The Lunatic: Laxmi Prasad Devkota -

Summary and Critical Analysis

In this autobiographical poem The Lunatic, Devkota wears the persona of a
lunatic as if it were a mask. Each stanza brings out a different aspect of the
speaker’s character, confidence, abnormality, imagination, sensitivity, rebellion,
aggression, anger and awful majesty.

Laxmi Prasad Devkota

Above all, this poem is at once a very modern expression of the deepest personal
feelings of the poet and a surgical exposure of the hollowness of the so called
intellectual aspirants of the time. The persona in the second stanza shows
abnormal behavior. He does what a normal person can’t do. For example, he can
see sound and hear the sight and taste the sweet smell. He can touch those
things, the existence of which the people in the world deny. He is so imaginative
that he can see a flower on the stone and the enchantress of the heaven smiling
into him. He understands the language of the birds and talks to them.

The third stanza shows how sensitive and tender-hearted he is. He contrasts his
situation with the addresses. The addressee is the one who uses his brains and
senses to find out the harsh reality. But the speaker uses his sixth sense and
finds out what the heart thinks to be correct. Dreams and imagination are
meaningful to him.

The fourth stanza tells how the speaker’s hypersensitivity led people to have a
wrong impression of him. When he watched the mystery of the heaven in cold
winter night, when he was sad at the death of people and the old age of a fair
lady, people called him mad. When he would be happy hearing the cuckoo’s song
and uncomfortable by the dead silence, they would think that he had gone mad.
They would punish him saying that he should be admitted to a mental hospital.
Even his friends would not regard him as a normal person.

In the fifth stanza, the persona has upset the accepted values. He does not
appreciate those things which the world praises highly. What the aristocrats
drink is the blood of the poor people. Due to lack of affection, prostitutes are no
better than dead bodies. Because of high ambition, the king and the emperor are
no better than the poor. The common men are far better than the highly learned
me. The best place in the world is the worse place for the speaker. So the world
calls him mentally deranged. In the sixth stanza, the speaker revolts against the
society which is being led by blind leaders. He thinks that penances have run
away from the society and they hate humanity. He rather sympathizes the weak
people.

Finally, the speaker behaves like a rebel. He criticizes the flatterers because
they have deprived people of their rights and they have underlined the false
actions. The poor people accept their falsity as good action, and then the
speaker gets so angry because he thinks these man-haters must be punished.
The persona in this poem attacks all the ugliness and wants to bring a complete
change in the society.

The poet has used the contrast between the world of the sane man and that of
the lunatic. The lunatic perceives what the sane man can’t. For example, the
mad man visualizes sound, hear the visible, tastes fragrance, but the normal man
hears sound, visualizes the visible, smells fragrance and tastes the delicious
food. The lunatic can touch the thing which an ordinary person can’t likewise; he
can see a flower in the stone and can talk with the bird. He feels that a heavenly
beauty is smiling to him. Similarly, the mad man uses his sixth sense whereas
the normal person uses only five senses. The worldly people use brains, but he
uses heart. By using the contrast the poet brings out the irony of the poem. The
poet wants to say that the worldly people are cold and cruel and they look at the
world from their own convention. Although insane, the speaker is sympathetic
and his hearing melts when he sees pathetic sights.

The phrase “the iconoclast of ugliness” in the poem refers to the world led by the
blind people. The shameless leaders are breaking the backbones of human
rights. They are persuading people to accept what is unacceptable. They don’t
treat human beings as man. They are cruel and inhuman. The speaker in the
poem can’t tolerate this kind of ugliness. So he wants to break it. He wants to
upset the conventional values which have helped the dictators to exploit the
common people. In this sense the speaker is the iconoclast of ugliness.

A persona is an invented person in this poem. He or she may not be the author
himself or herself. To express the inner feelings or emotions of that persona, the
poet has taken the persona of a lunatic in this poem. This poem has an
autobiographical element. Observing the unusual behavior of the poet many
people in the society called him a mad man. This poem is a response to the
people’s comment.

The lunatic persona thinks that people cram their brains with worldly facts and
figures and clams themselves to be knowledgeable person. They value
materialistic thing such as wine, prostitutes, power, but they never appreciate
the humanity shining brightly in every insignificant heart. They value the
transitory things and disregard the really valuable things. That is why they are
bigger fools. The stupidity makes the speaker arrogant.

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