyacinths’ is indicative of foreign domination blooming amidst the dead season. The winter sun creeps and the speaker waits for
the death wind as if the wind will bear him away as it bears away a light feather.
Winter and spring, life and death, dying and rebirth, all create uncertainly and suspense but what is certain, is the
Simeon’s approaching end:
Dust in sunlight and memory in corners
Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.
Coming face to face with the new birth fills Simeon with the sense of worthlessness of his own past life, a life with which
he has remained satisfied and at ease. His smugness,
There went never any rejected from my door.
give way to the foreboding of the next line:
Who shall remember my house, where shall live my children’s children
When the time of sorrow is come?
The time of sorrow means, Christ’s arrest and crucifixion. The speaker’s fear, that where shall live his children’s children
at the time of sorrow, is the general fear that almost everyone has. Everyone has fear of dying and hopes something after death,
but no one knows what will happen when one dies. We all have the doubt and fear as to what will happen after our death to the
people, whom we love, will they be happy?
…… foreign faces and the foreign swords
suggest the invaders, war and foreign domination.
Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation
Grant us thy peace.
Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,
Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,
Now at this birth season of decease,
bring out Simeon’s consciousness of coming sorrow. The ‘cords’ and ‘scourges’ refer to the punishment meted out to
Christ and ‘lamentation’ refers to the lamentation of the crowd of women, who followed Christ on the way to the crucifixion.
The Stations of Cross hinted by ‘stations’, is a Roman Catholic devotion. ‘Mountain of desolation’ has a reference to the Calvary,
where Christ’s crucifixion took place. Birth and death are fused in the phrase ‘birth season of decease’ to suggest, that the new
birth is accompanied by pain not joy, foretelling of a death, which leads to a truer life. The birth of the new ‘still unspeaking and
unspoken Word’ ensures the destruction of the pattern of life hitherto held.
Simeon knows that suffering is inevitable amidst glory and derision. Discipline of contemplation may be a ladder to
spiritual joy but Simeon is afraid, that he will not have that ultimate vision and that he will die before that. Simeon can see the
pain and confusion of those who will truly be His disciples.
I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.
Let thy servant depart,
Having seen thy salvation.
The last lines show Simeon’s state of mind into the future. Embodying far more than himself, he carries in himself the life
and the death of all his heirs. His fatigue as well as dying is like that of those who will come after him. Having already ‘seen thy
salvation’ and realized that ‘the saints’ stair is not for him’, he should be allowed as a faithful servant to depart with peace.
Having seen incarnation and
salvation, Simeon wishes only for death because he feels now that there is no time for him to make anything more
significant of his own life.
The poem is a Christian expression of the paradoxical life that comes through death. The poet’s experience is translated
partially into traditional Christian symbols and partially into personal creations.
The impending death of Simeon ‘who has seen the salvation’ does not give him time enough to come face to face with
‘the ultimate vision’ but at least makes him aware of the ‘glory and derision of those who will follow Christ.

Q.34. Describe the main theme of the poem “Marina” by T.S.Eliot.

Ans. Marina, the last of Eliot’s four Ariel poems, perhaps, is most personal in character and appeal. The title of the poem
is the name of the daughter of Pericles, the Athenian hero, who lost her and she was subsequently restored to him long atter, in
Shakespeare’s play Pericles, there is the touching scene (Act V, Sc. 1), presenting the restoration of Marina to her father who is
overwhelmed with an ecstatic delight and surprise, and has a problematic feeling of joy to get back at long last his long lost dear
daughter.
The restoration of Marina to Pericles is the context on which Eliot builds up the theme of his poem,  Marina. Pericles’s
experience of the regain of the lost daughter forms the theatrical background for expressing Eliot’s own religious experience.
The restoration of  Christian faith to the metropolitan inhabitants lost in doubts, commercialism is implied through the
restoration of Marina to Pericles. This is the main contention that Eliot’s poem optimistically presents.
The theme of Marina bears out a new experience in Eliot’s poetic faith. From the sad scrutiny of the hollowness of
modern life, Eliot is found to traverse in a different direction in Marina. He reveals here his Puritan distaste for the sensual
pleasures, often sought by men. It also exposes his Christian conviction of salvation to come through the restitution of the
Christian faith. From the mood of disgust and depression in The Hollow Men or The Waste Land, Eliot turns in Marina as in his
other Aerial Poems, to the spiritual revelation, to the new religious experience which forms the central contention of the poem.
The anecdote of the loss of the daughter of Pericles and her recovery is found to have provided Eliot with the materials
necessary to build up his deeply inspired religious theme in Marina. The poem has a profoundly religious undertone. It expresses
Eliot’s turn to truly Christian morality out of worldly lust and vanity.
Though based on the simple story element of the loss of Marina and her restoration to her father, the poem has a
symbolic undertone through which its religious contention is subtly suggested. Marina becomes the symbol of a new realization,
a spiritual revelation, which is striven after in a world, dominated with sensuality and lustfulness. Her recovery and settlement
stand for the return of the lost spiritual vision and the end of animal sensuality. From this angle, Marina well symbolizes man’s
religious revival, despite all materialistic obsessions and physical tensions of his earthly existence.
What, however, comes out strongly here is the optimistic view which the poem gives out. Eliot here has no pessimism or
cynicism of The Hollow Men or The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. His tone is here quite definite and positive. He gives out a
note of hope for man’s spiritual life and salvation after all materialistic pleasures and pursuits. The closing imagery of the ship,
long-neglected and forgotten, is an appropriate concept to bring out the collapse of animality at the restoration of the vision of
life eternal.
The title of the poem Marina is used by Eliot in a symbolic sense. It signifies the restoration of the Christian faith, much
disturbed and dismayed in the mechanization of life under urban civilization. Marina stands here for Christian faith and
innocence lost in materialism and to be subsequently restored for man’s salvation. This is the spiritual necessity, unfailing to
modern urbanity. Pericles is used here to symbolize the modern urban man who has the revelation of the spiritual bliss, attained
through the reinstitution of the Christian faith and innocence in modern urban life.

Q.35. Discuss T. S. Eliot’s contribution to poetic drama.

Ans. The poetic drama is verse drama. Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Macbeth, As You Like It, Twelfth Night are examples of
poetic drama. T.S.Eliot has the aesthetic notion that poetry cannot be alienated from the stage drama. Since poetry is the
language of man in moments of strong emotional state, it is applicable to stage drama because it deals with situation charged
with emotion to enhance moral conflict. The conflict may, or may not be resolved, but it must be there as an essential element
of drama.
 The Restoration playwright Thomas Otway wrote the verse play Venice Preserved (1662). Wordsworth tried his hand at
drama and wrote The Borderers - a verse play. Byron’s Don Juan, Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound are more or less dramatic
poems rather than plays. During the Victorian period Browning, Tennyson, Swinburne, Matthew Arnold wrote verse plays. But of
all these plays one can observe that they were failures on the stage. A play may have readability but if it lacks actability it is
bound to fail. Stephen Philips’s Herod was a success on the stage. It came after the British drama had been sufficiently revived
by George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde.
The Irish playwrights-W.B. Yeats, J.M.Synge, Sean O’Casey- wrote verse plays for the “Little Theatre”. Yeats’s play The
Countess Cathleen (1892) and The Land of Heart’s Desire (1894) were successfully staged. The Poetic drama was revived in the
twentieth century. Stephen Philips came out with Paolo and Francesca (1899), The Sin of David (1904) and Nero (1906). John
Drinkwater wrote Abraham Lincoln (1918) Mary Stuart (1921), Cromwell (1923), John Masefield wrote The Tragedy of Nan
(1908), Mallony Hotspur (1923), Esther (1921) and Berenice (1921).W.H.Auden wrote two poetic plays in collaboration with
Christopher Isherwood- Paid on Both Sides (1933) and The Dog Beneath the Skin (1933).
Eliot’s poetic drama is imbued with the interpretation of the maladies of his time. It is animated by genuine moral
passion. His poetry is also interpretative and it is inspired by the historical sense which forced him to write “not merely with his
own generation in his bones” but also in harmony with the tradition running through the ages. T.S.Eliot is one of the best
interpreters of his age maintaining literary excellence “purifying the dialect of the tribe.” Eliot in his Waste Land blended
traditional European and Indian thought with a view to interpreting the contemporary state of faithlessness and unrest. His
symbolism in taken form the Grail legend and he introduces the journey image in The Waste Land. He has borrowed much from
mythology - Tiresias figures in The Wasteland. He employs the Christian mythology of Hell, The Lethe river, and refers to Charon,
who ferries the souls of the dead to “Death’s other kingdom”. His poetry is saturated with classical allusions: In Sweeny Among
The Nightingales, there is an explicit allusion to the murder of Agamemnon. The poet refers to the story of Orestes. He killed his
own mother Clytemnestra. He was, therefore, pursued by the Furies. In Eliot’s play - The Family Reunion, Harry is also pursued
by them. There is modern imagery in Eliot:
a) The readers of Boston Evening Transcript
Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn.
b) He laughed like an irresponsible foetus
His laughter was submarine and profoundLike the oldman of the seas........
In The Waste Land, he describes:
At the violet hour when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing.
Eliot, in his drama, raised the poetic language to the classical standard of literary excellence. He introduced parallelisms,
contrast, anti-thesis, paradox, metaphor, irony, metonymsy antonyms etc. to make the content subtle. He rejected verse libre of
flowing excess and introduced compact verse of his own.
His meter remains iambic characterized by various rhythms. He even came out with the light quatrains as a corrective
measure to verse libre. The Waste land, The Love-song of J.Alfred Prufrock, The Hollow Men are imbued with new rhythms and
word music.
As a play wright, T.S.Eliot revives the spirit of the Greek drama. He employed the Chorus in The Rock, Murder in the
Cathedral and The Family Reunion. He resorts to the ritual in The Family Reunion: Agatha and Mary perform a ritual at the end
of the play so that “the curse be ended.”

Q.36. Eliot believed that poetic drama could be more moving and powerful than prose drama Elucidate.
Ans. Another contemporary playwright of T.S.Eliot was Chritopher Fry. He distinguished himself with high flautin
language saturated with quibbles and conceits. He took liberty with language and poetic expression. The poetic drama lost its
charm after T. S. Eliot , Stephen Philips and Christopher Fry. Eliot who was a born critic and poet, turned to poetic drama and
made his excellent contribution.
His charisma as a playwright began with his debut Murder in the Cathedral. Since it was thematically based on the
murder of Thomas a Backet, Archbishop of Canterbury, it appealed to the Christian audience. Eliot created the incantatory effect
by repeating phrases and sentence patterns. The Family Reunion was far superior to Murder in the Cathedral from the point of
view of craftmanship. There is no outward conflict as we see in Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. Harry is morbidly haunted by
the sense if sin caused by his belief of having drowned his wife to death. Finally he leaves the ancestral home at Wishwood to
expiate and attain spiritual salvation. The tragic notion of the impending disaster is dormant and it doesn’t explode on the
surface in the presence of dull-witted and mundane aunts and uncles of Harry. The Furies are like the witches in Shakespeare’s
Macbeth. As Harry departs, Lady Amy Monchensey breathes her last. She cannot endure the shock of Harry’s departure since he
had come home after eight long years and Amy was going to transfer all her assets to him to settle down at Wishwood like King
Lear’s ‘fast intent’ to “shake all cares and business from our age conferring them on younger strengths, while we unburden’d
crawl towards death”. The corpus of Poetic drama is a creation of a great genius that Eliot certainly is. Even if the plays have
failed on account of stage actability, they are, to quote T.S.Pearce, “interesting and entralling literary failures”. T.S.Eliot does not
stoop down to cheap popular taste. There is no compromise with excellence and grandeur. His plays are for the elite of
European society and the enlightened audience with literary sensibility.
Eliot as a playwright had strong convictions. He believed that poetic drama could be more moving and powerful than
prose drama. He wrote his poetic plays as an alternative to witty prose plays of George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde. He
stated his position as a critic in A Dialogue of Dramatic Poetry (1928). (which was prefaced to Dryden’s discussion on Drama)’
Rhetoric and Poetic Drama (1919) and Poetry and Drama (1950). He thought that the use of verse in drama was not a mere
ornamental device but it enhanced the dramatic effect with an impact on the mind of the audience. What Eliot did with
reference to poetic drama, Harold Pinter did with prose by attempting to create speech rhythms in prose charged with emotion.
Eliot had a notion that all poetry tended to become drama and all drama tended to become poetry. They were overlapping and
interpenetrating forms of imaginative writing. There is a thin line of demarcation between what is “poetic” and what is
“dramatic”.

Poetic drama could be made an adequate vehicle of noble human passions and emotions. Eliot’s emphasis is on noble
human emotions which should be universalized. Eliot rephrases Aristotle’s idea as expressed in his Poetics. He wrote his plays
closer to contemporary speech rhythm. Eliot has adopted commonplace experiences and raised them to nobler and finer human
dignity: it may be a quarrel between a husband and his wife as in The Cocktail Party; it may be guilt complex as in ‘The Family
Reunion’, it may be a gruesome murder of an Archbishop in the Cathedral as in Murder in the Cathedral. Eliot’s poetic drama
unfolds the meaning gradually, it is ‘not with a bang but with a whimper’. His plays have a striking plot each, happy phrasing and
sensitive rhythm. Myths, which are an integral part of the tradition, serve as a raw material to his plays. He visualises one single
tradition and doesn’t see it in the watertight compartments of Greek drama, Roman mythology.
T.S.Eliot was a profound poet-critic and culture- critic of Europe. He had studied the classics, Greek and Roman
mythology. His faith was Roman Catholic. He wished to revive poetic drama with freshness and vigour as a finer substitute of
prose drama. He employed chorus in the manner of Aeschylus. Chorus, in the Greek tragedy, served several functions. One of
the functions was to express the foreboding of impending disaster. Chorus in Eliot’s plays The Family Reunion and Murder in the
Cathedral is therefore, strictly in Greek fashion.The Family Reunion is more or less a play of sin and expiation.

T.S.Eliot made the classical myths relevant and refined by associating them with everyday experiences of the urban life
style. To ignite the ancient myths to yield relevant meaning is a child’s play. He gives them modern context and makes them
lively. Harry leaves Withwood in his expensive car accompanied by his chauffeur Downing. Eliot’s poetic drama is an enactment
of action at two distinct planes- at the level of interpersonal relationships and secondly at the level of individual moral and
spiritual experience.
The characters in Eliot’s plays are aristocratic by birth or by connection or association. They are quite sophisticated. They
enjoy cocktail parties, birthday parties.They represent various levels of consciousness and insights. His plays have a
moral/spiritual dimension which creates high seriousness.

Q.37. Explian the use of myths in T.S.Eliot’s poetry and drama.

 Ans. Ancient Greeks and Romans, like the Vedic Indians, believed that the world was ruled by a number of deities who
discharged various functions of Nature assigned to them. The Greek gods and goddesses, it was believed, lived on Mt. Olympus:
they were called as Olympians. The Romans be lieved in Jupiter/Jove just as the Greeks believed in Zeus and his spouse Hera.
Myths are plainly speaking supernatural tales explaining certain functions of nature. There are hundreds of legends and myths.
The legend of the Holy Grail is significant in Eliot’s poetry particularly in The Waste Land. Eliot desired poetry to be subtle,
allusive and symbolic. Myths served a wonderful purpose for metaphors and symbolism. Eliot largely dwells on the figure of
Tiresias and the legend of the Holy Grail in The Weste Land. These myths go very well with the theme of famine ridden and
barren land. The idea is that the barren land could restore fertility only by a ritual of sacrifice. Elios connects the concept of
fertility with the myth of three Phoenician Greek gods - Adonis, Attis and Osiris. The Phoenicians sacrified Adonis and Osiris in
spring time by drowning them. It was a ritual sacrifice. With the arrival of rains, it was presumed that the gods had come into
being again and the famine-ridden land would be fertile.
“Tiresais, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see.
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea”
It is through the inner vision of Tiresias that the poet surveys the barren Land which has fallen under a terrible curse. The
poet as prophet identifies himself with the spirit of Tiresias and therefore remarks “I - Tiresias” 5 in The Waste Land. The Family
Reunion refers to the Orestes myth. To put it into nut shell, Orestes was the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. In her
husband’s long absence, Clytemnestra developed illicit relations with Aegisthus. When Agmemnon returned from the Trojan
war, Clytemnestra murdered Agamemnon in league with her paramour Aegisthus. But the lives of her two children - Orestes and
his sister Electra were saved by their uncle. When Orestes bacame young, he, with the help of his sister, murdered both
Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. But soon after the matricide, Orestes was prusued by the Furies 6 to seek revenge. They wanted
him to expiate his sin. The oracle of Delphi directed Orestes to fetch a statue of Artemis from Tauric Chersonese to expiate his
sin. He followed the direction of the Delphic oracle. In T.S. Eliot’s play The Family Reunion, Harry is persued by the Eumenides
ever since he murdered his mother. Harry thinks he has murdered his wife and he is morbidly possessed by the guilt complex.
T.S.Eliot had actually embarked upon the career of a playwright by writing a pageant play to encourage the collection of
funds for the building of the new London Churches. The pageant play was The Rock. It was successfully staged. He was offered to
write a religious play for the Canterbury Festival of June 1935. The offer was made by George Bell, Bishop of Chickester. He
wrote Murder in the Cathedral (1935) commemorating the martyrdom of St. Thomas a Backet who had been murdered on 29th
December 1170.
 UNIT-2
W.B.YEATS : TO A SHADE
Q.1. When was W.B Yeats was born?
Ans. Yeats was born on June 13th, 1865.

Q.2. Where was W.B Yeats was born?

Ans. W.B Yeats was born in Dublin, Ireland.

Q.3. What was the nationality of William Butler Yeats?

Ans. Yeats nationality was Irish.

Q.4. Where Yeats spent most of his childhood?

Ans. Yeats was born and educated in Dublin but spent his childhood in County Silgo.

Q.5. What is the notable prize that Yeats was given?

Ans. Yeats awarded with noble prize in literature in 1923.

Q.6. Why does the poet urge the ghost of Parnell to return to its tomb with its head covered?
Ans. The poet advises the ghost of Parnell to cover his head while returning to its tomb, to save itself from the
embarrassment caused by the lack of regard and respect from the people, even when they recognize him.

Q.7. Who are the figures addressed or referred to in the poem? How does the poet relate to them?
Ans. The poem is addressed to the ghost of Charles Stewart Parnell, the most prominent Irish politician of the later 19th
century. Another Irish hero referred to in the second stanza is Hugh Lane, a painter, and a nationalist, who made efforts to
establish Dublin’s Municipal Gallery of Modern Art. Both these personalities earned great respect for Yeats for their contribution
to Irish nationalism.

Q.8. Why Parnell and Lane are still ignored in Ireland? What has been Ireland’s loss because of their absence?
Ans. William Butler Yeats It is the selfishness of the middle-class Dubliners and their ingratitude that is responsible for
the neglect of the memory of these two illustrious Irish heroes. In their lifetime, they become the target of the scheming and
intriguing people around them. Parnell met his downfall in the aftermath of the exposure of his affair with a married woman,
who had not yet taken divorce. Hugh Lane, on the other hand, who could have inspired generations of Irish children by his
artwork, fell due to intrigues of certain individuals like William Martin Murphy. If Parnell had continued as a leader of the Irish
Parliamentary Party, he could have served Ireland far longer.

Q.9. Comment on the style of the poet? What poetic devices has the poet used to convey the meaning of the poem?
Ans. The poem is rendered in a colloquial style. It is characteristic of the Yeatsian talk, a mode Yeats mastered, whereby
he would present the speaker in conversation with a persona.
Naturally, therefore, the diction is simple and clear. He uses poetic devices such as personification, smile, and alliteration.
The phrase “salt breath out of the sea” is an instance of personification. He uses alliteration when he, for example, sets up a
repeated pattern of ‘g’ and ‘s.’ His use of smile in the phrase “like gentle blood” intensifies the poet’s feeling for Hugh Lane.

Q.10. Draw a analysis of the poem ‘To a Shade’.

Ans. To a Shade is a poem which intermixes formal with colloquial rhetoric with remark; its imagery is economical as well
as evocative. The beauty of Dublin stands as a contrasting image against the ugliness of ‘the pack,’ it shows how Yeats came to
regard mob force as a negative influence. At the same time, the ‘old tricks’ echo through the ‘old foul mouth.’
A critic says that, ‘the aristocratic ideal of unselfish service is sketched in passionately yet entirely unsentimentally: its
demands are passion, fullhands, pains; it rewards may be disgrace and sorrow. The sorrow is, ultimately, the poet’s as well as
that of Lane and Parnell, but the real disgrace is Dublin’s.’
Yeats’s discontent with Irish politicians was founded on the opinion that they espoused hollow reason and practised
hypocrisy. The public controversies that stirred Yeats’s imagination in his middle years roused him to wage a personal attack on
the middle class in Ireland. They had destroyed Parnell and later Synge.
Yeats’s defence of Parnell, Synge and Hugh Lane – personally and through his voice as poet – contrasts his middle with
his earlier period.In taking such a stand he sought to unify and strengthen his own personal ideal of Ireland that any national
pride should be deep-rooted in the culture, tradition and history of the Irish nation itself.
 Q.11. Describe the summary of the poem.
Ans. The opening stanza of the poem is addressed to the ghost of Parnell who is imagined as revisiting the town of Dublin
with a yearning to look upon the monument that has been erected in Parnell’s honour or to see the ghostly splendour of
eighteenth century houses along the quays. Yeats urges the ghost of Parnell not to linger on in Dublin, even though the occasion
of his visit be the fact that a monument has been erected in his honour because the people of the town who had betrayed him
before his death are still ‘at their old tricks.’ The poet’s bitterness against the Irish people is expressed very well as he wondered
that the builder of Parnell’s monument may not necessarily have been paid for his pains. Perhaps, the ghost has revisited the
town, insists Yeats, because of its own charms. In fact,Parnell loved Dublin so well that his spirit was bound to visit the place and
feel happier due to a desire to taste once again the beauty of a Dublin evening when the saltish breeze blows from the sea, grey-
gulls keeps flying around, and houses, which are otherwise old and haggard, wear a majestic look fora while. Parnell’s ghost is
advised to leave the place and if it at all comes to pay another visit to Dublin,it should be satisfied with these tastes and sights
and then go back to the grave because the people of the town have not yet given up ‘their old tricks’ which were responsible for
causing frustration to Parnell.
The second stanza pays a tribute to Hugh Lane who was a man of passionate revolutionary zeal and emotional fervour
equivalent of Parnell. Here, Yeats, referring to Hugh Lane controversy,reserves the highest praise for Lane who proposed to
bring for the people of Dublin a gift in the form of a collection of French paintings if a proper art gallery could be provided for
them. Had the Dubliners acknowledged its worth and accepted it, it would have influenced their children with impressive
thought sand sublime emotions for generations. But instead of acknowledging the importance of such a gift and the artistic and
aesthetic influence it would have exercised upon their children, insult was heaped upon Hugh Lane, ‘for his pains’ and disgrace
‘for his openhandedness.’ Rather than honouring him for his generous and genuine offer, abuses were hurled upon him by
Dubliners. They came from a group of people who were incited by the newspaper-owner William Murphy, who was an enemy of
Parnell earlier. The ideal of service is spurned by these men and a man who brings benefits is, like Parnell,‘driven from the
place.’ The stanza rises to passionate scorn and links Parnell and Lane; Yeats reminds Parnell’s ghost that Ireland has learnt
nothing from its mistakes in Parnell’s case; things are as they have always been and thus quite unsuitable for a man of Parnell’s
kind is no time for Parnell’s ghost to return.
Having given the example of Hugh Lane to prove the ingratitude of Dubliners, the last stanza sounds off the opening
image of Parnell’s memory with an appeal to the ghost of Parnell to return to its grave in the Glasnevin cemetery in north Dublin
where Parnell was buried. Yeats asks the ghost to gather the cover provided by the earth around its head ‘till the dust stops your
ear’ so that it may not hear what the ungrateful Dubliners would be saying all this while. The ghost, indeed, need not stay on
because Parnell had already suffered enough of sorrow before he dies. The most poignant part of the poem comes when the
poet catches up the image of Dublin’s beauty by saying that the time has not arrived for him ‘to taste of that salt breath/ And
listen at the corners.’ The poem ends with a satiric thrust that Parnell is safer in the tomb than in Dublin which has heaped insult
upon him as well as Lane.The stanza is remarkable for its ironic comment on the attitude of contemporary Irish society and
becomes effective for its mixture of pathos and exhortation.

Q.12. What is symbolism ? Give an estimate of Yeats as a symbolist.

OR
Analyse Yeats symbolism with reference to the poems you have studied.
OR
“Yeats was a symbolist from the beginning to the end, and his symbolism increased in complexity with the maturing of
his powers . "Justify .
Ans. The Presence of Nature and Symbols in Yeats' poetry - In Yeats own words " a symbol is ( indeed ) the possible
expression of some invisible essence , a transport lamp about a spiritual flame . " Symbols are not merely denotative , but also
connotative and evocative . In addition to the literal meaning , they also conjure up a host of associations before the mind's eye .
The word ' rose not only denotes a flower but it also evokes images of beauty and love . Thus , symbols make the language rich
and expressive Yeats has been called "chief representative" of the symbolist movement in English literature , Indeed , Yeats uses
innumerable symbols , and sometimes the same symbols for different purposes in different contexts . Often the symbols are
derived from Yeats study of the occult , in which case the symbols become difficult to understand for the reader . Most of his
symbols such as the rose , cross , bird , tree , moon and sun are derived from Kabalistic and theosophical study .
Yeats symbols are all prevasive. There are a number of poems that are organized around certain key symbols and each
succeeding poem sheds light on the previous poems and "illuminates their sense. "In the volumes of entitled" The Rose," rose is
they key symbol. It symbolises intellectual beauty , austerity , the beauty of women specially that of Maud Gonne and Ireland as
well . Such symbols have been adopted by Yeats after great deliberation and they have their roots in mythology and legend . The
'Swan' in "The Wild Swans at Coole" is another ever recurring symbol . Then , there is the symbol of ' Helen ' . She symbolises
destructive beauty and is linked up with Dierdre and Maud Gonne , imparting to poems like " No Second Troy " an unimaginable
vastness , complexity and continuous expansiveness .
The Symbol : Dance - According to yeats , the value of a symbol is in its richenss or indefiniteness of reference . This , he
feels , make it more mysterious and powerful than allegory with its single meaning . Like ' the rose ' , the symbol of dance is
closely connected with yeats " system " and often appears in his poetry . It could mean patterned movement , joyous energy , or
at times a sort of immovable trance , or a kind of unity . The symbol of dance evokes the concept of unity in " Among school
children . "
" O body swayed to music , O brightening glance ,
How can we know the dancer from the dancer ?
 Here the ideal state of balance and unity is associated with the symbol of dance .
The bird are the best symbol - The ' bird symbol ' is one of the most important symbols in yeats' poems . It is a striking
example of the dynamic nature of the yeatsian symbol which grows , changes and acquires greater depth and density in their
progression. A similar process may be traced in the 'best imagery'. The unicorn and ' the slouching animal - farm ' in ' The Second
Coming ' are two fabulous creatures which are used as symbols by Yeats in his poems .
The Symbol : " Byzantium " - Byzantium, too has been used by yeats as a symbol for unity and perfection . Yeats felt that
Byzantium and its golden age is symbolical or a kind of unity and perfection such as the world had never known before or since .
He believed that the religious , aesthetic and practical life were one in the early Byzantium . He saw in the Byzantine culture and
unity of being a state in which art and life interpenetrated each other . In his poem " Sailing to Byzartium " Byzantium becomes
the symbol of a perfect world . The poet rejects the world of birth and death and decides for Byzantium . He thinks he will be
able to defeat Time by taking refuge in the world of art because art itself is timeless . He ignores the sensual music made by "
that dying generation " ( mortal birds ) in favour of the ethoreal music produced by Byzantium birds of hammered gold and gold
enamelling . Byzantium suggests a far off , unfamiliar civilization which is symbolical of the ideal , aesthetic existence he longs for
.
The Symbol : ‘The rose' - The rose symbol occurs frequently in the poems of W.B. Yeats . Most of his poems , which have
the rose , as the central symbol , can be found in the volume called “ The Rose " which appeared in 1933 . In " The Rose of The
Peace , " this symbol means , on love and beauty , thus , complicating the meaning . The shift in meaning of the same symbol in
different poems of yeats, at times boffles the readers. In “The Rose of Battle," 'the rose ' is a refuge from earthly love ,
symbolising God's side in the battle of spirit against matter. But this very symbol stands for the power of the creative
imagination and occult philosophy in the poem called “ To the Rose upon the Road of Time. "
Symbols in “ The Second Coming " - A study of the symbolism in the poem "The Second Coming" will show as the nature
of the symbols yeats was wont to use . They are taken partly from private doctrine , partly from Yeats direct sense of the world
about him and partly from both these sources . For Yeats one of the qualities that made life valuable under the dying aristocratic
social tradition was the " Ceremony of innocence, " a phrase that occurs in this poem . The expression " falcon and the falconer "
have both a symbolic and a doctrine reference .
Conclusion - After having made this survey , we could conclude that Yeats was a great symbolist right from the beginning
of his career to the very end . As his powers matured , his symbols became more intricate and gained in evocative power and
associative richness . Symbolism was a help in giving correctness to his visions . Symbolism made it possible for Yeats to express
‘ the richness of man's deeper reality which is something essentially mystical.

Q.13. Write a critical appreciation of the poem "To a shade" composed by W. B. Yeats.
OR
Write a brief essay on the poem 'To a Shade' throwing the light on chief characteristics of the poem.
Ans. Background of the Poem - The poem 'To a Shade' is addressed to Charles Steward Parnell ( 1946-1891 ) , the Irish
Parliament leader whose sacrifice and generosity came to be repudiated by his own people . He desired and agitated for an
independent Parliament of Ireland and led the Irish Revolution for independence, However, he was repudiated by the English
Prime Minister, Gladstone, the Irish hierarchy and the Irish party because of his love affair with Mrs. Kitty O'shea . His own party
and people disowned him and he died a broken hearted man, four months after his marriage with Mrs. O'shea. He was buried id
Glasnevin cemetry , Dublin , and a monument was created for him in O'connel street. Written in 1913, "To a Shade” is a
remarkable poem of twenty five lines. The poem expresses the poet's indignation over political conditions.
There was another great Irish nationalist leader , sir Hugh Lane , who also met the same fate as Parnell . Hugh Lane , the
nephew of Lady Gregory , was like Parnell, a man of "passionate and serving kind." He had given lofter thoughts and sweet
emotions to the Irish people . Their children , and their children's children , but he was repudiated by them. He had great heroic
virtues , He had offered a rich treasure thirty nine French impressionist paintings to the Dublin Art Gallery on condition that
suitable rooms must be built for meir safe keeping and proper display. It was a precious gift which would have inspired the Irish
people with nobility and generosity , generation after generation. But the Irish people violently objected to this gift . Instead of
being grateful to him for his kindness and generosity, the Irish drove him out of Dublin , insulted and disgraced him .
Disappointed , he gave the paintings to the National Gallery in London. However in 1915 he revoked the gift and drafted an
appendix to the will modifying certain provisions of it , and be queathed to his countrymen on condition that with five years of
his death they should proved a suitable building to keep these paintings. Unfortunately he was drowned before the appendix to
the will could be satified and the National Gallery of London refused to part with the precious paintings .
Subject-Matter of the Poem - This great poem sheds light on several aspects of Yeat's poetry and art . It brings out his
aristocratic beas and contempt for democracy. The poet feels that people like Parnell and Hugh Lane cannot feel at home in Irish
society. They are aristocrats, who, traditionally ary considered to be the guardians of art and culture while Ireland is mainly
democratic. The poet refers to Hugh Lane, the nephew of Lady Gregory, who like Parnell had served the cause of Irish
passionately But the hostility of the Irish who are still hostile to those who are good and self - sacrificing and generous , caused
him nothing else but humiliation. Murphy , who was the common enemy of both Parnell and Hugh Lane , was the person who
was responsible for this hounding out .
In "To a Shade" the poet imagines that the shade or the ghost of Parnell has revisited the town. It is likely that he has
returned to the scene of the earlier exploits to inhale the salt air coming out from the vast sea. He revisited the town at night
time , when people are indoors in their beds , when only the sea gullls can be seen flitting about, and , when old and decayed
and delapidated buildings appear majestic. The poet advises him to go back to his place of rest, i.e. the grave, because the
pope'e of Ireland still retain their old attitude. They are still as mean and ungrateful as during his life time. Thus the poet
concludes that Ireland is not a fit place for heroic , passionate men like Parnell , Hugh Lane and the like.
So the poet advises the uneasy spirit of Parnell to retire to his cemetery where the dust may cover his ears against abuse
and calumny , time is not yet ripe for him to stand at the corners of the streets of dublin to listen to the talk of the common folk .
The atmosphere of Ireland is not yet congenial to him because if he stays there he will hear only abuse and calumny . So the
poet concludes that time is not proper for him to taste the salt breath or listen to the people . He has suffered enough during his
life time and to listen to the talk of the people is not proper for him . So it would be safer for him to remains in his tomb in the
Glansnevin cemetry .
Most of the critics have showered lavish praise on the poem Bullough feels that the poem 'To a Shade' has achieved
nobility. David Daichess says that the poem is perfectly wrought. Although the tone of the poem is colloquial but it is well
controlled. Daichess says that the thid line of the poem Away, away is reminiscent of Keats ' "Ode to a Nightingale"

Q.14. Assess the contribution of Yeats to English poetry.

OR
Give a general estimate of Yeats as a poet.
Ans. 1. Introduction - Yeats has been recognized as a great poet by a number of critics. J. W. Beach calls him the finest of
the British poets of the modern age . Frazer in his famous book ' The Modern Writer and His World calls Yeats a major English
poet who is equated with Donne , with Konne , with Milton and with wordsworth and considers him very greatly superior to
Browning to Tennyson and to Arnold. Further he claims that the poetry of W B. Yeats would enjoy a greater permanence and
popularity than the poetry either of T. S. Eliot or of Ezra Pound because of its coherence and traditionalism . Many other critics
as Edith Sitwell also have bestowed praises on him.
2. Variety and Superiority of his Poetry - Yeats is great by virtue of the bulk and variety of his poetry and of which only
very few may be rated as inferior. The range of his creations is quite extensive and he selects themes from every sphere of life as
ancient legend, mythology , folklore , politics , history love and constantly creates new myths of his own .
3. Its Sustaining Evolution and Organic Unity - The gradual evolution is one of the chief features of Yeats's poetry. His
early poetry echoes Spencer, Shelley and the pre - Raphaelites , that is why he was called the last of the great romantics . But he
was soon tired and dissatisfied with this romanticism and dissatisfaction kept increasing with his advancing age. With the turn of
the century , Yeats changed into a great 20th century realistic poet from 19th century romantic. T. S. Eliot admiring him writes - "
But it must be apparent that Mr. Yeats has been and is the most creative poet of his time . I can think of no poet , not even
among the greatest who has shown a longer period of development as Yeats ".
4. The Clash of Opposites - Yeats's poetry has been called by Stock as the battle ground for the clash of opposites . He
was a boy 'caught between two worlds' and the resulting ambivalence in his personality has been reflected in the ambivalence
of his poetry. The antimonies of the human and the nonhuman, of the spiritual and the physical, the sensuous and the artistic,
physical decay and intellectual maturity , the past and the present , the personal and the impersonal , power and helplessness ,
are for ever appearing and reappearing in his poetry . According to David Daiches in his early poems such opposed are merely
mentioned but in his later poetry they have been reconciled .
5. Symbolism - Yeats was a symbolist all through his life. In his earlier poetry , his symbolism became mor and more
complicated , inconclusive and economical and personal. The Swan , the Tower , The Winding Stair , The Gyers etc. , are symbols
that frequently occurs in his later poetry. But the maturity of Yeats brought a change in his symbolism also. In the poem 'Leda
and the Swan' the whole ages of history from hoary antiquity to the present age have been compressed.
6. Yeats as a Myth Maker - Cleanth Broks regards Yeats as a great myth maker and his vision as "the most ambitious
attempt made by any poet of our time to set up a myth". Yeats is forever finding analogies for the present and the personal in
the past and the impersonal . The present is thus raised high and gloried and imparted the universal status of a myth . He invents
new myths or tries to make change in the context or invites them with new significance. For instance in the poem Magi , the old
Biblical story is modified and the Magiare is transported to stars looking down at the bestial floor.
7. Comprehensive and Intense - Yeats has sometimes been accused of being obscure. Undoubtedly , the undercurrent of
mysticism running through Yeats's poetry produces obscurity because mysticism cannot be rationally interpreted. But his
obscurity stems from profundity of thought and terseness of expression rather than carelessness on the pat of the poet. The
reality is this that Yeats was conscious poet who always polished and repolished his verses and what he had in mind he
expressed beautifully , clearly and musically . He sometimes seems coarse of obscure.
8. Mysticism - There is a vein of mysticism running through Yeats's poetry and mysticism by its very nature is incapable of
rational exposition . It is this mysticism that creates difficulties in the way of the readers and makes his poetry obscure.
9. As a meterist Artist - Yeats was a great meterist who experimented with a variety of stanzas and verse forms . He did
not care for the techniques like Libra that were in vogue in his days but he adopted the traditional meter and stanza form with
consummate skill. He freed the English Lyric the tyranny of the iambic and manipulate the stress , pause and cadence of the long
line with masterly ability and self - confidence. Particularly he made octosyllable couplet his own and brought out its full
colloquial possibilities . He made his stanza form correspond with the flow of though and emotion.
10. Acceptance of Life - Critics as I. A. Richards find in Yeats's poetry a total reflection of life. But this seems to
devaluation of his poetry a total reflection of life. But this seems to devaluation of his poetry and what is reality has been
expressed in the words of B. Rafon "Instead of life ordained , we have life raged against but also eagerly accepted." In his poetry
we find old man longing for 'Passion' , for ' Frenzy and would again like to be young to enjoy the charms of woman.
11. Conclusion - In this way criticism goes on about this or that aspect of Yeats's poetry But a great number of literary
works that have accumulated about and around him is the proof of the fascination he has exercised on those who cared to read
him. He had creative gift , he had wisdom and full command over his resources. His verse are the happy blending of refined and
noble expression with the language of the beggar and the peasant. His compact , loosely woven style , each word used with
calculated effect , lends itself readily , to a wide variety of subjects. To be precise , he may not be a Shakespeare , a Dante , or a
Milton but he ranks with the greatest poets of all times beyond doubts.
 UNIT-3
TED HUGHES : HAWK ROOSTING

Q.1. What wrote “Hawk Roosting”?

Ans. Ted Hughes wrote “Hawk Roosting”.
 
Q.2. To which country does Ted Hughes belong?
Ans. Ted Hughes belongs to England.
 
Q.3. How many stanzas are there in “Hawk Roosting”?
Ans. There are six stanzas in “Dust of Snow”.
 
Q.4. What is the rhyme pattern of “Dust of Snow”?
Ans. There is no rhyme pattern in “Hawk Roosting”.
 
Q.5. What is a hawk?
Ans. A hawk is a bird of prey.
 
Q.6. What does the title word ‘Roosting’ mean?
Ans. The title word ‘Roosting’ means thinking before falling asleep.
 
Q.7. What does the titled phrase “Hawk Roosting” mean?
Ans. The titled phrase “Hawk Roosting” means that the hawk is thinking before falling asleep.

Q.8. What is a hawk?

Ans. A hawk is a bird of prey. The poet Ted Hughes has referred to his superior power over other creatures of the
universe. The bird also stands for vitality and hence one can say that the poet has used the bird symbolically.
 
Q.9. What does the word ‘Roosting’ mean?
Ans. The word ‘Roosting’ means thinking before falling asleep. Here the hawk thinks that from a mere creation he has
become a veritable creator. He also thinks how he can make the act of killing his prey perfect. Finally, he thinks that he has not
faced any opposition.

Q.10. What does the phrase “no falsifying dream” mean?

Ans. The phrase “no falsifying dream” means that dreams very often create a false world by making the impossible
happen but in case of the hawk it is different. To be precise, what the hawk dreams of, he transforms it to reality. The hawk
achieves it by virtue of power.
 
Q.11. What are the two different meanings of the word “hooked” in “hooked head and hooked feet”?
Ans. In the phrase “hooked head” the word ‘hooked’ means bent downwards. The head of the hawk remains bent
downwards. In the phrase “hooked feet” the word ‘hooked’ means curved. The hawk keeps his feet in this manner because he
does not want to fall down.
 
Q.12. What does the hawk rehearse and why?
Ans. The hawk rehearses how he can kill creatures and kill them perfectly. The hawk being the most powerful creature,
there is no question of his ability of killing other creatures. So, what he aspires for is making the act of killing other creatures
perfectly.

Q.13. What does Ted Hughes say about the creation of the hawk?
Ans. According to Ted Hughes the hawk is the most powerful bird. The total energy involved in creating the other
creatures has been used by the creator to create the feet and each of the feathers of the hawk. Thus from the perspective of
creation, the hawk achieves a superior position.
 
Q.14. How does the hawk become a special kind of creation?
Ans. The hawk is a creation of the Supreme Creator, i.e. God. However, he has achieved superiority over the other kinds
of creation by virtue of his power. Thus in terms of the power he has become equal with the Creator and has become a special
kind of creation.

Q.15. How would you justify the title of Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting”? 
Ans. The title of Hughes’ poem consists of two words. The first word ‘Hawk’ refers to a bird of prey. The second word
‘Roosting’ means thinking before falling asleep. The poem itself poetizes what this bird thinks before falling asleep. First, he
thinks that the tall trees, the free flow of air, the sunlight, and the open face of the earth are helpful to him. Then he thinks that
from a mere creation he has become a creator by virtue of his power. He also thinks how he uses his brute force to kill his prey.
Finally, he thinks that he has not faced any opposition. Since the poem and its title show an organic relationship, the title is
appropriate. 
 
Q.16. Attempt a substance or summary of Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting”.
Ans. The hawk sits on the top of the forest. He always tries, even in his dream, how to perfect the act of killing other
creatures and eating them. He kills irrespective of the prey and the place of killing. He is powerful enough to achieve this. The
tall trees, the free flow of air, the sunlight, and the open face of the earth are helpful to him. From a mere creation, he has
elevated himself to a creator. He has not faced any opposition. He does not want to bring about any change to this supremacy.
He resolves to maintain this situation.
 
Q.17. What is the central theme of “Hawk Roosting”?
OR
What is the poem “Hawk Roosting” about?
Ans. Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting” is about the nature of the hawk. The hawk is a powerful creature. He attacks directly
to the bones of the prey and tears off their heads. The hawk is proud too. Therefore he misinterprets his position at the top of
the food chain to be his elevation from a creation to a veritable creator. He also mistakes the natural advantage of living at the
top-most part of the tree to be some special benefit that has been given to him. The hawk is confident too. That is why he says
that he wants to keep his supremacy unchallenged: “I am going to keep things like this.”       
 
Q.18. What is the central idea of Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting”?
OR
Do you think that “Hawk Roosting” is a poem of violence?  
Ans. Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting” poetizes not violence but vitality. This vitality becomes evident in the thinking of the
hawk. To be precise, he thinks how he can make the act of killing his prey and eating them perfect. He also thinks that Nature in
the form of sunlight, air, tree, and the earth are helpful to him. Moreover, he thinks that by virtue of his power he has elevated
himself from a mere creation to a veritable creator. Finally, he thinks that he has not allowed any change to his superiority and
will not allow anything of such type in the future. These thoughts result from his action of attacking the bones of his prey and
tearing off their heads.        
 
Q.19. How does the poem “Hawk Roosting” present Nature?
Ans. Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting” poetizes the vitality, epitomized by the hawk. In doing so the poet takes recourse to
Nature. The first reference to Nature occurs in the mention of high trees on which the bird has his dwelling. The second
reference to Nature occurs in the buoyancy of the air which however is natural at the high position of the forest. The third
reference to Nature occurs in the mention of the sun’s ray which seems to help the bird in the act of catching his prey. The final
reference to Nature occurs in the mention of the earth’s face which seems to be upward to the bird for a close inspection of the
prospective prey.  
 
Q.20. How does Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting” show power?
OR
How does Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting” present the theme of power?
Ans. According to Ted Hughes the titled bird, namely the hawk, is a powerful bird. Therefore, he attacks directly to the
bones of the prey and tears off their heads. This absence of any prior planning about the strength of the prospective prey
evinces his power. This exertion of power enables the bird to carry out killing his prey anywhere and everywhere. Therefore he
can dream of nothing else but making the act of killing and eating other creatures perfect. He is powerful enough to bridge up
his head and feet metaphorically. Above all, the incarnation of power puts the hawk to the top-most position of the living
beings: “Now I hold Creation in my foot.”       
 
Q.21. Attempt a critical analysis of Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting”.
OR
Attempt a critical appreciation of Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting”.
Ans. Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting” is a dramatic monologue on the nature and activities of the hawk. The bird epitomises
power because he is the supreme consumer of the food chain. However, since the bird mistakes this imposed power as his own
capacity, his pride of power becomes subject to ridicule. However, the poem abounds in images of vitality, not of violence
because it presents Nature as it is. Apart from death, Nature acts as a thematic aspect of this poem. From the structural point of
view, the poem is divided into six quatrains all of which are in free verse. Finally, though the poem has been analyzed in symbolic
terms, the poet himself says that it presents Nature as speaking.       
 
Q.22. What are the themes of Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting”?
Ans. Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting” poetizes several themes. The most important theme is vitality. The hawk epitomizes
this vitality in his being always busy, either in action or in thought. If he is not killing other creatures, he is thinking about how to
make the act of killing perfectly. Naturally, the theme of power comes into contention. The poet makes it clear that this power
naturally belongs to the bird since he is the supreme consumer of the forest. Finally, death appears as one of the themes of this
poem. The hawk is said to cause death to any creature irrespective of place. Not only that, he speaks of carrying on the dance of
death in the future.         
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Q.23. How would you assess Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting” as a dramatic monologue?
Ans. From the perspective of genre Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting” is a dramatic monologue. Here the hawk speaks about
his nature and activities. From what he speaks to the assumed addressee who in this case is the poet himself one can make an
assessment of his character. To be precise he has boundless egoism in his power. It is out of this egoism that he misinterprets his
position at the top of the food chain of the forest to be his elevation to the status of a veritable creator. Further one comes to
know that the hawk is a solipsist. Finally, the poem is set in a critical situation in the life of the speaker —- its going off to sleep.     
 
Q.24. Comment on the use of animal imagery in “Hawk Roosting”.
OR
Assess “Hawk Roosting” as an animal poem.
Ans. The key image of Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting” is that of the hawk. The hawk’s eye view of the world that Nature in
the form of tall trees, the sun, air, and the earth helps him in his destructive scheme has been presented here. The hawk appears
here as a solipsist and so tells that he was a creation but he has elevated himself to the status of a creator. This pride of the
hawk in his power is humorous because he is the supreme consumer and so he is bound to incarnate power. Thus by keeping
aside the pitfalls in the thought of the hawk, one is sure to understand that the hawk acts as a spokesman for Nature.      
 
Q.25. How does Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting” act as a comment on death?
Ans. The theme of death is indeed the pivotal point of Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting”. The hawk is the supreme consumer
and so it is obvious that he will cause death to the other creatures. This natural stance achieves a special colour as the bird looks
upon himself as a manifestation of his own capacity. To be precise, the bird thinks that from a creation he has elevated himself
to a veritable creator: “Now I hold Creation in my foot.” He thinks that Nature in the form of a high tree, the sun, and the air
help him. He also tells that he kills irrespective of the place of killing. He also tells about his plan of maintaining his superiority.   
 
Q.26. Make a note on the symbolism as you find in Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting”.
Ans. Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting” is about the nature of the titled bird. Still one can find symbolic undertones in it. One
may say that the hawk symbolizes fascism. However, the poet himself argues that the bird does not symbolise Hitler; rather he
presents Nature talking to herself. Keith Sagar opines that the hawk is a spokesman of Nature and the poem under review
poetizes the bird’s eye view of the world. A.E. Dyson looks upon the hawk’s killing of other animals in terms of war. M.L.
Rosenthal thinks that the hawk symbolizes the murderousness of Nature. Finally, Gifford and Roberts opine that through the
poem the poet attempts to speak with the animal subject.          
 
Q.27. Make a note on the structure of Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting”.
Ans. Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting” is composed of six stanzas. In the first stanza, the titled bird tells that he dreams of
making the act of killing his prey perfect. In the second stanza, he tells how Nature in the form of the sun, the air, the tree, and
the earth help him in his destructive act. In the third stanza, he boasts of his elevation from a mere creation to a veritable
creator. In the fourth stanza, he tells how he carries on killing his prey irrespective of place. In the penultimate stanza, he tells
that he kills by attacking the bones of the living creatures. In the final stanza, he tells of his resolution of maintaining his
supremacy.  

Q.28. Comment on the physical features of the hawk highlighted in the poem and their significance. 
Ans. This poem signifies the self-assertion or self-esteem of a Hawk which is separated from the human world. The poem
is a monologue which is dramatic in a non-human voice; i.e., of the Hawk carrying a false belief of being a superior living being.
The supreme ego of the Hawk is brandished by boasting of its physical features. Its arrogance is insinuated by the outrageous
fashion in which his physiology is branded. The vaunted self-praise as an instance of facism has been criticised. Savagery is
brought out by the poet by explaining the naive physiology of the Hawk. In the first stanza, the Hawk claims that the whole
world is limited between his “hooked head” and “hooked feet”. The Hawk thinks that the entire creation is personified by it and
even while asleep it “rehearses perfect kills and eats” in its dream. In the third stanza, we observe that the Hawk challenges
God. The Hawk compliments itself that “it took the whole of creation” to create it, its foot and its feather. The roles are now
reversed and he contains and exercises its powers over the entire world. 

Q.29. How does the poem emphasize the physical prowess of the hawk? 
Ans. The poem of Ted Hughes is famous for its obsessive and intense interest with the world of animals and birds. The
violent images and unusual phrases shock the readers. In this poem, the poet presents the readers with a deformed Hawk’s
image whose physical appearance from the Hawk’s perspective is highlighted. The Hawk always rests on the top branch of the
tree in the woods. The Hawk which is egocentric considers itself to be the most superior in the whole world. The superiority is
expressed through its physiology. The wild features possessed by the Hawk makes it look superior and ferocious to humans. It
thinks of “perfect kills and eats” even in its dream. The Hawk trusts that it consumed a whole of the creation for its making and
as the roles are reversed, it takes a flight of it and can revolve slowly around it. The way in which its authority is exercised by
considering the entire world its own, gives the right to kill where it pleases. The Hawk is not sophisticated as it swaggers and is
arrogant. Its attitude is not appreciable as it thinks that it is followed by the Sun. It considers its eyes as the last authority and
that it has “permitted no change” from when it began. The Hawk decides to keep it like this.

Q.30. ‘There is no sophistry in my body’—this statement expresses the brutal frankness of the hawk. Does the poet
suggest something through this statement? 
Ans. In the poem, the poet shows the Hawk as fallaciously authoritative and arrogant. The reader is notified about the
grotesque and savage image of the Hawk in the poem. The way it is portrayed, criticising God and its creation is considered as
facism by the critics. The way it thinks itself superior authority depicts its boldness to challenge the moral and social laws of the
world. When the Hawk conveys that “there is no sophistry in my body”, it is brutally frank and ruthless about its physiology. It is
arrogant and its self-admiration is evident by its impudence and insolence as it does not follow the social or natural laws. It is not
well mannered, knows only killing and ripping off the heads and when it pleases the Hawk, the whole creation is submissive to it.
The Hawk calls itself inscrutable and its way of killing should not be questioned in the fifth stanza. The Hawk decides the death
allotment and there is no superior authority to challenge its flight, which is “through the bones of the living”. 

Q.31. ‘Now I hold Creation in my foot’—explain the centrality of this assertion in the poem. What makes the hawk’s
assertion of its invincibility so categorical? 
Ans. As explained in the poem, the Hawk is shown to be indomitable and absolute. It credits itself as the head of the
woods. It sits on the top branch of the tree where all can be seen small beneath, which is considered as the highest of the social
ladder. The Hawk conveys that the entire creation is taken to make it. The Hawk’s perspective is based on its vision. The small
part of the jungle it sees while sitting on a bark, it perceives to be the world and considers itself as God. The petty egocentricity
of the bird is humorous as during its flight it is thought to be rotating the whole planet and moving life. Due to the reversal of
the roles, the Hawk declares “Now I hold creation in my foot”. The assertion of the Hawk is completely categorical. Hawk is
under the control of the creation and even the Sun obeys it. Nothing which its eyes do not agree to can exist or flourish. 

Q.32. Why is the poem entitled ‘Hawk Roosting’? 

Ans. The poem is about the Hawk, which is looking beneath from its roosting place, which is the highest point in the
entire jungle. It is a monologue which is dramatic in a non-human voice. The Hawk brags about its self-assertiveness and
superiority. It symbolises the humans who do not think about what has been defined by society beyond our perspective.
Ignorance is a bliss in the instance of the Hawk. It narrates the story of how the entire world is personified by incarnating it as
the superior of all living beings. It believes itself to be the centre of the cosmos. The entire poem is from the Hawk’s perspective
which is the bird of prey. Ted is famous for evoking violent imagery and his explanation of the battle of survival. In this poem, the
Hawk blathers about the supremacy inherited and its ignorance which it celebrates. 

Q.33. Bring out the parallel suggested between the predatory instincts of the bird and human behaviour.
Ans. The poet has cited various examples of birds, animals or even fishes in his poems to construct parallelism among
human behaviour and the animal world. Humans are social animals where the animal instinct is seated within us. It explores the
proclivity of humans when it is taken over by the predatory instinct. In the poem, the hunger for authority and power by the
Hawk, is similar to the humans’ lust for supremacy and power. The perspective of the Hawk is limited or blinded by its vision and
in humans, ignorance is their bliss. A constant battle is present for the survival of the fittest i.e., a jungle raj. The Hawk explains
the power inherited from the roost where it lives. It blathers about its self-assertion and pride similar to how humans do. It is
unclear whether there is a truth element in it or not, but whether the human or a Hawk, they claim their supremacy over the
entire world. They believe to be the ruler of the whole creation and God, who are thankless beings weaving their own fall. 

Q.34. Comment on the physical features of the hawk highlighted in the poem and their significance.
Ans. Hawk Roosting signifies self-esteem or self-assertion of a Hawk that is so alienated from the human world. The
poem is a dramatic monologue in a non-human voice; i.e., of the Hawk, who carries the false belief of himself being the most
superior living being. The Hawk brandishes its supreme ego by boasting of its physical features. The outrageous fashion in which
he brands his physiology insinuates his arrogance. The much vaunted self-praise has criticized as an instance of fascism. The poet
has brought out savagery by describing the unsophisticated physiology of the Hawk. In the first stanza of the poem, the Hawk
claims to limit the whole of the world between his “hooked head” and “hooked feet”. The Hawk insinuates himself to embody
the whole of creation and even while he is asleep he “rehearses perfect kills and eats” in his dream. In the third stanza, we see
the Hawk challenging the God. He flatters himself that “it took the whole of Creation” to design him, his foot, his each and every
feather. Now the roles are reversed and he possesses and exercises his power over the whole world.

Q.35. How does the poem emphasise the physical prowess of the Hawk?
Ans. Ted Hughes' poetry is known for its intense and obsessive fascination with the world of birds and animals. His
poems shock us with unusual phrases and violent images. The poet, in the poem Hawk Roosting, presents the reader a
grotesque image of a Hawk whose physical prowess, from the perspective of the hawk itself, is emphasised. The Hawk sits on
the top most branch of a tree in wood. The egocentric Hawk sees itself at the top of the world. It expresses its superiority
thought its physiology. The savage features of the Hawk make it appear ferocious and superior to the rest of the living beings. It
talks of its “perfect kills and eats” even in its dreams. The fascist Hawk believes that it took the whole of Creation to make it. And
now that the roles are reversed, it takes just one flight of it and it can revolve it all round slowly. The fashion in which it exercises
its authority by calling the whole of the world its own, it gives itself the solemn right to kill where it pleases. There is no
sophistication about the Hawk. He is arrogant and swaggers. His demeanour is not appreciable as he slanders the Sun, showing
that even the Sun follows the Hawk. He talks of his eyes as the final authority and that they haven't “permitted no change” since
it began. And the Hawk plans to keep it all like this.

Q.36. 'There is no sophistry in my body' – this statement expresses the brutal frankness of the Hawk. Does the poet
suggest something through this statement?
Ans. Ted Hughes in the poem Hawk Roosting portrays the Hawk as arrogant and fallaciously authoritative. The poet
apprises Hawk's savage and grotesque image to the reader. The fashion in which it is personified, belittling God and Creation is
condemned as fascism by many critics. The direct way it beholds itself as the highest authority shows its audacity to challenge all
the social and moral laws of this world. When it says that “there is no sophistry in my body”, the Hawk is ruthless and brutally
frank about its physiology. It is disdainful and its narcissism is much apparent by its insolence and impudence as it does not pay
heed to the laws of nature or even the social laws. It lacks mannerism and is gall; only knows killing and ripping the heads off as
and when it pleases the Hawk, as it all (the whole Creation) is subservient to him and it. In the fifth stanza, the Hawk declares
itself inscrutable and that its ways of killing are not to be questioned. It is the Hawk who decides the allotment of death and
there is no other supreme authority to challenge its flight, which is “through the bones of the living”.

Q.37. 'Now I hold Creation in my foot' – explain the centrality of this assertion in the poem. What makes the hawk's
assertion of its invincibility so categorical?
Ans. As posed in the poem, the Hawk appears to be absolute and indomitable. It ascribes itself the summit of the jungle.
The highest of all the social ladder, it sits on the highest point from where it can see it all beneath and small. The Hawk
exaggerates that it took the whole of the Creation to design it. It sits on a bark that is rough and it at the highest point of the
tree. The perspective of the Hawk is bounded by its vision. The little of the wood that it sees from its seat it takes it to be the
whole of the world and presumes itself as its God. The little bird's petty egocentricity is amusing as when it flies it believes itself
to be the one rotating the planet and moving the whole of the life. So now that the roles are reversed, the Hawk exclaims, “Now
I hold Creation in my foot.” The Hawk declaring its assertion as invincibly categorical. It is the Hawk who is in the control of the
whole creation, even the Sun abides by it. Nothing that its eyes do not permit can flourish or even exist.

Q.38. Why is the poem entitled 'Hawk Roosting'?

Ans. The poem is about the speaker, the Hawk, who is looking down from where it is roosting, the highest point in the
woods. It is a dramatic monologue in a non-human voice. The Hawk boasts of its superiority and is self-assertive. It is symbolic of
we humans who tend do not think beyond what has been defined to us by the society our beyond our perspective. Our
ignorance is our bliss as in the case of the Hawk. The Hawk, who narrates its story of how it perceives the world, is personified
incarnating it as the most superior of all the beings. The Hawk believes itself to be the centre of the cosmos. The whole poem is
from the perspective of the Hawk, the bird of prey. The poem is from Hughes' second book, Lupercal, published in 1960. Once in
an interview he explained, “Actually what I had in mind was that in this hawk Nature is thinking. Simply Nature. It's not so simple
because maybe Nature is no longer so simple.” in many of Huges poems animals serve as a metaphor. He takes their help to
describe his perspective on life. Ted is known for evoking violent imagery and his description of the ultimate battle of survival. In
Hawk Roosting, the Hawk goes on blathering about its inherited supremacy and its ignorance is its bliss, which it celebrates.

Q.39. Bring out the parallel suggested between the predatory instincts of the bird and human behaviour.
Ans. Ted Hughes has always known to have cited examples of animals or birds or even fishes in his poems to draw a
parallelism between the animal world and human behaviour. We humans are social animals; however, the animal instinct is still
seated within us. Hughes explores this proclivity of humans, when the predatory instinct takes over. In the poem the Hawk
hungers for the power and authority, similarly humans lust for power and exercise their supremacy. The Hawks perspective is
blinded or limited by its vision and even with humans, their ignorance is their bliss. There is a constant battle, the survival of the
fittest. It is a jungle raj. The Hawk talks of its inherited power from the roost it resides in. It blathers its pride and self-assertion.
The way any other human does. It matters little of whether there is an element of truth in it or not, but whether the Hawk or a
human, they proclaim their supremacy over the rest of the world. They believe themselves to be the rulers of the Creation and
mock God, thankless beings who weave their own fall.

Q.40. Attempt a critical appreciation of Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting”.

Ans. Included in “Lepercal”, Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting’ presents the vitality of the titled creature through his
monologue.
   The poem opens with the hawk telling of his activity other than hunting: “I sit on the top of the wood, my eyes closed.”
This is a pose not of resting but of thinking. Since the hawk belongs to the top of the food chain, he is a reservoir of great power
and so there is no ‘falsifying’ element in his thought. While the hawk sleeps, he thinks about action: “… … in sleep rehearse
perfect kills and eat”
 Thus action even in the form of thought designates the existence of the hawk. The repetition of the adjective ‘hooked’
with different meanings in connection with ‘head’ and ‘feet’ suggests the poet’s command over vocabulary.
  It is by virtue of the power that the hawk juxtaposes ‘head’ and ‘feet’ to suggest unplanned and wishful killing. Since the
hawk lives on the “top of the wood”, the high trees, the sun, and the air are naturally helpful to him but pure solipsism makes
him find Nature’s benevolence in these things. Since there is a fallacious understanding involved in this solipsism, the hawk’s
mistake in asserting his elevation from a creation to a creator becomes probable: “Now I hold creation in my foot.”      
The hawk, as Ronald Carter wisely points out, symbolizes totalitarian dictatorship. Therefore he has been presented as
killing any object and that too anywhere. Brute beauty characterizes the hawk and so he exhibits violence and brutality to other
creates without any element of mercy:
“My manners are tearing off heads —-
………………………………
For the one path of my flight I direct
Through the bones of the living.”
Here one can find, as Sanders points out, the hawk’s animal single-mindedness admixed with human arrogance.
Bestowed by the food chain of this power, the hawk through his non-reverential attitude to the Supreme Creator embodies
fascism. No wonder, he dares to say:
“No arguments assert my right.”
The note of pride as is evident here reminds one of the ‘Pike’, another character of Ted Hughes’ poetry. Moreover, one
finds here the stoical refusal to accept any wrongdoing.
  The poem under review ends with the self-confident hawk telling that his eye and a strong personality, as Ronald Carter
points out, will ensure that this situation does not change: “I am going to keep things like this.” There may be “no sophistry in his
body”, as the hawk says, but there certainly is ‘sophistry’ in his reasoning, though fallacious it is. Thus though Keith Sagar thinks
that the poem presents the hawk’s eye view of the world, one can find here Nature speaking about itself, though through
suggestions.
 
Q.41. Comment on the use of imagery in Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting”.
Ans. Included in “Lupercal”, Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting” poetizes the nature and character of the hawk through the
dexterous use of images.
The poem opens with the graphic image of the forest with the hawk sitting at its top: “I sit on the top of the wood, my
eyes closed.” Here ‘closed’ eye suggests thought, not inaction. The image of ‘head’ refers to this thought which in the case of the
hawk is followed by action, suggested by the image of ‘feet’. The image of one rehearsing ‘perfect’ killing and eating creates the
image of a powerful creature which the hawk actually is by virtue of its position of the supreme consumer.
Since the hawk is a solipsist, he believes that Nature in the form of high trees, the sun, and the air are helpful to his
exhibition of power. This is an image of Nature in physical terms but the nature of the hawk is violent: “Now I hold creation in
my foot.” The hawk assumes here the image of the creator. Out of sheer solipsism, the hawk thinks that all the energy used in
creation has been used to produce him. This image of the creation of the hawk is associated with the supposed creation of the
tiger in Blake’s poem “The Tyger”.       
The hawk, as Ronald Carter wisely points out, has been projected in the image of a totalitarian dictator. Therefore the
hawk kills other creatures, irrespective of place: “I kill where I please because it is all mine.”
The hawk has been given the image of brute beauty and so his activities are nothing but images of violent killing: “My
manners are tearing off heads”. Such kind of killing is preceded by flight directly through “the bones of the living”. Here the
hawk assumes the image of an arbitrator —- arbitrator of life and death. The violence of the hawk becomes mixed with human
arrogance when the hawk asserts: “No arguments assert my right.” The note of pride as is evident here reminds one of the
‘Pike’, another character of Ted Hughes’ poetry. Moreover, one finds here the stoical refusal to accept any wrongdoing.
Towards the end of the poem the image of the sun which suggests creative vitality occurs as evidence of the hawk’s
violence being in tune with the scheme of things. This being true the hawk’s solipsism becomes subject to ridicule. The self-
confident hawk tells that his eye and a strong personality, as Ronald Carter points out, will ensure that the superiority does not
change: “I am going to keep things like this.”
Thus the images contribute a lot to what Keith Sagar calls the hawk’s eye-view of the world.
 
Q.42. Assess Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting” as an animal poem.
Ans. Ted Hughes’ “Hawk Roosting”, as H.L.B. Moody opines, is more than an animal poem that would appear in an
anthology under the title of “BIRDS AND BEASTS”.
The poem opens with an account of the hawk sitting at a high place: “I sit on the top of the wood, my eyes closed.” In this
posture, the bird thinks of killing other creatures. The bird has enough power, suggested by the image of “hooked feet” to
transform his thoughts into action. Since the bird sits on the top of the wood, it is natural that it will get the advantage of “the
air’s buoyancy”, “the sun’s ray” and “the earth’s face upward”. However, out of sheer pride of its power, the hawk looks upon
these as “The convenience of the high trees”.
The poet humanizes the hawk by making it incarnate solipsism. Therefore he thinks that the whole energy used in
creating the universe has been spent in creating his ‘foot’ and “each feather”. In the poem “The Tyger” William Blake assumes
that the lion’s share of the energy used in creating the universe has been utilized in creating the ‘Tyger’. Pride in his power
makes the hawk assert his elevation from a creation to that of the veritable creator: “Now I hold Creation in my foot.”
  The hawk, as Ronald Carter wisely points out, has been humanized as a totalitarian dictator. Therefore the hawk says
that he kills other creatures, irrespective of place: “I kill where I please because it is all mine.” This sense of self-pride on the part
of the hawk is purely meaningless as the hawk has this power by virtue of his being the supreme consumer. Thus the hawk’s
solipsism becomes subject to ridicule.
 The hawk possesses brute beauty and so his activity is nothing but violent killing: “My manners are tearing off heads”.
Such kind of killing is preceded by flight directly through “the bones of the living”. Here the hawk assumes the image of an
arbitrator —- arbitrator of life and death. The violence of the hawk becomes mixed with human arrogance when the hawk
asserts: “No arguments assert my right.” The note of pride as is evident here reminds one of the ‘Pike’, another character of Ted
Hughes’ poetry. Moreover, one finds here the stoical refusal to accept any wrongdoing. The self-confident hawk tells that his eye
and a strong personality, as Ronald Carter points out, will ensure that the superiority does not change: “I am going to keep
things like this.”
To conclude, through the hawk’s eye view of the world the human attributes of the bird have been focused. Moreover,
the implied moral lesson takes “Hawk Roosting” very close to animal fable.

Q.43. Do you agree with the view that Hughes's “Hawk Roosting” is a poem about power ?
OR
Write a critical appreciation of the poem “Hawk Roosting".
Ans. The poem "Hawk Roosting" is included in Hughes's volume of poems entitled "Luperca”. It is written in the form of a
monologue bra soliloquy The speaker in this poem is a hawk , which is a bird of prey , attacking and killing smaller birds in order
to eat them and feed himself . Here the hawk is imagined as speaking to himself and expressing his ideas about himself and the
universe of which he is a permanent creature. The hawk speaks in an authoritative and confident manner . He is an egoist and a
self - centred creature . His egoism is boundless and infinite and quite amazes us. The hawk belongs to the animal world which
includes birds and therefore this poem belongs to the category of Hughes's animal - poems .
The hawk's egoism finds expression in the following lines :
"I kill where I please because it is all mine."
"No arguments assert my right . " and
"Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this."
Theme of the Poem - "Hawk Roosting" depicts violence and brutality in great measure. The imagery of violence and
brutality in the poem is even more striking than the hawk's egoism and his sense of power. The line "I kill where I please because
it is all mine" sums up all the fierceness and cruelty of the hawk. It seems that the hawk's whole business in life is ' to tear off
heads". His whole concern is to distribute death and he flies on the path which leads him through, the bones of the living
creatures. "Hawk Roosting" is one of the poems which show Hughes's interest in violence and brutality which are found in the
world of nature as the rule and not as the exception . Violence and brutality are one of the themes in the poetry of Hughes and
these form the poem "Hawk Roasting".
In this poem a hawk is imagined as speaking and expressing his Own ideas like a human being. The hawk says that he is
sitting comfortably in his nest on a high tree with his eyes closed. He is expressing his happy condition and his perfect
satisfaction with his life. In his imagination he reflects about the past and future and thinks of the many birds whom he had
killed and eaten and of the many birds whom he would kill and cat in the future. Then like a critic he comments that there is
nothing false about this view of his activities because he actually indulges in this sort of thing.
In the next stanza , light air on high trees and the rays of the Sun falling on them are said to be to the advantage of the
hawk , who is warmed by the rays of the Sun. The whole earth below lies open for his inspection. The hawk then praises his feet
and feathers . According to him , great pains had to be taken to give him that particular shape, especially his feet and feathers .
As a result , he is now so important and potent that he holds the entire creation in his foot.
The hawk then boasts that he can fly up from his nest and go round the whole world , killing any prey whom he likes to
kill because the whole world now belongs to him and there is nobody to stop him . He further says that there is nothing illusory
or deceptive about his shape and body and his only concern in life is to break heads of the birds whom he feels like killing . He
has no other aim or objective in life .
The hawk repeats that his only concern in life is to kill the birds who attract his attention . His only function in life is to
kill . He flies directly to his prey and breaks with his beak or his claws through the body and bones of the living creature who
becomes his prey . Being powerful he need not argue his case or show his authority by giving arguments . In fact , his authority is
taken for granted . It shows he reigns supreme in the whole world . The hawk claims that nothing has changed in the world
because he has never allowed any change to take place . Finally he asserts that he would permit no change in the universe even
in the future because he wants to keep things as they are.
An Amusing Poem - "Hawk Roosting" is a very amusing poem showing Hughes sense of humour. The poet here seems to
be ridiculing the hawk's false sense of power . Indeed , we feel highly amused when we read , the egotistical lines in which the
hawk speaks about himself . He talks about "the air's buoyancy and the Sun's ray", and of his feet and feathers "It took the
whole of creation / to produce my foot , my each feather". And yet Hughes may not be laughing at the hawk's sense of power
and seriously expressing hawk's exultation over his ferocity. In any case , the poet has endowed the hawk with a capacity to
think and to argue a case even though the bird's arguments are fallacious because of his narrow outlook. There may be "no
sophistry in his body", as the hawk says but there certainly is in his reasoning.
A Simple Poem - It is one of Hughes's simplest poems. Its thought content as well as its language is simple . This is a
poem which poses no difficulties at all even to the ordinary reader. The words are simple and so is the arrangement of words in
the lines . There is no complexity , no intricacy in the thought - content and there is no complexity or intricacy in the language or
in the arrangement of words or in the syntax . Thus there is nothing to bother or bewilder the reader.
 Hughes's Comment on the Poem - The poet's own remarks about the poem are worth noting . According to him , this
poem had generally , been regarded by critics as one dealing with the theme of violence. No wonder , the critics expressed their
opinion that Hughes had written this poem to denounce fascism or dictatorship in certain countries. The hawk sitting
comfortably in his nest and talking big was regarded as a symbol of some horrible totalitarian dictator bent upon destroying the
entire race of his enemy. But Hughes said that this approach to the poem was wholly wrong. He added that this poem only
represented Nature and not the world in thinking . In this poem he meant the hawk to be a representative of Nature and
nothing else . According to Hughes , the hawk in the poem is not Hitler , but only Nature talking to herself . In other words , the
poet only wanted to depict violence and cruelty prevailing m Nature .

Q.44. Write a critical note on Hughes's style and technique in his poetry.
Ans. Although Hughes's poetic style shows clearly the influences of the poets like G.M. Hopkins , Dylan Thomas and his
own wife Sylvia Plath , yet his style is one of the most original and impressive styles in modern poetry . One of the characteristics
of Hughes's poetry is his tendency to use tough and unusual vocabulary and to make unusual combinations of words. As a
result , the reader has to try hard to make out the sense of the word - combinations, which are reminiscent of G.M. Hopkins's
obscure language . In the poem entitled " Ghost Crabs " for example there is such phraseology as the following : " a bristling
surge of tall and staggering spectres " and " the convulsion in the roots of blood , in the cycles of concurrence " . Then in the
poem " Apple Dumps " we find the following expression : " A dawn - lipped apocalypse kissing the steeper " . The last stanza of
the poem " Pike " is no less obscure and difficult to understand :
"Owls hushing the floating woods
Frail on my ear against the dream
Darkness beneath night's darkness had freed,
That rose slowly towards me, watching.
We have strange and usual combinations of words in the poem "Thistle" : "a grasped fistful / Of splintered weapons and
Icelandic frost thrust up", and " ........... like pale hair and the gutturals of dialects/Every one manages a plume of blood.”
Simplicity of Words and Syntax in some poems : Despite his use of tough and unusual combinations of words ; Hughes's
is not incapable of employing simple vocabulary or of forming simple combinations of words. He has written certain poems in
which the vocabulary is totally simple and in which he has used words and phrases with great ease and felicity . The poem
"Hawk Roosting" is an example of this kind of style . Nothing could be simpler than the following lines:-
"I sit in the top of the wood , my eyes closed."
"I kill where I please because it is all mine."
and the last stanza :
"The Sun is behind me.
Nothing has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this."
The description of a dead pig in the poem " View of a pig " is quite simple:
“The pig lay on a barrow dead.
It weighed , they said, as much as three men.
Its eyes closed , pink - white eyelashes.
Its trotters stuck straight out."
Use of Striking Similes and Metaphors : One of the most important features of Hughes's poetic style is an abundant use
of similes and metaphors in his poems . In the poem " View of a pig " we have the following similes : " It ( the dead pig )
weighed , they said , as much as three men"; "It was like a sack of wheat"; "Its (a living pig's) squeal was the rending of metal"
while it was "faster and nimbler than a cat", and " they ( pigs ) feel like ovens", Their bite is worse than a horse's" , "Scald it and
scour it like doorstep". In the poem "Pike" the legendary depth of a pond is described as: "It was as deep as England." They last
simile is an example of a hyperbole also. Another example of a hyperbole is in the line "With the hair frozen on my head" In the
poem "thistles", thistles are identified with old Vikings of the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries and they are compared to human
being : "Then they grow grey, like men."
Graphic and Realistic Imagery : Another striking and important feature of Hughes's poetry is the use of graphic and
realistic imagery in his poems. The examples of similes and metaphors in the poems are themselves example of vivid imagery. In
addition to those examples we have series of images and pictures in the poems. The picture of a pike appears before our Ceyes
when we read :
"Pike, three inches long , perfect
Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold .
Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.
They dance on the surface among the flies."
Similarly , the self - description by a hawk draws a picture of an egoist hawk in the poem "Hawk Roosting":
"I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
In action , no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet .
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat."
Then we have a series of Nature - pictures in his poems which are most vivid and realistic .
Use of Alliteration : Alliteration is one of the figures of speech used by Hughes in his poems . In the poem " The Jaguar " ,
there is the oft quoted phrase : " By the bang of blood in the brain ".
 In the poem " Apple Dumps " , we have the following alliterative phrase : "A straggle of survivors" . In the poem "Ghost
Crabs" alliteration is found in the following lines:
"Sometimes, for minutes, a sliding
staring
Thickness of silence
Presses between us."
Obscurity and Ambiguity : Some of the lines and passages in Hughes's poems are obscure and ambiguous, hence it is
difficult to understand what they mean. Some of the examples may be given as follows :
"The nights snows stars and the earth creaks" . (The Howling of Wolves)
"Nothing escaped him. Nothing could escape." (Crow Alights)
"The wet star melting the gland." (Apple Dumps)
Darkness beneath night's darkness had freed ,
That rose slowly towards me , watching". (Pike)
Structural Unity of poems : One of the most striking qualities of Hughes's poems is the structural unity of the poems .
Every poem by him is a well - knit , complete unit . It is an organism ; an assemble of living parts moved by a single spirit.
 UNIT-4
PHILIP ARTHUR LARKIN : TOADS
Q.1. What does the poet mean by ‘Toads’?
Ans. The word ‘Toads’ has been used as  metaphor to describe the innate tendency among humans to be shirkers,
indolent, and parasitical. The other ‘Toad’ exerts the opposite influence on their hosts, driving the humans towards luxury,
comfort, fame, and indulgence.

Q.2. How do the two questions with which the poem begins set the tone of the poem?
Ans. The author obviously is irked by the  control the ‘toads’ exert on his life  making it so unbearably hectic and
loathsome. He questions its intrusion, and wonders if he could expel it by using his wit.
The whole poem centers around human life so full of wok, and the unbearable burden it exert to cause so much suffering
on him. However, he concludes that expelling the toad could bring poverty, drudgery, and want to life.

Q.3. Write the meaning of the term “Movement”?

Ans. The term “movement” refers to the work a group of poets of the nineteen-fifties. These poets were John Wain,
Donald Davie, Kingsley Amis, Thom Gunn, and a few others too. Philip Larkin was also one of the poets believed to be intimately
related to the Movement. These poets were believed to have rebelled against the inflated romanticism of the nineteen-thirties
and nineteen-forties. The work of these poets was regarded as a victory of common sense and clarity over obscurity and
mystification, and of verbal restraint over stylistic excess.

Q.4. What is the volume of poems entitled “New Lines”?

Ans. In 1956 an anthology of poems was published under the title of “New Lines” by Robert Conquest who began
generally to be regarded as the most representative poet of the Movement. It was Robert Conquest’s introduction to the
anthology which largely encouraged the belief that this new poetry represented a reaction against the excesses of the
romanticism of the 1940s. In his introduction, Robert Conquest asserted that the poets of the nineteen-forties had produced
poems marked by a diffuse and sentimental verbiage, while the new poets (of the nineteen-fifties) believed in a rational
structure and intelligible language. He further asserted that the poetry of the nineteen-fifties represented a new and healthy
general stand-point, and the restoration of a sound and fruitful attitude to poetry.
The new poetry, he said, was free from both mystical and logical compulsions, and was empirical in its attitude to
everything. According to Robert Conquest, the new poetry (that is, the poetry of the Movement) was also characterized by anti-
dogmatic attitudes and by a kind of aesthetic purity and philosophical detachment. The chief target of Robert Conquest’s
criticism of the poetry of the nineteen forties was Dylan Thomas even though he was not named.

Q.5. Analysis of a writer of dramatic monologues.

Ans. As one of the other critics says, Larkin’s poems often take the form of dramatic monologues, which seem intended
to reveal Larkin’s own thoughts and feelings because he is speaking out of his own strong convictions. In other words, the
speakers in these poems are Larkin himself. Although this emphasis on his own thoughts and feelings may seem to be
egotistical, it is this which gives strength to Larkin’s poems; and, as he himself has said, it reflects the example of his literary
mentor, Thomas Hardy, Yet his own experience and his own way of commenting on that experience are markedly different from
Hardy’s. For instance, when Larkin indulges in self-pity, he often parodies it, as in the poem Self’s the Man. Furthermore, when
Larkin divides things into two opposing sides, he usually seems to be carefully weighing them against each other, measuring
their relative merits, and coming to some sort of a logical conclusion.

Q.6. Write another critic’s views about Larkin’s themes?

Ans. These are not the only critics who have discussed the themes of Larkin’s poetry. There are others too, One of them
refers to Larkin’s emphasis on the sadness of the human condition, and says that the poem At Grass is a poem about old age.
This critic also finds such other themes in Larkin’s poetry as failure, the fragility of human choices (between bachelorhood and
marriage, for example), the importance of vocation in life, the horrifying reality of death, the struggles of the common people,
and the universality of human misery and sadness. According to this critic, Larkin is not only an analyst of the human mind but
also a romantic and deeply concerned with the spiritual health of human beings. This critic also finds rare moments of
“experiential surprise” in the poems Wedding Wind and The Explosion. We may add that man’s alienation from this world and
his sense of isolation from his environment, from Nature, and from things in general are also a prominent theme in Larkin’s
poetry.

Q.7. Give a comment on Philip Larkin and his movement.

Ans. The term “movement” refers to the work a group of poets of the nineteen-fifties. These poets were John Wain,
Donald Davie, Kingsley Amis, Thom Gunn, and a few others too. Philip Larkin was also one of the poets believed to be intimately
related to the Movement. These poets were believed to have rebelled against the inflated romanticism of the nineteen-thirties
and nineteen-forties. The work of these poets was regarded as a victory of common sense and clarity over obscurity and
mystification, and of verbal restraint over stylistic excess.
 Q.8. Describe the stylistic qualities and poetic techniques of Larkin’s work?
Ans. A number of critics have discussed Larkin’s poetic style and his poetic techniques. Larkin’s technical achievements in
many of his poems, including the imagery in them and their meter, rhythm, and syntax have been commented upon in great
detail. For instance, one of the critics has pointed to the syntactic inversion of the closing line of the poem At Grass, to the half-
rhymes of “home” and “come”, and to the subtle inner para-rhyme of “groom” in the final stanza. The effect of this, he says, is
to feel the voice hush and the imagery become subdued. The inverted syntax, he further says, is part of the subdued and
delaying echo of the verse. Both elements are part of an effect conveying the sense of evening and impending death. Another
critic shows how aspects of meaning in poetry are indicated through metrical effects. This critic comments thus on the third
stanza of the same poem, namely At Grass:
The lines describe the scene, but the change in metre makes us hear and see it. Where the other stanzas are written in
iambic pentameters, reversals of feet in the third stanza turn the first halves of these three lines into rocking choriambics,
enacting the horses’ gallop.
Actually, however, this poem is written not in iambic pentameter but in iambic tetrameter

Q.9. What are other faults of Larkin’s poetry, as Alleged by Critics?

Ans. While Tomlinson had condemned Larkin’s alleged parochialism, Alvarez dismissed the “gentility” of the poetry of
the Movement and demanded the quality of “urgency”. With reference to the poetry of Larkin, this critic made an adverse
comment on the following lines: “Hatless, I take off/My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.” (from Church Going). This is how he
commented on these lines:
This, in concentrated form, is the image of the post-war Welfare State Englishman; shabby, and not concerned with his
appearance: poor-he has a bike, not a car; gauche full of agnostic piety; under-fed, under-paid, over-taxed, hopeless, bored, wry.
There is, nevertheless, a good deal of truth in Alvarez’s over-all assessment of Movement poetry, especially in his
definition of the “gentility” which he found in it, and which he wanted to be replaced by “urgency”. According to Alvarez,
gentility is a belief that life is always more or less orderly, people always more or less polite, their emotions and habits more or
less decent and more or less controllable; that God, in short, is more or less good. What poetry, according to Alvarez, needed
was a new seriousness, and a recognition of the forces of evil and disintegration which had emerged from the two World Wars,
from the concentration camps, and from the threat of a future nuclear war.
Commenting on Larkin’s poem, At Grass, this critic said that, in spite of some of its merits, this poem was not really about
anything in particular.

Q.10. What is no epiphanies and no points of beauty or truth in Larkin’s poetry?

Ans. Subsequently, most of the hostile reactions to Larkin’s poetry followed the line of criticism adopted by Tomlinson
and Alvarez. The American critic, M.L. Rossenthal, asserted that Larkin’s poetry was marred by a petty bitterness and by the
sullenness of a man who found squalor in his own spirit and felt afraid of liberating himself form it. Another critic complained
that there were no epiphanies in Larkin’s poetry, and no high points of beauty or truth or love in it. This critic admitted that the
ordinariness of Larkin’s poetry imparted a certain kind of humanity to it; but he criticized this poetry for its failure to transform
the ordinary world in order to provide an uplifting vision for his readers.

Q.11. What are the Larkin’s democratic views about humanism?

Ans. Donald Davie (himself one of the Movement poets) was one of those who defended Larkin’s poetry, saying that
Larkin tolerated the intolerable for the sake of human solidarity. Indeed, Donald Davie made a very important remark about the
nature of Larkin’s humanism and the democratic basis of Larkin’s poetry. Davie saw Larkin as a very “Hardyesque” poet with a
thoroughly English soul. “The England in Larkin’s poems is the England we have lived in,” Davie said. Yet another critic, defending
Larkin, admitted that Larkin’s subject-matter in his poems was limited but he praised the manner in which Larkin’s poetry
exemplified the decline of the ideal, the decline of romance, and the decline of possibility which characterized post-war thought.

Q.12. Describe the Alleged Lack of human kindness and of solidarity in Larkin’s poetry?
Ans. Another adverse critic of Larkin’s poetry pointed out that the numbness and caution in Larkin’s poetry were not so
much symptoms of post-war culture as facets of Larkin’s individual psychology. This critic saw Larkin’s poems as being deficient
in human kindness, and lacking even the solidarity claimed for them by Donald Davie. In the final stanza of The Whitsun
Weddings, one critic found Larkin trying to open his heart to others, or about others; but the heart, he said, was dead. According
to him, this poem not only displayed the educated writer cut off from the people, but a man whose perceptions, curiosities, and
versifications could not be creative. This critic saw the speaker in this poem simply as Larkin; and he accordingly, showed a
deplorable inability to respond to the poem as structure and discourse.

Q.13. Explain about a strong defence of Larkin’s poetry.

Ans. One other critic wrote a very stimulating essay in defence of Larkin. This critic challenged the view that the outlook
of Larkin’s poetry suffered from a limiting and debilitating gentility. He asserted that in Larkin’s poems there frequently was a
progression from a poise or a pose to an exposure or an epiphany. Where one critic had lamented the want of epiphanies in
Larkin’s poetry, this critic asserted that Larkin’s poetry celebrated the unexpressed, deeply-felt longings for sacred time and
sacred space. He also said that Larkin’s poetry embodied “forgotten patterns of belief and ritual”, and he cited The Whitsun
Weddings as a good illustration of it. According to this critic, the most important aspect of Larkin’s poetry is its emphasis on the
ways in which Christianity seeks to accommodate itself to a world in which the old patterns of belief have disappeared. While
the adverse critics held that Larkin’s poetry was rather dull and unexciting, Larkin’s defenders have been emphasizing the
transcendent element in his poetry.

Q.14. Describe that it is not a well-organized group of poets with a well-defined programme.
Ans. It has been admitted by many critics that the poets of the Movement did not exist as a coherent literary group, but
it has also been admitted that these poets operated as a significant cultural influence.The Movement was the product of specific
views about literature and society; and it, in its turn, helped to establish and to propagate those views. The Movement, says a
critic ,was surely not a well-organized group of poets with a clear and consistent programme of ideas. But this group did have a
shared set of values and assumptions closely related to the moods and conditions of post-war England. Many of Larkin’s poems
undoubtedly reflect some of those values and assumptions. The characteristic features of the work of this group of poets might
roughly be described as dissenting and non-conformist, cool, scientific, and analytical. Stylistically, the poets of this group share
an avoidance of rhetoric; and they employ an austere tone and a colloquial idiom. As for Larkin, the appearance of his poems in
several anthologies of the nineteen-fifties encouraged the idea of his collaboration with the Movement. In course of time, critics
began to point out several other common features in the poetry of this group. An honesty of thought and feeling was added to
the clarity of expression among those features.

Q.15. Explain the volume of poems entitled “New Lines”.

Ans. In 1956 an anthology of poems was published under the title of “New Lines” by Robert Conquest who began
generally to be regarded as the most representative poet of the Movement. It was Robert Conquest’s introduction to the
anthology which largely encouraged the belief that this new poetry represented a reaction against the excesses of the
romanticism of the 1940s. In his introduction, Robert Conquest asserted that the poets of the nineteen-forties had produced
poems marked by a diffuse and sentimental verbiage, while the new poets (of the nineteen-fifties) believed in a rational
structure and intelligible language. He further asserted that the poetry of the nineteen-fifties represented a new and healthy
general stand-point, and the restoration of a sound and fruitful attitude to poetry. The new poetry, he said, was free from both
mystical and logical compulsions, and was empirical in its attitude to everything. According to Robert Conquest, the new poetry
(that is, the poetry of the Movement) was also characterized by anti-dogmatic attitudes and by a kind of aesthetic purity and
philosophical detachment. The chief target of Robert Conquest’s criticism of the poetry of the nineteenforties was Dylan Thomas
even though he was not named.

Q.16. What are some common features of the poetry of the movement?
Ans. A resemblance in attitudes and techniques is certainly evident in much of the poetry of the Movement that was
anthologized in the 1950s and also in the nineteen-sixties, and it is useful to compare such poems as Larkin’s Deceptions and
Kingsley Amis’s Alternative, or Donald Davie’s A Christening and Larkin’s The Whitsun Weddings. The use of wit and irony is a
prominent feature, and this often produces a poetry which seems defensive and guarded. Much of this poetry surely strives for
clarity and intelligibility; but there are poems which seem tame and trivial. The prevailing tone of the poetry of the Movement is
urbane and academic; and many of the poems are too neatly prescriptive and look like pieces of versified literary criticism. Some
of the titles provide an indication of “bookish” or “middle-brow” attitude: Kingsley Amis’s A Bookshop Idyll, D.J. Enright’s The
Verb to Think, Donald Davie’s Rejoinder to a Critic and Too Late for Satire, and John Wain’s Reason for Not Writing Nature
Poetry and Poem without a Main Verb. The cool, ironic aloofness or intellectual detachment in some of the poems of the
Movement can be somewhat shocking, as in Amis’s Shitty; but very often it leads to a denial of the human potential for change
and development, as in Davie’s A Christening with its deeply cynical line: “What we do best is breed.”

Q.17. Write a detailed summary of Larkin poem.

Ans. The poet, describing his work as a toad, asks why he should allow this toad to become a burden on his life. He would
like to use his wit or intelligence to fling this toad away in order to get rid of it. This toad makes the six working days of every
week of his life miserable; and he has to endure this toad (or his work or his official duties) just to pay a few bills or to meet his
routine expenses. And even the money, which he gets for enduring this toad, is too little for the amount of work which he has to
do.
The poet then says that there are many people in this world who do not have to work, and who maintain themselves
merely by using their wits. There are lecturers; there are persons who speak in an affected manner to impress others; there are
the never-do-wells; there are the idlers, and others like them. All such persons manage to exist in this world without becoming
paupers. There are many other people, like the gypsies, who have no homes and who therefore live in temporary structures or
in tents in the town-lanes, lighting their fires in buckets (because they do not have any regular kitchens). Such people eat just
what they get by sheer chance, or they eat tinned sardines, and they seem to like this way of living.Such people’s children go
about bare-foot because they cannot afford shoes. The menfolk among these people have wretched wives who are as thin as a
race-dog. In spite of their poverty, these people manage to exist in the world without starving.
The poet wishes that he had enough courage to throw up his job and to tell his employers to keep with them the pension
which he would earn if he continues to work till the age of retirement. But he cannot leave his job because he knows that to lead
a life without work is something which he can only dream about, and not actually adopt. He cannot spurn his job because there
is something within him which also is a kind of toad, but which forces him to continue working. This toad-like creature, dwelling
within him, has a heavy bottom, and is so demanding and stern that the poet cannot resist it.
 This inner toad, or this inner urge to work, would not even allow him to use persuasion or flattery in order to achieve his
desire for fame, to marry the girl whom he loves, and to get the money which he needs for his food and other expenses. Of
course, he cannot affirm that the toad outside him is an embodiment of the toad-like creature inside him. In other words, the
toad outside does not personify his inner urge to work. The toad outside forces him to work; and his conscience within him also
urges him to work. But the two compulsions are of different kinds. And it is difficult for him to get rid of either of these
compelling forces. The two forces exist side by side, leaving him no choice except to work.

Q.18. What do you understand by Modernism, and in what way was Larkin opposed to it?
OR
Write an essay on Modernism and Larkin's attitude to it.
OR
State clearly the points of conflict between Modernism and Larkin's poetic aims.
Ans. Conventional Forms, and the Colloquial Language of Larkin's Poetry - As Larkin was a slow writer , he was able to
give each of his poems the close attention required to build extremely tight , masterful verse . As a result , each of his volumes
contains many poems which immediately catch the reader's attention by virtue of their precise yet colloquial diction . Larkin
wrote many of his poems in conventional forms and in colloquial , even vulgar and coarse , language . Like Robert Frost , he
worked consciously against the modernist poetics of Wallace Stevens , T.S. Elliot , and Ezra Pound . The poetics of these men was
one of disjunction and image . Most of Larkin's poetry demonstrates a distrust of symbolic and metaphorical language and a
reliance on discursive verse . His use of plain language shows his belief in the importance of tradition , a faith in the people who
maintained a contact with the land , and a suspicion of modern society, urban development, and technological advances .
Indeed , he starts as the chief example among his contemporaries of the line of anti - modernist poetry represented by Thomas
Hardy and Rudyard Kipling, for both of whom he had great admiration . In much of his poetry he tried to fight against the
influence of W.B. Yeats and the symbolists.
The Meaning of Modernism ; and Larkin's Opposition to Modernism - Modernism was essentially opposed to order ,
reason, moderation, and realism. Larkin, like Thomas Hardy before him, and like John Betjeman who was Larkin's contemporary
and also a friend , offered a fundamentally moral , emotionally carried , and truthful account of reality. What we find in all these
poets (Hardy , Betjeman , and Larkin) is a profoundly sensitive and complex response to the muddle and the drama of ordinary ,
everyday human life. All of them adopt a poetic stance focussing closely and persistently on the mundane , and on the relentless
and sometimes frightening features of daily existence. This response includes both an affirmation that life is worth living , and a
stubborn refusal to be deceived in their perceptions of reality. Another feature of their poetry is a relationship which they all try
to establish between themselves and their audience (or readers). Wordsworth was the first major poet to state in his ' Preface to
the Lyrical Ballads ' the view that a clear , unambiguous , and lasting relationship should exist between the poet , his audience ,
and reality. According to Wordsworth, the appropriate subject of poetry is the "fluxes and reflexes of the mind when agitated by
the great and simple affections of our natures;" and he also defined the nature of poetic rhetoric by deciding to employ ordinary
discursive syntax and the true language of men as a means of poetic communication.
The poets, who follow Wordsworth's aesthetic principles, and who try in their different ways to achieve the moment of
perfect tension between poet, audience , and reality include such figures as Hardy , Kipling , A.E. Housman , Edward Thomas ,
Auden, Betjeman , and Larkin. And , whereas the Modernists were liable to commit the excesses of romanticism , these other
poets, namely Hardy, Betjeman, and Larkin retain an anti - romantic bias in their verse. This anti - romantic bias finds expression
in their almost classical restraint , their realistic attitude to the changing human environment , and their emphasis on a sharable
reality . They may occasionally pursue the romantic ideal of transcendence , their temper is largely : eptical and empirical .
Larkin's Emphasis on " Reality " in His Poems - Larkin's response to life and experience is characterized by freshness and
by poetic integrity . Larkin himself emphasized the way in which his poems derived their basic impulse from his raw feelings
about ordinary life , and from what he called " unsorted experience " . He writes honestly and directly about whatever happens
to arouse and hold his interest. Indeed , he praised Betjeman's poems for exactly this quality , for writing exclusively about
things that impress, excite, annoy, or attract him. Once a subject has established its claim on his attention , Larkin never
questions the legitimacy of his interest . Furthermore , Larkin's poetic rhetoric is based on what he called his " common word -
usage " which draws its strength from his experimentation with the real language of men , Larkin also agreed with Hardy in the
latter's view about the function of sadness and suffering in poetry as an essentially maturing experience . Larkin felt that such
maturing was most necessary for one's spiritual development . Hardy depended for the raw material of his poetry on the almost
random experience of everyday life and everyday reality which lay within the narrow sphere of his own immediate world . Larkin
too drew the material of his poetry from the same sphere , namely his own immediate world and the reality of it . Once Larkin
had cast off the influence of his chosen model , namely W.B. Yeats , he followed Hardy's example in his choice of poetic
material . It was partly for this reason that Larkin was described by a fellow poet as the effective unofficial laureate of post-1945
England . Another important point about Larkin is his explicit awareness of his audience ; and yet another point is his view of
poetry as rhetoric .
The Importance of Places and People in Larkin's Poetry - Again Larkin, like Hardy and Betjeman, shows a profound
awareness of the importance and significance of places. Topography is a salient feature of his poetry. In poems like 'Wedding-
Wind' , 'Livings' , and 'Here', moments of spiritual liberation are achieved in various places such as a farm , a lighthouse , and an
East Riding beach respectively . But places in Larkin's poetry are not divorced from people . Larkin's poetry is full of people of
individuals , families , and social groups . Places are fundamental to Larkin's moral commitment which is to preserve and sustain
the human scale of things. The moon - lit landscape , the family home, the food at a railway station , and the postal districts of
London are the silent but vibrant witnesses to the lives of the people; and these witnesses become part of the texture and the
meaning of ordinary , lived experience .
A poem like 'Show Saturday' illustrates the deeply sustaining value of the rituals of a rural community . Thus places
represent a sense of communal and social values ; and places nourish and strengthen the survival and the continuity of those
values. Larkin certainly does not approve of the soulless modernity of the kind of atomistic society which is governed by a
commercial ethic . It is in keeping with this disapproval of the modernistic notions of progress that Larkin sardonically describes
Britain as the "first slum of Europe" in his poem 'Going'. And it is in keeping with this attitude of his that in poems like "Here”,
'Mr. Bleaney', and 'Sunny Prestatyn' he shows his great compassion for people whose search for happiness in the modern world
seems doomed to failure in the atmosphere of unashamed and growing materialism.
Larkin's Conservatism - Larkin is a conservative in the profoundest sense of the word . His disgust with urbanization ,
cheap stores , and foul smelling roads - all these add up to a tradition of profound conservatism . He shows his scorn for the
commercialism and collectivism which are responsible for the moral , social , and aesthetic breakdown. Larkin therefore pays a
reverent tribute to rituals which sustain and strengthen a feeling of continuity, solidarity, and worth whileness in ordinary life ,
whether social life or family life , in such poems as 'Show Saturday' and 'To the Sea'.
Larkin's Conflict with Modernist Poetics - Finally , what particularly brings Larkin into conflict with the Modernist
philosophy and with the Modernist poetics is the fact that he is keenly aware of the existence of an audience (or readership) ,
and equally aware of the claims of that audience and that readership upon him . Larkin does not agree with the Modernist view ,
as stated by T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound , that the poet should address a small and intelligent audience rather a large and less
intelligent audience. The Modernist view seems to be that an ideal audience for a poet is one which is composed of literary
critics and poets . Larkin has just the opposite view . He believes that poetry is at bottom bound up with the giving of pleasure to
its readers and that , if a poet loses his " pleasure - seeking audience," he has lost the only audience worth having . Larkin's
fundamental quarrel with Modernism has therefore very much to do with its poetic rhetoric . He does not approve of the view
that poetry should be unnecessarily and deliberately obscure even if obscurity leads to a diminished number of readers . He
strongly disapproves of the density of literary allusions and the symbolic complexity of Modernist poetry which creates
difficulties for the reader . Larkin said that he liked the poetry of Betjeman because for Betjeman there had been no symbolism ,
no objective correlative , no T.S. Eliot , and no Ezra Pound.

Q.19. Elucidate with apt illustrations Larkin's use of irony in his poetry.
OR
Write a note on Larkin's use of irony in his poetry.
Ans. Irony , One of the Most Conspicuous Features of Larkin's Poetry - Irony is one of the most conspicuous features of
the poetry of Larkin. Irony arises from contrast , generally a contrast between the apparent meaning of a word or a line or a
passage or a whole poem and the writer's actual, intended meaning . Irony may be used to heighten a tragic effect or to produce
a comic effect. Larkin makes a comic use of irony, even though there is almost no irony in his serious poems which are
characterized by a gloomy and pessimistic outlook. In many cases , Larkin employs irony to poke fun at himself. Of course , he
makes use of irony to mock at the objectionable things which are taking place in his country; but even so he shows a marked
tendency to mock at himself .
The Use of Irony in 'Church Going' - 'Church Going' is a poem in which Larkin employs irony to mock at an established
institution , namely the Church , even though the poem ends with a very serious stanza having a profound significance . There is
irony behind the very title of this poem. Apparently the title refers to people's custom of going to church on Sundays to offer
prayers , and also of going to church on special occasions such as a marriage or a birth or a death. But the title also refers to the
decline of the Church, and the Church departing altogether from the lives of the people. Then the poet speaks ironically about
his reverence for the church when he says that , being hatless , he took off his cycle - clips in awkward reverence before entering
the church. He also employs irony when he utters the words : "Here endeth" instead of the word "Amen". Then he speaks
ironically when he tells us that he signed the book and donated an Irish sixpence . There is irony also in his remark that certain
churches would become museums with their " parchment , plate , and pyx " on display . Here the very alliteration adds to the
irony . The poet then speaks ironically about superstitious women visiting churches in future to seek remedies for the ills of their
children . And he gives an ironical reply to his own question : what would remain when disbelief has gone ? Next , he speaks
ironically about the kind of people who might continue to visit the churches even after a general loss of faith in the country ; and
he speaks ironically about the last visitor who might represent Larkin himself and his character as a bored and " uninformed man
" feeling inclined to visit a church despite his loss of faith .
The use of Irony in 'Toads' - In the poem " Water " Larkin is mocking at religious ceremonies and rituals . In the poem "
Toads " the poet speaks ironically about the persons who live on their wits ; and then he makes use of alliteration when he gives
examples of these people :
"Lots of folk live on their wits :
Lecturers , lispers ,
Losels , loblolly - men , louts
They don't end up as paupers."
He also speaks ironically about the " unspeakable wives " of the nomads who have no houses and who live temporarily in
the city lanes . These wives are ironically described as " Skinny as whippets " . The poet is ironical when he shouts the words : "
Stuff your pension !" Irony reaches its climax in the poem when he refers to the people who are able to get fame , money and
love by using their talent for glib and pleasing talks.
 The use of Irony in 'Mr. Bleaney' - ' Irony pervades the whole poem called Mr. Bleaney . The room in which Mr. Bleaney
dwelt was very shabby , and the view from its window was shabby also . This shabbiness has been described in the poem in an
ironical vein . Then the poet lies down on the bed where Mr. Bleaney used to lie , and he snuffs his cigarettes on the same saucer
( or ash - tray ) which Mr. Bleaney was in the habit of using for that purpose . Next , the poet speaks ironically about the blaring
radio - set which he describes as "the jabbering set." In order to drown the noise coming from the radio - set , the poet stuffs his
ears with cotton . Then the poet speaks ironically about Mr. Bleaney's going to stay with some folk in Frinton to spend his
summer holidays . Finally , the poet speaks'ironically about Mr. Bleaney's feelings about this room , and Mr. Bleaney's grinning at
the thought that this room was his home . But Larkin ends the poem with a very serious and instructive remark which does not
have the least touch of irony in it . This poem is an ironical portrayal of Mr. Bleaney but , at the same time , the poet portrays
himself in an ironical manner , partly by indicating the resemblance between himself and Mr. Bleaney , and partly by bringing to
our notice the wide difference between himself and Mr. Bleaney - the intellectual man and the man who earned his living by
manual work .
Irony in the poem "Whitsun Wedding" - There are many touches of irony in the poem called " The Whistsun Weddings
" . Here Larkin gives an account of a railway journey which he made from Hull to Oxford . The manner in which he describes the
sights on the way which he saw from the windows of the train is most ironical . For example , Larkin describes the girls standing
on the railway stations as “ grinning and pomaded , in parodies of fashion heels and veils " . The poet again describes these girls
as standing there “ irresolutely ” . Similarly , in poem " Going , Going " , Larkin's account of the damage which is being done to
the landscape and the countryside scenery in England has ironical touches , There is obvious irony in the poem “ Dockey and Son
" in which Larkin pokes fun at Dockey for having a wife and a son while he himself has neither , Thus , we can find many
examples of irony in Larkin's poetry . Thus we can find many examples of irony in Larkin's poetry.

Q.20. Write a critical appreciation of Philip Larkin's poem 'Toads' mentioning its chief characteristics.
OR
Discuss Philip Larkin's attitude to 'work' in reference to his poem “Toads".
Ans. Introduction : This poem is autobiographical because Larkin had to work very hard as a librarian at the University of
Hull and as a result of heavy burden of work he suffered bouts of depression . At the same time the was aware that he could not
live as an idler or as a parasite . His conscience urged him to do his work.
Subject-Matter : The Poem "Toads" begins by comparing work to a road which sits continuously and heavily on the
poet's life . The poet asks if it is not possible for him to get rid of this brute . He has to work for six days of the week and this
heavy duty is poisoning his life . He has to put in all this toil just to be able to earn some money in order to pay a few bills . He
then tells us about those people who manage to continue in life without working . There are lecturers and there are lispers who
talk artificialy to impress others . There are worthless people and there are idlers , gypsies and others like them . All such people
manage to live in this world without becoming too poor to live . None of them dies of hunger or starvation . Larkin himself would
like to follow the example of all such idlers , but he has not the courage to do so . For him , the life of idleness or leisure is just a
dream which cannot be fulfilled . The poet cannot give up work and lead a life of complete leisure because there is also within
him a toad - like creature which weighs so heavily upon him that he cannot throw it away . The " something sufficiently toad -
like " within the poet is the voice of his conscience which urges him to keep working and not to keep away from it . If he has to
achieved ( wealth , fame and sexual satisfaction he must work . He then comes to the conclusion that it is impossible for him to
get rid either of the desire for a life of idleness and leisure or the inner urge to work . Thus the poem ends on an ambivalent note
.
Larkin's “Toads" is a well-argued poem about the external need to work and the inner urge to work as well as the poet's
desire for leisure. The world; but one's conscience also urges one to work . The poet wishes to lead external need to work arises
from one's desire to preserve one's life in the an idle life and to enjoy his leisure , but he cannot do so because he has got to
work in order to earn money which is essential for living . Still he would like to follow the example of those people who do not
do any kind of work but who manage to preserve their lives . But then there is another consideration in this regard . Within the
poet lives another urge , which is the urge to work . His conscience would not allow him to rest if he did not do any work . Thus
there is in this poem a balancing of the arguments in favour of a life of idleness and leisure and equally strong arguments in
favour of work and toil .
Chief Characteristics : The poem "Toads" is characterized by wit and humour , the dramatic voice , a unique tone and an
individual style , a new insight into an ordinary existence and the desire to escape from the dull routine of work . In the poem
work is compared to a toad that squats on the poet's life and he considers whether he can use his intelligence to " drive the
brute off . Then there is a list of characters who live on their wits : lecturers , lispers , losels , loblolly - men , louts . There is an
inner toad ( cowardice ) and that it is impossible to lose either toad "when you have both".
Imagery in the Poem : The poem is quite rich in imagery and symbolism . The metaphor of work being regarded as a toad
is quite satisfactory , though it is not very appropriate or poetic . However , the imagery concerning the people who five on their
wits is quite vivid and realistic. In addition to the metaphor, one or two similes in the poem are also quite effectiv , "something
toad - like" within the poet has haunches "as heavy as hard luck" and "cold as snow" . There is a quotation in the poem which is
slightly changed from Shakespeare's play , "The Tempest": "that is the stuff that dreams are made on" . There is also a pun here
upon the word " stuff because in the preceding line we have the poet's challenging words: "Stuff your pension !" which means
that he does not care at all for the pension which he might get after retirement . The lines which use the well - chosen words are
those in which the poet says that the something toad - like within him would never allow him "to blarney his way to getting the
fame and the girl and the money all - at one sitting" This is an example of condensation and terseness of styled.
 Critic's Opinions - According to one of the critics, the immediate substitution of "Toad" for "Work" in the opening line
suggests that the idea of work is something unappealing but at the same time natural . It is a poem which emerged from a post -
war period in which anxiety about work was a fundamental concern with a great deal of literature of the 1959's . The poem is a
good example of a familiar and on - going debate about individual rights and responsibilities in a modern democratic society.
Another critic says that in this poem Larkin resents the daily toil in the library , and yet he continues with it saying that it
is hard to lose either the toad - outside or the toad - like creature within himself. The poem takes the form of a debate between
two sides of Larkin's personality. In the beginning of the poem we have the rebellious , tree-booting and anti authoritarian
aspect of the poet's personality; but towards the end of the poem it is his more orthodox and self-critical side which asserts
itself . In fact, the poem is a statement to the effect that working and idleness complement each other.
 UNIT-5
E.E. CUMMINGS : THY FINGERS MAKE EARLY FLOWERS

Q.1. Name E.E. Cumming’s first volume of poems.

Ans. Tulips and Chimneys.

Q.2. What is it that makes E.E. Cummings poetry so specific?

Ans. Cummings expressed ideas through new grammatical usage.

Q.3. What do you know about E.E. Cummings?

Ans. He was a poet- painter.

Q.4. Name the first autobiographical work of E.E. Cummings.

Ans. The Enormous Room.

Q.5. Whose “moist eyes are at kisses playing?”

Ans. The lady love or the beloved’s.

Q.6. When was the poem Thy Fingers Make Early Flowers written?
Ans. 1923.

Q.7. Who others, besides E.E. Cummings, are included in the generation of American writers that carried out a
revolution in literary expression in the twentieth century?
Ans. Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot, John Dos Passos and William Faulkner.

Q.8. Write a short note on ‘E. E. Cummings’.

Ans. E. E. Cummings was a combination of an unabashed Romantic in his view of life and an avant-garde modernist
seeking to explore unusual means of expression. His poetry developed from boyhood imitations of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
to the linguistic surprises he brought to the literary scene in the 1920s. He continued to write sonnets all his life, often
traditional in theme—a tribute to love, an address to the moon, the praise of a church, a prayer of thanks for the ability to
respond to life—but sometimes he chose “unpoetic” subjects—a nightclub dancer, the gurgle of water going down a sink,
brothels and their customers, a denunciation of salesmen, a politician giving a hypocritical patriotic speech, a melange of play
with advertising slogans.

Q.9. What did Cummings mention in his first manuscript book of poems, “Tulips & Chimneys.”
Ans. His first manuscript book of poems, “Tulips & Chimneys,” was a gathering of work in traditional verse forms as well
as in his newest unconventional forms of expressiveness. It included lush lyrics from his Harvard year, tender love poems, erotic
epigrams, sonnets (some crammed with literary allusion, other merely attempting to depict ordinary scenes of life-on city
streets, in cafes, in rooming houses), celebrations of the beauties of the natural world, and harsh satires directed at politicians,
generals, professors, the clergy, and national leaders. The publishing world was not yet ready for some of Cummings’s poems
about drunks, prostitutes, Salvation Army workers, gangsters, or bums. Thus, the original version of Cumming’s manuscript did
not survive the forbidding selectivity of editors, and it eventually emerged as books.

Q.10. Describe about his six-week visit to Soviet Russia?

Ans. His six-week visit to Soviet Russia in 1931 led him to compose Eimi (1933), an autobiographical narrative based on
his travel diary. He recorded his train travel, three weeks in Moscow, and two weeks in Kiev and Odessa in highly idiosyncratic
prose as the travels of an American, Comrade Kemmin-kz. His disappointment with and hostility to the Communist world is
organized into a structure based on Dante’s descent into the Inferno. Comrade K eventually passes through the Purgatorio
(Turkey) and at length reaches the Paradiso (Paris). The result, despite the difficulties it poses for a reader, is Cummings’s most
powerful achievement, concluding with a transcendental experience, a mystical union of the narrator, the artist, with the
creative force in the universe.

Q.11. Write about the surrealist movements in the arts?

Ans. Cummings’s travels in Europe and extended stays in Paris in the 1920s brought him in touch with the Dada and
Surrealist movements in the arts, influences that appear in his increasing experiment with language and ventures into irrational
modes of expression in his poems. “The Symbol of all Art is the Prism,” he declared. “The goal is destructive. To break up the
white light of objective realism into the secret glories it contains.” In a play, Him (1927), Cummings attempted to include the
unconscious thoughts of its two principal characters, Him, a playwright, and Me, his girlfriend. The Plunge into the unconscious
was represented by a series of vaudeville skits and circus acts, so that Cummings’s jokes and verbal nonsense made for a highly
entertaining but not very coherent work.
 Q.12. Writer about the poet ‘Edward Estlin Cummings’.
Ans. Edward Estlin Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 14, 1894. He began writing poems as
early as 1904 and studied Latin and Greek at the Cambridge Latin High School.
He received his BA in 1915 and his MA in 1916, both from Harvard University. His studies there introduced him to the
poetry of avant-garde writers, such as Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound.
In 1917, Cummings published an early selection of poems in the anthology Eight Harvard Poets. The same year,
Cummings left the United States for France as a volunteer ambulance driver in World War I. Five months after his assignment,
however, he and a friend were interned in a prison camp by the French authorities on suspicion of espionage (an experience
recounted in his novel, The Enormous Room) for his outspoken anti-war convictions.
After the war, he settled into a life divided between his lifetime summer home, Joy Farm in New Hampshire, and
Greenwich Village, with frequent visits to Paris. He also traveled throughout Europe, meeting poets and artists, including Pablo
Picasso, whose work he particularly admired.
In 1920, The Dial published seven poems by Cummings, including "Buffalo Bill ’s." Serving as Cummings' debut to a wider
American audience, these "experiments" foreshadowed the synthetic cubist strategy Cummings would explore in the next few
years.
In his work, Cummings experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax, abandoning traditional
techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. Later in his career, he was often
criticized for settling into his signature style and not pressing his work toward further evolution. Nevertheless, he attained great
popularity, especially among young readers, for the simplicity of his language, his playful mode and his attention to subjects such
as war and sex.
The poet and critic Randall Jarrell once noted that Cummings is "one of the most individual poets who ever lived—and,
though it sometimes seems so, it is not just his vices and exaggerations, the defects of his qualities, that make a writer popular.
But, primarily, Mr. Cummings's poems are loved because they are full of sentimentally, of sex, of more or less improper jokes, of
elementary lyric insistence."
During his lifetime, Cummings received a number of honors, including an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, two
Guggenheim Fellowships, the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1958, and a Ford
Foundation grant.
At the time of his death, September 3, 1962, he was the second most widely read poet in the United States, after  Robert
Frost. He is buried in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts.
 UNIT-6
AMY LOWELL: (I) THE SISTERS (II) THE WEATHER-COCK POINTS SOUTH

Q.1. What is needed for the twig to become healthy and strong?
Ans. Water and sunlight are needed for the twig to become healthy and strong.

Q.2. In what ways will the twig develop if it is cared for?

Ans. If the twig is cared for it will grow into a tall bush with many flowers and leaves which will sparkle in the sunlight.

Q.3. What is a closet and what might be found there?

Ans. Closet is a small room or space in a wall with door. It is used to store things.

Q.4. Will the twig grow in closet ?

Ans. No, the twig will not grow in closet as it neither has fertile soil for its roots, nor sunlight.

Q.5. What is the twig compared to In second stanza?

Ans. It is compare to twisted nail in the second stanza.

Q.6. Is the closet mentioned in the poem used much? How do we know?
Ans. No, the closet mentioned in the poem is not used much. There are old mousetraps and blunted tools discarded in it.
Its door is opened very rarely.

Q.7. What message does the poem give us written by Amy Lowell 'The Poem?
Ans. This simple poem by Amy Lowell is full of wisdom. The poetess talks about the abundance that is hidden in each and
everything of nature.

Q.8. What does the poet mean by each Horizon has its claim?
Ans. To emphasize her wish she asserts through the line, ' Each horizon has its claim' that the four main directions of the
world-North South, East and West all stand in contrast to each other, yet all four are equally attractive. They all have their
individual charms and attractions.

Q.9. What is the twig compared to?

Ans. The twig is compared to an old twisted nail.

Q.10. What is the dinner party by Amy Lowell about?

Ans. The voice of the poem shares a moment of secrecy with a companion at dinner. The other people at the meal
represent the rest of the world. The poet thinks of them as too dull and boring, too unintelligent, to see the secret.

Q.11. Lowell’s poetry is particularly notable for its rendering of sensuous images. Discuss.
Ans. This poem, along with "A Decade" are seen as celebrations of lesbian devotion. The poem describes the intimacy of
her and her lover through body and spirit. During the time of writing, lesbianism wasn't as accepted as it is today. It was, frankly,
deeply frowned upon. However, that didn't stop Lowell from writing "The Weather-Cock Points South" to stun communities
around the world. Luckily, writers are known to be more liberal when it comes to social aspects of ones self.
Even though this poem does not rhyme, it uses the same words to end specific lines in order to draw attention to it. For
example, the first stanza uses "One by one" twice and ends three lines with "leaves". To me, this is quite significant in
understanding the true nature of the poem. "Leaves" can be seen as different parts of the woman's body, but it can also be
viewed as emotions such as stubbornness to give in to fantasies.

Q.12. Write a autobiographical sketch of the Poet .

Ans. Amy Lawrence Lowell (February 9, 1874—May 12, 1925) was an American poet of the imagist school from
Brookline, Massachusetts who posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926.
Lowell was born into Brookline’s prominent Lowell family. One brother, Percival Lowell, was a famous astronomer who
predicted the existence of the dwarf planet Pluto and believed the canals on Mars showed it hosted living intelligence; another
brother, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, served as president of Harvard University.
She never attended college because her family did not consider it proper for a woman, but she compensated for this with
avid reading and near-obsessive book-collecting. She lived as a socialite and travelled widely, turning to poetry in 1902 after
being inspired by a performance of Eleonora Duse in Europe.
Lowell was said to be lesbian, and in 1912 she and actress Ada Dwyer Russell were reputed to be lovers. Russell is
reputed to be the subject of her more erotic work, most notably the love poems contained in ‘Two Speak Together’, a
subsection of Pictures of the Floating World. The two women traveled to England together, where Lowell met Ezra Pound, who
at once became a major influence and a major critic of her work. Lowell died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1925 at the age of 51.
The following year, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for What’s O’Clock. That collection included the patriotic poem
“Lilacs”, which Untermeyer said was the poem of hers he liked best.
Her first published work appeared in 1910 in Atlantic Monthly. The first published collection of her poetry, A Dome of
Many-Coloured Glass, appeared two years later in 1912. An additional group of uncollected poems was added to the volume The
Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell, published in 1955 with an introduction by Louis Untermeyer, who considered himself
her friend.
Though she sometimes wrote sonnets, Lowell was an early adherent to the “free verse” In many poems she dispenses
with line breaks so that the work looks like prose on the page. This technique she labeled “polyphonic prose”.
Throughout her working life Lowell was a promoter of both contemporary and historical poets. When she died she was
attempting to complete her two-volume biography of John Keats.
Lowell was a short but imposing figure who kept her hair in a bun .She smoked cigars constantly, claiming that they
lasted longer than cigarettes. A glandular problem kept her perpetually overweight, so that poet Witter Bynner once said, in a
cruel comment repeated by Ezra Pound and thereafter commonly misattributed to him, that she was a “hippopoetess.”
Lowell not only published her own work but also that of other writers. According to Untermyer, she “captured” the
Imagist movement from Ezra Pound. Pound threatened to sue her for bringing out her three-volume series Some Imagist Poets,
and thereafter called the American Imagists the “Amygist” movement. Pound criticized her as not an imagist but merely a rich
woman who was able to financially assist the publication of imagist poetry.
In the post-World War II years, Lowell, like other women writers, was largely forgotten, but with the renascence of the
women’s movement in the 1970s, women’s studies brought her back to light.
Amy Lowell’s work explore two major issues: the imagist movement as it was imported into the United States and the
treatment of lesbian material by a lesbian poet .While the subject of Lowell’s imagism is easy to introduce, the subject of
homosexuality in her life and writing has been more difficult because students are sometimes uncomfortable with the topic, and
they are ignorant of the history of censorship and homophobia in the United States. The study of Lowell’s life and work presents
a good opportunity to open these important subjects to discussion.

Q.13. How literal are the erotic effects in Amy Lowell’s “The Weather-Cock Points South”? How do erotics and
spirituality play off against one another in the poem? 
Ans. Amy Lowell published her poem in 1919. At the time, she couldn’t express her sexual orientation freely as we do
nowadays, however, she could write. And that’s what she did most.
At the single moment we read “I put your leaves aside, one by one” you are induced to image, to picture the most
romantic and erotic moment between someone and a woman: the oral sex. Calmingly reading, the reader tends to slowly breath
at each stanza. Although Lowell is detailing a moment based on touching, as we read “Pleasant to touch, veined with purple”,
the reader can be easily led to imagine the next step, the moment someone is down facing the sexual organ, touching with the
tipping of the fingers the vagina, while observing the sensual movements that this pleasurable moment is providing to this
‘flower’, to this “white flower, swaying slightly in the evening wind”. It is absolutely divine. 
On the other hand, we can also look at another point of view, a different side the moment we remove the sex from the
poem. What if it is about a different metaphor? About putting someone apart from her fear? From her leaves that cover her
shame, her incredulity of being accepted because she feels different, she reacts differently to certain things that society might
not (and they don’t) accept? It is possible to infer that the “Flower with surfaces of ice” is actually the cold moments someone
has to face during her or his lifetime, underneath her or his own reality, which it may not be screamed, talked, discussed about.
Not at that time.
Is it about sex? Probably. But it may not be as well. When we read “The bud is more than the calyx”, we impulsively
picture the clitoris, although it also could mean the ugliness hiding something beautiful. Just because a female writer wrote it in
a time that homosexualism was not well seeing, it does not mean she wanted to write about the intercourse between two
women on this poem. Reading about Lowell’s biography we tend to read this poem with a sexual vision, yet let’s give it the
opportunity to be something else.
 UNIT-7
WALLACE STEVENS : (I) SUNDAY MORNING (II) THE ANECDOTE OF A JAR
(III) EMPEROR OF ICE-CREAM

Q.1. What kind of ceremony is taking place in this poem?

Ans. A wake is being held.

Q.2. Who is Dona addressing by saying “Look out”?

Ans. By saying "Look out", Dona is addressing Don Gonzalo.

Q.3. What was Dona doing?

Ans. Dona was in the park feeding breadcrumbs to pigeons.

Q.4. Who scared the birds? Are they pet birds?

Ans. Don Gonzalo scared the birds. They are not pet birds.

Q.5. Where are the speakers at the time of the conversation?

Ans. At the time of the conversation, the speakers are in a park.

Q.6. At what point of time, do you think, Laura and Gonzalo begin to recognise each other?
Ans. When Dona Laura takes the book from Don Gonzalo and begins to read aloud, I believe Laura and Gonzalo begin to
recognize each other. When she reads the line "Twenty Years Pass," they both look at each other with scepticism.

Q.7. When does Dona Laura realise that Don Gonzalo was her former lover?
Ans. When Dona Laura tells him about the villa in Maricella and Gonzalo tells her about the Silver Maiden named Laura
Llorente, Dona Laura realizes that Don Gonzalo was her former lover. To hear his admirable description of her, she recognizes
him as her former lover.

Q.8. Why do Dona Laura and Don Gonzalo spin fictitious stories about themselves?
Ans. Dona Laura and Don Gonzalo make up stories about themselves because they don't want to reveal their true
identities to one another. They are now quite old and have moved on from their romantic past. They are dissatisfied with their
ageing appearance. In this old age, they prefer to hear admirable words from one another. They believe it is better to interact
with each other when they are unfamiliar with each other.

Q.9. What makes Dona Laura think that Don Gonzalo is an ill-natured man? Why do neither Dona Laura nor Don
Gonzalo reveal their true identities?
Ans. Gonzalo's rude behaviour, as well as his demeanour, lead Laura to believe that he is a bad-tempered man. Gonzalo
frightens all the pigeons Laura is feeding breadcrumbs to in a park. He even responds to Laura's question in an impolite manner.
Dona Laura and Don Gonzalo do not reveal their true identities because they are aware that they were lovers in the past. They
are both quite old now and have outlived their youth. They believe that it is preferable to conceal their identities and to be
happy through admirable words from both sides.

Q.10. How do Dona Laura and Don Gonzalo feel about each other?
Ans. Dona Laura and Don Gonzalo are irritated with each other at the start of the play. They lash out at each other with
harsh and stinging words. However, when they establish a friendly relationship, they discover that they are former lovers. They
begin telling their past stories while concealing their true identities. They don't want to reveal their reality at the age of seventy,
preferring to reminisce about their happy romantic past through their conversations. They like each other and enjoy their
admiration and past stories through fictitious means. They'd rather meet again in the park.

Q.11. What is the effect of flashback in the play when Dona Laura and Don Gonzalo knew that they were the lovers in
the past?
Ans. A flashback is a dramatic device in which earlier events are interjected into a narrative's normal chronological flow.
Flashback has played an important role in making this romantic comedy very interesting in this play. When Don Gonzalo and
Dona Laura discovered that they had been lovers in the past, their flashback stories began to tell us about various events from
their romantic youth. This play has been expanded with a variety of hidden facts as a result of their flashback. Because of its use,
the play has a variety of concealing and revealing twists, as well as a satisfying climax. Both characters continue to use flashback
stories with various information, which has made the entire audience pay attention and enjoy every single dialogue of the play.
The foundation of this amusing play can be thought of as a flashback.

Q.12. Discuss how the play is built around humour and irony.
 Ans. This play is built around irony and humour. The play is the ideal combination of humour and irony. This romantic
comedy was created with the goal of entertaining all audiences through humour and irony. This play begins with old Dona
Laura's amusing dialogue. Following Don Gonzalo's entrance into the park, the sarcastic arguments between both old people
created an extremely humorous environment in the play. There's a lot of irony in both characters' pinching words. When they
realize they know each other, they begin telling their flashback stories, which piques the readers' interest and makes them want
to hear more from the characters. Their way of interacting with ironic remarks, their false stories about their deaths, their
methods of concealing their identities to fool each other, their promise to meet the next sunny morning, and so on have added
to the humour and irony of the play.

Q.13. How is the title ‘A Sunny Morning’ justifiable? Discuss.

Ans. This play is set in a park in Madrid, Spain on a sunny morning. In this setting, the entire play has been presented. A
sunny morning has provided an ideal setting for a reunion of two former lovers in their golden years. They argue, know each
other, conceal their identities, admire, tell fabricated stories about their deaths, prefer to meet again the next sunny morning,
and so on. From start to finish, the entire play continues to make us laugh hysterically while remaining in this setting of a sunny
morning. As a result, the title 'A Sunny Morning' is quite appropriate, as it depicts a reconciliation of former lovers in a park with
great humour. In this way, the title ‘A Sunny Morning’ is justifiable.

Q.14. What do you predict will happen in the next meeting between Dona Laura and Don Gonzalo? Discuss.
Ans. I predict they will be much more enthusiastic at the next meeting. They will once again express their emotions
through fictitious means. They will both try to make each other happy. Don Gonzalo will undoubtedly be more forthright this
time. He will make an effort to show his appreciation for her. Readers will be able to see their shyness. They will undoubtedly
have a lot more fun with their pretentious acts.

Q.15. Was it wise for Dona Laura and Don Gonzalo to keep their identities secret? How might their secrets affect
future meetings?
Ans. Yes, Dona Laura and Don were wise to keep their identities hidden. They both realized, at the age of seventy, that
they were former lovers who had split up due to their misfortune. They did, however, a good job of concealing their true
identities. They were both quite old and in poor physical condition. They were dissatisfied with their old appearance.  The
revelation of their true nature would be futile at this age. They reasoned that it would be best if they concealed their identities
and pretended to be strangers. They decided that the best way to relive their sweet youthful memories was through deception.
If they continue to lie in this manner, their secrets may have an impact on future meetings. Secrecy is never maintained for an
extended period of time. Because of their older age, they are at a high risk of revealing secrets. If they unknowingly reveal their
realities, they will not attempt to meet in the near future.

Q.16. How does Stevens juxtapose life and death in this poem? How similar or different are the images he uses for
each?
Ans. The starkest division between life and death is the split between the two stanzas, the first of which largely depicts
life, and the second of which depicts death. At first impression, the sudden shift between the two, and lack of transition, leads
the reader to question why and how the two stanzas are connected. On closer reading, however, the images in each section
appear more closely linked as they mirror each other: the cold of death resonates with the cold of ice cream, and the motionless
corpse forms a duality with the cigar man's muscles. Stevens reinforces this connection by ending both stanzas with the same
declarative line. In this way, elements of life and death each appear sprinkled throughout the other, emphasizing one of the
poem's main points, that death is an inevitable component of life.

Q.17. How does the poem's whimsical tone impact its meaning?
Ans. The surprisingly playful tone of the poem begins with its title, "The Emperor of Ice-Cream," which seems at once
childlike and imperial. The quaint, fun scene of the first stanza, of young people hanging around the ice cream maker, does not
seem to fit with the funeral that we then learn is the reason for the gathering. Likewise, the last line's declaration that simple
pleasures like ice cream rule over life seems to cheapen or make light of the woman's death. However, this juxtaposition
reminds us that life is full of mundane desires and pleasures, and that joy can coexist with death. The poem suggests that forcing
a somber, formal poetic tone onto life would do a disservice.

Q.18. Who might the "emperor of ice-cream" be? What does his title tell us about the poem's view of life?
Ans. On a literal level, the emperor of ice cream could be the man who makes it in the first stanza, a neighborhood figure
who symbolizes the fun, collective spirit of the people. As a symbol, however, he stands for the central role that everyday joys
and attractions like ice cream play in human lives, helping the poem act as a sort of ode to the commonplace. He contrasts with
other figures we might imagine to be "emperor" of human life or fate: most notably, death, which forms the poem's main point
of contrast. To say that life is governed by ice cream might come off as cheap and gaudy, but it has the positive energy that
makes life more attractive than death.

Q.19. How does the formal construction of the poem reinforce its meaning? Think about the symmetry of the two
stanzas, and the rhyming couplet that ends each one.
 Ans. The two eight-line stanzas are both structured as a sequence of commands, ending with the same line. The heavy
use of commands gives the reader a sense of being present in the scene in a functional capacity, having the power to direct
certain aspects of the scene. They create a highly interactive experience of looking, and the penultimate lines of each stanza,
two commands with "Let...," both urge the reader to reflect on the preceding stanza. The two "Let" commands, "Let be be finale
of seem" and "Let the lamp affix its beam," both seem to urge the reader to focus their gaze on plain and simple reality. They
then form a sort of cause-and-effect relation with the repeating final line: if you look at life plainly, then you will see that "the
only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream." In a poem without much rhyme, the rare couplets create a sense of final declaration,
leading the reader to ponder what it means for "the emperor of ice-cream" to be the ultimate truth of life.

Q.20. When the dead woman’s body is covered with a sheet, some parts are hidden and others remain visible. Why is
it important for us to see or not see certain things in the poem? How much of the second stanza’s funereal scene do you think
the people in the kitchen see?
Ans. The act of trying, and failing, to completely cover the dead body essentially represents our futile attempts to hide
the reality of death. Actually, this failure only occurs prospectively—"If her horny feet protrude..."—but the speaker sounds as if
he already knows the sheet will not be long enough, and makes sure that we at least see the gnarled feet in our mind's eye. In
not showing the woman's face—the conveyor of emotion, speech, and spirit—the poem reveals the more simple, crude flesh of
the feet, a physical connection of the person to the earth and the eventual grave. Stevens emphasizes these basic, physical
characteristics throughout the poem as a way to look at life and death in their purest forms: in stanza one, we primarily see the
man, wenches, and boys through details of their bodies. It is crucial to the poem that the attendees in stanza one seem oblivious
to the death scene in stanza two, as it gives the reader a privileged position of sight by which to contrast the two scenes and the
few tangible details that Stevens allows us to see in each.

Q.21. What are the literary/poetic devices in ‘Sunday Morning’?

Ans. 1. Alliteration
 When two or more words are close together and start with the same consonant they are said to alliterate. For the
reader this brings added texture and interest. There are several examples occurring throughout this poem.
A selection:
 holy hush/winding across wide water/balm or beauty/part of pain/Downward to darkness.
2. Assonance
 When two or more words in close alliance have the same sounding vowels. For example:
 Green freedom/calm darkens/rang its brassy.
3. Enjambment
 When a line runs on into the next with no punctuation but maintaining sense it is said to be enjambed. The reader is
encouraged to flow on into the next line taking hardly a pause.
 There are many enjambed lines in this poem. For example:
 And the green freedom of a cockatoo.
 Upon a rug mingle to dissipate.
 The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
4. Simile
 The trees, like seraphin.
 The day is like wide water.

Q.22. Write a detail summary of poem ‘The Emperor of Ice Cream’.

Ans. The Emperor of Ice Cream is one of the most famous poems written by the American poet Wallace Stevens.
Published first in 1923, it is almost nonsensical at first glance. Slowly some (disputable) meaning emerges. For so far as we can
say, it describes a funeral-an angry, happy, sad, joyous paradox—in which mourners at a wake are called to order by the writer.
“Call…bid…Let…Bring…Take…spread”, the poem directs behaviour. Like any occasion in which humans gather, it sets out
the etiquette for sharing a moment, instructing and admonishing both the living and the dead.
The poem starts with the words in which the speaker directs that it is the moment to call a person who can roll cigars so
that he can ‘whip’ up some ice cream from ‘concupiscent curds’ in the kitchen. The poet has chooses an odd word (concupiscent
means lusty). There are young girls hanging around in their dresses while the young boys bring flowers enveloped in old
newspapers. The last two lines of the first stanza are tough; “Let be be finale of seem” refers to his desire to let things that
“seem” like each other end, and rather see things objectively for how they are. Consequently, bringing an end to comparisons
such as similes and metaphor. Also, “the only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream” means that imagination is the king of all
things. Since “the emperor of ice cream” is simply a figment of imagination, he claims that the way humans perceive and
imagine things to be becomes the way they truly are. Therefore, imagination is the ruler of all things.
The stanza as a whole seems to focus on things that are short-lived: ice cream (which needs to be eaten quickly or it
melts), sexual desire (through the use of the word concupiscent), youth (the “wenches” and “boys”), flowers (which die quickly
once picked), and “newspapers of last month” because newspapers are things that are good and true for only a short time, and
last month’s would be out of date. So, when the speaker says that “the emperor alone is the emperor of ice-cream,” he may
mean that the richest person is the one who lives in the moment, who knows that the present (and his appetite and
youthfulness and beauty and good things) is all that we really have.
 The second stanza seems to focus on the preparing of a corpse to bury. There is a “dresser of deal” that probably refers
to a cheap coffin, a “sheet” that the dead woman once embroidered with birds, and someone “spreads it so as to cover her
face.” Her “horny feet” (they have to be calloused) may stick out and show “how cold she is;” the body of the woman is cold
because she is no longer alive. Maybe somebody places a lamp near her so mourners can see her better. Eventually, the speaker
repeats the notion that “the only emperor is the emperor of ice cream,” as if to warn us that this will be the future for all of us at
some stage, and so the way to make ourselves rich is to revel in the present: to enjoy the flowers and the ice cream now, so to
speak, because these beauties won’t last.

Q.23. Give a short detail about the poet ‘Wallace Stevens’.

Ans. Wallace Stevens was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, on October 2, 1879. He attended Harvard University as an
undergraduate from 1897 to 1900. He planned to travel to Paris as a writer, but after a working briefly as a reporter for the  New
York Herald Times, he decided to study law. He graduated with a degree from New York Law School in 1903 and was admitted to
the U.S. Bar in 1904. He practiced law in New York City until 1916.
Though he had serious determination to become a successful lawyer, Stevens had several friends among the New York
writers and painters in Greenwich Village, including the poets William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, and E. E. Cummings.
In 1914, under the pseudonym "Peter Parasol," he sent a group of poems under the title "Phases" to Harriet Monroe for
a war poem competition for Poetry magazine. Stevens did not win the prize, but his work was published by Monroe in
November of that year.
Stevens moved to Connecticut in 1916, having found employment at the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Co., where he
became vice president in 1934. He had begun to establish an identity for himself outside the world of law and business,
however, and his first book of poems, Harmonium (Alfred A. Knopf), published in 1923, exhibited the influence of both
the English Romantics and the French symbolists, an inclination to aesthetic philosophy, and a wholly original style and
sensibility: exotic, whimsical, infused with the light and color of an Impressionist painting.
For the next several years, Stevens focused on his business life. He began to publish new poems in 1930, however, and in
the following year, Knopf published a second edition of Harmonium, which included fourteen new poems and left out three of
the decidedly weaker ones.
More than any other modern poet, Stevens was concerned with the transformative power of the imagination.
Composing poems on his way to and from the office and in the evenings, Stevens continued to spend his days behind a desk at
the office, and led a quiet, uneventful life.
Though now considered one of the major American poets of the century, he did not receive widespread recognition until
the publication of his Collected Poems, just a year before his death. His other major works include Ideas of Order (The Alcestis
Press, 1935), The Man With the Blue Guitar (Alfred A. Knopf, 1937), Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction (The Cummington Press,
1942), and a collection of essays on poetry, The Necessary Angel (Alfred A. Knopf, 1951).
Stevens died in Hartford, Connecticut, on August 2, 1955.

Q.24. Trace the development of thoughts and feelings in the poem "Sunday Morning."
OR
What is the theme of "Sunday Morning" and how has it been dealt with?
Ans. The Poem a Meditation - Sunday Morning is most probably Stevens, best known poem. The poem is an account of
the thoughts and feelings of a woman who is imagined as sitting comfortably over a late break fast on a Sunday Morning . The
woman appears to have just got up from bed and , sitting in her sunny chair, "she dreams a little." Thus the poem is a day dream
or a meditation on the near edge of sleep that emerges from a darkening calm while other people are at church at this time ,
this woman is lost in her thoughts.
The Woman's thoughts about the Crucifixion - Where exactly this woman is , we are not told in specific terms. But she is
far, far away is space and time from the scenes of the New Testament story . She is musing upon the Crucifixion. The death of
Jesus Christ is described by the poet as an "ancient sacrifice" and as an "old catastroshe." The woman is mentally so occupied in
thoughts of the Crucifixion that she thinks of walking on the water to Palestine (where Christ had been curcified). She feeld that,
in order to understand the Crucifixion she has to go and see for herself the scene of that catastrophe . Her thoughts are like the
twilight on water, and the day resembles a soundless stretch of motionless water . There is an antithesis in the opening lines of
the poem where we are told that the world, when vividly visualized, dissipates a holy or unworldly belief. There is a contrast of
moods in the opening lines ; comfort versus sacrifice; and living in the world versus living for another world. Close to the woman
is a cup of coffee, some oranges, and a green coloured parrot . As the woman lives in considerable comfort , her desires indicate
the limits of the body's pleasure. Her surroundings are described by the poet with a deliberate sensuality or a luxuary of feeling.
The force of the oranges and the parrot is increased by repetition.
Three questions and the answers to them - The second stanza begins with three questions. These three questions sum
up the arguments of the entire poem. The woman asks why she should give what she possesses to the deal, namely to Jesus
Christ. This question by her implies that religion is a tax on her property and is centered on death. Her second question is why
divinity should come only in silent shadows and in dreams . This question expresses a doubt about all religions and not about
Christianity alone . This question makes religion a depersonalized abstraction like the thought of heaven. The third question is
whether the woman should not enjoy all the worldly pleasures which are available to her instead of occupying herself with the
thought of heaven. The woman's questions answer themselves. They reveal her slowly forming conclusion that religion is a
fantasy for an act of the mind. The questions also show that her thoughts are turning back to her surroundings. By implication
she acknowledges the need for thoughts which can be cherished. Although she has rejected religion, she searches her
experience of the world to find something which can take the place of religion. Divinity is not rejected; but it is confined to the
inner world.
The third question begins with an account of God Jove. This is an abrupt departure from the thoughts expressed in the
second stanza. The subject here remains religion , but the argument of the preceding stanzas is abandoned and resumed only
with the second set of three questions contained the strange image of Jove moving as "a muttering king among hinds." (The
word "hinds” means a household servant or a farm labourer).
This world, more durable than any vision of paradise - In the fourth stanza, the woman's thoughts return from the
future to the present and to the condition of vestigial faith which was the starting point of her meditations. The woman feels
contented when she sees the birds and hears their "sweet questionings" perhaps because these questionings are a confirmation
of her own questionings. But when the birds disappear and the fields vanish in the mist, a question arises; and the question is;
where, then is woman in the lines that follow the question which has been asked. These six locations are a complex mixture of
many images; and the poet affirms that the woman's personal memories and desires will retain their power for a longer period
of time than any vision of paradise. Her vivid impressions of the world, in retrospect or prospect , are more powerful than any
imagery creation. In other worlds, the earth and this world are more durable than any vision of paradise. We may say that
paradise is only an illusion, while this world in which we live, has a certain reality. April's green the birds singing in the warm
fields, the woman's desire for June and evening , and the Swallow's wings have thus a greater reality than paradise .
Death; the Mother of Beauty - The idea of death as a mother is another example of the surprises which Stevens springs
upon us in his poetry . It is the thought of death which makes the things of this world appear beautiful to us; and it is in that
sense that death is the mother of beauty. The paths that we have taken, whether in sorrow , in triumph, or in love , are certainly
to be destroyed in course of time. This is a changing world; and death is the finality of all changes. Fulfilment also comes only
from death , though fulfillment is not found in death. In the closing lines of Stanza V, there is a reference to maidens and to boys
who pile "new" (or fresh) plums and pears. As in the story of Adam and Eve when they were in the garden of Eden, eating is in
this stanza associated with sexuality . After tasting the plums and pears , the maidens wander off, feeling passionate.
Paradise, Not a Welcome Proposition - In Stanza VI, the scene of the fruit trees (bearing plums and pears) is imagined as
paradise. In paradise there is probably no change and no death . The fruit does not fall from the trees there. There can be no
beauty if there is no change. And, therefore, the woman's need can be supplied only by this world's temporal beauty and by the
recognition that paradise is another version of this very world . By implication , the only imperishable bliss is art.
A Primitive Faith as a Subsitute for Religion - With the final Stanza, the poem comes full circle. The end of the poem is its
beginning . The conclusion consists of three sentences or three statements. The woman hears a voice crying that the death of
Jesus Christ was like any other death, that Christ's tomb is merely a grave and not the entrance to another world, and that Christ
was merely Jesus or a man who perished and not a divine being who rose from his grave. "We live in an old chaos of the sun."
This means that no order is possible on this earth. But the fact that the chaos is old or ancient proves the continuing stability of
the chaotic earth . We may look at the world without religion in three ways. The world may be regarded as an old dependency
having no sponser, or as a solitude but not as a loneliness or as an island in that wide water upon which a voice cries , saying that
dream seas separate the woman from palestine and us from paradise. These three ways of looking at the world are an attempt
to comprehend the human condition as a whole. Then follow a description of the deer, quail, berries, and pigeons. Thus the
world may be explained by the objects which it contains. We must therefore surrender ourselves to the world ; and we must
believe in the thereness of the world. This is the primitive faith that Stevens suggests as a subsitute for the Orthodox religion in
this poem.

Q.25. Write a critical appreciation of the poem 'Of Modern Poetry' composed by Wallace Stevens.
OR
What does Stevens have to say about modern poetry in his poem on the subject?
Ans. The term "Acting", used Metaphorically for writing poetry - In his poem of modern poetry, Stevens tells us that the
modern poet is in a different situation from that in which previous poets used to be. Being in a changed situation, the modern
poet inust revise, modify, and even re-invent the art of writing poetry. Stevens does not here raise the question of the origin of
this change and does not specify any starting point of modern poetry. The word "modern" here is unspecific. Most probably , by
modern poetry Stevens meant the poetry written by the poets of his own generation. Stevens in this poem refers to a poet as an
actor or player, just as he refers to the guitarist in the poem. The man with the Blue Guitar as a poet writing poetry is here
refered to as "acting" and Stevens uses all the meanings of the word "acting." Acting here means doing , assuming a role , and
producing effects ; and of course , the word also means writing poetry . The theatre in this poem symbolizes the whole world ,
and we inevitably recall Shakespeare's famous epigram : All the world's a stage. The use of this metaphor in Stevens poetry
emphasizes the rhetoric and sham in all our gestures . Once of his remarks in Adagia is "Authors are actors , book are theatres."
New conditions demand a break with the past - Stevens says in the poem that the theatre has been changed to
something else; but he also says that the poet can not redefine his art by leaving the theatre. The modern poet's task is to
construct a new stage ; and the modern poet must be like an insatiable actor on that stage . Where as previously the office of
the poet was well - established and new poems merely repeated old ones , and poetry was therefore a single continuous
discourse (a "script"), conditions have now changed. The old continuity and the old stability, which those poems provided , have
now disappeared , with the result that the past no longer has any meaning. The past is now only a "souvenir" a mere dead
memory. The modern poet is in a new situation. He has to work in a place and at a time which are discontinuous with the past .
He needs to enter more fully into the present. This means learning a new language ("the speech of the place"). This also means
making his contemporaries his audience, Poetry has to face the men, and also to meet the women . In other words, the men
must be confronted more directly than the women , but the women have to be approached more closely. The "emotion as of
two people " refers to the emotion between a man and a woman.
The poet must think about war - Stevens goes on to say that poetry has to think about war, and that it has to find "what
will suffice" because he has said in the very opening lines; The poem of the mind in the act of finding. What will suffice.
"Stevens” view that poetry has to think about war is noteworthy because it shows the seriousness of his contention that
everything in all his peoms could be related to events. This view of his shows that he did not aim at writing "pure poetry" all his
life. Real events, especially such momentous events as the war, could not be ignored by a poet.
A bond between the poet and his audience - Stevens then goes on to say that the modern poet's words are to appeal to
the most sensitive and discriminating area of the mind ("the delicatest car of the mind"); that the poet's audience is invisible,
and that a poet seeks to bring about a unity of feeling. The play or the poem is not the thing ; it is rather the deeper
communication, the self - communication, which the poem makes possible. The poet's words establish a bond between
expresses what they, the audience, are. They hear themselves in terms of one emotion shared by two people , or of two
emotions becoming one. All Stevens poetic effort is directed towards healing this fundamental duality , and for him it is a never -
ending process (and this is why the poet needs to be "like an insatiable actor"). Such is the nature of all modern poetry , says
Stevens.
The problem and its solution - The movement in this poem is from "the poem of the mind in the act of finding what
what will suffice" to "the poem of the act of the mind." If we can never know anything except only versions of things , then all
our knowledge is an approximation . We can never know who we are , or where we are . Each version will make us feel that
falsity , the artificiality , and the temporariness of all the other versions . Both the real and the unreal will therefore seem
unauthentic . Modern poetry is therefore a description of the mind in the act of sutticing in these circumstances . The mere
description of the problem should suffice because the description of the problem is itself the solution of the problem . Becoming
fully conscious of our predicament enables us to cope with it , and it must be coped with because the circumstances can not be
changed . This is the certainity of Stevens uncertainity .
Emphasis on bodily action - The poetry of the mind must , according to Stevens, be the finding of a satisfication ;
similarly the final pre-requisite of the poetry of supreme fiction is that it must give pleasure , and to this end Stevens turns to the
world rather than to himself. The poem of the act of the mind is an escape from introspection, solipsism , and autobiography .
Stevens examples are not at all intellectual; a man skating , a woman dancing a woman combing. The emphasis is on bodily
action. All are ordinary activities without any precise exterior purpose , performed by a single person alone in a state similar to
day - dreaming , each with its own particular rhythm . The body in each case describes a figure in harmony with an implied music
.
the close of this poem - "Of modern poetry" ends with a description of a moment of completion . Stevens poetry is full of
descriptions of moments of completion, as in this case. Each description is both partial and temporary , at once an
approximation and the achievement of this most wished for state we are the music while the music lasts . The feeling of
endlessness in Stevens produces images of finality. The poem of the act of the mind takes him ever more into the world .
Because in the last analysis the poem owns its existence to being in the world , its existence is an affirmation of the existence of
reality . Poetic thinking , even with all its uncertainties , is the anti - thesis of solipsism ; it is the " way of life " as Stevens puts it
elsewhere in his work .

Q.26. Write a critical appreciation of the poem 'The Emperor of Ice cream'.
OR
Explain the thoughts expressed in the poem 'The Emperor of Ice Cream '.
Ans. A Titillating Poem - "The Emperor of Ice-cream" is a short and titillating poem which has an exhilarating effect on us
once we have understand its meaning. Its combination of the tragic occasion and the comic vein of writing make it particularly
interesting. The gloom of death, which might otherwise have depressed us, is greatly diminished by the comic tone of the author
in dealing with it.
Obscure or Puzzling Poem : The First Stanza - This poem has an attractive but intriguing title . We do not understand
what the phrase " The Emperor of Ice - cream, " meAns. Nor can we understand the meaning of this poem without the help and
guidance of critics. Thus obscurity is the most striking feature of this poem as of most other peoms by Stevens. The poem begins
abruptly and without our being able to understand what the background of peom is. The poet asks somebody to call the roller of
big cigars and bid him whip the curds in kitchen cups . The curds are regarded as " concupiscent . "A picture is thus evoked by
these lines , and we can imagine a muscular fellow, who rolls big cigars, and who will now whip the curds in the kitchen. The
word "concupiscent" means voluptuous and, therefore, implies sexuality. Then follows another picture, that of wenches (or
females) idling away their time, dressed in clothes which they are accustomed to wear. And then another picture follows , the
picture of the boys bringing flowers in old newspapers. Next comes a line which would puzzle even a scholar. "Let be finale of
seem." The whole stanza then ends with the following words; "The only emperor is the emperor of ice - cream."
The Second Stanza : The Death of a Woman - The second stanza calls upon somebody to take from the wardrobe a sheet
on which the woman had once embroidered fantails , and to cover the womans face with it . Here we get the first sign that there
is a dead woman lying in the room . This impression of ours is confirmed by the lines which follow ; the woman is "cold" and
"dumb" and her feet are hard and rigid like a horn. And the second stanza also closed with the same words as the first , namely
that the "only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream." But now we do realize that we have gone through a poem which has been
written on the subject of death. And then the critics come to our rescue and tell us that ice - cream in this poem symbolizes
change and flux which are an essential principle underlying this world . Ice - cream symbolizes change and flux because it melts
quickly . But ice - cream also symbolizes firmness and stability as long as it is in a frozen state.
 The Idea Behind the Poem - The idea behind the poem is that reality is most exactly fixed appearance which is yet one
that will surely change soon The picture of the dead woman conveys the same idea. Ice cream is here regarded as a kind of
emperor issuing a command; and the command is that change and flux can not be separated from life even though at particular
times we may find something to be fixed and firm . Like ice - cream , life melts upon the tongue in the very act of tasting . In the
first stanza , the concupiscent curds convey an experience sex , while the woman's corpse in the second stanza conveys the idea
of death. Both sex and death are examples of moments which our perception regards as being fixed . And yet these are also
moments of the greatest change. A sexual intercourse leads to conception (or pregnancy); and the end of a woman's life means
her having been taken away by death.
An Ambiguous Poem - We can not feel absolutely certain that we have understood the poem aright. Critics are
themselves not sure on this point. For instance , though it is clear that a scene of an imminent funeral has been depicted, we do
not know whether the events have occurred at a brothel or somewhere else. Nor is it clear whether the woman has died a
natural death or has been murdered. The poem is thus ambiguous .
The Vein of Comedy in an Otherwise Sad Poem - The occasion of the poem is sad one because of the death which has
taken place . But Stevens does not sentimentalize this occasion. Nor does he idealize his attitude towards death and change. In
fact , Stevens has written the poem in a somewhat comic vein. The manner in which the wenches are depicted as "dawdling"
and the boys as bringing flowers in last months newspapers is certainly amusing in spite of the general atmosphere of gloom in
the house where a woman has died. The refrain of the poem emphasizes the tone of comedy. "The only emperor is the emperor
of ice-cream." Manufacturers of ice - cream would certainly feel faltered by their product having thus been glorified by Stevens ,
but they would not understand what Stevens here really implies . The implication, as already pointed out above, is that reality is
fixed like ice - cream in its frozen state, and that reality is changing like ice - cream which melts on the tongue.
The Concrete and Interesting Imagery in the Poem - Once we understand the meaning of the poem , we are in a position
to appreciate the imagery in it. The imagery is concrete, and interesting too. We particularly note some of the details of the
imagery presented to us . For instance, the boys have brought flowers for the dead woman in last month's newspapers, and the
dresser, which is made of deal, has lost its three glass knobs : (Deal is a kind of wood of which furniture is made).

Q.27. Write a note on the kind of imagery which Stevens employs in his poems.
OR
Examine critically the imagery in Steven's poetry.
OR
Write an essay on the use of imagery in Steven's poetry.
Ans. Like most Poets, Stevens had a pictorial imagination. But unlike most poets, he thought chiefly in terms of images
and pictures. Imagery is one of the most conspicuous features of Stevens poetry. In fact, the sounds and images of his poems
were more important to him than the rational meaning in them. In his opinion , images and sounds could by themselves be
regarded as the raison d'etre for the writing of a poem. Most of the imagery in his poetry is strikingly vivid. This imagery is vivid
even when it is unrealistic or fanciful. In most cases his imagery is concrete and has a strong visual appeal; and much of the
imagery has an audio - visual appeal .
Enjoyable Audio-Visual Imagery - Some of the poems contain what may be called audio - visual images of a remarkable
kind . Two poems stand out in this respect. These poems are " Peter Quince at the Clavier " and " The Idea of Order at Key West
". These two poems show Stevens strong liking for images and sounds . Stevens made no secret of his liking for sounds and
images , and freely provided these two elements in his poetry , sometimes even giving an impression to the reader that the
poem did not possess any meaning which could be started in words. In "Peter Quince at the Clavier" we almost hear the music
of the Clavier and the sounds of a cymbal crashing , of horns roaring , and the tambourines giving out a noise . There is even a
reference to the rhythmic throbbing of the hearts of the elders in the poem. Then there are the pictures of Susanna bathing in
the green , clear , and warm water of a pool of Susanna standing upon the bank of the pool; of Susanna walking upon the grass ,
and of Susanna feeling ashamed of her nakedness then there is a series of pictures in the final stanza; the body dies ; so evening
die ; so gardens die ; so maidens die . In "The Idea of Order at Key West", we have superb pictures of a woman singing on the sea
- shore. Her song is distinct from the sound of the sea in the beginning but the song and the sounds mingle together afterwards;
and then the song and the sounds are again distinguishable from each other. We are given a vivid picture of the turmoi ! of the
sea : "the meaningless plungings of water and the wind. "So far as the sounds and images are concerned, this poem is most
enjoyable , though the essential meaning at the heart of the poem is not easily decipherable.
Abstract Imagery - Then there is a lot of abstract imagery in Stevens poetry . In "Sunday Morning", we have the following
abstract pictures. divinity must live within himself; passions of rain, or moods in falling snow; grievings in loneliness; unsubdued
elations when the forest blooms gusty ; emotions on wet roads on autumn nights . Here every picture is abstract except the
"forest blooming gusty" and "wet roads on autumn nights. "Then there is the line; "We live in an old chaos of the sun." Which is
a perfect image of an abstract kind. Abstract also is the image of " old dependency of day and night. "These two abstract
pictures are followed by concrete pictures of the deer walking upon the mountains, the quail whistling their spontaneous cries:
sweet berries ripening in the wilderness , and casual flocks of pigeons flying through the air.
Examples of Vivid and Concrete Imagery - The imagery in " The Emperor of Ice - cream " is also very vivid whether we
understand the meaning and the significance of the poem or not . There is the muscular one who is the rolier of big cigars : there
are the wenches dawdling in their habitual dresses , there are boys bringing flowers in last month's newspapers ; and so on.
There is some remarkable , vivid imagery in Sunday Morning , even though the argument in the poem is conducted in terms
which we do not easily follow. The very opening lines contain imagery which , besides being vivid , is also realistic. There are
Coffee and oranges on the breakfast table ; there is the " green freedom " of a parrot upon the rug ; there is the dreaming
woman occupied by thoughts of the old catastrophe , namely the crucifixion ; there is the same woman travelling in her
imagination over the seas to palestine . Then there is the picture of a ring of men , supple and turbulent , chanting Psalms on a
summer morning. This imagery is highly suggestive . The chant of these men shall be a chant of paradise, out of their blood ; and
into their chant shall enter the windy lake, the trees, and echoing hills. "Anecdote of the Jar” is a short poem which contains
concrete and vivid imagery, though the poems significance has to be explained to us by scholars. We can easily visualize a jar
being placed on the top of a hill in the "Slovenly Wilderness." Then there is the poem called "The Bird with the Coppery, Keen
Claws" which contains vivid pictures of a "parakeet of parakeets." In the final stanza of this poem we are told that this parakeet
munches a dry shell while he exerts his will This poem is a series of picture . Similarly , we get a long series of picture in "Thirteen
Ways of Looking at a Blackbird", beginning with the picture of the eye of the blackbird, the eye which is the only moving thing
among twenty snowy mountains. In one Stanza we get vivid picture of the river moving and the blackbird flying.
Imagist Poems - The influence of imagism on Stevens poetry can clearly observed in some of the shorter poems. a
reference has already been made to "The Load of Sugar-cane". Then there is the poem called vacancy in the park which contains
a series of similes each of which is a vivid and precise picture. Some one has walked across the snow, someone looking for
something without knowing what. It is like a boat which has pulled away from a shore at night and disappeared; it is like a guitar
left on a table by a woman who has forgotten it; and so on. Vivid , sharp , and precise images occur also in the poem "Not Ideas
About the Thing" but the thing ltself, though even here the meaning of the poem is difficult to understand. The long poem
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird contains pictures each of which is vivid and precise. In a postcard from the volcano we
get a vivid and sharp image in the last stanza. It is the picture of a dirty house in a guned world , a tatter of shadows peaked to
white , smeared with the gold of the opulent sun. The phrase "the gold of the opulent sun" conveys to us the yellow look of the
morning sun in all its splendour.
 UNIT-8
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS : (I) THE RED WHEELBARROW (II)
LANDSCAPE WITH THE FALL OF ICARUS

Q.1. Although we would call this a free verse poem, each strophe is precisely arranged in the same way as the others.
What “form” do the strophes take?
Ans. The strophes each consist of two lines: the first with three words, the latter with one.

Q.2. “Wheelbarrow” is written as one word in the title, but divided in the second strophe. Why does Williams divide it
in the body of the poem?
Ans. While “wheelbarrow” is usually written as one word, Williams divides it in the body of the poem to preserve the
strophe’s form.

Q.3. How could “so much” depend on a wheelbarrow? What, specifically, could depend on a wheelbarrow? Explain.
Ans. By declaring that so much depends upon the wheelbarrow, the poem implies the importance of agriculture and
farm labourers. More broadly, the wheelbarrow can also act as a representation of all everyday objects that the speaker believes
are worthy of appreciation.

Q.4. What do the chickens symbolize in the red wheelbarrow?

Ans. “The Red Wheelbarrow” is without symbols. In fact, the objects in the poem—the wheelbarrow, the rainwater, and
the white chickens—are the very opposite of symbols. They are simple objects that represent the idea of simplicity. The fact that
the chickens are white does not make them a symbol of purity, for example.
 
Q.5. What kind of structure and form used in the poem ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’?
Ans. ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’ by William Carlos Williams is a four stanza poem that is separated into sets of two lines,
known as couplets. These lines are extremely short and unusual. The first line of each stanza has three words and the second
line of each only one. Williams chose to write this piece in free verse. This means that there is no single pattern
of rhyme or meter at work in the text. The diction is conversational and simple, creating a calm and casual tone.
 
Q.6. Write a short note on the literary devices use in the poem.
Ans. Williams makes use of several literary devices in ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’. These include but are not limited to
examples of alliteration, juxtaposition, and imagery. The latter is one of the most obvious and important techniques at work. By
using images clearly and succinctly, Williams enures that readers connect with the sentiments that he’s interested in.
Juxtaposition is another interesting and important technique that helps to convey the meaning behind ‘The Red
Wheelbarrow’. the clearest example of this technique is the wheelbarrow itself, which in a non-poetic  context is unimportant
and the importance that Williams bestows on it. He depicts it as the hinge upon which the entire world rests.
Alliteration is a formal device that is concerned with the use and reuse of words that start with the same consonant
sounds. For example, “rain” and “red” as well as “barrow” and “beside”. Each example takes on a greater significance in the
poem due to the overall brevity of the text.

Q.7. List all words from the poem that are crucial to the imagery.
OR
Discuss ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’ is an Imagist poem.
Ans. The images in the poem must be viewed in the context of their basic circumstances. The speaker will see that the
wheelbarrow is red. Red is likely to suggest things like life, blood, courage and zeal that are part of what the farmer supports and
supports. The wheelbarrow is one thing for us but it’s splitting the word into two lines. The poet separated the wheel and the
barrow (the body). The barrow is on the wheel. The wheel could be a symbol of life (process), progress, time and life, and so on.
The theme of dependency and interdependence can be extended in all directions. The chickens are white, probably suggesting
that this is a pure and sacred profession, uncorrupted and honest. Peace also exists in this natural and simple way of a farmer. It
might also remind readers of innocence. The word ‘rainwater’ is divided into two so that we can see them separately and in
turns and appreciate them. The poem draws our attention to many things, but all the time with the utmost possible attention.
The glazing/glossy wheelbarrow, bathed in natural rainwater and white chickens, creates simple but significant imagery that is
symbolically responsible in many ways. A Christian reader may interpret the red as the blood of Christ, and the white as the
white of holiness.

Q.8. What is the main themes in the poem ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’?
Ans. In ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’ Williams engages with themes that include sentimentality and nostalgia, as well as
nature. The latter can be expended to include human beings and what they create. The wheelbarrow is, by Williams’ own
depiction, an incredibly important tool. He sees it as something upon which practically the whole world hinges. through his focus
on the wheelbarrow, Williams is also asking the reader to consider nature and humankind’s connection with it. It is a tool that
allows for rural and farming communities to make a living and support their families day to day.
He presents this single red wheelbarrow as something of high importance. He wonders in awe in regards to its various
uses and its ever-present nature. By taking a close, albeit brief, look at the wheelbarrow he is asking the reader to do the same.
To look closely and take note of the value in things that we normally take for granted.

Q.9. Write a short summary of the poem ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’.

Ans. The poem ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’ is a very short poem comprised of fourteen words only. It is a Japanese haiku-
style poem, in which a single image is elaborated and the meaning of that image is left entirely up to the reader’s imagination. It
is objectivist, rooted in reality, and uses no metaphors or symbols to escape from hard, even worldly reality. The fragmentation
of the syntax is proof of William’s effort to capture new, intrinsic, especially American cadences in his poetry.
The object of Williams’ attention here is a red wheelbarrow, a humble country implement used to carry straw or manure
or animal food around a farm, set up against some white chickens, “glazed” or made bright by the rain. Due to the contrast
between the wheelbarrow’s red and the white of the chickens, the image becomes pungent. What is also unusual is that
Williams can write a poem on such an ordinary farm object–poetry can indeed be composed about anything at all. Probably the
phrase “So much depends.. .” refers to the task set by the poet himself—can he indeed write a poem about a wheelbarrow and
some chickens, a poem that people won’t laugh at a poem worth the name? All these questions are answered affirmatively by
the fact that this poem continues to be anthologized 70-odd years after it was composed.

Q.10. William Carlos Williams is a poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. Elaborate with illustrations
from his poems.
Ans. In the first lines of this piece the speaker introduces the reader to the story which forms the backbone of both the
painting and poem ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.’ From the second line, a reader should be aware that it will deal with the
tragic, and avoidable death of Icarus, son of Daedalus. It is also clear through the first lines that the text is going to discuss a
famous depiction of the story, the painting of the same name by Pieter Brueghel. 
The speaker continues on to say that when the tragedy occurred, it was spring. This comes from looking at the painting
and deciding, at least according to the painter, that it depicts springs. This adds depth to the narrative as spring is generally
associated with life, birth and natural beauty. 
One might also look at the colours used by Brueghel and interpret them as associated to spring. The water is a bright
green, and miscellaneous plants are blooming around the hill in the bottom left. The true subject of the piece contrasts markedly
with one’s conceptions of what spring should be. In amongst what seems like a peaceful pastoral scene, a young man drowns.  
The second set of lines are used to help describe the scene for one who has never seen the painting. He states that there
is a “farmer…ploughing / his field.” Every part of the “pateantry” of spring is being played out by the coast.
‘of the year was
awake tingling
Near’
‘the edge of the sea
concerned 
with itself’
In the next set of lines, the speaker describes a certain feeling in the air. The painting has a “ tone” much like a poem
does. In this case, it seems as though the “year was / awake tingling / near.” Something seems to be dawning or developing in
the scene. The “tingling” is in this context associated with spring, but could also refer to the darkness of what is occurring to
Icarus. It alludes to a tragedy under the happy veneer of the work. 
The next lines bring the reader, and the viewer of the painting, down to the “edge of the sea.” It is a spot, as is the rest of
the portrayed scene, that does not care for anything but “itself.” The sea may have things happening around and in it, but in
reality these things do not impact its larger body. This is the same way in which the farmers and sailors address the world. 
‘sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings’ wax’
‘unsignificantly
off the coast
there was’
‘a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning’
While the sun’s brightness at this moment might be beneficial to the workers, it is harming someone else, fatally. It
“melted  / the wings’ wax.” Without prior knowledge of this story, these things would be hard to reconcile. The title of the poem
helps one understand what exactly the speaker is talking about. 
He speaks of the fall of Icarus as being “unsignificant.” This was not because it wasn’t tragic, but because no one noticed.
His father, still flying, can be seen in the sky looking down on his son, but the other characters do not look towards the water.
They remain focused on accomplishing the tasks they set out to do. 
 The final three lines contrast with the rest of the poem. They are also somewhat of a shock if by this point one does not
understand the underlying tragedy that inspired both poem and painting. There is a “splash” in the water that goes “quite
unnoticed.” This light sound meant nothing to those who heard it, but it was the sound of “Icarus drowning.” 

Q.11. Explain a short analysis of William Carlos Williams’ ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’.
Ans. It may be just sixteen words long, and consist of eight short lines, but ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’ by William Carlos
Williams has generated more commentary than many longer twentieth-century poems. In this post we offer a short analysis of
Williams’ poem, which you can read here.
Williams’ poem turns on enjambment, which is utilised in every one of its four short stanzas. The first stanza even
highlights how the syntax of the run-on line reflects the meaning being conveyed: we read ‘So much depends / upon’ and
depend upon the continuation of the poem into the second line to provide us with the rest of the meaning. ‘Depends’ leaves us
suspended, dependent. Similarly, ‘a red wheel’ finds itself transformed by the next line: not a red wheel, we realise, but red
wheel barrow; not merely glazed with rain but with rain water. This latter example doesn’t alter the poem’s semantic sense –
rainwater is, after all, rain – but the effect of thinking we have the full story, only to have the extra ‘water’ appear in the
following line, enacts the slow dripping of the rainwater droplets from the barrow onto the ground, or, indeed,the slow
recognition of the water droplets on the wheelbarrow. By that fourth and final stanza, we have grown wise to this technique,
and we know that ‘beside the white’ remains unfinished, with the noun being required to complement the adjective ‘white’.
Why does ‘so much’ depend upon such a minor thing as the red wheelbarrow? One answer is to interpret that red
wheelbarrow as a metonym for something greater, as a specific example of a general phenomenon or idea. The red
wheelbarrow being ‘glazed’ by the rainwater captures the wheelbarrow in a brief, transient moment after the rainfall, when the
rainwater has made the red wheelbarrow shine in the sunlight. (This is much like the fleeting ‘apparition’ of the faces of the
commuters in Ezra Pound’s poem ‘In a Station of the Metro’.) This moment will pass, as soon as the rain evaporates and the
wheelbarrow is dry again. We might say, then, that Williams is declaring – in typically concrete, Imagist terms – that much
depends on these fleeting moments, on capturing moments of beauty which may seem ordinary or mundane (wheelbarrow,
chickens). It is important that we observe and perceive such small, everyday details, and recognise the poetic beauty in them. An
interesting parallel can be found in the Edward Thomas poem ‘Tall Nettles’.
However, another way to interpret the meaning of ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’ is to affirm that Williams literally means that
much depends upon a red wheelbarrow and the white chickens: that these symbols of farming and agriculture are central to the
maintaining of life as we know it. Of course, one may ask here why it’s important the wheelbarrow is  red; would a green
wheelbarrow be viewed as less important in the agrarian history of the world? But this interpretation is tenable, nevertheless.
Yet although ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’ is unrhymed, the subtle interplay between the sounds of the words that end each
line creates a melodious pattern that reminds us of rhyme: ‘chickens’ very faintly picks up on ‘depends’ from the beginning of
the poem, while it is possible to detect a faint alliterative relationship between ‘water’ and ‘white’. In the last analysis, William
Carlos Williams clearly set out to write a poem that offers concreteness of expression as its main feature. And, of course, that
red wheelbarrow.

Q.12. Discuss the theme of ‘Landscape with the fall of Icarus’.

Ans. Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is an ecphrastic poem. Ekphrasis or ecphrasis is the graphic, often dramatic
description of a visual work of art. In ancient times it referred to a description of any thing, person, or experience. The word
comes from the Greek ek and phrasis, ‘out’ and‘speak’ respectively, verb ekphrazein, to proclaim or call an inanimate object by
name.
William Carlos Williams wrote this poem upon seeing Pieter Bruegel’s Landscape With The Fall of Icarus.
The poem, as indicated by the title, touches upon the Greek tragedy of Icarus, the story in which Icarus, the son of
Daedalus, took flight from prison wearing wings made from wax and feathers. Icarus, disregarding his father’s wishes that he not
fly too close to the sun, did just that and melted his way to a feathery demise, drowning in the sea.
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus rings true to William Carlos Williams’s style of poetry — a style that employs
enjambment and meter to illustrate the message of the poem as much as — if not more so — than traditional plot and imagery.
Thus, Williams takes us along the journey of the mythical Icarus as he soared on wax wings. At least, at the very
beginning of the poem, it seems as if it is just a flight. The enjambment pulls us steadily through the poem as if on an easy
drifting through the sky. We explore the scenery along with Icarus, and yet, the poem seems not about Icarus. The poem is the
journey, the scenery, the day rather than a story. However, it is at the final line of the poem that we realize the true focus of the
poem: “Icarus drowning”. William reveals to us his initial deceit, showing us that the poem was a descent rather than a flight —
each stanza pulling the reader from the sky, and bringing us quite literally to the ending: death. This little surprise at the end
mirrors Icarus’s own supposed surprise.
The death of Icarus, the poet tells us “According to Brueghel,” took place in spring when the year was emerging in all its
pageantry. The irony of the death of Icarus, who has always been an emblem for the poet’s upward flight that ends in tragedy, is
that his death goes unnoticed in the spring — a mere splash in the sea. The fear of all poets — that their passing will go “quite
unnoticed” — is an old and pervasive theme. That Williams reiterates the theme is significant in the life of a poet who always felt
the world had never fully recognized his accomplishments.
 UNIT-9
NISSIM EZEKIEL : ENTERPRISE, IN INDIA

Q.1. What is existential philosophy?

Ans. It is a modern philosophy related to human suffering and experience.

Q.2. How did the travellers feel at the beginning of the journey?
Ans. They felt happy and were full of hope.

Q.3. What is meant by “Copious notes”?

Ans. The travellers took notes of what they experienced and observed.

Q.4. What is meant by a sage?

Ans. A sage is a wise man.

Q.5. Explain – “a shadow falls on us”? 

Ans. They became depressed.

Q.6. What is meant by “lost our way”?

Ans. It means they became confused.

Q.7. What does the “thunder” signify?

Ans. The thunder signifies some omens.

Q.8. What is meant by a “straggling crowd”?

Ans. It means a divided group of people.

Q.9. Why was every face darkened?

Ans. Every face was darkened because the trip did not give the desired happiness.

Q.10. Explain the line – “Home is where we have to gather grace”?

Ans. It means our destiny is fulfilled at home where there are no problems.

Q.11. How has Nissim Ezekiel used a “journey” as a metaphor for life?
Ans. In the poem ‘Enterprise’ Ezekiel has used the technique of allegory. The surface meaning is clear but we have to find
the hidden meaning also. There is a journey on the physical plane where the group goes on a pilgrimage. On the other hand
there is an inner journey where the poet evolves in a spiritual sense.

Q.12. What was the first phase of the journey?

Ans. The first phase of the journey marks the beginning of the enterprise. The travellers were in a happy and courageous
mood. They were ready to face any problem.

Q.13. What happened in the second phase of the journey?

Ans. The second phase of the journey was also not difficult. The travellers observed things keenly and made detailed
notes. They studied the behaviour of the people they met on the way.

Q.14. What does the “desert path” suggest?

Ans. The “desert path” suggests some specific problems that arose during the journey.

Q.15. What happened during third phase?

Ans. The differences among the travellers cropped up, as to how to cross a desert patch. One of the members who was
considered to be the most stylized left the batch. It caused frustration among other members.

Q.16. What happened in the last phases of the journey?

Ans. In the last phases, the travellers were attacked twice. They even lost their way. Some of the travellers disobeyed the
leader and claimed their liberty. This caused frustration and anger among the other members of the group.

Q.17. What was the poet’s reaction?

Ans. The poet reacted in a balanced manner. He did not take sides. He decided that he would continue the journey even
if it meant more hardships.
 Q.18. On the basis of your reading of the poem evaluate the poet‟s attitude towards life?
Ans. Nissim Ezekiel has been called the poet of “human balance”. Amongst the bickerings of life man must  retain his
poise. Only then we can achieve something in life. He try to project this message through the poem. A group of travellers
decides to embark on a pilgrimage. They are full of hope and enthusiasm. They are idealistic and courageous. But soon there are
dissensions. This results in one of scholarly member leaving the group. There is an element of anger and frustration at this stage.
In the next phase the pilgrims face more difficulties. They are attacked and they get confused. They lose their way. Now
the ego clashes among the members become more clear. Some of the pilgrims start claiming that they are independent and will
follow their inclination. The poet retains his balance of mind. Though he is also depressed he tries to gain courage from  prayer.
The leader also shows reasonableness. He encourages them by telling them the destination is very near. He also tried to keep
them united.
At last, only a small number of travellers is left behind. They keep on moving without hope but finally they reach their
destination even then there is no joy of success on their face. They all seem disappointed. Nissim Ezekiel retains his balance and
suggests that ego clashes never solve the problem. It is better in such cases to get grace then to fight it out among ourselves.

Q.19. Bring out the theme of the poem “Enterprise”.

Ans. Nissim Ezekiel’s poem “Enterprise” is based on the theme that as a human being everyone can achieve some
amount of dignity. As a human being we can fulfill our destiny if we are able to do the assigned task. This poem presents the
journey as a metaphor of life. The journey is a collective effort of the pilgrims. In the beginning of their journey they are
confident and have a courageous mind. Everything goes on smoothly. But soon the problem arises due to scoring sun and the
hardships of the desert. Due to all these sufferings one of their companions gets lost in the desert. They are confronted with
inevitable sufferings but they keep on moving. Finally, they reach their destination. But they find all this exercise worthless in the
end. Their high hopes from the enterprise fade away. Yet in the last line of the poem, the poet says that home is the place where
we have to gather our grace.
Through this poem Ezekiel wants to give an important message to the readers. He says that graceful purposes can be
achieved without setting high ambitions and without undertaking high-sounding projects. In the end, the poet gives a message
that if we want to achieve something worthwhile collectively we have to avoid the clash of our egoes.

Q.20. Explore the implications of the central metaphor of “the journey” for life?
Ans. Nissim Ezekiel’s poem “Enterprise” is a wonderful poem. It shows that for Nissim Ezekiel life is the symbol of a
journey. One has to move on. There will be problems, clashes and differences. They will lead to a sense of futility. In spite of all
this we must go on.
This theme has been presented with the help of the metaphor of a journey. Some people form a group and decide to go
on a pilgrimage. They start with hope, joy and a confidence in themselves. But very soon there are differences. A most scholarly
person in the group decides to leave the group. But the journey goes on. This is how we live life.
In the second phase, again there is trouble. Some robbers attack them. They lose their way. There is frustration and
disappointment. But they must go on till they reach the destination.
Life of a man is like a journey. He must grow and evolve. This is the idea we come across in the poem. Sometimes there
would be frustration and disappointments, but we must not lose our balance and continue doing our work.

Q.21. Write a summary of “Enterprise”.

Ans. “Enterprise” is one of the best poems written by Ezekiel. He uses the metaphor of a pilgrimage to suggest the
difficulties and problems faced by man in the journey of human life. In this poem a group of people including the poet decide to
set out on a pilgrimage. Initially, all the members of the pilgrim party were full of joy and hope. Their minds were full of noble
and grand ideas.
They were determined to complete the “Enterprise”. They did not feel any burden but soon after having travelled some
distance some of them started feeling that perhaps the journey was futile. But most of the travellers went on with courage and
hope. They keenly observed the things and made detailed notes of their experiences.
But then the differences cropped up between them about how to cross a desert patch. Soon a member who could write
excellent prose parted ways. This casts a shadow on the whole group of passengers. But still they went on.
Then at some place they were twice attacked. Then they forgot their path and got lost. Later on a section of the
members claimed its liberty to leave the group. Thus there were difficulties and frustrations in the course of the journey.
The leader of the group felt that they were about to reach the final destination. The other members of the group were not as
hopeful. The number of the pilgrims was going down.
The remaining pilgrims went on without hope. They were feeling hopeless but they went on. Then they reached their
destination. But this did not give them any joy. The whole enterprise seemed to be futile and yet in the last line the poet convey
the idea that life is not wholly unheroic, our job is to do our duty. Only in this way man could enjoy any grace or peace of mind.

Q.22. Estimate the Nissim Ezekiel as a poet.

Ans. A Versatile Genius
Ezekiel is the most outstanding Indian poet, writing in English today. He has published six anthologies of verse --A Time to
Change; Sixty Poems; The Third; The unfinished Man; The Exact Name; and The Hymns in Darkness and Poster Poems--besides a
large number of poems published in literary journals and magazines from time to time and not yet collected and brought
together. He is a man of varied tastes and interests and pre-occupations. Besides teaching poetry and prosody at the University
of Bombay, he also edits a number of literary journals, writes reviews, and has also a large body of literary and art criticism to his
credit.
Q.23. Describe the Nissim Ezekiel a great love-poet?
Ans. A study of his poetry reveals a gradual evolution of his art and genius. A number of major themes run through his
poetry gaining in depth and intensity with each successive volume that he has published. No theme recurs so frequently as the
theme of love and sex. There are highly sensuous descriptions of the human body and of love-making in the bed. His treatment
of the act of love, and of the charms of the female body, is characterised by extreme frankness. This has exposed him to the
charge of being a poet of the body, of the female anatomy, of wallowing in sex, but such criticism is superficial and unjust. He is
certainly neither a Platonist nor a romantic dreamer, nor does he reject the claims of the body. But constantly there is the urge
to transcend, to rise, and to travel beyond the merely physical. Mere physical love is sinful, it is the “whore of love” and this,
“consciousness of sin” renders him unfit for the “discovery of cities fresh as brides.” The final view seems to be that charity,
absorption of body and mind, a passion beyond sex, is the true commitent. The subsequent aspect of the poet’s craving for “a
bit of land, a women, and a child or two”, remains, therefore, an unattainable aspiration, till one rises above the merely physical
and ‘great women beast of sex’ is seen as a ‘myth and a dream’. It is significant to note that nowhere is there any indication of
the poet’s falling a prey toputrid love. On the contrary, he tries invariably to understand the nature of real love and passion
through his own indulgence in the act. Love in its bare form, in and outside the marriage, has occupied the poet in many of his
early poems.
In his love-poetry, Ezekiel deals with every possible facet and variety of love experience. There is a deeper and deeper
exploration of the theme in each volume as in music. It is the tension between the opposite poles of physical and spiritual, the
respective claims of the body and the soul, the love which corrupts and demoralises and that which brings elevation and
fulfilment, which makes Ezekiel such a great love poet.

Q.24. What is the clash of opposites in Nissim Ezekiel poetry.

Ans. Indeed, the greatness of Ezekiel as a poet lies in the fact that in his poetry he is constantly bringing together
opposite concepts and trying to reconcile and harmonise them. As M. Sivaramkrishna puts it, “the real source of creative tension
in his poetry is between his pervasive philosophic preoccupation and an insistent awareness of the ties stemming from the
surrounding milieu. This awareness prevents the poet from drugging himself with the narcotic of philosophic abstractions The
two polarities in his poetry, therefore, are life as pilgrimage, an enterprise--involving a movement away from home---and life in
the actual milieu of the backward place, the home, in which he is implicated by ties of the community. Consequently the the
personal level on which feelings of loss and deprivation are communicated is prevented from sliding into fatal self-
preoccupation. In short, the quest for a possible metaphysical truth and the harsh empirical reality jostle with each other in his
poetry and give his poetry its peculiar tang.”
His poetry is a battleground for the clash of opposites. Contraries exist side by side, and the poet constantly tries to
harmonies and resolve them. In Enterprise the poet frankly tells us that grace or redemption is possible not through a negation
of life and its harsh reality, but through an acceptance of it with all its sin, dirt, squalor, quarrels and conflicts. Grace is to be
found only at home. But in so far as “Home” is a metaphor for the self, redemption has to be won also through the private
landscape of one’s psyche or mind. Both these realms, the outer and the inner, are essential to human growth and fulfillment.
Without commitment to life in the world and without journey into the abyss of one’s being, the metaphoric pilgrimage of
Ezekiel’s aesthetic vision remains incomplete, though an ever-lasting possibility. The enterprise, the pilgrimage, is a metaphor
for the movement from the outer to the inner, from the physical to the spiritual, from intellectual argumentation and discussion
to inner illumination, from disintegration and chaos to order, discipline and self-control.

Q.25. What imagery and symbolism used in the poetry.

Ans. Simplicity is the cardinal virtue of Ezekiel’s poetry, and decoration is reduced to the minimum. He is not an imagist
poet in any sense. But this does not mean that imagery is entirely absent from his poetry. He uses imagery, but he does so only
sparingly, and when used, his images are not decorative, but strictly functional. Certain images are frequently repeated and thus
they acquire symbolic overtones and enable the poet to make the abstract concrete and easy to understand. Thus in Enterprise,
the journey is a metaphor for the journey of life, it is also symbolic of the voyage into one’s inner self, the voyage of self-
exploration. ‘Home symbolises the place where one lives, as also one’s inner self. In Night of the Scropion, “flash of diabolic tail
in the dark room”, is symbolic of the evil that pervades the world and against which all created things have to wage an ever-
continuing struggle and which can be overcome only by an integrated approach.
The woman, the city, and nature are the ever-recurring images in Ezekiel’s poetry, and by repetition they acquire
symbolic overtones. They are the key-images but round these are usually woven a number of associative images, and in this way
we get a cluster of images which enlarge expressive range and vigour of the language. There is frequent recurrence of the image
of the pagan woman who is a great beast of sex. She is symbolic of mean passion, earthly corruption, and defilement. The image
of woman as a sexual beast appears again and again. The poet dwells heavily upon the various organs of the female body: the
breasts and thighs, flesh and hair, belly and torso, bone and marrow, lung and liver and eyes--all enticing and repelling at one
and the same time.

Q.26. Writ the critical analysis of the poem “In India.”

 Ans. The poem ranks very high and has received much critical attention. Thus Anisur Rehman commenting on its imagery
writes, “In India the imagery is not only vivid and graphic but also kaleidoscopic. The images swarming in succession engage the
attention of the reader till a complete image of an Indian city emerges before his eyes. The poet appears to be interested more
in wholes than in parts and working with a series of images, succeeds here in creating an illusion of real city. The images do not
vary widely from one another but represent a class by themselves. The poet’s awareness of their interrelationship results
ultimately in the composition of a complete scene, making explicit the pattern of life in one of the Indian cities.”
In his earlier volumes, the poet has transmitted his awareness of the sprawling large city and its dark attributes, but later
he developed a sardonic view of the city. Lately, he has come to accommodate with and own the urban scene with the new
awareness of its reality. We may notice the feeble hints at it in In India but a clear testimony of his shift in attitude is to be found
in his recent collection, entitled Hymns in Darkness.
In India the imagery is integral to the total design of the poem, and is in sharp contrast to the purity and tranquility of
nature-imagery he has used elsewhere. Anisur Rehmanalso stresses the poet’s use of irony to highlight the cultural contrasts
which are such glaring facts of Indian life, particularly in the city. He writes, “what strikes most is the ironic portrayal of the
various facts of life as lived in our country. There are four parts in the poem of which the first part presents the suffering mass of
humanity. The second is conceived more bitterly:
The Anglo-Indian gentlemen
Drinking whisky in some Jewish den
With Muslims slowly creeping in
Before or after prayers.
The part of the poem presents the pseudo-modern Indians leading fashionable lives in the cities. In the concluding part of
the poem, there is a frank delineation of artificial air and snobbery of the English boss and the Indian lady. They keep talking of
‘all the changes India needs’ and finally indulge in sex, a suitable end to the whole affair. The poem is damagingly ironic and truly
representative of a certain class in the country. It gives us a vivid sense of the Indian milieu, its traditions and cultures. The city
scene has been perceived in all its tragic majesty and through the use of vivid pictorial imagery and ironic contrasts it is versified
for the reader also. East-west tensions-the conflict of the two cultures-are also brought out by the episode in which the English
boss tries to seduce his charming Indian secretary. The ‘Wooden’ Indian wives, who did not flirt, are well contrated with
“women bosom semibare” belonging to other nations with different cultural norms, their “semi-bare bosoms” being suggestive
of their lax morality.

Q.27. Explain the language and diction of the poem “In India”.
Ans. Nissim Ezekiel has high conception of his chosen calling and has thought long and deep over its various aspects,
difficulties and problems. In his considered view, poetry is not a matter of inspiration alone; good poetry is the result of
painstaking efforts on the part of the poet. The best poets wait patiently for words,and they write only at the right moment
when the right words come to them.
Coleridge defined poetry as the use of right words at the right place, and this definition clearly brings out Ezekiel’s own
practice. He is a painstaking artist who tries to use the best possible words for his purposes. Pursued with sincerity and devotion,
art can be elevated to such remedial heights when, dead can hear, the blind recover sight. Words are carefully chosen both with
reference to their sense and their sound. All superfluity is avoided and terseness and condensation achieved. The result is that
many of his lines are aphoristic, epigrammatic, and are easily remembered. “The best poets wait for words,” “Home is where we
have to gather grace”; “cities fresh as brides”, are only a few in stances of such condensed statements chosen at random. Ezeiel
is economical in his use of language, but he is never obscure. Clarity is the virtue which he prizes above all else, and
condensation never is at the cost of clarity.
Simplicity in language and diction characterises Ezekiel’s poetry. The use of archaic, obsolete, out of the way and
grandiloquent words is carefully avoided. Even philosophical and theological subjects are dealt with simplicity and clarity. For
him communicative efficacy is the test of great poetry. Ezekiel has criticised the heavy vo cabulary and eschewed the
grandiloquence characteristic of the type of poetry Aurobindo wrote. Moreover, he never employs the poetic diction already
grown outdated and is sharply aware of the blend of sense and sound in poetry.
Ezekiel has stressed the importance of the contemporary idiom. “You cannot write good poetry”, he said, “in a language
which is not alive.” He is aware of the nature of words, their contemporaneity, their meaning, phonetic associations and inner
potency. Various words put together in the scheme of a poem create a pattern of music and rehearse the rhythm of real
exsperience. He strongly affirms that only the modern idiom can stand the tough, critical taste-an idiom which is the product of
the much talked about interaction between prose and verse. “Tone, vocabulary, diction, sound, all need precision in a poem,”
says Ezekiel, “if the form as a whole is to be strong and not an approximation of some casual sense of it in the poet.” More and
more he has tended to use a casual way of utterance and contemporary words, idioms and phrases.
Ezekiel is not an innovator or an experimenter with language. He does not coin or compound words. He uses words from
the common, everyday vocabulary but by his use imparts to them a new meaning and new emotive significance. Simple words
are turned into metaphors, images and symbols according to need. Even seemingly prosaic words acquire poetic, overtones
from the context in which they are used, and thus there is artistic modification and recreation. Ezekiel stresses the right of the
poet to impart new significance to words, to reform them poetically in the following words, “I think it is true that a poet must
have the right to change and recreate language, but it is not true that this cannot be done by foreigners. In my opinion, it is not
essential that a good poet should change and recreate the language, but if he aspires to be a great poet, he is likely to attempt
the task. A poet acquires the right to change and recreate language by arriving at the existing possibilities.”
 Ezekiel exploits to the full the music that is in words as well as imparts to them an added vitality and expressiveness. He
has thus increased the expressive range of the language and modified the meaning of individual words, added new significance
to them even though he writes in a foreign tongue.
English is foreign because it is not an Indian language, but Ezekiel uses it like a lord and master. It may also be noted that
he could not have written in any other language, for his knowledge of Marathi was an indifferent one, and he had no knowledge
of Hebrew at all. We have already noted above his use of ‘Pidgin’ or ‘Babu English’, and also that in his more recent verse he
does not hestitate to use common vernacular words. He tends more and more to use converstional idiom and language and thus
capture the flavour of day to day Indian speech; which is also indicative of the Indian thought processes. Of the countless Indian
poets writing in English, he is the one who best represents the national identity, and who best expresses the national aspirations
and culture. It is a rare achievement indeed, and it entitles him to the rank of the greatest Indian poet writing in English.

Q.28. Discuss the art and technique of Nissim Ezekiel with reference to the poems you have read.
Ans. The last line, so characteristic of Ezekiel’s condensed aphoristic style, contains the moral of the lyric. Efforts at
escape from the realities of human existence are futile. We must accept the limitations of our lot, and do our best within those
limitations. Heroism means the acceptance of our lot in life and the doing of our best in the service of God and humanity. Says
Chetan Karnani : the redemption has to be sought either through the world or in one’s own mind. By putting the statement in
very generalized terms, Ezekiel manages to have it in many ways. In a way, home also refers to his city where life has to be lived
with all it kindred clamour. If any grace is to be sought, it can only be within the city’s confines and not outside. ‘Home’ is the
reality principal which must be acceptecd, faced and made the best of. This is the only sane and balanced way of life possible for
man.”
Ezekiel himself said that the lyric was written for, “personal theurapatic purposes”, to analyse, examine and explore his
own feelings of loss and deprivation. He wanted to find relief from personal tensions and frustrations and so he has expressed
them in the lyric. He thus sought the psychological relief which results from pouring out our troubles and frustrations to an
intimate, sympathetic friend. But this analysis and exploration has been done in generalized terms, so that the lyric has also
become a metaphor for, a symbol or an allegory of, the human condition. The personal frustrations and tensions of the poet are
thus seen to be also those of humanity at large. The journey which is undertaken is symbolic of the poet’s own quest for identity
which is also the quest of most gifted and sensitive souls like him.
C.D. Narasimahah writes of the lyric, “but the way the poem develops is entirely original including possibly what he
makes of the crowd and thunder in the last stanza but one; and Home in the last line of the poem is significantly reminiscent of
the Four Quartets.” The last stanza sums up the futility of much human enterprise: the word “gather” inherits all the poetic
associations of the word from Herrick, Milton, W.B. Yeats and finds fulfillment in one who values his tradition and puts his own
faith in the things of the spirit, both suggested by the words ‘Home’ and ‘grace’.
The lyric also shows Ezekiel’s mastery over poetic form. Right words have been used at the right place, there is almost
Shakespearean felicity of expression, with hardly any false note or superfluity. Simplicity, economy and precision characterise
the poet’s diction. The mind is carried away in one sweep with a sense of musical delight. The rhyme-scheme is regular, the
rhythm is accurate, and there is a fine fusion of subject amtter and poetic form. The slow incantatory music leaves a lasting
impression on the mind. It is a great work of art from the pen of one of the greatest living Indian poets writing in English.

Q.29. Write about the life and works of Nissim Ezekiel.

Ans. Nissim Ezekil is one of the foremost Indian poets writing in English, and he has attracted considerable critical
attention from scholars both in India and abroad. Not only that but also by virute of his critical evaluation, he has brought fame
and recognition to a number of Indian English poets.
This outstanding poet of post-independence India was born in Bombay in 1924. He is a Jew by birth, but he has made
India his home. He was educated at Antonio D’Souza High School and Wilson College, Bombay, and Birbeck College, London. He
lives in Bombay, where he is Reader in American Literature at the University. In 1964, he was a Visiting Professor at Leeds
University. In 1974, an invitee of the U.S. Government under its International Visitors Program; and in 1975, a Cultural Award
Visitor to Australia. For sometime he was Director of Theatre Unit, Bombay. His works include A Time to Change (1952), Sixty
Poems (1953), The Third (1959), The Unifinished Man (1960), The Exact Name (1965), Three Plays (1969) and Hymns in Darkness
and Poster Poems (1976). He has had poems published in Encounter; The Illustrated Weekly of India; London Magazine and The
Spectator.
Ezekiel was in England from 1948-52. He returned to India in 1952 and worked for some time as Professor and Head of
the Dept., of English, Mittibhai College of Arts, Bombay. Today, he is settled at Bombay and works as Reader in American
Literature in the University of Bombay. He has been abroad on a number of assignments. He was a visiting professor at the
University of Leeds in 1964, and then in 1967 he went on a lecture tour of America and recited his own poems at a number of
universities and colleges. Also, he has worked, and is still working, as the editor of a number of journals including, The Quest;
Illustrated Weekly of India; the Indian P.E.N. and Poetry in India. He is also a member of the Genral Council of the Lalit Kala
Akademi and the Sahitya Akademi. He is also working as the General Editor of the Indian Poetry Series and the Unviersity Text
Book Series.
In England, “philosophy, poverty and poetry” shared his basement room. But now in India he lives in comfortable
circumstances. He is married and has three children, and is a man much sought after, and he wields great influence on Indian art
and literature. He has not only been a good poet himself, but also a cause of good poetry in others. Through sheer sustained
effort, spread over a period of over twenty-five years, he has come to occupy the foremost place among the Indian poets writing
in English.
 Though primarily a poet, his interests are not confined to poetry alone. He is also a great critic by virtue both of the
quality and quantity of his criticism. He has flirted with politics in the garb of cultural freedom and has also been in advertising
for some time. He has also tried his hand at drama and also been in advertising for some time. He has also tried his hand at
drama and has some good plays to his credit. He has frequently changed his jobs and has played many roles, but primarily he has
always been a poet. A glance at his published works is sufficient to give us an idea of the versatility of his genius.
 K.N.DARUWALA : (I) CROSSING OF RIVERS (II) THE MISTRESS

Q.1. Who is K.N. Daruwala?

Ans. Daruwala is one of the most substantial modern Indo-Anglian poets.

Q.2. Where did Daruwala attend the college?

Ans. Daruwala attended the Government College in Ludhiana for his higher education.

Q.3. What did his poetry bring?

Ans. Daruwalla’s poetry has brought to life the world of riot and curfew, sirens, warrants, men nabbed at night, lathi
blows on cowering bodies, “the starch on your khakhi back’, soda bottles and acid bulbs waiting on the rooftops, and press
communiques.

Q.4. What is outstanding example of Daruwalla’s realistic and original imagery?

Ans. The Ghaghra in Spate is outstanding example of Daruwalla’s realistic and original imagery.

Q.5. What did the poem Evangelical Eva contains?

Ans. The poem Evangelical Eva contains interesting material, and yet it too contains a valuable piece of information
about the essentials of human nature.

Q.6. Make an assessment of K. N. Daruwalla’s contribution to Indo-Anglian poetry.

Ans. Daruwala is one of the most substantial modern Indo-Anglian poets. He has equalled Nissim Ezekiel’s achievement
in the field of poetry even though his themes and his style are entirely different. Daruwala’s poetry covers a wide range. He
stands out amongst Indian-English poets for bringing to poetry a range of experience generally outside the ambit or scope of
poets. Daruwalla’s poetry has brought to life the world of riot and curfew, sirens, warrants, men nabbed at night, lathi blows on
cowering bodies, “the starch on your khakhi back’, soda bottles and acid bulbs waiting on the rooftops, and press communiques.
Daruwalla’s favourite images are those of violence, disease, and fire.
Thus the first contribution which Daruwalla has made to Indo-Anglian poetry is his enlargement of its themes and his
widening of its range of subjects.
The Ghaghra in Spate brings before our minds the actute distress and misery of the villagers who have to starve for days
because of the flood in the Ghaghra and whose mud-and-straw cottages are swept away by the rushing waters. When the flood-
waters retreat, the damage caused is even greater. Then the Ghaghra becomes really bitchy. Pestilene depicts the misery and
distress caused by an epidemic like cholera. Persons affected by this disease are carried to hospitals on string-beds.
There are frail bodies, frozen bodies, delirious bodies, and bodies lying supine of these beds. And yet the authorities do
not admit that cholera has broken out in the city. They would give euphemistic names to this epidemic in order to reduce the
horror in the minds of the people and to cover their own inefficiency. The doctors would say that there is no cholera but only
diarrhea; or they would call it gastroenterities. There is a piece among the poems entitled Raminations in which the poet feels
that this violence is an indication of the mass hatreds which prevail in the country. The poet here employs some horrifying
serpent-imagery to emphasize the dangerouness of these mass hatreds. The poem entitled The Epileptic also shows Daruwalla’s
social sympathy and his compassion for the victims of disease.
The poem entitled Graft is a masterpiece of irony and satire. Not only have bribe-giving and bribe-talking have but also
the adulteration of foodstuffs and certain other malpractices. “To legalize a bastard you’ve to bribe the priest,” says Daruwalla.
People indulge in all kinds of fishy deals; and even decent chaps indulge in adultery. But the stars, under which these people
were born, indicate that they would have long lives and would flourish in every respect. The life-line of such persons extends to
the elbow almost; and, as for children, each of the corrupt men would be blessed with nine ! Then there is the poem entitled In
the Tarai in which the poet says that bandits are of course everywhere and that their occuption is to burn the homes of the
villagers, to cut off the fingers of women in order to obtain the gold rings which they are wearing, and to snatch away the gold
necklece from round their goitered necks. In describing these brutalities, Daruwalla uses his characteristic irony. The People is
another of Daruwalla’s trimphs in the field of irony and satire.
His imagery also covers a wide range. It is realistic and original, often strikingly original. And the imagery in his poetry is
plentiful too. The Ghaghra in Spate is outstanding example of Daruwalla’s realistic and original imagery. Here we are made to
visualize the Ghaghra as looking like ‘overstewed coffee’ and then at night like ‘a red weal across the spine of the land’. And the
moon is red because she has menses. The poem entitled In the Tarai also contains original and yet realistic imegery. Apart from
the imagery in the opening stanza, we have the vivid and perfectly realistic imegery of the bandits working havoc in the land.
Railroad Reveries contains several vivid pictures, some of these unforgettable. There is sad-eyed bitch which, being tormented
by the urchins on the platform, walks away with her head drooping and her eyes bored. There is a blind boy on the platform,
walking from compartment to compartment of the train with his begging bowl to whom the poet would like to give a coin in
charity but is unable to do so because of his indecision.
His poetry is the poetry of incident and event; and his mode is that of narration and description. The poem entitled
Routine describes an incident (a confrontation between the police and a mob of agitators); but it concludes with a welcome
piece of instruction. We here learn that much of the police action against a mob has been well rehearsed in the past, and that
everything is done according to a plan. The poem entitled Death by Burial contains interesting events and yet it concludes with a
valuable moral which is that a communal riot can break out over any issue even if there has been unanimity among both the
Hindus and the Muslims in most matters. The poem Evangelical Eva contains interesting material, and yet it too contains a
valuable piece of information about the essentials of human nature, namely that self-sacrifice and a life of renunciation may not
always be appreciated. Pestitence contains ample action. Cholera has broken out and patients are being taken to a hospital in
large numbers. But there is a point which the poet wishes to make that the authorities would bot admit that cholera had broken
out. Even the doctors in a hospital would give to cholera another name, diarrhea or gastro-enteritis. All this is something special
about Daruwalla’s poetry.
 KAMALA DAS : (I) AN INTRODUCTION (II) GHANSHYAM
Q.1. What does the poetess know about Indian politics?
Ans. The poetess Kamala Das does not understand politics but she knows the name of every Indian politician beginning
with Nehru and she can say those names as easily as the names of days, months.

Q.2. “I am Indian”—Who refers herself as an Indian? Where was the speaker born?
Ans. The poetess Kamala Das refers herself as Indian. She was born in Malabar.

Q.3. How many languages did the poetess know to speak, write? What was her native language?
Ans. The poetess knew three languages to speak and two languages to write. Malayalam was her native language.

Q.4. “Don’t write in English”—Who orders and to whom? Why does the speaker say so?
Ans. All the critics, friends, visiting cousins order the poetess not to write in English because English is not her mother-
tongue.

Q.5. “Why not leave me alone”—Who says so and to whom? Why does the speaker say so?
Ans. The poetess Kamala Das says so to her critics, friends and visiting cousins because they all protest her to write or
speak in other language except her mother-tongue. 

Q.6. Which languages are Kamala Das’ own language? How does Kamala Das describe her own language?
Ans. According to Kamala Das, the languages that she likes to speak, write are her own language that may be incomplete,
with distortions, queerness because with those languages she can express her joys, longings.
Those languages are as useful to the poetess as cawing to crows, roaring to the lions.

Q.7. How does the poetess compare her English writings to the trees and clouds?
Ans. According to the poetess, her English writings are not incoherent and insignificant like the sound of trees and
clouds.

Q.8. “I was a child, and later they

Told me I grew…………………..”—Who is ‘I’ here? Who are ‘they’ here? Why do they consider that the referred person
has grown up?
Ans. Here ‘I’ refers to the poetess Kamala Das.
Here ‘they’ refers to the people of society.
They consider that the poetess has grown up because she has become tall and her limbs have swelled and also in one or
two places of her body, hair has sprouted. 

Q.9. “………….ignored my womanliness”—Who ignored her womanliness? How did she do that? Why did she do that?
Ans. Here in the poem “An Introduction”, the poetic persona i.e. the poetess herself wanted to ignore her womanliness.
To ignore her womanliness, she wore her brother’s dresses, cut her hair short.
She did so because she could not endure the pain of being a woman in this male-dominated society.

Q.10. “Dress in sarees, be girl

Be wife, they said…………”—Who said this and to whom? When did they say so?
Ans. The people of society said this to the poetess Kamala Das.
When to ignore her womanliness, she wore her brother’s dresses, cut her hair short, they said so.

Q.11. What did the categoriser/ society advise the poetess?

Ans. The categoriser/ society advised the poetess to dress in saree to be looked like a girl or someone else’s wife. They
also advised her to be cook, embroiderer or a quarreller. 

Q.12. What did the categoriser/ society forbid the poetess?

Ans. The categoriser/ society forbade the poetess to sit on walls, peep through window curtain and even to cry loudly.

Q.13. “Be Amy, or be Kamala. Or better

Still be Madhavikutty.”—Explain.
 Ans. The male-dominated society always underestimates the identity of woman in this society. They want that woman
should live her life like a dependent woman.

Q.14. What can a man do at midnight?

Ans. At midnight, a man can drink wine in a hotel of strange town lonely without anyone’s permission. 

Q.15. “…………………….anywhere and

Everywhere I see the one who calls himself I”—Whose confession is this? Explain.
Ans. The poetess Kamala Das says this.
Kamala Das meets so many people in her life and loves many of them. But when she asks them who they are. They
answer that they only love themselves not the poetess. Here a male ego is evident in their answers.

Q.16. “I too call myself I”—Who is ‘I’ here? Explain.

Ans. Here ‘I’ refers to the poetess Kamala Das herself.
When the poetess seeks love everywhere, she observes that no body loves her. They only love themselves and express
their identity as “I”. So, the poetess also decides to call herself ‘I’.

Q.17. What type of poem is this?

Ans. An Introduction is a confessional autobiographical poem.

Q.18. Talking about the English language the narrator says, “It is as useful to me as cawing is to crows or roaring to the
lions…” What is the literary device used in this line?
Ans. The literary device used in this line is a simile.

Q.19. What do the images of ‘rivers’ and ‘oceans’ imply?

Ans. Ans. These two images act as objective correlatives for the psychological states of men and women respectively. In
sexual desires, men are in haste like rivers while women are patient like the ocean.

Q.20. What could be implied meaning of the opening lines of the poem: “I don’t know politics but I know the names of
those in power, …beginning with Nehru.”
Ans. Ans. The opening line of the poem ‘I don’t know politics but I know the names of those in power beginning with
Nehru’ makes it obvious that she does not want to assume any political identity. She rather prefers a national identity. Mark the
following line: “I am Indian, very brown in colour, born in Malabar, here the poet uses the words which are identity markers –
‘Indian’, ‘brown in colour’ and ‘born in Malabar’.

Q.21. “In Kamala Das’ poems the poet is the poetry”. Comment maximum in 50 words.
Ans. Ans. Most of Kamala Das’s poems are autobiographical in tone. Since she shares much of her private experiences
with readers by way of her poetry, she is also called a confessional poet. She drew the subjects of her poetry mostly from her
our life, it is justified to say that in Kamala Das, the poet is the poetry.

Q.22. Write a biographical sketch of ‘Kamala Das’.

Ans. Kamala Das is her non de plume or pseudonym, and her real name is Madhavi Kutty. She was born on the 31st
March, 1934 at Punnayarkulam in the coastal region of Malabar in the state of Kerala. She received her education largely at
home and she came of a very orthodox and conservative family. Ironically her poetry is most unorthodox and almost
revolutionary as compared to the environment and atmosphere in which she grew up.
She was married at the early age of fifteen, but her marriage proved an absolute failure. It was the failure of her marriage
that compelled her to enter into extra-marital sexual relationship in search of the kind of love which her husband had failed to
give her. She believed in marriage as an emotional and spiritual bond; and her husband’s coldness in this respect led her to feel
acutely dissatisfied and discontented in life. Her poetry is generally called confessional poetry because it is a record of her
personal experiences, chiefly in the sphere of marriage and sex, though it certainly has a range and includes a few other aspects
of her life too.
Kamala Das’s poetic output is contained in four volumes of poems which include Summer in Calcutta, The Descendants,
The Old Playhouse and Other poems, and Stranger Time. She has written her autobiography to which she gave the title My
Story. Although she has distinguished herself as an Indo-Anglian poet, showing an extraordinary command over the English
language, she has also achieved eminence as a writer of short stories in her mother tongue (namely Malayalam) for which the
Kerala Sahitya Akademi honoured her with an award in 1969.
 Kamala Das has written a number of miscellaneous essays which, like her poems, have made her a controversial figure
because of the views which she has expressed in them. Some of these essays bear the following titles: I Studied All Men; What
women Expect out of Marriage and What They Get”; “Why Not More than One Husband”? and “I Have Lived Beautifully”.
Kamala Das had long been settled in the city of Bombay. She had three grown-up children. She died on 31 May 2009 in
Pune at the age of 75. In his condolence message Prime Minister Manmohan Singh paid glowing tributes to Das saying her
poems focusing on womanhood and feminism, gained her recognition as one of the most noted of modern Indian poets.

Q.23. Describe the Kamala Das as a feminist poet?

Ans. Kamala Das’s poetry is essentially the poetry of a woman. This poetry centres round Kamala Das as a woman- as a
wife, as a sexual partner for many men besides her husband, and as a mother.
Her feminine sensibility is the motivating and governing force behind her poems; and it is this sensibility which has given
to her poetry a disinctive character. Other women too have written poems showing their feminine sensibility; but Kamala Das is
on of the pioneers in this respect and one of innovators.
Kamala Das’s feminine sensibility appears most emphatically and forcefully in poems in which she has described the
temperament and disposition of her husband. The Old Playhouse is one of the poems which are permeated by her feminine
sensibility. Her feminine sensibility revolted against her husband’s manner of making love of her. Only a bold woman would thus
express her disgust with a husband who seeks only the gratification of his lust. In The Sunshine Cat Kamala Das’s feminine
sensibility compels her to describe her husband as a selfish and cowardly man who did not love her properly. Her husband, she
says, had been treating her as a prisoner with only a yellow cat (or a streak of sunshine) to keep her company.
Kamala Das’s feminine sensibility shows itself also in the two poems which she has written about the birth of a son to
her. The poem entitled Jaisurya is an expression of a woman’s most precious feelings when she is about to give birth to a child
and subsequently when she has actually given birth to the expected child. The other poem is entitled The White Flowers.
The typical feminine themes, and even the images and symbols chosen by Kamala Das, make her poems distinctly
feminine. She regards the human body, both male and female, as a rare possession, and a gift from God. Her poems are
feminine in theme and feminine in tone. She is sensitive, sensuous, and sentimental. She is intensely emotional, sometimes
emotional without restraint. For instance, her forgiving attitude in her poem entitled Composition is typical of the Indian
feminine sensibility. In the poem she says that she has reached an age at which one forgives all and that she is ready to forgive
friends and to forgive those who ruined friendship. Indeed, she has successfully blended fierce female protest and charming
feminine sentiments in her poems.
Her poetry may be regarded as the poetry of protest. Her protest is directed against the injustices and the persecution to
which women in India have always been subjected. In a poem entitled The Conflagration, she scolds the Indian women for
thinking that their only function is to lie beneath a man in order to satisfy his lust. Here she tells the women that the world
extends a lot beyond the sixfoot frames of a husband. Thus her poetry serves a social purpose and a reformative function too. In
this respect too her poetry differs from the poetry of most other women poets writing in English.

Q.24. Describe the Kamala Das as a confessional poet?

Ans. Kamala Das is pre-eminently a confessional poet and, in this respect, she may be regarded as an outstanding Indo-
Anglian poet comparable to the American Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. A confessional poet is one who takes the reader into
confidence about his or her personal and private life, and reveals those facts of her life which an ordinary person, even if that
person be a poet, would keep strictly to himself or herself because of the delicate nature of those facts. A confessional poet has
to shed all of his or her inhibitions and restrictions and restraints which the social code and the conventions of society impose
upon him or her.
Kamala Das has a lot to confess in her poetry, and she does so in the most candid manner conceivable. Indeed, her
poetry has no precedent so far as her frankness and candour in revealing herself to the readers are concerned. She has
expressed her intense desire to confess in a very graphic manner by saying that the she must ‘striptease’ her mind and that she
must exude autobiography. Her confessions pertain to her role as a wife, as a mistress to relationship with her husband, and of
her extra-marital sexual relationships. The themes of most of her poems are love or lust, and marriage. In dealing with these
themes, she hides nothing, and in dealing with this subject-matter, she makes use of language freely, without any scruples, and
even unabashedly. The orthodox reader would even accuse her of being immodest, shameless, or brazen in her use of the
language through which she lays bare the secrets of her private life. Her poetry is the poetry of introspection, of self-analysis, of
self-explanation, and of self revelation.
Kamala Das as a confessional poet has rendered some valuable service to the female sex by making them conscious of
their dormant sexual desires and their suppressed discontent with their husbands from the sexual point of view. She has thus
given a sort of incentive to women to assert themselves or at least not to suppress themselves. In these confessional poems
Kamala Das appears as a feminist, indirectly advocating the liberation of women from the conventional social restraints and
taboos.
Two of Kamala Das’s poems contain her feelings as a mother. The poem entitled Jaisurya expresses her feeling of
exultation when she is going to give birth to a child and her feeling of pride when the child comes out of the darkness of her
womb into this bright world lit by sunlight. During the child-birth, Kamala Das felt that to her at that time neither love was
important nor lust, and that the man or men, who had been betraying her by gratifying their lust and then forsaking her, did not
matter to her at all. She found child-birth to be a glorious phenomenon. The other poem about her motherhood has the title of
The White Flowers.
Confessional poetry is written by a poet under an internal pressure in order to give vent to his or her grievances or
feeling of resentment or a sense of the injustice experienced by him or her. Kamala Das’s poetry is replete with a powerful force
of catharsis and protest. This is so because of Kamala Das’s intensely confessional quality and her ultra-subjective treatment.
Kamala Das raises her confessional tarts to the level of a specific universal appeal. The struggle of her self ultimately becomes
the struggle of all mankind, and herein lies her forte because the best confessional poetry is that which rises above the subject-
matter to achieve some sort of victory over pain and defeat.
Every poem of hers, whether it be The Looking-Glass or Substitute, has come directly from experience. She has not
written propagandist poetry; she has not written any poem deliberately as a sponsor or advocate of any social cause. She went
on writing poems because of an inner urge to reveal her personal life and its secrets; and it is just an accident that her poetry
has turned out to be poetry in which the rights of women have emerged as an important theme.

Q.25. Write an essay on Kamala Das’s concept of love as revealed in her poems.
Ans. This poem first appeared in Kamala Das’s very first volume of poem which was entitled Summer in Calcutta and
which was published in 1965. This poem is wholly autobiographical and may also be labelled as a confessional poem. It is
confessional in the sense that Kamala Das here takes the reader into her confidence with confessional poems, this one shows
Kamala Das’s candour in dealing with sex, with bodily functions, and the like. At the same time it shows Kamala Das’s capacity
for self-assertion. Furthermore, we have here a poem of revolt against conventionalism and the restraints which society has
been imposing upon women. Kamala Das’s feminism or her advocacy of the rights of women clearly appears here. Thus this
poem reveals to us several aspects of Kamala Das as a poet.
Kamala Das begins this poem by telling us, that although she does not know much about politics, she knows the names of
those persons, beginning with Nehru, who have wielded political power in this country. She then describes herself as an Indian,
of a very brown complexion, born in Malabar, having the ability to speak three languages, writing actually in two languages, and
dreaming in the third. Next, she speaks sarcastically about the many relatives and friends who used to advise her not to write in
English because English was not her mother tongue. In fact, she takes such advisers to task for having given her this advise
because she claims the right to speak and write in any language she likes.
I don’t know politics but I know the names
Of those in power, and can repeat them like
Days of weak, or names of months, beginning with
Nehru, I am Indian, very brown, born in
Malabar, I speak three languages, write in
Two, dream in one. Don’t write in English, they said,
English is not your mother-tongue. Why not leave
Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousinsEvery one of you? Why not let me speak in
Any language I like? The language I speak
Becomes mine, its distortions, its queenesses
All mine, mine alone. It is half English, half
Indian, funny perhaps, but it is honest,
It is as human as I am human don’t
You see? It voices my joys, my longings, my
Hopes
Kamala Das goes on to tell us that, as she grew up form a child to an adult, her limbs swelled, and hair sprouted in one or
two parts of her body. Then she asked for love, and what she got was a husband who performed the sexual act with her in the
crudest possible manner. The husband’s way of performing this act made her feel miserable.
 Everybody wanted to give some of the other advice to her. Her advisers urged her to do some embroidery of cooking and
also to keep quarrelling with the servants. They told her to call herself Amy or Kamala or better still Mahdavikutty. They urged
her not to pretend to be a split personality suffering from a psychological discorder, and not to become a nyphomaniac or a sex-
crazy woman.
Dress in sarees, be girl
Be wife, they said. Be embroidered, be cook,
Be a quarreller with servants. Fit in. Oh,
Belong, cried the categorizser. Don’t sit
On walls or deep in through open lace-draped windows.
Be Amy, or be Kamala. Or, better
Still, be Madhavikutty. It is time to
Choose a name, a role. Don’t play pretending games.
Don’t play at schizophrenia or be a
Nympho. Don’t cry embarrassingly loud when
Jilted love.........I met a man, loved him. Call
Him not by any name, he is every man
Who wants a woman, just as I am every
Woman who seeks love. In him.....the hungry haste
Of rivers, in me..........the oceans tireless
Waiting.
Finally Kamala Das describes herself in the following words:
I am sinner
I am saint. I am the beloved and the
Betrayed. I have no joys which are not yours, no
Aches which are not yours. I too call myself I.
What she here means to say is that she is no different from other human beings, that like every other human being she is
sometimes sinful and sometimes pious, that she is sometimes loved and sometimes betrayed in love, that she has the same joys
in life which others have, and that she suffers the same disappointment which others suffer.
In this short poem, Kamala Das has given us a self-portrait and the anatomy of her mind, recounting the major incidents
of her life and the experience which had affected her most till the time of her writing this poem. The poem is remarkable for its
compression and for the compactness of its structure even though it contains a diversity of facts and circumstances. The rules of
punctuation have her been fully observed; all the lines are almost of the same length. The words used and the phraseology show
Kamala Das’s talent for choosing the right words and putting them in highly satisfactory combinations. Indeed, the poem
contains many felicities of word and phrase. Her brief picture of her husband’ rough treatment of her is an outstanding example:
He did not beat me
But my sad woman-body felt so beaten.
The weight of my breasts and womb crushed me. I shrank
Pitifully. Then.........
These lines also show Kamala Das’s uninhibited manner of speaking about sex and about her physical organs.
 AFRICAN POETRY: JAMES BERRY & WOLE SOYINKA

Q.1. Comment on the final lines of the poems.

Ans. Both the poems end at the note of positive reins where the block remains as he is.

Q.2. In what contexts are the specific terms normally used for colour.
Ans. The context is always the racial prejudice amongst the white and the black in their cultural life.

Q.3. In not more than two sentences state the point made by Soyinka.
Ans. Soyinka offers an anecdote which illustrates racial prejudice. He leads we to share the black man’s recovery. The
irony arises from the absurdity of situation.

Q.4. List the similes used in the poems.

Ans. Similes refer to verse which offers a comparison using the words ‘as’ or ‘like’ and ‘the.........of’. The students should
search for themselves.

Q.5. What kind of connotations do they introduce ?

Ans. Connotations are additional meaning carried by a word and arising from memories, perceptions, notions and
emotions we associate with it. Students should search for themselves.

Q.6. What are the implications of ‘no fear no scales no feathers no shells ?
Ans. The terms no fur no scales no feathers no shells, refers to the stupid notion of racial prejudice that prevails amongst
the white motives.

Q.7. Differentiate between the racial attitudes shown by the characters.

Ans. The small little girl and her surprised looks in Berry’s poem and the colour red as symbol of harted for the blacks in
reference to their unhealthy misunderstandings.

Q.8. What do you think African poetry focuses on ?

Ans. African poetry often focuses on the experiences of young black intellectuals who had left their homes in tropical
Africa or the Caribbean to study and immerse themselves in the cultural life of the metropolitan London. What they all too often
found was culture shock and alienation, homesickness and racial insult.

Q.9. Comment on the diction of the poems.

Ans. The diction of the two poems is a specific choice of vocabulary, tone and style of the African poets. It is formal
colloquial and academic wherein the poets use the strategy of code words for the colour of the skin depiction and at every stage
the poems reflect the poet’s context implying nervousness of the white and the clack concept.

Q.10. Pick out all words which refer to skin colour.

Ans. Location indifferent, African, breeding. Clark, rancid breath, Red pillar box, Red double. Tired, chocolate, West
African sepia, raven black, peroxide blond and giraffee, no fur no scales, no feathers no rhells, silhovettee tummy black etc.

Q.11. Contrast the language skills displayed by the two speakers.

Ans. The language of the two poems depict the points raised by the black poets. There are reference to the code words
used to depict the colour of the skin on the black man’s idea of life amongst the white’s.

Q.12. Find three adjectives to describe each poet and his poem.
Ans. Soyinka’s poetry is a clear cut assertion of his concept of the white man’s ego. He is coloured and his writings are full
of cadence and colour. James Berry’s poem illustrates a simple assertive diction and decorum in the expression and rhythm and
the reader is forced to realize the deep intricated surface meaning.

Q.13. In the above two poems colours are used as a code. How is this done in each poem?
Ans. James Berry and Wole Soyinka both the poets offer an anecdote which illustrates racial prejudice. The irony arises
from the absurdity of a situation which places a highly cultured black man at the mercy of a barely literate and foolish woman in
Soyinka’s poem. Whereas Berry stresses the tenderness of a relationship that develops between a white little girl and the black
narrator inspite of the differences of background, gender, race and age.

Q.14. Write a short introduction of Wole Soyinka's poetry.

Ans. Wole Soyinka's poetry has often been described as a powerful and serious agent to social change. His themes are
primarily concerned with the promotion of human rights and African politics. At the same time, such poems as "Telephone
Conversation" reveal a lyrical understanding of the rhythms and resonances of language balanced with humor and a deeply felt
compassion for the human condition. Appearing initially in the collection Modern Poetry from Africa (1963), the poem is a
provocative interrogation of racial prejudice, misguided civility, and the power of language to create ghettos of race and of spirit.
Negotiating elegantly between the subtleties of irony and the social criticism of sarcasm, "Telephone Conversation" always
maintains a thoughtful distance from the emotional minefields of its subject matter, transforming itself into a poem that sets
aside anger and frustration in favor of humor as a means to achieve a deeper understanding and spirit of integration and
harmony.
Out of Soyinka's large body of work, "Telephone Conversation" is one of his most well-known and most often
anthologized poems. It may be found in Perrine's Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense, edited by Thomas Arp and Greg
Johnson, published by Thomson in 2006.

Q.15. What themes and style use in African poetry.

Ans. Racial Conflict
"Telephone Conversation" is a dramatic dialogue in which a person of color responds to the racial prejudices of a woman
with whom he is trying to negotiate rental accommodations. As the poem begins, the speaker's well-educated and polished
voice, as heard on the telephone, make him acceptable to the landlady, but when he turns to the crucial moment of "self-
confession," the truth of racial conflict comes to the foreground. The landlady clearly does not want a tenant of color, yet at the
same time is trapped by the code of civil conduct that will not allow her to acknowledge what might be considered an uncivilized
racial prejudice. The cluster of assumptions articulated by the well-bred landlady gather into an almost textbook definition of
racism. She is xenophobic (exhibiting an irrational fear of foreigners, such as the African caller). She engages a vocabulary of
racial stereotypes (making hasty generalizations based on skin color or ethnic background), and her unwillingness to rent to a
man of color reinforces a policy of racial segregation or what has been called ghettoization (the practice of restricting members
of a racial or ethnic group to certain neighborhoods or areas of a city).
But even as she weaves her way through a series of deeply prejudicial questions, ranging from "HOW DARK?" to "THAT's
DARK, ISN'T IT?" the woman reveals the confused underside of racial attitudes. At no point in the poem does the speaker
internalize the sense of inferiority that is being projected upon him, nor does he react in anger to her narrow-mindedness.
Instead, he engages language in a calm and highly sophisticated manner, elevating the poem from diatribe or attack to a much
more effective end of allowing readers to see the world through the absurd lens of racial prejudice.
 Poetry and Politics
Although the school of New Criticism struggled to keep the worlds of politics and poetry at arm's length, a poem such as
"Telephone Conversation" is a reminder that poets in some parts of the world, or of certain ethnic or racial backgrounds, do not
get to choose one side of that divide or the other. Their very existence is politically charged. For a speaker like the one in
Soyinka's poem, the politics lingering behind such seemingly benign words as "dark" and "light," for instance, are partly the
pressures that threaten to fragment a community and that resist a spirit or imagination that might want to promote a sense of
wholeness or integration. Words, especially when used as labels, divide the world of Soyinka's poem in the same insidious and
powerful ways as any political agenda might.
It is this potential for divisiveness that the poem's speaker attempts to undercut in the closing lines of the poem, when
he effectively breaks down the landlady's powerful (but unstated) fixation with the word "dark" through his own list of the
various shadings that might clarify for her the abstraction of darkness. As the speaker notes, he is simultaneously a man who is
"brunette," "raven black," and, in a wonderful twist, "peroxide blonde" on the palms of his hands and soles of his feet.
STYLE
Satire
Satire is a technique that uses humor and irony to undercut misguided behaviors or to censure social and political
attitudes. From its origins in the writing and culture of the ancient Greeks, satire has remained a powerful tool of moral
judgment. The tone of satiric literature ranges from the detached irony of Soyinka's "Telephone Conversation" to fully expressed
anger and vehement contempt. Given that most satire relies heavily on balancing humor and word play with criticism, it is
appropriate that irony is one of its chief tools.

Q.16. Write a historical context of the poetry.

Ans. The history of European dominance of Africa through military and economic strategies is a long and often bloody
one. The 1880s marked the intensification of conflicts between European countries for control of the regions of Africa. Especially
prominent countries in the imperial project for the last part of the nineteenth and early twentieth century were France
(especially in West Africa), Great Britain (East and South Africa, the Gold Coast), Belgium (the Congo), Spain (the Western
Sahara), Italy (North Africa), and Germany (East Africa). The struggle for control of African territories was driven in part by the
rich natural resources of the various regions of the continent as well as by a desire to control crucial routes for overseas trade.
The political and economic tensions that circulated just below the surface of the struggle for Africa informed many of the
international crises that led to World War I. The rush to colonize the Congo, the rebellions that threatened the building of
the Suez Canal, and the seemingly perpetual battles over control of the Nile headwaters are three examples of many crises
provoking incidents that are usually recognized as precipitating the political tensions that erupted into war in 1914.
Furthermore, the cultural impact of Colonialism was immense. The varied cultures of each African locality were
subsumed by the culture of the country occupying that locality. In short, native Africans were treated as second-class citizens by
the ruling class of European colonists. Thus, it is important to note that though Soyinka's poem explores the speaker's
experiences of racism and displacement in a foreign country, that speaker would likely be subject to similar experiences in his
own birthplace as well.

Q.17. How is the racial attitude depicted in African poetry?

Ans. In Britain, prior to the 1900s, there was often tension arising over governmental and cultural attitudes towards
immigration. Originally these tensions grew from hostility towards peoples of a different culture and appearance, most notably
towards members of the growing Jewish community and later towards immigrants from Russia and  Eastern Europe. Due to the
tensions and concerns created by immigration, the British parliament decided to restrict immigration in 1905, a decision that has
repercussions even today as the country continues to maintain very strong legislative control of immigration levels.
Following World War II, Britain suffered through a slow and often debilitating return from the economic hardships of the
previous decades. The economy was able to rebuild, albeit slowly, and the signs of recovery proved a beacon to immigrants who
were seeking refuge or a better lifestyle in the United Kingdom. Under the British Nationality Act of 1948, the British
Government decided to embark on a major change in the law of nationality throughout the Commonwealth. All other
Commonwealth countries, with the exception of Ireland, had their own British subject nationality status. Since the middle of the
twentieth century, racial tensions have ebbed and flowed in Britain, driven in part by the economic climate of the day and by the
realization that the large populations of different nationalities, notably South Asians, Africans, East Asians, and Eastern
Europeans, have reconfigured Britain into a country populated predominantly by people with a foreign heritage.
Racism in Britain
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, racial policies and trade practices were a central mechanism for
controlling a disenfranchised work force comprised largely of Scottish and Irish workers. As immigrant populations expanded
through the early twentieth century, so did the discriminatory conduct, which had to take into account the presence of an
increasing number of workers of Jewish heritage as well as immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe.

Q.18. Draw a character sketch of author biography.

Ans. Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka was born in Isara, Nigeria on July 13, 1934. A member of the Yoruba tribe, he was well
schooled as a child in the stories of tribal gods and folklore, mostly because of his grandfather, who was a respected tribal elder.
Soyinka's parents represented another powerful influence in the young boy's life. His mother was a convert to Christianity and
his father was headmaster at the local British-model school. Not surprisingly, Soyinka as a youngster was very familiar with the
tensions that defined colonial Africa in the early decades of the twentieth century, as tribal culture collided, sometimes violently,
with the imperatives of British colonizers.
Soyinka took up writing very early in his life, publishing poems and short stories in the Nigerian literary magazine Black
Orpheus before leaving his homeland to attend the University of Leeds in England. He returned to Nigeria in 1960, the same year
that the country declared its independence from colonial rule. A prolific writer, Soyinka gained prominence initially for his work
as a playwright of such politically motivated works as The Swamp Dwellers (1958), The Lion and the Jewel (1959), and A Dance of
the Forests (1960).
 It was during this same prolific period that Soyinka's "Telephone Conversation" appeared in the 1963 collection Modern
Poetry from Africa. Two years later, he was arrested for allegedly forcing a radio announcer to report incorrect election results.
Soyinka was released three months later, after the international writers group PEN made public the knowledge that no evidence
had ever been produced in support of the arrest. He was arrested again two years later for his vocal opposition to the civil war
that was threatening to split the country along longstanding tribal lines. Accused of helping Biafran fighters buy military jets,
Soyinka spent two years in prison, despite the fact that he was never formally charged with any crime.
During his imprisonment, much of it spent in solitary confinement, Soyinka kept a prison diary, which was published in
1972 as The Man Died: Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka. He also wrote a trilogy of nonfiction books that trace the trajectory of his
life and family: Aké: The Years of Childhood (1980), Isara: A Voyage Around Essay (1989), and Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years: A
Memoir, 1946-1965 (1994).
Following a period of self-imposed exile, Soyinka was among a group of pro-democracy activists charged with treason for
his criticism of the military regime of General Sani Abacha. Facing a death sentence in Nigeria, he spent many years lecturing
throughout Europe and the United States, including stays at Yale and Cornell University, where he served as the Goldwin Smith
professor for African Studies and Theatre Arts from 1988 to 1991. It was during these expatriate years that Soyinka wrote  Art,
Dialogue and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture and The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian
Crisis (1996). In 1999, he turned his attention to the role of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission in The
Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness.
A poet as well as a dramatist and essayist, Soyinka has published several collections, including Idanre and Other
Poems (1967), Ogun Abibiman (1976), Mandela's Earth and Other Poems (1988), and Samarkand and Other Markets I Have
Known (2002).
Internationally recognized for both his writing and his advocacy of democracy and civil rights, Soyinka has collected an
impressive catalogue of rewards and honors, including the John Whiting Drama Prize (1966), the Nobel Prize for Literature
(1986), and the Enrico Mattei Award for Humanities (1986). Soyinka continues to travel the world speaking on the behalf of the
oppressed and the marginalized.
 JAYANTA MAHAPATRA : (I) GENESIS (II) HER HAND

Q.1. Name the first Indian English poet to have received the Sahitya Akademi Award.
Ans. Jayanta Mahapatra.

Q.2. Name the anthology in which the poem Genesis was included.
Ans. Random Descent.

Q.3. How can a poet, according to Jayant Mahapatra fulfil his responsibility as a member of civil society?
Ans. Through his sensitive portrayal of reality.

Q.4. Who represents the Mother of Mankind in Genesis?

Ans. Eve.

Q.5. What do ‘silence’ and ‘stillness’ symbolize in the poem Genesis ? insanity?
Ans. Infinite time.

Q.6. What was the poem Her Hand occasioned by?

Ans. Human being.

Q.7. What is the underlying idea of the poem Her Hand?

Ans. Gujarat Communal clashes in 2002.

Q.8. What according to Jayanta Mahapatra is the salient feature of the genesis of each and every knowledge?
Ans. Genesis of every knowledge undergoes a change in course of time.

Q.9. Write a short note about the poet ‘Jayanta Mahapatra’.

Ans. Jayanta Mahapatra (1928), a physicist, bilingual poet and essayist, holds the distinction of being the first Indian
English poet to have received the Sahitya Akademi Award (1981) for Relationship. He started writing poetry at the age of thirty–
eight, quite late in normal standard. And immediately his poetry received accolades from knowledgeable quarters. Rooted in
mythical-historical past of Orissa, and yet not unaware of the sociological changes in the contemporary society, he beautifully
recreates in the mode of his poetic expression the landscape and people around him.
Jayanta Mahapatra needs no introduction. Perhaps any discussion on Indian Poetry in English is incomplete without
reference to his poetical works. In his poetry, Mahapatra sings of the hearts and minds of many things of nature, on the basis of
his sincere love for all creation. Poverty, deprivation, social injustice, the plight of the Indian woman and prostitution recur in his
verses. He says, “All these things happen around me.” He cannot ignore them and write about the ‘better things’ of life——
about the lives of the upper classes. His belief in poetry as a social reality sets him off from other contemporary poets writing in
English. At present, he is the author of seventeen volumes of verse (in English). His poetry is the “redolent of the Orissa
scene....”He has often called himself “an Oriya poet writing in English.” The epitome of simplicity and sincerity, Jayanta
Mahapatra has been invited to Oriya seminars and gatherings. He has been engaged in translations from Oriya too. He has
translated the works of fellow poets Soubhagya Mishra and Shakti Chattopadhyay.He has become “bilingual” these days. His
Oriya works include Bali (1993), Kahibi Gotie Katha (1995), Baya Raja (1997) and Tikie Chhayee (2001). Jayanta Mahapatra’s
English short stories are different from the common run of stories in the sense that they focus not so much on the thematic
content as on the form and expression. In his stories Mahapatra probes deep into the recess of the human mind. His influence
on contemporary Oriya poets (writing in English) like Bibhu Padhi,Niranjan Mahanti, Prabhanjan Mishra and Rabindra K. Swain is
worth mentioning. Jayanta Mahapatra has also inspired (directly/ indirectly) the diasporic Indian English poets like Meena
Alexander and Shanta Acharya for their career in poetry.

Q.10. How does the poet lead the readers to a realm of myth, reality and vision in the poem ‘Genesis’?
Ans. The poem ‘Genesis’ is included in Radom Descent. The poet deftly weaves a structure around the Christian myth
relating to the ‘apple’ or the forbidden fruit in the poem ‘Genesis’.
The poet shows the difference between the nature of knowledge and the instinctive spontaneity of human being,
inherited from Adam and Eve who by eating the forbidden fruit have set themselves free. In one hand the poet shows the sense
of freedom, spontaneity and a sense of adventure and on the other hand a kind of closure that religious knowledge brings. The
poet doesn’t make any preference.
Rather he makes the ‘apple’ a symbol both of freedom, from individual point of view and perversion from religious point
of view. The poet’s intention is not to point out what is right or what is wrong. The poem is rather a site for multilayers of
meanings. The poet with deconstructive spirit sets stage ready in the text for the greater exploration of knowledge. In this
process he only points out that there is a ‘genesis’ of each and every set of knowledge which might undergo a change in course
of time. When things go on in an endless process the boundary line between sanity and insanity gets blurred. This binary
concept of sanity and insanity is something which is constructed by human beings. As the poem moves towards the second
stanza, one finds the attempt of the poet to go beyond this closed construct.
The spirit of exploration becomes intense in the fifth stanza because it is Eve, who represents the mother of mankind ,
takes the apple, the forbidden fruit. Mahapatra shows that taking the forbidden fruit is just a beginning of the Faustian
adventure. Hence, mankind itself is a delicate articulation of Eve and Adam.
‘Silence’ in the second stanza and ‘stillness’ in the sixth stanza are the symbols of infinite time. It is the time which plays a
great role in Mahapatra’s poems. Time changes everything. Time glorifies everything. Ultimately it is the time which mortalizes
or immortalizes everything. It is this sense of time which Mahapatra develops not only by himself but also inherits unconsciously
from Orissa’s rich cultural past. The construction of Orissa as well as Mahapatra is a coincidence: Orissa is constituted of its past,
present and future in the form of a vision, so also Mahapatra, his poetic mind consists of an assimilationof the past ethos of
Orissa, its present self-expression and its dreams.
In the poem ‘Genesis’, the poet leads the readers , however, to a realm of myth, reality and vision and leaves upto them
for analysis, even though it may not be final, which might be an ‘and’ without an ‘end’.
 GIRISH KARNAD : HAYAVADAN (I), HAYAVADAN (II)

Q.1. Who is the author of Hayavadana?

Ans. Girish Karnad.

Q.2. What sole object is center stage when the play Havadana begins?
Ans. A chair.

Q.3. Who sits at the table with the musicians stage right at the start of Hayavadana?
Ans. Bhagavata.

Q.4. What mask is placed on the chair in the opening scene of Act I in Hayavadana?
Ans. Ganesha.

Q.5. What does the Bhagavata say Ganesha is lord and master of in Act I?
Ans. Success and Perfection.

Q.6. In what city does the Bhagavata begin his story?

Ans. Dharmapura.

Q.7. What is the name of the hero of the story introduced in Act I who is the son of Brahmin Vidyasagara?
Ans. Devadatta.

Q.8. Why do Devadatta and Kapila kill each other?

Ans. The friends kill each other because they are both in love with the same woman and, more importantly, because they
are themselves suffering from incompleteness. They have each other's heads on their own bodies, but their bodies have now
returned to their original condition. Thus, Kapila is now muscular and physically strong again, but he is not as cerebral as
Devadatta, who is newly soft and pudgy. They realize that they will forever be feuding over Padmini, forever fighting with "their"
body's deep memory, forever warring against fragmentation.

Q.9. What might the play suggest about marriage?

Ans. There is a lot going on in Hayavadana on the philosophical and moral levels, but there is still a core tale here about
marriage and its concomitant disappointments. Padmini marries Devadatta but lusts after his best friend; she is discontented
with her husband's brain and lack of brawn, and finds what she thinks she wants in Kapila. However, even when she
miraculously ends up with what she thinks she wants, she is unhappy. Devadatta is not enough of Kapila, and he begins to lose
even that small vestige. She is left wanting the "real" Kapila, but even at the end of the poem she is wondering why the three of
them cannot just be together even though it defies all social norms.
Marriage, then, is a contract that is not necessarily fulfilling. Aparna Bhargava Dharwadker writes that the play shows
how "conjugal passion dissipates invariably into disappointment and creates the desire for other unions, however hard the
individual male self may try to preserve its ideal nature. Women do not have the power to prevent this downward slide, but they
do have agency in the drama of discontent."

Q.10. Did Padmini mix the heads on purpose?

Ans. The text says simply, "Eagerly, Padmini puts the heads—that is, the masks, back. But in her excitement she mixes
them up" and that she has her "eyes shut tightly," at least when she does  namasakra and walks away with her back to the
goddess. She seems full of consternation when she and the men realize what's happened, and claims she didn't know she was
mixing them up. On the one hand, her surprise seems legitimate. It is dark, it is a tense and terrifying and portentous moment
for her, and she is flustered. On the other hand, this is what she wanted deep down, and Kali knew it and did not stop her. It
may have been unconscious, but it does seem possible, maybe even probable, that she did this to some degree on purpose.

Q.11. What might the play convey about India's independence from Britain?
 Ans. On the surface, the play doesn't look like it has much to say on this subject. It seems too fanciful, too stylized, too
unattached to a particular time and place. However, as Ngozi Udengwu suggests, it is a metaphor for the fracturing of Indian
identity after British colonial rule. There are "situations of mind/body dichotomy within an individual as well as within a social
group," and intimations of India's problems coming out of colonial rule, which affected most aspects of Indian life. So while
Indians "have won independence from the colonialists, they have discovered that their cultural identity has been fractured."
Devadatta and Kapila struggle with the same fragmentation, as well as Hayavadana, and only the child who literally and
figuratively comes from all the characters and all the places (the woods, the city, the "real" world of the actors, the religious
milieu, etc.) offers a glimpse of how India can achieve unity.

Q.12. What is the purpose of Hayavadana in the play?

Ans. Hayavadana's main purpose in the play is to exemplify the importance of being complete, and to demonstrate
incompleteness. From his entry onstage, all he wants is to be a complete man, but he has the head of a horse, and feels the
want of unity. Although Kali makes him complete, she does not care enough to pay attention to what it is that he wants and so
she makes him completely a horse—almost. He still speaks with the voice of a man, which prevents him from feeling totally
complete. It is not until he is able to "neigh" like a horse that he achieves full completeness, and also happiness.
This is in stark contrast to the gods, who are always complete even when visually they are the very opposite. Ganesha,
the god who oversees and represents success and perfection, is a boy with the head of an elephant. This would not seem to be
either complete or successful, and certainly not perfect, but it is a lesson to the human characters that gods are perfect in
whatever form, whilst humans are rarely complete.

Q.13. What is power politics in the play?

Ans. The heroine of the play searches for her own satisfaction playing the game of sexual politic sex changing the heads
of the two men and enjoying both the personalities and becoming the cause of their deaths at the end.
At another level the play deals with caste- hierarchy. Devdatta the son of a learned Brahmin and Padmini the daughter of
a wealthy man get married. Kapila’s friendship with Devdatta is granted approval by the society but marital relationship between
their castes is impossible. When their heads an exchanged, Padmini goes with Devdatta’s head as the “ scared text” gives
importance of the haed as the most important organ. Kapila is well aware of this upperclass shrewdness and is not satisfied.
Finally they go to a Rishi who declares:
‘As the heavenly Kapila-Vriksha is supreme among the trees, so is the head among human limbs. Therefore the man with
Devdatta’s head is indeed Devdatta and he is the right ful husband of Padmini”.
Padmini asks Bhagwata to hand over the child after five years to his grandfather for prosperous life. Thus the class and
caste problems have been raised by Karnard through the play.

Q.14. What is the source of the play .Hayavadan’.

Ans. Hayavadan is an “urban folk” play and it joins the conventions of YakShagna folk performance (stock characters,
music, dance, mask, talking dolls etc.) with a core narrative that poses philosophical riddles about the nature of identity and
reality. The idea of “the heads that got switched” came from Katha Saritasagra.
Thomas Mann’s philosophical elaboration of this story in The Transport Heads is fully developed parable about
conjugality, proscribed desire and that can be resolved only by death. The story of Devdatta, Kapila and Padmini in Karnard’s
Hayavadan follows elements of characterization and the order of events in Mann’s novella closely enough to be considered, in
some respects a ‘de- orientalized’ contemporary Indian theatrical version of it.
Karnard tackles the problem of incongruity, the disjunction between head and body. The problem is temporarily solved
when their heads are exchanged but soon the bodies revert to their original qualities and the problem of dualism returns and
the human condition appears as essentially one of disunity and imperfection culminating in death. Thus the theme is to reach
perfection, completeness which when not realized ends in tragedy.

Q.15. How does Girish Karnard deal with the social problems in the play ‘Hayavadan’?
Ans. The most remarkable problem dealt with is of marriage, extra-marital relationship and search for identity in the
world of sensuous relationships. The intimale friendship of Devdatta and Kapila becomes tense when Padmini marries Devdatta
but feels attracted towards Kapila as well .Jyoti Rane opines:
“ The picture that emerges through Karnard’s plays in that compability between man and women is well high impossible .
Since most of Karnard’s plays have origin in Indian myths we encounter situations and Indian cultural norms in his plays. In India,
the bride and groom rarely meet before marriage and elders play an active and decisive role in fixing marriage. In Hayvadan
Kapila goes to Padmini’s house with a marriage proposal for Devdatta. At the gate he is stopped and questioned by Padmini.
However, he seeks some elder of the house, preferably Padmini father. He also realizes that the marriage between Padmini and
Devdatta will do disaster.
Karnard brings out the evil of “sati pratha”. It could have brought fame to the family in the traditional manner, but the
playwright projects the scene as a mockery. After instructing Bhagwata that her son should be brought up as a son of Kapila for
five years and then he handed over to great sire Vidyasagar, Devdatta’s father Padmini pronounces.
“Make me a large funeral pyre. We are three”. Then she prays to goddess Kali:
“You must have your joke even now. Other women can die praying that they should get the same husband in all lives to
come. You haven’t left me even that little consolation”.
Thus the playwright hits at the social hypocracy. He wants to convey that more or less these futile exercises have no
sense or logic.

Q.16. Comment on the merits of the play ‘Hayavadan’ which make it a great success.
Ans. Hayavadan involves the author’s self-conscious manipulation of the structure of folk performance. While the action
of folk theatre moves between a frame and the inner play, in Hayavadan there are two outer frames, both belonging to the
historical present, which intersect unpredictably with each other and with the action of the inner play. The first frame consists of
Bhagavata, the female chorus, and the two male actors who are not merely characters in a folk performance but perform in a
provincial troupe preparing to enact the story of Padmini and her two husbands for a contemporary audience. Just as the action
of the inner play is about to begin, the performance is disrupted by the appearance of Hayavadan, the talking horse who wants a
solution to his own predicament. His disruption forces the characters of folk drama to revert to their ‘real’ persona as actors,
and the performance of Padmini’s story begins only after the Bhagavata has persuaded Hayavadan to leave and seek divine
intervention for the solution of his problem. Similarly, the end of Padmini’s story is not the end of the play: the two framing
narratives continue until Hayavadan, who now reappears as a horse with a human voice, has lost-as he wants to-this last human
attribute. The conventional folk structure of a play-within-a-play is therefore yoked in Hayavadn to a reflexive rehearsal format,
whose function is to subject the defining convections of folk performance to ironic scrutiny.
Beyond its philosophical reflection on identity and its self-reflexive structure, Hayavdan also resonates in present
dramatic and cultural contexts because it gives primacy to women in the psychosexual relations of marriage, and creates a space
for the expression, even the fulfillment, of amoral female desire within the constraints of patriarchy. In this respect, the genre of
‘urban folk’ theatre to which both Hayavadan and Naga-Mandala belong offers a radical contrast to the representation of
women in the ‘urban realist’ drama of such playwrights as Mohan Rakesh, Vijay Tendulkar, the early Badal Sircar, Mahesh
Elkunchwar,Jayawant Dalvi, and Mahesh Dattani. The essential basis of difference here is not he gender of the author, which
continues to be exclusively male (Karnad, Chandrashekhar Kambar, Tanvir, K.N. Panikkar, Ratan Thiyam), but the qualitatively
different attitudes to gender that emerge within the plays when male authors move out of the urban social-realist mode into the
anti-modern, anti-realistic, charismatic realm of folk culture. Plays such as Hayavadan and Naga-Mandala ( as well as Kambar’s
Jokumaraswami and Tanvir’s Charandas Chor) are important for the discourse of gender because they embody several principles
largely absent in realist drama. The ideology of urban folk drama thus manifests itself most conspicuously in the treatment of
femininity, sexuality, desire, and power: although the challenge to patriarchy is not absolute, women in folk drama find the
means of exercising an ambivalent freedom within its constraints, unlike their urban counterparts in such plays as Rakesh’s Adhe
Adhure or Vijay Tendulkar’s Shantata! Court Chalu Ahe.

Q.17. Write the critical comments on the play written by Girish Karnard.
Ans. Professor Aparna Bhargava Dharwadker, University of Wisconsin-Madison comments: Girish Karnard belongs to the
formative generation of Indian playwrights who come to maternity generation in the two decades following independence, and
collectively reshaped Indian theatre as a major national institution in the latter twentieth century .
Karnard is typical among contemporary playwrights in being the principal translator of his own plays and an important
commentator on the nature and contexts of his drama.
The majority of his plays employ the narratives of myth history and folk lore to evoke an ancient or pre modern world
that resonates in contemporary contexts because of his uncanny ability to remake the past in the image of the present.
 Lakshmi Chandrashekhar opines:
Karnand has been accused of escaping into the past, but the use of mythology in the most modern Literature validates
individual experience and universalizes it. And I think Kranand has been able to do that”
  India Today:
Had rightly comments “playwright, poet, critic, translator and cultural administrator all rolled into one- Karnad is a
renaissance man. Karnnad’s celebrity is based on decades of prolific and combines a twelfth-century folk tale about ‘transport
heads’ with indigenous performance traditions to offer a path-breaking model force quintessentially “Indian” theatre in post
colonial times.
 The Hindu :
Hayavdan is full of humour, sly comments on politics, and comic hyperbole….a richly layered play, interspersed [with]
typical Indian elements like the folk tale… A notable achievement.
 The Tribune:
There have been a galaxy of literatures in Indian languages whose works can be classified as the world’s best and
translated not only in English but other language. Girish Karnad is one of them.
 Sunday Times:
‘A multi-faceted personality, a man with many identities-Karnad has been described in so many ways, Tughlaq is…. An
irreverent look at men who ruled the destiny of people… offer[ing] paralles with contemporary times- India after Nehru.
Hayavadan… floored theatre buffs in Germany, England, Australia and America. Nagamandala…. Has not stopped being
performed on stage round the world since it appeared in 1988’?

Q.18. Critically comment on the relevance of the title ‘Hayavadan’.

Ans. Girish Karnad is a gifted writer, actor and director of films. He is the well-known author of the Kannada plays
entitled Tughlaq and Yayati. Now he has translated into English his own work Hayavadana. It is mainly based on the
famous Katha Sarit Sagara tale that Thomas Mann made use of, for his short but great novel  The Transposed Heads. In all his
three plays-whether the theme is historical or mythical or legendary- Karnad’s approach is modern. He wonderfully brings into
play the conventions and motifs of folk-art like masks and curtains in order to project a world of intensities, uncertainties and
unpredictable denouements.
Devadatta and Kapila are close friends. The former is an intellectual companion, while the latter is of a sensual type.
Devedatta is already married to a lady named Padmini. But later Kapila falls in love with her. The two friends, so as to get over
the situation, decide to kill themselves. They perform the act. Padmini transposes the heads, while rejoining the severed limbs. It
naturally results in confusion of identities and several complications arise from it. It drives them to fight a duel and they kill
themselves again. Then Padmini ascends their funeral pyre and performs Sati (Dying along with the husband). It is a highly
tantalizing story, even without the psychological dimension and Karnad very ably makes the most of it.
Hayavadana is one of Karnad’s most remarkable works. The plot of Hayavadana comes from ‘Kantha Sarit Sagara‘ an
ancient compilation of stories in Sanskrit. The central event in the play- the story of Devadatta and Kapila is based on the tale
from the “Betal Panchabinsati.” But he has borrowed it through Thomas Mann’s retelling of the story in ‘The Transposed Heads.’
The Sanskrit tale told by a ghost to an adventurous king gains a further mock-heroic dimension in Mann’s version. The
original story poses a moral problem, whereas Mann uses it to ridicule the mechanical notion of life which differentiates
between body and soul. He ridicules the philosophy which holds the head superior to the body.
The human body, Mann argues is a device for the completion of human destiny. Even the transposition of heads did not
literate the protagonists from the physiological limits imposed by nature. Karnad’s poses a different problem, that of human
identity in world of tangled relationships. When the play opens, Devadatta and Kapila are the closer of friend’s one mind, one
heart as Bhagavata describes them. Devadatta is a man of intellect, Kapila a man of the body. Their relations get complicated
when Devadatta marries Padmini.
Kapila falls in love with Padmini and she too starts drifting towards him. The friends kill themselves in a scene, hilariously
comic, but at the same time, full of dramatic connotations Padmini transposes their heads, giving Devadatta Kapila’s body and
Kapila Devadatta’s. As a result Padmini gets the desired ‘Man.’ Kali understood each individuals moral fibre and was indifferent
than the usual stereotypical portrayal of God and Goddesses.
The result is a confusion of identities which reveals the ambiguous nature of human personality. Initially
Devadattaactually the head of Devadatta on kapila’s body-behaves differently from what he was before. But slowly he changes
to his former self. So does Kapila, faster than Devadatta. But there is a difference. Devadatta stops reading texts, does not write
poetry, while Kapila is haunted by the memories in Devadatta’s body.
Padmini, after the exchange of heads, had felt that she had the best of both the man, gets slowly disappointed of the
three, only she has the capacity for complete experience. She understands, but cannot control the circumstances in which she is
placed. Her situation is beautifully summed up by the image of river and the scare-crow in the choric songs.
 The sword fight that leaves both the friends dead brings to baffling story to end. The death of three protagonists was not
portrayed tragically… the death only to emphasise the logic behind absurdity of the situation.

Q.19. Karnad analyzes the inner psychology of the characters in the play. Discuss.
Ans. 1. Bhagwata
He is the main link character, ‘sutradhar’ who gives his comments on the incidents, behaviour of the characters and is
present from the very first scene to the last scene of the play. He is narrator-commentator.
2. Hayavadan
The play is named after him. He is a symbolic, mythological character and the whole story rotates round his change-his
search for identity and completeness.
3. Devdatta
He is one of the heroes of the story. He is very handsome, delicate, educated and gets married to Padmini, the heroine.
He is son of a great scholar. He is very jealous and possessive.
4. Kapila
He is the other hero of the story, a very imitate friend of Devdatta, the son of an-iron smith, very strong, tough and
devoted to Devdatta and can sacrifice anything for his friend.
5. Padmini
She is the heroine who becomes the cause of the tragedy as she is divided into two personalities. She weds Devdatta for
his status, academics and is attracted towards Kapila for manliness etc. Finally she commits Sati-not for one man but for two in
an ironic manner.
6. Actor I +II –
Are the minor characters but they link the story in between wherever necessary. Doll I +II – are the talking two dolls
bought by Devdatta and they comment and reveal the inner life of Padmini and Devadtta to the readers.
7. Child
He is the son of Padmini, Devdatta and Kapila and appears at the end of the play. He is a very serious child, only
Hayavadan makes him laugh as the child has never seen a horse laughing like a human being. Finally the child is taken to his
grandfather by the same while stallion.

Q.20. Write about the author life and personality.

Ans. Life and Personality
Born on May 19, 1938, in Matheran, a town near Bombay, Girish Karnad spent his childhood in a small village called ‘Sirsi’
in Karnatka. His father named Shri Raghunath was a doctor. His mother Kasibai was a kind lady. He had first hand experience of
the indigenous folk theatre. This maiden experience with the Natak companies in the childhood had a lasting impression on his
mind. Karnad recollects his deep impression in these words: “It may have something to do with the fact that in the small town of
Siris, where I grew up, strolling groups of players called Natak mandalis or Natak companies would come, set up a stage, present
a few plays over a couple of months and move on. My parents were addicted to these plays. That was in the late 1940s. By the
early 1950s, films had more or less finished off this kind of theatre, though some mandalis still survive in North Karnataka in a
very degenerate state. But in those days they were good or at least I was young and thought so. I loved going to see them and
the magic has stayed with me.”
Like Shakespeare, Girish Karnad carried deep impressions of childhood experiences in his mind. His tender mind and
heart accumulated the impressions of the indigenous plays staged before his eyes. Karnad was influenced by both the traditions-
western and native. It was the post-independence period, when he happened to study the western authors. He studied Aristole,
Shakespeare, and John Dryden etc. He was also attracted towards Dryden’s critical work, Essay on Dramatic Poesy.
Comparative study of the western and the eastern literatures helped him understand that though there was immense
possibilities of learning from the west, yet Indian/Native traditions were more valuable and acceptable.
Meanwhile,Girish Karnad completed his graduation from Karnataka University, Dharwad, in 1958 and shifted to Bombay
for further studies. Once again, he came in touch with the theatre in Mumbai. The first play he witnessed in Mumbai was
Strinbery’s, Miss Juli, directed by Ebrahim Alkazi. It was one of Alkazi’s less successful performances. But he was deeply moved
due to the power of violence in the play. He was equally attracted by the way lights faded in and out on the stage.
As he was a bright student, he obtained the prestigious Rhodes scholarship and reached England to obtain his post-
graduation degree. While studying at Magdalene College, Oxford-Karnad experienced and realized his love for art and culture.
Having returned to India, he joined Oxford University Press, Madras in 1963.
 Due to his assignment, he came in contact with various kinds of literature in India and abroad. These influenced his
creative talent. Gradually he got name and fame. As a result of this, he was appointed Director of the film and television
Institute of India, Pune, 1974. In 1987, he visited USA as Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at the department of South Asian
Languages and civilizations-university of Chicago. He was appointed Chairman of the Sangeet Natak Akadmi (National Academy
of Performing Arts), New Delhi, from 1988 to 1933. In 1994 Karnad was honoured with Doctor of Letters Degree by Karnataka
university for his contribution to art and theatre. This is followed by Girish Karnad’s adornment of two prestigious awards ,
Padmshri in 1974 and Padmbhusan in 1992 by the President of India. A feather in his cap was added when he achieved
prestigious Jnanpith Award in 1999. He resides in Bangalore with his medico wife and two children, a daughter, and a son.

Q.21. What kind of literary background used by Girish Karnad in his play?
Ans. Being one of the leading Indian playwrights of our time, Karnad has written ten plays; out of which, he has
translated five into English. Almost all the plays are rooted in Indian mythology and history. As a modern dramatist his plays
report a strong and un-mistaken western philosophical sensibility.
Girish Karnad has a deep study of existentialism through the literary works of Sartre and Camus. The playwright projects
existentialist crisis of modern men. It is conveyed through strong individual who seemed to be caught in intense psychological
and philosophical conflicts. Lakshmi Chandrasekhar ‘s opines:
“Karnad has been accused of escaping into the past, but the use of mythology in most modern literature validates
individual experience and universalizes it. And I think Karnad has been able to do that” Karnad started writing plays accidentally.
Once he was about to go to England. He was reading The Mahabharata, one of the great epics of ancient Indian civilization. He
came across the story of Yayati and was inspired to write a play. All of a sudden he found in himself a playwright. He wrote his
play is Kannad. The original root of the play Yayati was borrowed from the ancient Indian Mythology.
The theme of the play has a native essence, but the form and structure are decorated in the western style.
This accidental incidence of writing plays motivated him to be a playwright. Actually, Karnad had fancy to be a poet and
not a playwright. During his teenage, he composed poetry and trained himself to be a poet, keeping in mind the great Indian
poets like Tagore and Sir Aurbindo. Girish Karnad admits, that “The greatest ambition of his life was to be a poet”. When he
entered college, he thought of writing in English and become a novelist with his inner ambition to become globally famous. But
ultimately he turned out to be playwright. Karand’s opinion about a playwright is:
“The subject that interests most writers is of course is themselves and it is easy subject to talk about. But you know it is
always easier if you are a poet or a novelist because you are used to talking in your voice. You spend your whole life talking as a
writer directly to the audience. The problem in being a playwright is that everything that you write is for someone else to say”.
The playwright is divided into various characters. He writes dialogues for them. A kind of conflict has to be created to
make the play interesting. In the beginning of his career, Karnad could see that very little attention was paid to plays in India.
There is no doubt that the Natak Companies in India had made a major contribution to the theatrical activities. The two
questions emerged before Girish Karnad as a playwright;
1. Where does the playwright look for the source of his plays?
2. Why does one write plays at all?
Karnard always kept these questions in his mind before beginning his career as a playwright and was able to contribute
wonderful creations to the world. His source for dramas had been history and mythology with the target to bring the truth of
society under some guise, as bitter truth cannot be appreciated in literary field- besides literature becomes boring or a subject of
social science.

Q.22. Descrive about the major works of Girish Karnad.

Ans.
 Yayati
We have already noted that Girish Karnad began his career as a playwright accidentally. His first play Yayati came in
1961. It is an existential drama conceived with the theme of responsibility. The theme is taken from The Mahabharata. It is the
story of Yayti, the king and Puru his son. The playwright was honoured with Mysore State Award for its literary height and the
matical treatment.
 Tughlaq
The next play, Tughlaq (1964), was a historical play. “Mr. Kurtakuti suggested him that Indian history has not been
handled by any Indian writer as it had been done by Shakespeare and Bretch.” Both the playwrights’ utilized historical themes
and characters giving them touch of genius.
 The play is a remarkable example of very rich and complex symbolism. It has subtle weaving of different motifs. Tughlaq
also reflects the political mood of disillusionment. In present times, it can be compared to the period following the Nehru era in
India.
The play Tughlaq projects the transformation of the character of the medieval ruler Mohammad bin- Tughlaq. It is
journey of a sensitive and intelligent ruler who really intends to do the welfare for his people. He is misunderstood and
maligned, and suffers a sense of self-alienation. He is forced to give up his earlier idealism and end up as a tyrant-ruler.
Unlike Indian mythology, Karnad discovered the immense possibilities of themes of plays in history too. He has also
depicted the role of religion and politics in the play. It is a worth enjoying work of art.
 Hayavadan
Hayavadan, a mythological play published in 1971 deals with many modern problems. The main plot of Hayavadan is
taken from ‘Kathasaritsagara’ and Thomas Mann’s retelling of the story in The Transposed Heads. But presented it in folk-
theatre style full of stock-character masks, chorus etc.
Karnad won the Kamaladevi Award of the Bharatiya Natya Sangh in 1972 for the play ‘Hayavadan’.Bali (sacrifice) The next
play Bali (sacrifice) appeared in 1985 which was first staged at the Prithvi Theatre, Bombay. Satyadev Dubey directed the play.
Apparently it seems the story of a royal family and the conflict of violence and non-violence. But the intended objective of the
playwright is different. Girish Karnad opens up ideological conflicts of cruelty and power politics in the simple plot of the play.
The conflict is between Jain ideologies and Shaktapati, the Kali worshippers.
The play has a great literary value. The great artists like Nassrudin Shah and Ratna Pathak played the leading roles in this
play. This is a different kind of play in which Girish Karnad intends to reach out its complex structure from the physical action to
the metaphysical realm of intention. The playwright with a keen interest composed the play. He revised his original draft twenty
times before it was performed on the stage.
 Naga-Mandala
Naga-Mandala is another interesting play written by Girish Karnad in 1988. The play possesses multiple modern
perspectives, based on two oral tales from Karnataka. In the introductory note to the play, the playwright comments:”
“Naga-Mandala is based on two oral tales from Karnataka which I first heard several years ago from professor
A.K.Ramanujan. It is only least of the reasons for dedicating this play to him. I wrote Nagamandala during the year I spent at the
university of Chicago as visiting professor and Fulbright scholar in residence.” The source of the play is based on the oral tales.
They are assimilated and transformed into a beautiful literary art. Generally these tales are narrated by women—normally the
older women in the family at the time when children are being fed in the evening in the kitchen or being put to bed. The elder
women members also remain present at that time. These tales are usually meant for the children but they also serve deeper
meanings among the women of the family. It is a story of life’s fidelity and fantasy with reality.
 Tale-Danda
In 1990 came Tale-Danda, a play exposing caste-system in India. The play depicts the twelfth century communal struggle
in the city of Kalyana in north Karnataka. The play has its source from the historical incident that took place in twelfth century in
Indian history. The movement of sharanas is recorded as a past history but it has modern relevance too.
In ‘Tale-Danda’ Karnad projects power-politics of social and political level through religion. Tha dramatist interrogates
about the social, secular and democratic values of the spectators. He also questions on the caste-system and religious
fundamental notions. He also enforces us to brood over “History repeats in new form”. Tale-Danda fetched for the Karnad the
“Writer of The Year” award instituted by Granthaloka, in 1990,followed by Karnataka Nataka Academy for the best play of 1990.
In addition to that, he received the Karnataka Nataka Shaitya Academy Award for the play in 1993 and the Sahitya
Academy (National Academy of the letters) Award in 1994.
 The Fire and the Rain
The Fire and the Rain takes us into the world of the Mahabharata age. The playwright treats the subject of the play in a
chain of murder, revenge, and jealousy. This series of crimes is committed in the learned families of Raibhaya and Bharadwaja.
Nittilai, an inhabitant of forest, tries to break the chain of crime. Girish Karnad makes an effort to focus on the mystery of evils
hidden within human beings. The playwright does not bother about external evils but the real ones are within human beings.
As we know that the human mind is very much complex, it is very difficult to fathom it. The playwright depicts the evil
present in the human heart. Karnad exposes the nature of evils in this play. The myth is depicted with new dimensions, and
touches the problem of our times.
 The Dreams of Tipu Sultan
The latest play of Girish Karnad is The Dreams of Tipu Sultan dealing with the world of dreams secretly recorded by one
of India’s most famous warrior-Tipu Sultan.
 Like Tughlaq, Tipu Sultan has been a very fascinating character in Indian history. He has dominated Indian and British
imagination for the last two centuries. For the first time the playwright has included British characters with Indian characters in
this play. The play represents cultural and political interaction. The Dreams of Tipu Sultan is remarkable contribution to Indian
English drama.

Q.23. What themes are used by the poet in “Hayavadana.”

Ans. Hybridity
One of the main themes of the play is that of creatures that are hybrids of different things; the title
character, Hayavadana, is a hybrid of a man and a horse, and even Kapila and Devadatta end up being hybrids of each other. At
the start of the play, being a hybrid is something godly and special; the opening prayer is to Ganesha, a god who is a boy with
the head of an elephant. He is the lord and master of perfection which is paradoxical given his appearance. However, as the play
continues, the hybrid characters seem less and less perfect to themselves and all ultimately feel that they are incomplete
because they are not fully one creature or another.
 Incompleteness
The theme of being incomplete is personified by all of the characters. Devadatta and Kapila are brain and brawn
respectively, but neither feels truly complete. This is mirrored by Padmini; she chooses to take Devadatta as her husband but she
still finds herself longing for the physicality of Kapila. She feels incomplete because she has been abandoned twice by the same
two men, which emphasizes her own incompleteness to her.
Devadatta and Kapila feel a sense of incompletenes after they have each other's bodies joined to their own heads. At first
it seems that Devadatta gets the best deal because he gets to keep his own sharp mind, and also has the muscular physique of
Kapila. Kapila has his own strength of mind but has Devadatta's soft, unathletic body. He begins to feel incomplete as soon as the
switch has occurred; however, when both men start to find that their bodies are returning to their prior state, they still both feel
incomplete because they realize that they are living half existences.
The most obvious example of incompleteness is Hayavadana, who wants nothing more than to be made complete. He
wants to be made fully a man but Kali makes him fully a horse instead. Even when she does so he feels incomplete because he
still has the voice of a man. When he is able to change this and achieve the "neigh" of a horse instead he finally feels that he is
complete.
 Conflict between body and mind
The play engages with the question of which is more powerful, the body or the mind. By all accounts it is the mind, as
shown in Hayavadana, Devadatta, and Kapila's experiences, but Karnad also suggests the body has more power than one might
initially assume. The body has memory, memory that stubbornly resists the mind's desire to sublimate it. The body's physical
engagement with the world leaves a residue within, and when considering this as well as the putative supremacy of the mind,
one must consider the two parts as near equals and both important to the formation of a complete identity.
 Women's Subversiveness
Padmini might be a wife and mother, as traditional Indian society would dictate, but she is not complacent, quiet, or
docile. She is a desiring, sensual women who pursues what—or who—she wants. She is openly selfish and independent-minded,
something that the goddess Kali admires. Karnad allows her subversiveness to come through both her own words and those of
the Female Chorus, which articulates her discontent with her conjugal life. Her sharp tongue and subtle subversiveness make her
much more than a subaltern; rather, she is the closest to "complete" of all the characters.
 City vs. Nature
Devadatta represents the city, a place dedicated to commerce and to the pursuits of the mind, not the body. The woods
are associated woth Kapila in that they are a place where the physical body feels most at home, most complete. Nature is
not opposed to the intellect, but it values strength, perseverance, and resilience; there the currency is not money but physical
power. Padmini is a woman of the city but increasingly drawn to the woods, which represents her desire for both Devadatta and
Kapila. Her son is naturally of both places, though, being raised in one and then the other, which suggests his identity will be
more complete.
 Theatre and its conventions
Karnad plays with the different levels of reality and drama throughout the piece. Bhagavata asks Ganesha for a blessing
and speaks of the play's beginning, which is then interrupted by an Actor and Hayavadana. This  is part of the play, though we are
supposed to think it is not, and following it Bhagavata segues into a completely different story. A chorus and Bhagavata
comment on the action, the latter speaking to and about the audience occasionally. And at the end, the two seemingly disparate
plots suddenly converge, all done in a way to make the audience reflect on the didactic nature of theatre, the
fusion and fragmentation of drama and real life, and the nature of storytelling.
 Indian Identity
Karnad alludes to post-colonial India's identity problems through his characters, especially Hayavadana. After British rule,
Indians were left with the vestiges of colonial politics, education, social structures, and more, which existed alongside and in
tension with traditional Indian ones. Indians wrestled with their varying degrees of participation within the colonial system, and
now in its vacuum had to come to terms with their fractured identity. By having Hayavadana try—and fail—to find completeness
in purely Indian patriotic behavior, Karnad suggests how difficult this period is for his nation.