Waiting for Godot by Sameul Barclay Beckett

The play : Waiting for Godot

Hello, I am Emisha Ravani, writing this blog as a part of thinking activity which is given by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad for the chapter of ‘Waiting for Godot’. In this we have to answer some questions in our blog.

Samuel Beckett

So, let’s have a look to the answers,

1) In both Acts, evening falls into night and moon rises. How would you like to interpret this ‘coming of night and moon’ when actually they are waiting for Godot?

In the play ‘Waiting for Godot’ there is two acts. And both acts are ending with the same time of ‘coming of night and moon’. In the play our both major characters are waiting for ‘Godot’ at evening time.

Coming of night and moon symbolizing the peace or rest. Here we can say that now both the characters are tired of waiting so they can have peace while act of waiting. Another thing is that when moon rise the day set so the hopelessness of waiting can be seen here as day is gone in a same way. 

2) The director feels the setting with some debris. Can you read any meaning in the contours of debris in the setting of the play?

The image of debris of ukrain that now a days it facing this same situation of war.

This play ‘Waiting for Godot’ is written after WW2 so it was the time when all the things were destroyed so by this setting of the Debris might director of the movie has used this setting purposely.

Another observation is like, director has used the debris to show destroyed aspect. The movie’s theme is all absurdity and nothingness. So one can say that this is the theme of human life too and destroyed aspect of life of thinking.

Debris can be symbol like, it seems that the fight or war can not give anything to human excepting this kind of useless things. And how people were thinking and how they were having the absurdity after war situation in their mind.  

3) Do you agree: “The play (Waiting for Godot), we agreed, was a positive play, not negative, not pessimistic. As I saw it, with my blood and skin and eyes, the philosophy is: 'No matter what— atom bombs, hydrogen bombs, anything—life goes on. You can kill yourself, but you can't kill life." ? (Source: E.G. Marshal said so - he played Vladimir in original Broadway production 1950s)

4) Do you think that the obedience of Lucky is extremely irritating and nauseatic? Even when the master Pozzo is blind, he obediently hands the whip in his hand. Do you think that such a capacity of slavishness is unbelievable?

Yes, the character of Lucky is biting me in his every act which he is doing. It seems to me like extreme irritating character when I see his slavishness ideology. By portraying this character might, Beckett is trying to show us the proper situation of people in different contexts. He is secondly major character but by his character, the play is getting the very unique idea of slavishness itself.

In first act of the play, the Pozzo and Lucky comes and there is the interesting act going on when Pozzo tell to Lucky to ‘think’ and there is the idea come out that Thinking is terrible.

Again they arrive in the second act, and Pozzo become blind and Lucky become dumb. Pozzo cannot see now still Lucky obediently hands the whip in his hand. And it is the unbearable to see. 

5) Do you think that plays like this can better be ‘read’ than ‘viewed’ as it requires a lot of thinking on the part of readers, while viewing, the torrent of dialogues does not give ample time and space to ‘think’? Or is it that the audio-visuals help in better understanding of the play?

Whenever we think about movie screening of any play or literary texts. Firstly we have to be careful to it’s faithfulness towards original one. Other side it helps us to understand in better way and also time consuming way to get familiar to any texts or story.

If we talk about this text Waiting for Godot. The movie adaptation itself it is hard to catch the dialogues and it seems like bored way. The chain of dialogues is going constant so the viewer or audience can not have time to catch those dialogues at a time. In the movie screening it seems more comic rather than serious one. When we read the play it seems like something serious going on between the all characters and their conversations.

6) Which of the following sequence you liked the most:

(i) Vladimir – Estragon killing time in questions and conversations while waiting

(ii) Pozzo – Lucky episode in both acts

The whole play is all about conversation rather than any of actions. When we watch the faithful version of the movie it starts with the conversation of Vladimir and Estragon (in the novel)with the setting of tree, (in the movie) with the setting of tree and debris. And they both are doing conversation, it seems like comic but it has many philosophies in it.

Meanwhile there are two characters added and they are, Pozzo and Lucky. One is master and another is slave of that master. So from those characters Beckett very well given idea or concept of mastery and slavery. Let’s have a look the Pozzo’s dialogues.  

POZZO: 

(terrifying voice). I am Pozzo! (Silence.) Pozzo! (Silence.) Does that name mean nothing to you? (Silence.) I say does that name mean nothing to you?  

POZZO: 

(halting). You are human beings none the less. (He puts on his glasses.) As far as one can see. (He takes off his glasses.) Of the same species as myself. (He bursts into an enormous laugh.) Of the same species as Pozzo! Made in God's image!

THANK YOU!

The play 'Breath' by Samuel Buckett

Interpretation Challenge & and Shooting a Video : Samuel Buckett's 'Breath'

Hello, I am  Emisha Ravani, writing this blog while studying the Absurdity and Samuel Buckett's 'Waiting for Godot', as a part of the activity. Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad Sir given to us, to make a video for the play 'Breath'. And also interpret it by our own sense of interpretation.  

Samuel Beckett

The absurdist genre of literature arose in the 1950s and 1960s, prompted by post-war disillusionment. This genre focus on mainly Existentialism. The mode of most “Absurdity Plays” is “Tragicomedy”. When human existence lacks meaning or purpose and communication breaks down. We largely find the cyclical structure in this genre. As we see the structure of “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett.

“In a universe that is suddenly deprived of illusions and of light , man feels a stranger. …This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, truly constitutes the feeling of Absurdity.” – The French philosopher, Albert Camus.

So let's have a look to video first,

The Picturization of the play : 

The interpretation of the video :

In the video, I used an effect of fading at the starting and ending part of the video. In the theater they use the curtains to fading effect. Here as we use the cinematography language so we can use various effects to convert the physical effect into the digital effects.

Secondly, I took the dry leaves as littered or dead plant material. When crop grows it rise from the soil and it’s leaves will be destroyed in the soil again. This process is general process of every leaf of the tree. Still it live very generously without thinking  how long it survive. In the same we rise from the soil and the five elements ‘Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Space’. We will be destroyed in these things. As Existentialism insist that during this “Nothingness” we should survive like these leaves survive.

The sound effect plays a vital role in the video. Might it makes the video horrible somehow.  

The Script of the play : 

CURTAIN Up

1. Faint light on stage littered with miscellaneous rubbish. Hold about five seconds.

2. Faint brief cry and immediately inspiration and slow increase of light together reaching maximum - together in about ten seconds. Silence and hold for about five seconds.

3. Expiration and slow decrease of light together reaching minimum together (light as in 1) in about ten seconds and immediately cry as before. Silence and hold about five seconds.

Rubbish. No verticals, all scattered and lying. Cry. Instant of recorded vagitus. Important that two cries be identical, switching on and off strictly synchronized light and breath. Breath. Amplified recording.

CURTAIN Down

It was a greatly interesting activity to do. Many new things and new experience, I learnt a lot form this activity. Generally I edit many videos but this time I edit something new which have already a script so quite unique to do. I uploaded it at my you tube platform too.  

THANK YOU !

Existentialism Theory

Existentialism Theory - Flipped Learning

Hello, I am Emisha Ravani, Writing this blog as flipped learning given by Prof. Dilip sir Barad. Here we have to do is, from the given ten videos we shell write the thoughts and questions whivh we have and then about the experince about flipped learning. visit this teacher's blog to get an idea about flipped learning. You can watch all videos here in teacher's blog about existentialism. 

The thoughts I like and some questions :-

Video 1 : “You cannot recover without running across the themes of individualism freedom and emotions every once in a while.” “Believing in God you’ve taken the easy way out”

Question : Human’s emotions are same then why existentialism is mainly popular among young people?

Video 2 : “Suicide is an individual act”- Camus . “There is one truly philosophical problem and that is suicide”

Question : What is absurd reasoning?

Video 3 :  “Reason is useless and there is nothing beyond reason”

Question : “A total absence of hope” and “There is no place for hope”- is there the longing for escapism or suicide?

Video 4 : “Whom do they hate most? Him who breaks up their tables of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker. He, however, is the creator.” – Nietsche

Question : In which way existentialism talks about the values which imposed by others?

Video 5 :   “Become who you are” – Nietsche , “ Being an individual does not mean you are a narcissist”

Video 6 : “The highest values devaluate themselves”

Video 7 : “Our ability to make free choices gives us the chance to sculpt a unique essence for ourselves during the course of our lifetime.”

Video 8 : “Do whatever you want”

Video 9 : “Absurdity – The search for answers in an answerless world”

“The literal meaning of life is whatever you are doing that prevents you from killing yourself.”

 

If you want to check out the list of Existentialists then click here. 

WHAT IS EXISTENTIALISM? - Individualism, Passion and Freedom

Above video i like the most and i would like share an image which i like the most in this video. 

There four feelings impressed me a lot in a way that how optimistically shown the experience of existentialism in own life. There are many aspects which are leading us towards passimism in this theory. Though it is something which is strongly leading us towards positive tone. So, i like the most it.

Existentialism is a philosophical theory which deals with ‘Thinking’. When you think that what is purpose of life then you can get the idea of absurdity of life. Somewhere it talks about ‘Harsh individualism’ likewise, we are choiceless and the concept of thrownness as it consider. It looks at suicide in a individual way. To understand in more ways let’s have a look upon one of Gujrati literary figure

અસ્તિત્વવાદ માણસને એક વ્યક્તિ રૂપે જુએ છે. પતિ-પત્ની બે હોય. પણ હકીકતમાં તો પતિ, એક મનુષ્યવ્યક્તિ. તેમ, પત્ની પણ, એક મનુષ્યવ્યક્તિ. (Suman Shah)

It says that existentialism is looking to human in a way of individualism. It talks about the relationship of husband – wife. And says that wife is an individual persona and husband is an individual persona. Thus we all are individual though we are same.

વિશ્વ વિશ્વ છે. પણ વ્યક્તિમાત્રને થાય છે --હું હું છું. હું ભલે દુનિયામાં છું, પણ મારી પોતાની એક દુનિયા છે. (Suman Shah)

Here it talks about the separateness of world and one. Optimistically we can think about our own world which is within us. "An elegant suicide is the ultimate work of Art" when we start to think that life is meaningless , we drown towards suicide.

In this video : An educated, hard-working average man, who is no different than anyone else, trying to make a living for himself and always trying for the best. He is looking for someone, and his endless search for that person everyday has left him tired and in chaos. He finally begins to question everything.

Learning outcome : During this flipped leaning activity, I found very first thing is that here as a student we do not expect to rely on the teacher. We try to find the answers of our easy questions by our own selves. And this learning become interesting by this aspect of it in the observation as a student. Secondly, I was aware about this theory but too little I was knowing, So when it comes as a task then it seems like an excited to activity in a way to know more about any particular topic (Existentialism). 

Feedback : It is tough theory to understand but by the flip leaning it became easy to me cause these videos have provide us very vast background of this philosophy. So we can connect easily if any developed discussion is going on in the classroom. Thoroughly I enjoyed this learning way.

THANK YOU !

The Archetypes of Literature

Hello, I am Emisha Ravani, writing this blog as a part of thinking activity which is given by Prof. Dr. Dilipsir Barad during discussion of Archetypal Critism. In this I will discuss questions below. 

The word ‘archetype’ – from the Greek words

‘arche’ meaning ‘beginning’ and ‘typos’ meaning ‘model’

Archetypal criticism :

A critical theory that interprets a text by focusing on recurring myths and archetypes in narrative, symbols, images, and character types in literary works to find meaning. 

1. What is Archetypal Criticism? What does the archetypal critic do?

What is most distinctive about Northrop Frye’s criticism is its metaphorical relationship to Jungian psychology. Frye was careful to disclaim any belief in a collective unconscious or racial memory, or the dependence of his literary theories upon any such belief. Indeed, Frye reads Jung only as one who has provided “a grammar of literary symbolism,” as a textual critic rather than as a psychologist. Nevertheless, for Frye as for Jung, the power of literature comes out of its evocation of archetypes that have a permanent place in human life: the hero and the virgin, the witch and the magus, the quest and the journey, the open green world of the forest and the walled-off city.(From the original essay of Northop Frye)

To understand this concept let’s see first this psychological term,

The collective unconsciousness

collective unconscious, term introduced by psychiatrist Carl Jung to represent a form of the unconscious (that part of the mind containing memories and impulses of which the individual is not aware) common to mankind as a whole and originating in the inherited structure of the brain.

What is the collective unconscious?

Jung said that the collective unconscious is a layer of our unconscious mind we come into this world containing, that connects each one of to the history of thoughts and behaviours of all of mankind.

Here the surprisingly told that, Archetypes mean that we can have the same thoughts and ideas as other people we have never met even though they come from an entirely different background and culture. We can relate to the different kind of elements by the same interpretations and same emotions even. So, we can say that in this manner the archetypes playing a vital role in the term of collective unconsciousness. In a much easier sense we can say that the existed all and everything seems same to everyone in a particular way or in a same frequency of the interpretations itself.

The archetypal critis study the various kind of literary texts and criticise them by the archetype methodology.

2. What is Frye trying prove by giving an analogy of 'Physics to Nature' and 'Criticism to Literature'?

Every organized body of knowledge can be learned progressively; and experience shows that there is also something progressive about the learning of literature. Our opening sentence has already got us into a semantic difficulty. Physics is an organized body of knowledge about nature, and a student of it says that he is learning physics, not that he is learning nature. Art, like nature, is the subject of a systematic study, and has to be distinguished from the study itself, which is criticism. It is therefore impossible to “learn literature”: one learns about it in a certain way, but what one learns, transitively, is the criticism of literature. Similarly, the difficulty often felt in “teaching literature” arises from the fact that it cannot be done: the criticism of literature is all that can be directly taught. So while no one expects literature itself to behave like a science, there is surely no reason why criticism, as a systematic and organized study, should not be, at least partly, a science. Not a “pure” or “exact” science, perhaps, but these phrases form part of a nineteenth-century cosmology which is no longer with us. Criticism deals with the arts and may well be something of an art itself, but it does not follow that it must be unsystematic. If it is to be related to the sciences too, it does not follow that it must be deprived of the graces of culture.(From The Original essay of Northop Frye)

Here, He says physics is like criticism.

Science à physics = Nature

Literature àCriticism = Life

The literature is not about to learn or teach processes. But in the field of literature it is the process of criticism and how to read any literary works.

3. Share your views of Criticism as an organised body of knowledge. Mention relation of literature with history and philosophy.

All literature produced by the two pillars that is, History and Philosophy. History playing role for ‘events’ and Philosophy for ‘ideas’. In the good literature there should be action and wisdom. Whenever we talks about the literature it is going into many ways like criticism should be done by the many ways. When artists create work of art, they uses the events from the history and they takes theories from the philosophy and afterwards work get the action and wisdom in a proper way or proper shade.

4.Briefly explain inductive method with illustration of Shakespeare's Hamlet's Grave Digger's scene.

Northop Frye has given two kind of methods in archetypes.

1.Inductive
2.Deductive

When we look at Inductive method we can see the chain like:

Observation à Generalization à theory

Inductive method has the term of “Particular to General”. And mainly it can be use in the specific way like it starts with observation and progressively it goes towards theory. Inductive method is able to give more clear view to look at the things and gives more general ideas.

Here we will see the inductive usage in the illustrations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet’s Grave Digger’s scene. The archetype “Liebestod” is used. The word Liebestod means Love – Death. The protagonist, Hamlet is taking action on risk of own self for his beloved. So, we can say that he is here as the Liebestod hero.

5. Briefly explain deductive method with reference to an analogy to Music, Painting, rhythm and pattern. Give examples of the outcome of deductive method.

As above we have seen the inductive method now we will look at the deductive method. This method is  going little paradoxically with that method. It is going like generalization towards the any particular observation.

And it’s chain is like :

Rhythm à Music = Temporal (time)

Pattern à Painting = Spatial (space)

This method can be used to interpreting any work of art. The rhythm of literature is narrative and the pattern of literature is image of literature. When we listen the music we spend time to interpret it and it leads like general to particular observation. Music and painting, both are going respectively time and space. Furtherly when we go to Frye he says that in the nature it has the cycle which provide synchronization between organism and rhythm.  

6. Refer to the Indian seasonal grid (below). If you can, please read small Gujarati or Hindi or English poem from the archetypal approach and apply Indian seasonal grid in the interpretation.

There are two basic categories in Frye’s framework, i.e., comedic and tragic. Each category is further subdivided into two categories: comedy and romance for the comedic; tragedy and satire (or ironic) for the tragic. Though he is dismissive of Frazer, Frye uses the seasons in his archetypal schema. Each season is aligned with a literary genre: comedy with spring, romance with summer, tragedy with autumn, and satire with winter.

Rain symbols signified renewal, fertility and change. Here the post use the archetype of Monsoon season to express his own emotions. Post has given the tone of reasoning.

THANK YOU !

Research Paper : The reading of The Waste Land and The Second Coming through pandemic lens

The reading of The Waste Land and The Second Coming through pandemic lens

Emisha Ravani 

MA Semester 2 

Department of English, MKBU, 

emisharavani3459@gmail.com

Abstract: Why literary texts are correlative to the pandemic? As we are suffering from the pandemic to all aspects of society. How they are written by the poets to study through that lens? This study is dealing with the two poems The Waste Land and The Second Coming, poets like T.S.Eliot and W.B.Yeats, who were in the time of the pandemic are also studied by their biographical notes which are reflected in their works. It is the outlook to the poems through pandemic lens and try to justify the various views for that.

Key words: Pandemic, Elizabeth Outka, The Waste Land, The Second Coming

 Introduction :

When we look at bygone ages or it’s literature, We find that all literature has shown the war literature, But very few literary figures could thrown light on pandemics in the literature. Or we can say it is somewhere hidden. This section argues for a change in our reading practices, For how to read for what is hidden. We are trained in modernism to see the trauma of war but not the trauma of the pandemic.

Eliot’s death-haunted cityscapes to Yeat’s visions of a second coming. These records of literature will allow us to see the pandemic’s fragmented traces in the literature. Usually we think that wars can be more horrible for human’s death. According to sources many people recognized that the flu was more devasting that the war. The pandemic affect people by both the physical and psychological suffering. It makes our life completely changed. As well as it dragged our all sort of attentions. 

‘The Waste Land’ through pandemic lens

The epic of the modernism ‘The Waste Land’. When it came out there was a time of Spanish flu, between the time of WW1 and WW2. Even when we want to look at this kind of sight we should know the author’s biography surely. During that time people were writing the letters and by those letters we can find their physical and mental states. 

By the letters of Eliot we can find that Eliot and his wife caught the virus in Dec 1918 in the second wave of the pandemic. Also many members of family died in the influenza of the pandemic. Now we can say that it was too much effect to Eliot’s state of mind and mantle condition while writing this “long epidemic of domestic influenza”. He had not good relationship with his wife because sort of personal sexual interrupting and wife’s relations with other men even. we can see by his own letters. It influenced Eliot’s mind even he was suffered from physical problem. “I have simply had a sort of collapse; I slept almost continuously for two days. I feel very weak and exhausted.” In Letter to Henry from Eliot. This statement is showing his health condition very clearly. “A new form of influenza… which leaves extreme dryness and a bitter taste in the mouth” …“hot rainless sprint” – Loddon Letter in The Dial (july1921). There were symptoms of the flu like people were becoming tasteless and frightened, fever in the body. He suffered from nervous breakdown in 1921. We can find this kind of imaginaries in the poem. Critics have studied this poem by many various aspects or the dimensions but one of them ‘Viral Context’ they did not seen. In the whole poem we can not find the direct reference of war and pandemic as well as. Might, the reason can be that whenever writer write or they paint the words, there is must ongoing journey of unconscious thought process. By the driving flow of all the aspects they write, which are unconscious or subconscious. Many critics are dealing with the idea of the war fragments though we may say that, in the part of the poem Eliot has portrayed the same thing by post-pandemic consciousness, according to Elizabeth Outka. 

We can observe influenza of The Waste Land by vivid terms. To prove the roots of pandemic in the poem. ‘A delirium logic’, when we see the poem we can find that there are many images in that collage and those are not to connected easily to each other. We have to connect to get sense of the whole idea of the poem. As well as there are many speckers who have mentioned something in weird tones. By this term we can understand that if we have fever then in our dream there is total frightened way or the disturbed flow of images. 

‘The miasmic residue of the pandemic experience’, in the beginning lines we can find the this kind of negative atmosphere like all the bodies are suffering from the acute illnesses. ‘Feverish hallucination’ specks about the symptoms of the feverish body. “ Burning burning burning burning O Lord Thou pluckest me out O Lord Thou pluckest burning” these lines may showing the bodily pain of one’s own.

‘Fragmentary language’ by this term, we should look to the original line of the poem in the image of ‘A Game of Chess’. Here he might experienced the isolation on own self as he portrayed the broken language. Then he went towards spiritual crisis by the thirst of water. He uses like ‘If there were water and no rock’ it is symbolically well designed thought of draught of spiritual sense of living. It throws light towards pandemic delirium rather than war. The poem’s form and content both are equally dealing with the spiritual, psychological, physical and mental aspects of poet through pandemic lens. 

‘Water and Wind’, by using this term we can say that in the pandemic time everywhere there is virus as we see the line like “Under the brown fog, the wind under the door, what is the wind doing, the wind crosses the brown land, only the wind’s home” “Fear death by water; the drowned Phoenician sailor, death by water”. ‘Tolling of Bells’, this symbolizing the constant deaths of people who lives in the domestic streets and they are dying by the pandemic. It’s not talk about the battle field cause bells tolling was not happening for whose they are died in the battel fields.

In the current pandemic we all are fighting very individually rather than it belongs to the our social decorum though it is more social. Somewhere we are not able to read even very clear glasses with transparency. Even we were not aware about the vocab of pandemic before it happened. 

Furtherly, there is the mentioned of “Death and Bones”. How people were living deadly-enervated living. To get the clear idea of the death we should jump to the image of pervasive death and bones echo images and accounts from the era. Elizabeth Outka referred the painting of A Grim Reaper by Australian artist Alfred Kubin to justify the image of influenza. ‘Viral Resurrection’, in this by influenza not only effect to the people’s body but the landscapes, cities, minds, vegetation world, language etc infected by virus. We can feel in parts of the poem. ‘Silence, forgetting, after life’, poems talks about war somehow but contently a representation of the silence that surrounded the pandemic. 

As we seen above that, It's difficult way to capture the quality of pandemic in the particular way of writing and more difficult to read any produced text by the using the pandemic lens. 

‘The Second Coming’ by pandemic lens 

When Elizabeth Outka says that the pandemic was not ‘forgotten’- it just went underground. When we interpret a text we always go to the showing readings we very rarely go to the hidden readings in the text. The hidden reading can be done by the author’s biographical graph. T.S.Eliot, Virginia Woolf, William Butler Yeats, these are the writers who were affected by the flu that we can find in their works. 

Further, Elizabeth jumps to the ‘Contagion Guilt’. Here we take it as the ‘Social Contagion’, which means that automatic adoption of an emotional state of another person or group. So it is more socially rather than individually. Though disease are more individual. As we know that any pandemic happen, the social decorum very firstly will affected more. We can find the numbers of dead bodies or the all kinds of social loss during the pandemic but if we have record it by the literature then only afterwards we can find the information.

The poem starts like “Turning and turning in the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer”. It seems like there was the gyre of fluish war while 1919 when poem got published. Also it is showing the political violence in Ireland. When we look at his biography then, his wife, George, who was pregnant and caught virus, almost near to death. At that time around seventy percent pregnant women were died. One can see this incident and can say that only at that time Yeat’s wrote this poem. Because it is 5 more hallucinated when one looses loved one, and then he or she writing the emotions and feelings that one may feel by their works. If we are able to find the pessimism of pandemic in those texts. Generally, it is hard to see. 

“blood-dimmed tide”, Here we can imagine that this is the most infected imaginary of the poem to prove the pandemic reading. Just floods of blood, in the flu was bleeding from the nose, mouth, ears. Such a horrible visionary one can get by this line. “Ceremony of innocence being drowned”, when it’s his wife and unborn baby who were in the process of drowning like that. “ things are falling apart; the center cannot hold” talks about the situation of emergency in the time of pandemic or the flu.

If we want to make another reading of the poem we can do through the apocalypse vision. It leads towards the ‘ultimate destruction’ as main theme in the poem.

In both the works one cannot find easily the tone of the pandemics. In The Waste Land, there are so many images portrayed by Thomas Stearns Eliot which can be studied by another perspectives rather than the pandemic one. Like myths, allusions, real images, religion centric elements. Though it could happen in the way we have seen.

In The Second Coming , which is written by William Butler Yeats. There is also we could find the light of pandemic which has thrown by the poet’s own mind. So these are the symbols of the pandemic to look into both the poems through pandemic lens. 

Conclusion : 

So, by this observation we can have point that whichever situation we are facing in the present, if we have recorded as history of the past. We can easily interpret those texts by our times perspective which is needed there. We interpret texts by what is going on consciously in our minds. As we know that in current scenario of the pandemic, Here the pandemic interpretations are presented.

Works Cited : 

 Eliot, T. S. (n.d.). The waste land by T. S. eliot. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved February 21, 2022, from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land 

 Onion, R. (2020, May 3). The 1918 flu pandemic killed millions. so why does its cultural memory feel so faint? Slate Magazine. Retrieved February 21, 2022, from https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/05/1918-pandemic-cultural-memoryliterature-outka.html 

 Outka, E. (2020). Viral modernism: The influenza pandemic and interwar literature. Columbia University Press.

 Yeats, W. B. (n.d.). The second coming by William Butler yeats. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved February 21, 2022, from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming

The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby - by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Hello, I am Emisha Ravani, Writing this blog as thinking activity. To get more idea about this activity click here to visit teacher's blog. Here i will discuss the below questions.

1) How did the film capture the Jazz Age - the Roaring Twenties of the America in 1920s?

2) How did the film help in understanding the characters of the novel?
3) How did the film help in understanding the symbolic significance of 'The Valley of Ashes', 'The Eyes of Dr. T J Eckleberg' and 'The Green Light'?
4) How did the film capture the theme of racism and sexism?
5) Watch the video on Nick Carraway and discuss him as a narrator.
6) Watch the video on psychoanalytical study of Jay Gatsby and write about his character

So, Let's have a look to the discussion of these questions. By these questions we will get the whole idea about movie thoroughly.

1) How did the film capture the Jazz Age - the Roaring Twenties of the America in 1920s?

First if we want to know about this idea about America in the movie, we have to know about Jazz Age. The characters of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby represent a specific part of 1920s American society: the rich people of the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald's own experiences during this era form the basis of the novel. It was the time when millions of people have died in the war and Spanish flu then Europe and America got this age afterwards.

Jazz Age is about the concept of how the development of everything like fashion and business etc. it was the giant flow of alcoholism, bootleggers, and one of the massive rise in gang crime caused by the ban on alcohol. Prohibition ultimately caused more problems then it solved, New York and Chicago becoming hives of gang activity during this era. As we can see in the movie too as it has setting of the Jazz age New York. Jazz spread like wildfire across the US and Europe in the twenties due to the sudden availability of cheap records. It gave the way to self – expression at large.

Watch this video to get more idea about The Jazz Age.

2) How did the film help in understanding the characters of the novel?

In the film, when we watch, we can find all characters are quite faithfully presented as in the novel. All the characters have become more impersonal due to the fact that Luhrmann puts more effort into the visuals of the movie and that can be seen as a loss to the movie. Luhrmann has mostly put his effort into how the movie looks aesthetically and somewhere along all the special effects and the glitter the characters have lost the personalities they had in the novel, since the viewer will focus on the visuals instead of someone describing the characters.

The film help very vastly in understanding the characters of the novel. Though one may have surety about novel’s character due to the changes in the process of adaptation.

3) How did the film help in understanding the symbolic significance of 'The Valley of Ashes', 'The Eyes of Dr. T J Eckleberg' and 'The Green Light'?

The valley of ashes

The valley of ashes is the place that ashes grow everywhere. It symbolizes the poverty and hopelessness.

The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg

This is powerful symbol. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are a pair of fading, bespectacled eyes painted on an old advertising billboard over the valley of ashes. They may represent God staring down upon and judging American society as a moral wasteland, though the novel never makes this point explicitly.

The Green Light

Nick first sees Gatsby stretching his arms towards a green light at the end of Daisy's dock. Here, the green light is a symbol of hope.

4) How did the film capture the theme of racism and sexism?

‘The Great Gatsby’ film capture the theme of racism and sexism at certain points. Throughout time women have been written as the lesser sex weaker, secondary characters. They are portrayed as dumb, stupid, and nothing more that their fading beauty. They are written as if they need to be saved or helped because they cannot help themselves. Women, such as Daisy Buchanan who believes all a women can be is a “beautiful little fool”. He convinces the women that their place in society is to be helpless and at his mercy. This is especially apparent through Tom Buchanan 's wife Daisy. Daisy believes, “that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” She believes that all she is a beautiful little fool, but no one can blame her. Whenever Daisy is spoken about it 's not in relation to her intelligence, but rather that, “‘Her voice is full of money,’ Gatsby.

When we think about extramarital affair, according to the Cambridge English dictionary ‘An extramarital saxual relationship is one between a married person and someone who is not thier husband or wife : an extramarital affair.' In this movie we find this sort of relationship between ‘Tom and Myrtle’ and ‘Daisy and Jay’. In that time the rich people used get that kind of affair with the ladies to fulfilled their sexual desires. We can have a look at this thing with sight of class conflicts. Somehow Luhrmann has portrayed this perspective successfully by the Tom and Myrtle’s relationship. Also we can see some vulgar sort of scenes are there at apartment parties. How all the women and men are going lunatic to the parties and to get the aura.

In the term of racism, We see in the film Tom’s character is carrying this term. And he is oftentimes showing his narrowness towards this idea of racism. When they are at dining to have food so he is doing misbehaving with the maid of his own house. Tom has very deeper thought of racism in his conscious and it is showing in his behaviour oftentimes in the film.

5) Watch the video on Nick Carraway and discuss him as a narrator.

In the video, They says that Nick Carraway is as a narrator probably not reliable. He is in sanatorium because he is dealing with alcoholism, insomnia, anger, depression. It is the psychological and emotional trauma he suffered. When we see him in the story we have sympathy to him from the beginning. And there doctor said to him to write his experience to overcome this trauma. So The Great Gatsby is a cathartic experience somehow. So his unreliability started from this point that author or narrator is not having proper state of mind.

6) Watch the video on psychoanalytical study of Jay Gatsby and write about his character.

In this video, there is the psychoanalysis of Jay Gatsby’s character. The professor of psychiatry and behavioural science ‘Jared DeFife’ gives the ideas about Gatsby’s character. He is dealing with the main two aspects of this psychoanalytical study that are “guilt” and “shame”.

The shame part of Gatsby is that when he is born in the poor family, he did not like to be poor. Somewhere he is showing that he is shameful for his lower class upbringing like his father is farm worker, not very successful. Then he became the self made man. He changes his name, and has create a persona of himself. It can be the reaction against the shame.

Guilt, is emotion that people feel when they have done something wrong. According to psychologists, this is the reaction formation. When he is showing his wealth and lavishness by organizing parties. And another thing is that he is doing wrong something in business too. To cover up those wrongs he might taking attention of people to his parties. Here the symbol of ‘Eyes’ is very appropriate to understand this observation that how Gatsby has the kind of inferiority for his own self by his deeds that who is watching at him, and to cover that he is doing all this things. As a human being we are afraid to being seen and the negative things being seen. Another emotion has portrayed here is the “Self Grief”, when he lost Daisy, when he returned to the war. Then he trying to recapture what he has lost. Here we can see the grief reaction, in that people cannot move forward and being depressed. And they only being stuck to at that point or that person only. And it is complicated totally and heavy.

Now we can easily get idea about The Jazz Age, Characters, Symboles, Themes etc. 

THANK YOU!

Auden's Poems

W.H.Auden's Poem

Hello, I am Emisha Ravani, Writing this blog as a thinking activity given by Prof. Dilip Barad. To get much information you can visit the teacher's blog. Here, I am going to discuss these below questions. 

1) Auden's poems seems to be written in our times for 2022. Justify this in context of pandemic and Russia-Ukraine war.

2) In order to create duality in interpretation of the poem (September 1, 1939), Auden uses codified language to conceal the underlying theme of the lack of acceptance of homosexuality in society. Do you agree with this observation?

W.H. Auden the full name is  Wystan Hugh Auden. He is the British- American poet. And we have his three notable poems here to look at, Those are like,
1. September 1, 19393. 

2.Epitaph on a Tyrant

3. In Memory of W. B. Yeats

Let's have a first look on the poem "In Memory of W.B.Yeats".

The poem:  

He disappeared in the dead of winter:

The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,

And snow disfigured the public statues;

The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.

What instruments we have agree

The day of his death was a dark cold day.

Far from his illness

The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,

The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;

By mourning tongues

The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,

An afternoon of nurses and rumours;

The provinces of his body revolted,

The squares of his mind were empty,

Silence invaded the suburbs,

The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities

And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,

To find his happiness in another kind of wood

And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.

The words of a dead man

Are modified in the guts of the living.

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow

When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the bourse,

And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed

And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom

A few thousand will think of this day

As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.

What instruments we have agree

The day of his death was a dark cold day.

 

II

You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:

The parish of rich women, physical decay,

Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.

Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives

In the valley of its making where executives

Would never want to tamper, flows on south

From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,

Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,

A way of happening, a mouth.

 

III

Earth, receive an honoured guest:

William Yeats is laid to rest.

Let the Irish vessel lie

Emptied of its poetry.

In the nightmare of the dark

All the dogs of Europe bark,

And the living nations wait,

Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace

Stares from every human face,

And the seas of pity lie

Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right

To the bottom of the night,

With your unconstraining voice

Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse

Make a vineyard of the curse,

Sing of human unsuccess

In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart

Let the healing fountain start,

In the prison of his days

Teach the free man how to praise.

From Another Time by W. H. Auden, published by Random House.

The poem “In Memory of W.B.Yeats” by W.H.Auden, he wrote this poem on the death of W.B.Yeats so we can consider it as elegy (in modern literature a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead). Auden has not followed the tradition of writing elegy that’s why it is much different elegy which is modern elegy. In this poem we can get the main theme is ‘ The role of poem’ and about whom? That is “Poet”.

Let’s go to direct poem, when very first word poet uses “He”, from that we know that poet is talking about W.B.Yeats here. And he says that ‘he disappeared in the dead of winter’ means poet is addressing the death of W.B.Yeats. Further we can see that poet has used the fact of the day instead of nearly metaphor. Also we find the modernism elements here when we see the words like airports and thermometer. By this reference of thermometer he wants to make us know that when Yeats was died he was in ill bed. The day of his death is dark cold day, here he says that it is not normal day. In literature we often get this kind of metaphor when such figures died that such gloomy elements. Then he describe the nature and animals with the reference of death.   

The provinces of his body revolted,

The squares of his mind were empty,

Silence invaded the suburbs,

The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.

From these lines we interpret that the how his body and mind was suffering at the death day. And now his admirers will remember him.

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities

And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,

By this line he says that now poet will scattered everywhere by his works. And by unfamiliar affections, that is the idea of  poet is no more. In the further lines poet used the vocab of share market. And by that poet says that there are people who are not effected by the death of poet but there are few people who can be effected by the poet’s death.

In the second stanza, he direct uses “He” as poet. Yeats was political active figure and he was telling people to fight for freedom. He wrote for the people in the context of Ireland. But still that condition has not changed at all.

“For poetry makes nothing happen:”, here poet is saying that poets write for the betterment of people but poetry can not make any change in the society. This the theme that how can poetry make change! And where poetry can survive! Even the stuffs will be survive in the poetry. The voices of the readers will make poetry survive as he says. If poet died then, yet poetry should not be died.

In the last stanza,   

Earth, receive an honoured guest:

William Yeats is laid to rest.

Let the Irish vessel lie

Emptied of its poetry.

When Yeats’s body will entered in the earth as honored guest. “Vessel” means his all collection of poetry we can say.

In the nightmare of the dark

All the dogs of Europe bark,

And the living nations wait,

Each sequestered in its hate;

Here, we can take the reference of WW2 that how the various European countries were fighting to each other. And poet says that when dark time come still your poetry will make it rejoice. Whenever dullness exist the verses of the poet will make the golden world. And by the word “curse” there is the bible reference.   

In the deserts of the heart

Let the healing fountain start,

In the prison of his days

Teach the free man how to praise.

In these lines, he says that agony in the deserted heart poetry will be the healing fountain to that agony. And poetry will be always fight it’s own survive. Poetry is for the people who are busy in their own lives.

The poem is not about the only W.B.Yeats but poem is for the all poets. It is the meditation or reflection, thinking on the role of poetry, place of in modern world. The modern world is for that people have no time for poetry and may questioning like, what is poetry for? Can poetry make anything happen? Should it make anything happen? The poem is answer to all above questions. And poet gives the light to the idea of changing the world by literature.

The main concern is here how modern world is much busy in the work and the forget to give importance to the poetry or literature. In this poem we can get the words like modern elements so from that we can come to know that this poem is written for the present time.  

Epitaph on a Tyrant

The poem :

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,

And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;

He knew human folly like the back of his hand,

And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;

When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,

And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

W.H.Auden is Anglo- American poet. We should have historical sense when we want to study any texts. As per new criticism we will not ask that what poet wants to say, but we will ask what poetry wants to say. It is written around 1939 perhaps. Here the poet is trying to write about “Tyrant” and that is direct to the “Adolf Hitler”. Poet is not talking about only him but he talks about all kind of Tyrant.

Here very first word that is, ‘Perfection’. If we want to look it at by the first impression we can it has optimism itself. But we should see that in which way poet has used this word in the poem of tyrant. Might he went as negative tone too. Further, “of a kind” says that there is something in a particular way we can say by the poet has used the way to put this phrase. Like he says that kind of perfection of tyrants.

In the second line, there is the point that the songs are he is singing around the people. He uses the word “Invented” means that all the tyrants are saying that it is going to be done first time. How they use the pseudo language. In this poet is saying that they invented the poetry which is their own. ‘easy to understand’ mentioned here might it is saying that how tyrants use the way of oversimplify. Also here rise a question like poetry should be easy or hard to understand? Modern or twentieth century literature is not easy to understand so it cannot be understood by people so it is not democratic literature. So we can see the elements of modern literature.

Further, poet says that tyrants know the human folly like the back of his hand. It says that how tyrants uses the violence to people. By the human folly he might wants to go with ‘Emotional susceptibility’. For example when it comes to the mother, nation, religion or selfhood, people become emotional. And tyrants know about it so they always use these keys to pretend.

‘great interested in armies and fleets’ by this line we can see very easily this thing that how they pretend to people by dressing like armies and visit them on holidays. Let’s see how Hitler was in war time uniform and standing among the army men.

When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, in this line he talks about senators that how they are behaving like sycophancy. From this image we can easily become familiar with the word.

Now a days we see that how people are becoming puppets of authorities. It is kind of show off or we can say people wanting such kind of power under them. Or longing to ruling.

And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

In the last line there is many reference like we see that every tyrants taking photographs with children to show the soft corner to people and we see by the psychological point of view we can say that they are doing this activity to hide their own guilt or they trying to convince their own selves to get rid of their wrong deeds. And here the reference of Jesus, and using that they wants to prove them as compassion personalities among them.

By these pictures we can get the idea that how they are using this sort of mindsets.

Another reference we find here there is interchange of the words in this line, here is one report which is specking about a very sympathetic ruler who is “ Dutch ruler William the Silent” the writer John Lothrop Motley says that : ‘ As long as he lived, he was the guiding star of a whole brave nations, and when he died the little children cried in the streets.

So by this reference poet did irony upon the tyrant’s tears what they use very oftentimes to gain sympathy of people. Let’s get some idea by images.

Here i put a quote from James Madison which is saying that 

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