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Showing posts from July, 2012

Role of witches in Macbeth

Shakespeare’s use of witches in his famous play Macbeth is indeed a common contemporary theatrical device of the time. However, he reaches the situation and the characters to such a psychological state that we are somehow convinced at the rationality of the irrationality of the witches. They have been used to lessen the responsibility of the hero’s killing a legitimate, old and virtuous king, King Duncan. In order to misguide the hero, Macbeth who has been presented at first as brave, noble, gentle, loyal to the king and loved by all,  Shakespeare here applies, a device, the witches whose task is to misguide and confuse people and distort reality. To them, Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air. They call Macbeth the “thane of Glamis” which he already possess, and the future “thane of Cawdor” and the king hereafter. Next when he, having returned from a victorious battlefield, is informed the king’s reward to him the “thane of Cawdor ”, he be

Caliban in The Tempest as a Colonized Native

Though not a major character, Caliban in The Tempest has become a central attention of the critics and readers of recent post colonial studies , as Richard P Wheeler ( 2001: 320) comments, Many recent readings have rigorously emphasized the importance of the play’s relation to the colonialist enterprise. (p.320) Hence, Caliban is the primary source of evaluating the nature of European colonialism, because Caliban is presented here as a symbol of a colonized native. The name of Prospero’s servant-monster, Caliban, seems to be an anagram or derivative of “Cannibal.”. In The Tempest , Caliban suffers the same fate as many New World natives: He loses control over a domain he thought he ruled, becoming a virtual slave of Prospero: As I told thee before, I am subject to a tyrant, a sorcerer, that by his cunning hath cheated me of the island. (III, 2) Almost all of the “colonizers” on the island treat Caliban, the native, as “savage” and a type of meanest creature. P

What is Theatre of the Absurd? Some examples of absurd play

"What do I know about man's destiny?  I could tell you more about radishes." -Samuel Beckett Theater of the Absurd came about as a reaction to World War II.  It took the basis of existential philosophy and combined it with dramatic elements to create a style of theatre which presented a world which can not be logically explained, life is in one word, ABSURD! Thus, The Theatre of the Absurd is a designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction…as well as to the style of theatre which has evolved from their work. (wikipedia) Needless to say, this genre of theatre took quite some time to catch on because it used techniques that seemed to be illogical to the theatre world.  The plots often deviated from the more traditional episodic structure, and seem to move in a circle, ending the same way it began.  The scenery was often unrecognizable, and to make matters worse, the dialogue never seemed to make any sense. The “Theatre of the Absurd” is a term coi

Proverbs in Things Fall Apart

Proverbs are a very important part of African oral culture, and therefore prominent in Things Fall Apart. At the beginning of the novel, the narrator notes that, "proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten." Achebe writes in English, the language of the colonizer, but incorporates idioms, proverbs, and imagery that invoke the Igbo tradition and culture into his prose in order to convey the experience of African society under colonization and to force the reader to accept the story he tells on his own terms. Yet, Achebe’s translation of the Igbo language into English retains the cadences, rhythms, and speech patterns of the language without making them sound, as Conrad did, “primitive.” Note some selected proverbs, “A man who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness” “When a man says yes, his Chi[personal God] says yes also.” “A child cannot pay for its mother’s milk.”

The Lion and the Jewel as an African Play

The Lion and the Jewel , an African play written in English, has paid attention  to the English speaking audiences in different countries. The play has brought together some features of African, more definitely Yoruba, theatrical tradition. At the same time, it communicates with elements of English theatre tradition. Soyinka ’s own words clarify his intention in the play, and single out one by one, the elements or features of African theatre tradition in the play: “African drama is sophisticated in idiom. Our forms of theatre are quite different from literary drama. We use spontaneous dialogue, folk music, simple stories, and relevant dances to express what we mean. Our theatre uses stylized forms into the drama of the English language.” ( Quoted in Nkosi,108)           The first and foremost quality of an African drama is its “spontaneous dialogue” which in the context means unprepared or extempore sentences spoken by the performers in the course of the actual performance.

Things Fall Apart: The Fall of Traditional Igbo Society and Culture

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. Chinua Achebe, the father of modern African literature, very aptly chooses the title and the epigraph of his novel Things Fall Apart from W. B. Yeats’s “The Second Coming”  in order to adapt the process of the fall of traditional Igbo society and culture. Set in the 1890s, the novel carefully portrays, at first, the complex, advanced social institutions and artistic traditions of Igbo culture; next, its contact with Europeans; and finally the falling apart of the traditional Igbo culture. At the first part of the novel, Achebe presents the Igbo society as harmonious, coherent and peaceful and illustrates various aspects of the traditional way of life of the Ibo people. Don C. Ohadike writes of the pre-colonial condition of the Igbo people: Their major preoccupations were to live free from crime and sickness, t

Regeneration in King Lear

King Lear is the story of sin, suffering, realization, redemption and regeneration of Lear, the King of Britain, a dotty 80-year-old ruler. At his retirement age, Lear wants to hand over the responsibility of ruling the kingdom to his three daughters: Goneril, Regan and Cordelia, still enjoying the power of being king. Therefore he arranges a “love test” for them. But he fails to realize the true love; rather rewards the false love and punishes the true love and the innocent characters. Thus he commits sin which leads to his own suffering, realization and finally regenerates into a new man. For this reason, John Maule Lothian ( 1949: 27) calls King Lear as “the spiritual history or regeneration of King Lear”(p. 27) At the very outset of the play, the audience sees Lear as a man that uses his materialistic things as a device to control everyone around him. Lear wants his daughters to show their undying love to him, but two only “love” him for what they can get from him.

Search for Identity in A House For Mr. Biswas

Vidyadhar Suraj Prasad Naipaul, an expatriate from Trinidad, is a product of post-imperialist society whose primary business as a novelist is to project carefully the complex fate of individuals in a cross-cultural society. In his magnum opus, A House for Mr. Biswas, Naipaul deals with the problems of fragmentation, frustration, alienation, and exile, more definitely the identity crisis of an individual. The novel tells the story of its protagonist, Mr. Biswas from birth to death in different phases, and his problems of identity crisis. Born with six fingers, a symbol of bad luck for his father and family, Mohun feels an alien and an outsider even in his own family and in his own Indian world. Thus, Naipaul portrays the complexity of the relationship between a man and his origins and his inability to escape from it.  Yet Mohun searches for his own identity “I am just somebody. Nobody at all” (279). Unlike his father and brothers’ identity of labourers, Mr. Biswas’s identit

The theme of transformation or change in The Metamorphosis

“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” (Kafka, 12) This jolting narration begins The Metamorphosis which tells the story of  Gregor Samsa’s  transformation into a vermin……………. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is a novel with many levels of meaning. The very title of the novel “Metamorphosis” focuses Kafka’s attention to the theme of transformation or change. Metamorphoses or transformations in the novel occur on several levels. Gregor, the main character, changes mentally, physically and emotionally and attitude to him changes accordingly. First of all there is a physical change to Gregor which is indicated at the very opening of the novel. Transformation occurs to everything and everybody in the novel. After physical change, transformation passes to higher level and changes mental structures of Gregor. In the beginning of story Gregor Samsa, the protagonist, appears as a young and energ

Development of an Artist in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man tells the story of Stephen Dedalus, a boy growing up in Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century, as he gradually decides to cast off all his social, familial, and religious constraints to live a life devoted to the art of writing. Thus Stephen develops, as Gerald Doherty states, from “finite to infinite, creature to creator, earthly to heavenly (or hellish) domains”. Stephen’s maturity comes through his bitter experiences of life; his rebellion is directed against all constituted authority in different forms: family, school, custom, race etc. In his early age, he fears the authority in the domestic atmosphere.           “He hid under the table.” The only way to escape punishment is to submit or to “apologize”. He finds the “ conscience of [his] race” as corrupt and brutal. He also finds the social customs rigid and ready-made which he must conform. In his school he is “caught in the whirl of a scrimmage”, and is unduly