An overview on Anita Desai’s “Clear Light of Day”

The Imagery of House in Anita Desai’s “Clear Light of Day”

Written By Rakesh Patel

I consider Anita Desai’s “Clear Light of Day” as a poetic novel as it considerably deals with symbols and suggestions. Her use of “the house” imagery is at the center which signifies dust, dullness and decay.

As the novel begins, you’ll notice that the house of the Das family does not change except decays. Like Anita Desai’s other novels, the setting is Old Delhi. The interesting thing you’ll notice is she skillfully synthesizes the image of house with the lives of the Das family. The house is associated with sickness, dust, and disorder. And for that reason, the “grey” color is described again and again.

So, the house reflects the mentality and sickness of the entire Das family. In other words, nobody in the Das household enjoys life, all merely exists! The sickness and disorder pervade in the mind of the family members. This house is exactly in contrast with the house of Haider Ali and that is why Raja gets attracted towards it.

For this house of Das family, the symbol of “web” is described which is apt from every point of view. As I say the house does not change but decays, it is fair to remark that because of such sickness and dusty atmosphere of the house everybody feels “suffocated” and that is why they try to find escape in one thing or another. For that reason, Raja is attracted towards Haider Ali’s house. Tara often goes to Mira Mansi and finally, she succeeds in escaping completely by marrying off Bakul. Baba seeks escape in music and plays his gramophone all the time. Bimla becomes the professor of history. In this way, the house plays a vital role behind the escapist nature of the Das household.

Anita Desai beautifully describes the state of the Delhi city. Sometimes, the whole city seems to be dead and the houses are referred to in the novel as the “tombs”. The house of the Das family seems to be deserted and therefore, Bimla does not prevent Baba playing his gramophone loudly because she thinks that the silence of the house is more dreadful. For her, the noise produced by Baba’s gramophone gives peace to her. Even when Mr. Das and his wife were alive, they were just like the outsiders as Mr. Das was known for his entrance. The mother was either engrossed in the cards or confined to the bed. That is why Tara sometimes feels that even the ghost of her father could create the noise of papers and nothing else!

The decaying aspect of the house is felt on the Das family and this why the whole family gets scattered and only Bim remains with Baba in the “dead house”. This is how, the house has symbolic significance, which plays a major role in the actions and deeds of the Das household and becomes the central episode in the novel.

Read the Novel:
Desai, Anita, Clear Light of Day (Vintage U, K. Random House, 1980)

Copyright © Rakesh Patel

The Original Resource:
http://www.poetbay.com/viewText.php?textId=65918

 

Kiran Desai – The Inheritance of Loss

Kiran Desai was born on 3rd September, 1971 in New Delhi, India, and lived there until she was 14. Then she went to the United States with her mother. She took her early education in Massachusetts. After completing her education, she started writing in US.

The Inheritance of Loss was published in early 2006. This novel won the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award. The subject of The Inheritance of Loss is set partly in India and partly in the USA. She shows what is the difference between the living pattern in India and abroad.

 

What is One-Act Play All About?

A one-act play is a type of play which does not necessarily consist of one act. It is neither an act from full length play. More specifically you can say that the duration of the play may be equal to the time normally required by an act from a full-length play.

A one-act play is an independent as well as a self-sufficient form of art. It also consists of all the elements that you find in a full-length play such as setting, characters, property, stage, conflict, and point of view, theme etc. It also has an organic form with beginning, middle and an end. Unlike a full-length play, the unity of time, place and action do not function fully.

You will see that a one-act play does not have episodic subjects; rather it has a visionary and conceptual unity. It normally represents a single situation, action, and atmosphere leading to deep impression. The characters and the experiences are not complex, you can understand easily.

Since it has a confined canvas, the life experiences it conveys can not be complex and difficult as it happens in a full-length play. The number of characters is bound to be small. Some of the beautiful examples that you will love to read are Donne Byrne’s The Professors, Stanley Houghton’s The Dear Departed, and W. W. Jacobs’s The Monkey’s Paw.

Though the orchestral representation, multidimensional experience, a throbbing effect may not be there in a one-act play, but it certainly has to offer a slice of life as a piece of literature does.

 

Toni Morrison Talks About Her Motivation For Writing

 

Toni Morrison’s Beloved – A Novel With Universal Appeal, Depth and Brilliance

Toni Morrison’s Beloved – A Novel With Universal Appeal, Depth and Brilliance
By Rakesh Ramubhai Patel

Toni Morrison (1931), an American writer, enjoys a good position as one of the most popular as well as successful black female writers. Her work celebrates the black experience by way of featuring mythic elements, compassion with the humanity in poetic language. Her fifth novel Beloved (1987), which is remarkable for its depth, brilliance and universal appeal, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. She also won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1993.

What is the Novel All About?

The novel Beloved is the story of Sethe, an unfortunate mother who prefers killing her daughter Beloved rather than letting her grown up as a slave.

This tale is set in Reconstruction Ohio. Morrison vividly sketches the dark picture of slavery and its dehumanizing effects with all mental and physical traumas inflicted on the survivals. She beautifully weaves a ghostly stale in a realistic narrative.

Themes in The Novel:

The novel deals with many complex and enduring themes such as black Americans’ relationship to slavery, the quest for individual, cultural identity, the importance of family and community, the nature of humanity. It is because of Morrison’s unique treatment to these themes her work achieve universality.

Morrison’s Style in the Novel:

Beloved is considered as Morrison’s most successful novel. She makes use of multiple timeframe. She beautifully makes a way for the fantastic occurrences in the novel like that of reappearance of Beloved. The language is poetic which shows her lyric storytelling ability very clearly.

Though the novel stimulated considerable controversy, accusations of racism, several months after its publication, it’s a great piece of work one should really appreciate for its merit.

Rakesh Patel is an aspiring poet, freelance writer, self-published author and teacher. Read short poems by Rakesh Patel.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rakesh_Ramubhai_Patel
http://EzineArticles.com/?Toni-Morrisons-Beloved—A-Novel-With-Universal-Appeal,-Depth-and-Brilliance&id=2977164

 

Epiphany: A Manifestation or a Moment of Revelation

Epiphany is a popular literary term almost every student of literature is familiar with. It means a manifestation or a sign for something to come. Christian thinkers use this term to denote a manifestation of God’s presence in this world.

The term epiphany reminds of James Joyce who employed this word effectively in his work. He adopted this term to secular experience. He used it to signify a revelation at the time of perceiving a commonplace object. His novels and short stories consist of several epiphanies. For instance; a climatic epiphany is a sort of revelation that Stephan, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, experiences seeing a young girl on the seashore.

In modern poetry and fiction, this idea of epiphany is artistically used to denote the sudden flare of revelation of an ordinary object. James Joyce used it as “moments”. Later on, Shelley used it, in his Defense of Poetry (1821), to describe the most cherished moments. Wordsworth also employed this concept and his ideas revolved around some beautiful moments. For instance; his short poetry like The Solitary Reaper deals with a moment of revelation. His Prelude is full of such visionary moments:

’twas a moment’s pause, -
All that took place within me came and went
As in a moment; yet with Time it dwells,
And grateful memory, as a thing divine.

 

Short Summary of Beowulf: the Greatest Epic or Heroic Poem

Beowulf was perhaps composed during the 9th century A. D. by someone whose name is not known. It is the earliest and the greatest epic or heroic poem.

Short Summary of Beowulf:

This epic poem describes the hero Beowulf marching with his fourteen warriors and arrive at the place of Heorot where he finds that he king of Heorot Hrothgar terrified by a monster called Grendel. Beowulf manages to kill Grendel and his monster-mother at his abode beneath a lake. After that he returns to his country and becomes the king there and rules his kingdom for fifty years. He dies of the wounds he got once during the combat fought with a dragon.

The Specialty of the Poem:

This epic poem has the magnificent ending. It describes the selfless heroism of Beowulf, anguish of his people, the memorial knoll on the low cliff, which would route every returning mariner to guide a straight course to harbor in the memory of his dead hero.

Myth and Meaning of the Poem:

The time when this poem Beowulf composed, there existed several northern legends of Beowa, a half-divine hero, and the monster called Grendel. Some consider the later as a bear and some interpret it as the malaria of the marsh lands.

Symbolic Interpretation:

As for the symbolic interpretation, some consider these myths as Beowulf’s successive fights with the three dragons as: 1. the overcoming of the threat of the sea, which was trodden by the dykes, 2. the conquering of the sea by sailing upon it, 3. the conflict with the hostile forces of nature defeated by man’s will and perseverance.

Really speaking, Beowulf is the epic portraying the picture of a brave man’s death.

 

What is Epigram? The Epigrammatists who made this Form Popular

Epigram is a form of poetry which is presented to show terse, pointed and witty observation.

Epigrams were in vogue in ancient times also which were in the forms of inscriptions on statues or stones.

The term “epigram” became popular after 18th century for the witty statements.

Some Latin poets like Juneval, Martial, developed this form and used it as a short satire in verse. In French, Voltaire wrote fine epigrams.

As for the English literature, the poets such as Ben Jonson, John Donne, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, and Jonathan Swift were often considered as the masters of epigrams.

Oscar Wilde was one of the famous epigrammatists. Most of the short poems of Walter Savage were fine examples of non-satirical epigrams.

S. T. Coleridge used this form in the 19th century. One of his epigrams shows that Romanticism did not preclude wit:

“On a Volunteer Singer

Swans sing before they die – ’twere no bad thing
Should certain people die before they sing!”

 

Halimbawa Ng Haiku: Examples of Haiku Poems, and their Forms

Halimbawa ng haiku means examples of haiku poems. This form has become so much popular that this form is often introduced in schools so that students can enjoy and learn.

The Form and Structure:

Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry which consists of 17 moare (also called “on” or syllables) in 3 metrical phrases of 5-7-5 moare respectively. But most writers of this verse form in English use about 10 to 14 syllables with no formal pattern.

The form of haiku poems consists of a “kigo” or “kireji” or verbal caesura. Japanese form is traditionally printed in a single vertical line whereas, in English, it is composed in 3 lines which is parallel to the 3 metrical lines in Japanese form.

It was the custom to make the carving of famous haiku upon natural stone in order to make poem monuments came to be known as kuhi.

Marlene Mountain was considered one of the first English-language haiku poets. He wrote the verse in a single horizontal line inspired by the single vertical line of printed Japanese haiku. The single-line form normally contains fewer than 17 syllables.

The writers of Haiku in English language make use of the following:

•    3 lines up to 17 syllables
•    a season word (kigo)
•    a cut or kire (sometimes marked by a punctuation) to compare two images

Influence of This Verse Form:

The influence of haiku poetry is felt worldwide. It is found in journals in Japan, and in the English-speaking countries including India, in Russia, in Northern Europe, in central and southeast Europe.

In the early 20th century, in India, Rabindranath Tagore tried his hands at haiku in Bengali and made some translations from Japanese. Zeenabhai Ratanji Desai ‘Sneharashmi’, made this verse form famous in Gujarati.

It was Feb’ 2008 when the World Haiku Festival was held in Bangalore, and its main intention was to gather haikuists from all over India and from Europe and the US.
Haiku had a significant influence on Imagists in the 1910s, especially Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” of 1913.

At the time of the Imagist period, several mainstream writers and poets composed came to be known as “hokku,” in a 5-7-5 syllable pattern.
The Afro-American novelist Richard Wright composed around 4,000 haikus.

Examples of Haiku Poems:

Buson is really considered as one of the greatest masters of haiga which is an art form where painting is combined with haiku. And therefore, his love for painting is clearly seen in the style of his poems.

1. Bashō’s “old pond” is one of the famous examples:
furuike ya
(fu/ru/i/ke ya): 5

kawazu tobikomu
(ka/wa/zu to/bi/ko/mu): 7

mizu no oto
(mi/zu no o/to): 5

Translation:

old pond
a frog jumps
the sound of water

2. A classic hokku by Matsuo Bashō:

fuji no kaze ya oogi ni nosete Edo miyage

Translation:

the wind of Mt. Fuji
I’ve brought on my fan!
a gift from Edo

3. Snow in my shoe
Abandoned
Sparrow’s nest

Jack Kerouac (collected in Book of Haikus, Penguin Books, 2003)

4. Whitecaps on the bay:
A broken signboard banging
In the April wind.

Richard Wright (collected in Haiku: This Other World, Arcade Publishing, 1998)

5. lily:
out of the water
out of itself
bass
picking bugs
off the moon

Nick Virgilio (Selected Haiku, Burnt Lake Press/Black Moss Press, 1988)

6. downpour:
my “I-Thou”
T-shirt

Raymond Roseliep (Rabbit in the Moon, Alembic Press, 1983)

7. an aging willow–
its image unsteady
in the flowing stream

Robert Spiess (Red Moon Anthology, Red Moon Press, 1996)

8. Just friends:
he watches my gauze dress
blowing on the line.

Alexis Rotella (After an Affair, Merging Media, 1984)

9. meteor shower…
a gentle wave
wets our sandals

Michael Dylan Welch (HSA Newsletter XV:4, Autumn 2000)

 

Onomatopoeia Poems: Different Examples of Onomatopoeia in Literature and Poetry

The term onomatopoeia comes from the Greek word “onomatopoeia” which means ‘word-making’. It represents the sound by way of imitating the word. For instance, the sound “meow” represents the word cat.

As far as literature is concerned, poets make use of this feature and convey the meaning of their poetry by way of representing sounds.

The use of sound in such a way that echoes or suggests the meaning is also called onomatopoeia for instance; “The moan of doves in immemorial elms.”

Examples of Onomatopoeia Poems in Literature

Tennyson, in “Song of the Lotus-Eaters”, he describes the languorous life of the Lotus-Eaters by presenting words with sounds:

“Here are cool mosses deep,
And through the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.”

See the effect of sound produced by the humming bees in the following lines from his “Come Down, O Maid”:

“The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.”

Browning also used some unpleasant sounds, in “Meeting at Night”:

“A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match.”

It has become a literary device in which the sounds of words are used to suggest a sense of the subject.

Examples in Synthetic Languages:

Onomatopoeic words are wonderfully incorporated into the structure of synthetic languages. Some words are evolved into new sounds or pronunciations in such a way that they go beyond the concept of onomatopoeia for instance; the English word “bleat” used for the sheep noise was pronounced as “blairt/blet” in medieval times.

Examples in English Language:

Some very familiar sounds which occur in English language are “beep”, “hiccup”, “bang”, and “splash”.

Certain phrases like “the humming bee”, “the whizzing arrow”, and “the cackling hen” are good examples.

Sounds related to machines are often considered as the examples of onomatopoeia for instance; “beep-beep” sound of horn, and “vroom” sound of engine.

Words used for certain things or objects represent some sounds for instance; the most common word “zip/zipper” stands for fastener.

Certain animal sounds just like “meow” for cat, “quack” for duck, “bark” for dog are very typical in English language.

Many birds are named after the sound they produce for intake; the cuckoo, the whooping crane, chickadee, etc.