Thinking Activity: 

Pre-Independence Literature: 

A translation of Tagore’s poem ‘Deeno Daan’ (’Destitute Donation’)

Said the royal attendant, “Despite entreaties, king,
The finest hermit, best among men, refuses shelter
In your temple of gold, he is singing to god
Beneath a tree by the road. The devout surround him
In numbers large, their overflowing tears of joy
Rinse the dust off the earth. The temple, though,
Is all but deserted; just as bees abandon
The gilded honeypot when maddened by the fragrance
Of the flower to swiftly spread their wings
And fly to the petals unfurling in the bush
To quench their eager thirst, so too are people,
Sparing not a glance for the palace of gold,
Thronging to where a flower in a devout heart
Spreads heaven’s incense. On the bejewelled platform
The god sits alone in the empty temple.”

At this,
The fretful king dismounted from his throne to go
Where the hermit sat beneath the tree. Bowing, he said,
“My lord, why have you forsaken god’s mighty abode,
The royal construction of gold that pierces the sky,
To sing paeans to the divine here on the streets?’
“There is no god in that temple,” said the hermit.

Furious,
The king said, “No god! You speak like a godless man,
Hermit. A bejewelled idol on a bejewelled throne,
You say it’s empty?”

“Not empty, it holds royal arrogance,
You have consecrated yourself, not the god of the world.”

Frowning, said the king, “You say the temple I made
With twenty lakh gold coins, reaching to the sky,
That I dedicated to the deity after due rituals,
This impeccable edifice – it has no room for god!”

Said the tranquil hermit, “The year when the fires
Raged and rendered twenty thousand subjects
Homeless, destitute; when they came to your door
With futile pleas for help, and sheltered in the woods,
In caves, in the shade of trees, in dilapidated temples,
When you constructed your gold-encrusted building
With twenty lakh gold coins for a deity, god said,
‘My eternal home is lit with countless lamps
In the blue, infinite sky; its everlasting foundations
Are truth, peace, compassion, love. This feeble miser
Who could not give homes to his homeless subjects
Expects to give me one!’ At that moment god left
To join the poor in their shelter beneath the trees.
As hollow as the froth and foam in the deep wide ocean
Is your temple, just as bereft beneath the universe,
A bubble of gold and pride.”

Flaring up in rage
The king said, “You false deceiver, leave my kingdom
This instant.”

Serenely the hermit said to him,
“You have exiled the one who loves the devout.
Now send the devout into the same exile, king.”

Translated from the Bengali by Arunava Sinha.

Click here to go to the site where the poem is taken from.

Give answers of following questions:

1) The poem is written before 120 years (approx.). Can you find any resemblance between the poem and the pandemic time? 

(Some hints: During the pandemic time temples were closed - people were dying - there was no place in hospitals for Covid patients)

2) Why do you think the King is angry on the Sage?

3) Why do you think the Sage denies to enter in the temple?

4) Can there be any connection between the text of the poem and the verdict of Ayoydhya Ram Mandir? (To get some ideas Click here)

Thinking Activity: Waiting For Godot:

Waiting For Godot is about existential crisis of a human being. Read from the existential perspective the play is about futility and meaninglessness of life. It is observed that the characters are helpless and hopeless. They do not do anything except 'waiting' which does not add any meaning to their existence. They are like dead bodies without hope. It is the choice they made in their life. 

Existentialism is about an individual's existence, choice and freedom in life. It is about meaning given to life by using the freedom to choose. 

Here is a link to read more about Existentialism.

Existentialism  

Students are requested to answer the following questions:

1. What do you think about the characters of the play?

2. What do you say about their activities and its significance?

3. Is there any similarity between the situations in the play and the lockdown period of 2020?

4.  Did you feel like existential crisis?

5. What did you do to pass time?

6. How was your psychological condition?

  

 Thinking Activity on Things Fall Apart:

Here are some questions on Things Fall Apart. Students are requested to answer the questions in 300 words. 

1. What is historical context of Things Fall Apart?

2. What is the significant of the title?

3. Write a brief note on the concept of 'Chi' in Things Fall Apart?

4. What do you think about the incident of Ikemefuna? How does it help to understand the Ibo culture in more specific ways?

5. Write a brief note on Ibo people's belief in the world of spirits.

6. How is the difference between the father land and the mother land is described in Things Fall Apart?

7. Write a brief note on the concept of Nativism and Native identity in Things Fall Apart.

8. Point out the important points of Things Fall Apart which can be compared with Kanthapura by Raja Rao.

 Quiz on The American Literature:

The Scarlet Letter

The Old man and The Sea

Quiz on Robert Frost

Mourning Becomes Electra

Quiz on For Whom the Bell Tolls

Long Day's Journey into Night

 Hell is - other people. Reading of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

¨  Hell is – other people.

                                                - No Exit. A play by Satre (spoken by Garcin, a journalist)

    To most of us, having relationships with other people is one of the most important aspects of our lives, part of what gives our lives their meaning. But relationships with others are actually hell.

   To understand this idea we have to take a long detour into the Existentialists' take on the existence of others. 

    Ever since Descartes, Western philosophy has been bedeviled by two related philosophical problems that are both forms of skepticism. The first is labeled 'skepticism about the external world' and is based on the belief that we have immediate access only to the contents of our own minds or consciousness. The problem with this view is that we ordinarily believe in the existence of objects external to our minds, like the computer on which I am typing this sentence. The point is, if we have immediate access only to the contents of our own minds, as this view requires, how can we justify our belief in the existence of these 'external things'? Is there no real justification for thinking that there is a world of things 'our there', that is, external to our own minds? According to this skeptical point of view, even our own bodies have a problematic status because they are not immediately recongnizable a part of who or what we are. These views pose serious problems that philosophers working within the Cartesian tradition have to attempt to solve. 

    The second problem facing post-Cartesian philosophers concerns the existence of other people and, more specifically their minds. Although we all believe that there are others besides ourselves in the world, it is not easy to say what justifies this belief. Even if we allow that we have knowledge of the existence of bodies in the world that resemble our own, the question remains us to our justification for believing that there are minds 'attached' to those bodies that are like our own minds in important ways. We have privileged access to our minds are therefore we know that they exist but the same we lack in the case of other people's minds. Thus, the skeptical problem of other minds is how to justify our ordinary belief in the reality of them. So skeptic asserts that we have direct access to the contents of our minds and thus know that our minds exist. This is the point of Descartes' "I think therefore I am." But this we lack in the case of others as we are barred from having direct access to their minds. He points out that we cannot really ever know that there are minds 'attached' to the bodies that we see 'out there' that look similar to our own. As a result, we cannot have knowledge of the existence of minds other than our own. 

    The world in which we live is a world that we share with who like us and of whose existence we can be sure.

    Heidegger's use of the word Dasein. Dasein: ‘there’ (da) and ‘being’ (sein). Dasein – Being there. (developed by Martin Heidegger in Being and Time. For human beings)

  Dasein is to exist in a world with other Daseins existing alongside oneself. In other words, Dasein’s way of being-in-the-world is always being-with.

    He claims that it is through our interactions with everyday things such as tables and chairs that we first encounter other humans, for we realize that it is part of our experience of the world that it be populated by other humans, other Daseins. Why is it so?

  Because there are things that I encounter in my world - implements (Zeug) - that bear the traces of those of those others who made them in such a way that they can fulfill a need of those who come across them. Heidegger puts it as Dasein's world is, simply put, a world populated with other Daseins. For this reason, Heidegger conceptualizes it as a with-world. The world in which we live is a world that we share with others who are like us and of whose existence we can be sure. 

  Who are these Daseins that we both are and encounter in our world? His answer is: these Daseins are a they. - Heidegger

   The consciousness of the presence of the 'they' invokes a norm or standard of behavior that holds within a community and asserts that members of the community are simply to that norm or standard. On Heidegger’s view, the others we encounter exist in the mode of a They or a One is to say that they are part of a community that imposes standards on individual Daseins that specify how a Dasein is to behave. To be a Dasein is to find oneself a member of a community of Dasein that promulgates standards of behavior.

  What about an individual? About their freedom? Importance is given to freedom. According to Satre humans were essentially nihilating beings, creatures who were  able to structure their own behavior instead of being determined  by nature to behave in pre-established ways.

  What happens when a nihilating being encounters others in the form of a They? The They expects that the encountering person will conform to Their standards of behavior. The They extends its presence into virtually all aspects of a person’s life.  One has to behave in a way expected by the They, to belong to the group, to be accepted by the They. The philosophical moral is, ‘dominance of the They’ forces us to give up our freedom, by accepting standards set by a specific community of others. In place of our capacity to be free initiators of actions, our initial encounters with other influence us to become conformists, and we are pushed to behave in a way that are socially acceptable. “Everyone is the other, and no one is himself.” Heidegger in Being and Time, 165). According to Satre others take our freedom from us, just as we take it from them.We find ourselves with the depressing sense that others enforce social conformity by getting us to behave as they want us to rather than as we would like. Jealousy – all other emotions – structure our lives in a more fundamental way. According to Satre, Jealousy colors our entire world. For example: Othello. Iago suggests to Othello that his wife, Desdemona, is having an affair with Cassio. His entire world is oriented towards this emotion and every object becomes a sign he tries to interpret in order to confirm his suspicion. For example misplaced handkerchief. Othello is so dominated by his jealousy that it permeates everything he sees. His world becomes projection of his jealousy sees devastating result. 

   Because of this an individual just becomes a ‘thing’ in the world of others. As a result of this an individual no longer exists as he/she did previously, for his/her awareness of being seen changes the nature of his existence. Awareness of the existence of others is what Satre calls ‘the look’. It is called objectification or reification.

 The theme of the other is a threat to our existence.

   For Satre, my primary experience of the other is as the cause of my objectification, the loss of my being, as I am placed into the other’s world. When I attempt to regain my self, I do so by objectifying the other, for only in so far as I succeed in doing so, will I succeed in regaining my world. The answer to the question: Is hell other people? Yes. They are. Their look pulls us out of our own world and turns us into an object of theirs.

  Task: Thinks of all the different ways in which you have felt the pressure to conform to standards that others have set, but that you did not feel comfortable with.

Reading of The Scarlet Letter: 

    The Scarlet Letter is a romance, a story of a young beautiful woman Hester Prynne, and adulteress, who has given birth to a daughter out of her wedlock. This is how critics, text-come-guides etc... introduce the novel. By applying the theme of the Other in the novel, I differ in my opinion. I personally believe that the novel is about the society - the they, who are very much present in the lives of each of the character. The they have given shapes to the lives of the individuals in the novel. The they have structured it so deeply that it is almost impossible to make the self free from the shackles of society. The Scarlet Letter 'A' is worthy of multiple interpretation. So I would rather see it as a story of a particular community. It is the story of people with self-imposed identity as 'representatives of religion'. It is the look of the people which has given birth such a hellish incident. The look of the people has reduced individuals to the level of mere 'thing' only. Individuals with their different capacities try hard to regain their original identity. 

    The Scaffold scene in the market is an example of the theme of community which very much prevails in the novel. It shows the interest of people in the lives of individuals. In the very opening scene Hester, with her baby-three months old daughter Pearl, is punished and forced to stand on the scaffold. She is there to face the look of the people. 

    " Mistress Prynne shall be set where man, woman, and child may have a fair sight of her brave apparel from this time till an hour past meridian. A blessing on the righteous colony of the Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine! Come along, Madame Hester, and show your scarlet letter in the market-place!"

   Hester, with A on her bosom and a three months baby in her hand becomes a center of attraction for people. People think, "This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die. 

    People were curious to know about Hester and her Sin. It is the people who have transformed the very act of creation in Sin. The Puritan mentality looks at love as a taboo. So they have given a badge to Hester as punishment. But it doesn't matter much for Hester. She, with her daughter Pearl, lives in the forest and creates her own community. Forest is a place where both the mother and the daughter express their wildness of innocence. 

    Whereas the case with Dimmesdale is different. He is also present at the scaffold scene. It is because of the fear of people he could not show courage to come forward and confess. He could not accept it in public that he is the father of the child. He lives with the burden and has reduced himself to thing in his own eyes also. He is very much aware about the existence of others in the world and the fear of the others does not allow him to be what actually he is. He merely displays false hypocrisy as he is ashamed or afraid  of what he has done. Dimmesdale is an individual who, because of the fear of the other, cannot accept his responsibility. He has given much priority to his relationship with the others, with his position, with other ministers. Perhaps this is the reason that he could not bear pain of his deed. Just after confession he dies. Death has allowed him to escape. He does not remain in the texture of the novel to see the strange look of people towards him. 

     So Hell is - the other. It is the other people who have created a very horrible condition in individual's life.

Existentialism:

The word Existentialism was officially coined by Gabriel Marcel in 1943 Philosophy is a way of life and Existentialism represents long tradition of in the history of philosophy in the West, extending back at least to Socrates. Existentialism is the only contemporary form of philosophy that remained true to the conception of philosophy first articulated over two and a half millennia ago in Ancient Greece. For the Greeks, philosophy was something to be studied in isolation by a group of specialists, but rather the expression of a way life, a mode of conduct. Existentialism has remained a vibrant form of philosophical thought. It seeks to help people to their own feelings and ideas. Perhaps no other philosophical movement has had as great an impact on the philosophy, literature and general cultural outlook of the twentieth century as has existentialism. That’s why it becomes difficult to trace existentialism. It is an ‘ism’ and that gives the misleading impression of a coherent and unified philosophical school.

There is a common understanding or perspective about existentialism that it is about negative emotions like alienation, despair, absurdity etc. The general notion is that it reflects nihilism. It is a kind of atypical movement and most thinkers deny that they fall under the category of existentialist. There are some ideas upon which most existentialists agree there are ideas and principles to which some existentialists show their disagreement. 

The very major characteristic of existentialism is that it begins from man not from nature. Existentialism does not treat man a thinking subject rather it treats man as an existent. According to Sartre, “We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world, and defines himself afterwards. If man, as the existentialism sees him, is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself.”

As per Satre man’s existence precedes his essence, “Existence precedes essence”. It refers to the view that each person exists first, without meaning or purpose, strives thereafter to give himself/herself meaning and purpose. “A person’s essence is to have no essence other than the one must continually invent for himself”.

In human life essence is shaped by existence, not the other way round. Human beings live their lives and that in turn defines what they truly are. There is no predefined pattern that human beings can fit into because everything depends upon situation. A person interprets every situation according to his/her desires, hopes, expectations and intentions. Every situation a person encounters is understood as presently lacking something desired, expected, intended or anticipated. Nothing is predefined and a person acts according to the situation.

Another thing in existentialism is, it is connected with individual. In the view of Roger and Thompson, “Existentialism is about the experience of living as a human being. It is about engaging with the world and dealing with two features of life- the situation in which we find ourselves and the constant desire to go beyond ourselves, planning and shaping our future.” Existentialism is a way of life, a philosophy integrated within life.

Existentialism is not about negativity. It is neither dark nor depressive. It is about the challenges of life. It is describes how it is for each and every person to be in the world, the awkwardness of our inescapable human condition. People feel dissatisfied when something is lacking. Something is always lacking, namely the future. A person is in competition to achieve or fulfill the future immediately to become past. So tomorrow never comes and yesterday is just a memory. And perhaps this reality haunts human beings. It becomes the cause for regret and despair. Existentialism is not about regret or despair. It is about just the way things are. Existentialism recommends bravely accepting how life is and making the most of it. It recommends building life on the firm basis of hard, uncomfortable truths rather than living in illusion. 

Existentialism is a philosophy which teaches a person to come out of the illusion. It teaches to accept life as it is, with its hard realities. 

Existentialism is a philosophy. It is an intellectual movement. To put it simply, “Existentialism is a broad intellectual movement of largely continental philosophers, psychologists, novelists, dramatists, artists, musicians, film makers, comedian and assorted drop outs that developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and remains influential today.”

 

Quiz on Existentialism

Blended Learning:

Hello Friends, 

The pandemic Covid-19 has turned the entire world upside down. During these days of crisis we can't sacrifice learning new things. It is the only way to fight back. Learning keeps us live and vibrant. Teachers are trying new methods to reach their students beyond class as teaching-learning is now not limited to four walls of classroom only. Blended learning is one of the methods in which students can access their content beyond the class and from anywhere. 

Again the task was given by Dr. Dilip Barad (Head, Dept. of English, MKBU). He conducted eFDP  (https://sites.google.com/view/webinar-eng-mkbu) for teachers of Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University. 

Links of Videos: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xMqJmMcME0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIh4jJlvF44

Links of Books:

The Handbook of Blended Learning: Global Perspectives, Local Designs

Blended Learning: How to Integrate Online & Traditional Learning

Resource on Flipped Classroom:

Hello Learners,

It is very much difficult to manage life during the pandemic Covid-19. It has flipped the world. Everything is changing and people are trying to find out new ways to cop up with the difficult situation. In these days of crisis when classroom teaching is not possible, teachers have to learn new methods to teach their students. Flipped Classroom is one of the methods. The task is given in eFDP (https://sites.google.com/view/webinar-eng-mkbu) conducted by Dept. of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University  It is given by Dr. Dilip Barad (Head, Dept of English). 

Link of Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCIxikOq73Q

Links of Books:

The Flipped Classroom: Practice and Practices in Higher Education

Flipped Learning: A Guide for Higher Education Faculty

How to use Google Drive:

Hello Learners,

 Due to the pandemic Covid-19 Online teaching (ERT) is must. To train teachers for Online teaching Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University has started eFDP (https://sites.google.com/view/webinar-eng-mkbu) which was conducted by Dr. Dilip Barad (Head, Dept. of English). This task is given on day 1 of eFDP. The task was about to search of a video resource of Use of Google Drive. 

Here is the link. 

video on how to use google drive

Quiz on The Victorian Literature:

Oliver Twist

Middlemarch

Quiz on The Victorian Age

Culture and Anarchy Study Material and Quiz

Quiz on The Romantic Literature:

John Keats

Frankenstein

Sense and Sensibility 

The Romantic Age

A study of Poets- Wordsworth and Coleridge

Quiz on Pride and Prejudice

Thinking Activity on John Keats: Finding out approaches to Death in Literature

Thinking Activity on John Keats: Finding out approaches to Death in Literature

Death, the ultimate reality. People normally don't want to talk about death. They cannot accept it. But writers have some special kind of fascination towards death. Death is always the beloved topic of all writers however their approach to death differ. John Keats in his Ode to Nightingale writes 'half in love with ' and wants to die at midnight with 'easeful' death.

One example from Keats is given. Students are suppose to find out how Death is generally dealt by other writers in literature.  

Quiz on The African Literature:

A Grain of Wheat

The Swamp Dwellers

Things Fall Apart

Waiting For the Barbarians

Quiz on Selected Poems (The African Literature) 

Colonial Power and the Native:

Where to start from? What to say? Because colonialism or postcolonialism is a never ending issue. Postcolonial studies have a fashion in today's world. Ironically it has become a fashion to study the 'wretched class'.

The identity of the 'native' is constructed for the westerner's gaze. A community of the 'native' with some traditions and customs, with a family,  with a voice, and with a history, has been transformed into an object or let say 'oriental' by the colonizer.

For some last five-six centuries the world has been trained to see everything from a western perspective. The knowledge is generated by the West and a king of 'whiteman's myth' was created that everything of the West or White will definitely be good or rather say 'Best'. The phrase 'White man's burden ' was very popular. So the White took it as their responsibility to reform the 'other' world.

The world was divided. The West has become a metaphor of patriarchy and the non-western world are feminized.The culture of the native was not respected. The native became the synonym for barbaric and savage. The colonial power marginalized the native. In the process of transforming and reforming the natives, they were dehumanized.

The history of the 'native' was eradicated and was recreated by the colonizer. The 'native' is taught the language, religion, tradition, etc... of the colonizer. In that way the 'native' is translated. Translation means transforming the material identity. With Colonization the culture of the 'native' is transformed into the subordinated culture of a colonial regime, and all aspects of the original culture have to reconstructed and reshaped.

In that way the nation suffers from the death pangs as the culture, creativity, imagination, knowledge and history of the 'native' dies and it cannot be covered up. 

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein v/s Kenneth Branagh's movie Frankenstein:

Pre-viewing tasks:

·        What is gothic scientific fiction?

·        What is a frame narrative?

·        What is the point of view of the author?

·        What are the viewpoints of different characters?

·        Do you have confusion about the title of the novel?

·        Who do you think is the real monster, the Creator or the Creature?

·        What is tabula rasa?

·        What is the significance of the subtitle "The Modern Prometheus"?

·        Do you think Mary Shelley's Frankenstein stands on the brick of revolutionary changes?

While viewing the movie:

·        How is the beginning and the end of the movie?

·        Do you feel the effect of horror in the movie?

·        What do you think about the character of the monster in the movie?

·        What do you think about the conversation between Victor and the monster?

·        Do you think that some scenes are omitted or replaced by other scene? How is the effect of these changes?

·        Do you think the director has used appropriate symbols in the movie?

Post-viewing tasks:

·        What is the difference between the movie and the novel?

·        Does the movie help you to understand narrative structure of the novel?

·        Do you think the movie is helpful to understand the viewpoints of different characters?

·        What do you think about the creation of lady monster in the novel and Elizabeth's look of a monster in the movie?

·        Think about Victor's acceptance of Elizabeth and rejection of the monster.

·        Do you think the director is faithful to the novel?

Screening  Kya Kehna in the context of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

1.    What are the names of the protagonists in both the works?

2.    Write their story in brief.

3.    What is the role played by society in Hester’s life?

4.    What is the role played by society in Priya’s life?

5.    Compare and contrast the male characters, Roger Chillingworth, Arthur Dimmesdale, Rahul, and Ajay.

6.    Compare and contrast ‘The scaffold scene in The Scarlet Letter’ and ‘a year-end performance in Kya Kehna in which a group of students performs a play on Priya and her pregnancy’.

7.    What are the reasons that Arthur Dimmesdale and Rahul do not come forward to accept their fatherhood? How do you they differ and what are the similarities?

8.    What is the role played by Chillingworth in Hester’s life? Why do you think he wanted to take revenge on Hester and Dimmesdale?

9.    What is the role played by Rahul’s mother in Priya’s life? Why do you think she wants to take revenge on Priya?

10. Write a note on class difference in Kya Kehna.

11. Why do you think the director has lifted the character of Ajay to the ideal state? Is it possible in real life? What are the reasons of your YES or NO?

12. How do you see Hester and Priya as individuals?

13. Write a critical note on the end of the movie and the novel. Why do you think the novelist has not given happy ending?

The Oldman and The Sea

The Oldman and The Sea is a novella written by Earnest Hemingway an American writer. The novella is with single action, single thought and single plot. Hemingway has used very limited characters to express the grand importance of struggle in life and an individual’s strength and capacity of fight against the odds of life.

The Oldman, Santiago goes for fishing and comes back with nothing for eighty-four days. He still continues to go without losing courage. Though he has faced failure in life for many times, he is still hopeful in his eyes about skill and luck. He feels that he is still capable of bearing the weight of great fish. On the eighty-fifth the oldman goes for fishing. He goes deep into the sea to catch a big fish. A huge fish is stuck in his fishing bait but he has not seen his pray. He can just feel the weight. The fish starts pulling the boat and it continues for 2-3 days. Finally it appears on the surface then starts circling the boat. The oldman respects the fish’s strength and mightiness and calls the fish his brother and gathering all his courage he kills the marlin. The oldman is victorious but the victory is short lived. The sharks come to eat the marlin. The oldman tries to save is price but cannot do anything. The body is marlin is mutilated. When the oldman comes back only the head of the great fish was left. He was tired and goes to sleep.

In the critical journey of life the oldman tries to get inspiration. Manolin is as such character in the oldman’s life. The readers look at the oldman from the boy’s eyes. When the oldman was alone in the sea he desperately wishes for the boy’s company. In the critical time of life the oldman’s frequently visits his past. The scene of young lions playing at seashore is his pleasant memory. Every time he dreams lions. Yeats: “ Some one scene, some one adventure, some one picture that is the image of his secret life, and this one image, if he would buts brood over it his lifelong, would lead his soul.” The dream of lions has a special space in the oldman’s life. These particular person and scene helps him to be positive in his life. So the oldman fails but he never loses.

Here are some questions: Enjoy thinking

1.      Can you mark a critical phase of your life?

2.      Do you have any such person whom you recall in the crisis?

3.      What is the importance of that person? Why?

4.      What is the importance of dream of lions in the novel?

5.      Do you have any such scene or image you frequently like to visit?

6.      What is the reason of your obsession for that scene?

7.      Replace the oldman with yourself. How would be the approach if you fail like the oldman in life?

Middlemarch by George Eliot (Applying Feminism) Task for Students

In Middlemarch Eliot notably focuses on women of The Victorian society. As the novel is by a woman and for women Feminism can be applied at its best. Eliot has portrayed women of slightly different classes. She has put them in different situations.

Dorothea, majorly concerned one, is an upper class woman with idealistic ideas about life and marriage. Her decision to marry Edward Casaubon is because she wanted to a part of intellectual discourse with her husband. She decides to marry him because she wanted to help him in his research work as an assistant. It can be also interpreted that she wanted to satisfy her intellectual hunger by marring him. It was the time in which education and knowledge was limited to men only. Women were excluded from it. Perhaps for Dorothea it was the only way to be knowledgeable but she fails.

Rosamond is a girl of upper middle class. She wants to marry someone who does not belong to Middlemarch. By marrying someone life this she wants go out of Middlemarch town. She is very materialistic. She marries Dr. Lydgate but ultimately the marriage fails. One can't blame Rosamond for what she is as she has learned everything from the patriarchal society where the law of the father is powerful one.

Mary Garth is a middle,class woman but she is very realistic and natural. She stretches herself to help her family. She does not believe in romanticizing love and marriage instead she is very strict and hard on wrong decisions of Fred. She fulfills her responsibility of making him into a man.

All these women are involved in the process of creating 'safe zone'. They wish to have 'E' securities (Emotional and Economical). To see, at what extent they get success, requires critical thinking. 

Frankenstain by Mary Shelley (Pre-task)

Mary Shelley traveled through Europe and during her travel she visited Frankenstein castle. An alchemist used to do experiments there before two centuries. After coming back from her travel she had a dream and then she composed the novel, at the age of Eighteen. The novel is about the creation of a monster by the protagonist. The creation is given the name of 'Monster'. The word 'monster' has many connotative meanings. Based on this you are suppose to answer following questions?

1) When did you have a dream?
2) What did you see in your dream?
3) Based on your dream if you are asked to create something, What type of creation would be there?
4) The creation will be ugly or beautiful?
5) If ugly, why? If beautiful, why?
6) What are your interpretations for the word 'monster'?
7) Have you ever visited such kind of places which has some connections with horror and terror?

Mourning Becomes Electra

Mourning Becomes Electra is written by Eugene O’Neill an American playwright. The play is divided into three parts. Home Coming, The Hunted and The Haunted. In this modern play O’Neill has juxtaposed myth and nineteenth century American society.

The house appears as a mere physical entity. He regards physical landscape as just a shadow of mental image. The haunted house in Mourning Becomes Electra is like a monster swelling its own breed. It is a visual symbol of Mannon fate. The white portico as contrasted with the house is a false façade hiding the truth that the house is the camera-eye of destiny. To Christine, the house appears like a mask on Puritan grey ugliness. While to Lavinia it is a temple of Hate and Death, to Orin it looks Ghostly and dead like ‘a tomb’, but none of them can sneak away from the sinister grip of the house. The momentary escape and release promised by sea only intensifies the feeling that the characters are doomed to wither their life in it. Ezra, Christine, Orin and Lavinia (entombing herself in the house) die in the house; the house works out their destruction and thus is a symbol of Mannon’s way of life. The house is an artistic symbol with multiple layers of meaning. O’Neill himself points out the Mannon house emerges in the context of modern man’s dilemma as a grotesque perversion of the Greek meaning of life. Thus the house here is an emblem of decay and waste and meaninglessness in modern life. So the house here is just a house, it is not a home. The idea of ‘home’ is an obsessive one with O’Neill. He was never at rest with the idea of ‘home’.

The house is a general setting of the play. It is the large building of the Greek temple type that was in vogue in the first half of the nineteenth century. It evokes most prominently the contrast between the Greek way of life and modern man’s perversion of everything that is Greek. The house, either interior or exterior, remains the scene of action and the Mannons, with a brief illusory escape into the sea, are finally drawn to be doomed in the house. In the beginning of the play windows are open, but when Ezra returns they are shut. The house turns out to be a death mask. The shutter remains closed even after Ezra’s death, for the house is virtually a tomb with his corpse in it.

So in Mourning Becomes Electra O’Neill has portrayed a family but the family is a fragmented family. They live in their world. Here we see lack of love and care, lack of understanding, lack of feeling etc… It’s because they live in a house not in a home.

Drama represents the cultural attitudes of the age to which it belongs and also presupposes the existence of a dramatic tradition which it uses. The plot and the characters of a play relate to the cultural situations and embody the problems and the question of the time. In Mourning Becomes Electra O’Neill portrays the nineteenth century attitude and the Freudinaism, juxtaposing Greek myths with modern problems. O’Neill has created a modern tale of the Oresteia theme of Greek mythology, transmuting the background, and embodying modern cultural attitudes, in place of those embedded in the Greek story.

The Brigadier Ezra Mannon recalls to our mind Agamemnon. His wife Christine hates him, and her dislike for her husband may be attributed to the first night of their marriage and also to the fact that Ezra compelled his Orin to join the war. Christine poisons her husband to be able to carry on her love affair with Adam Brant whose prototype is Aegisthus, the lover of Clytemnestra. Adam Brant is the son of Marie Brantome and David Mannon, Ezra’s uncle who was expelled from the house for his illegitimate love, by Ezra’s father Abe.

In The Hunted, Lavinia Ezra’s daughter attached to her father and suspicious of her mother’s amorous feelings for Adam Brant, decides to take revenge in collaboration with her brother Orin who has been freed of his attachment to his mother. Christine commits suicide to learn the death of Brant who has been murdered by Orin.

In The Haunted, Orin and Lavinia sail to the South East Pacific Islands in search of oblivion and peace. Lavinia after visiting the islands which represent peace and innocence returns with Orin, enthused with a new spirit, and overcome an ardent desire to enjoy life. Her immediate proposal to Peter for marriage is abhorrent to him and the charms of marriage having been lost, she decides to immure herself in a cell, in the Puritan Mannon way, away from the company of men, doors barred and the sunlight denied. Orin also has left her, and is driven to shoot himself. Orin-like-Orestes, has murdered Aegisthus-like-Adam, and has a sense of attachment to Electra-like-Lavinia.

The events in the first two plays cover a period of a fortnight in the spring of 1805, and the third part covers more than a month in the summer of 1866. Nearly all the incidents except Adam Brant’s murder take place in front of the Mannon house or inside. The characters of Seth (the gardener) with Amos-Ames, Lousia, and Minnie constitute the chorus, the people watching and spying on the aristocratic and the rich Mannons. Their use of the local dialect is significant. O’ Neill, besides introducing the elements of chorus, has depicted the mask-like faces of his characters. Describing Lavinia, O’Neill observes “Above all, one is struck by the same strange, life like mask impression her face gives in repose.”Eve Ezra’s face has the same strange semblance of life like mask that we have already seen in the faces of his wife and daughter and Brant.” Their faces bear an impress of the characteristics of the Mannon passion of destroying one another. The Mannon house, the White Grecian Temple itself is mask-like.