TWO LOVE POEMS

1.TO HIS COY MISTRESS-ANDREW MARVELL,ENGLAND(1621-1678)

SUMMARY:

               In this dramatic poem,the English poet Andrew Marvell presents the speaker’s physical love and sexual desire(lust) for his beloved.The speaker tries his best to convince his mistress to involve into sexual relationship.However,the beloved feels very shy and makes no response.

             The speaker says that if he had enough time and limitless space he would praise the beauty and sweetness of his beloved for ages.He would adore(praise) her eyes and forehead for a hundred years and her each breast for two hundred years.He would  admire the rest of the organs for thirty thousands years.She would wander by the side of Ganges of India collecting rubies and he would complain by the tides of Humber of England.He would love her ten years before the flood and she would refuse till the conversion of the Jews.

                 But the speaker says that time is limited and life is short.He always hears time’s winged chariot coming near.He tells his love that her beauty will not be fresh forever.When she enters into grave,her beauty,virginity,pride,honour etc. will turn into dust.He says that his desires,lust will be also ashes.According to him,she will not hear the echoes of his song in the grave and there,no one will go to embrace her.

                  Finally,the speaker persuades his beloved to make love while they are at the prime of youth,desires and energy.Thus,according to him,they should surpass time as the bird of prey attacks its victim.They should mix their strength and sweetness and they should enjoy present moment fully.The speaker says that life is brief and death is inevitable.Time is chewing everybody slowly.So,he tries to woo his mistress to surpass time and death by making love or by involving into love game at the present.

2. PIANO-DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE,ENGLAND(1885-1930)      

                This is a nostalgic poem.It is composed by a famous English Poet,D.H.Lawrence.This poem is about the poet’s pain of remembrance and pain of growing up.It conveys a tension between the speaker’s desire to be a man and his desire to return to his childhood.

              

               Softly is the evening,a woman is playing piano and singing to the poet.But this song and music of piano takes the poet to the bygone days.The poet  forgets his present maturity and finds himself as a small child sitting under piano on the lap of his mother who smiles and sings.

                                           

               Though the poet tries to control himself,the music of piano betrays him back.His heart weeps when he remembers those Sunday evenings when as a child he used to sit on the lap of his mother in a cosy parlour listening to her hymns.

                                            

                So,now it is useless for the woman to play piano passionately to woo the poet.The present manhood of the poet is cast down in the flood of remembrance.He is lost in the childhood days and weeps like a child for the past.       

ANTON CHEKHOV’S DRAMA:SWAN SONG

SUMMARY:   

                   A swan-song is the last thing produced or performed by an artist for the public.This one-act play of Chekhov is a swan-song for the central character,Svetlovidov.”A swan-song” is a powerful character study of a stage actor, Svetlovidov who has been in the theatre more than forty years.This play represents Svetlovidov last performance on the stage.He has already climbed many peaks of success and achievements in his long acting career.However,his present condition is pitiable.He is ummarried,lonely,old,neglected and frustrated.He has spent forty-five years in the stage acting career with great skills and masterful performance just to meet his old lonely and unhealthy life of failure.He says,”I am helpless.”These remarks best represent the despair(sadness) and failure of Svetlovidov in his old age.

A wonderful,charming and rich woman falls in love with Svetlovidov when he is at the peak of his success.Svetlovidov also loves her and he wants to marry the beautiful young woman to settle happy married life.However,the charming lady asks Svetlovidov to quit his acting career if he wants to marry her.She says,”Leave the stage.”She could love an actor but not be an actor’s wife.She loves Svetlovidov  for his acting but refuses to marry him.This is because acting is regarded to be the profession of low social prestige.The response and attitude of the wonderful woman represents the attitude of upper and middle class society.In a quite desperate(sad) tone ,Svetlovidov says,”I saw then that there was no such thing as holy art,that it was all wild talk and falsity that I was a slave,a plaything….I am an alien(stranger) to them,to them I am so much dirt,almost a prostitute,to please their vanity they will seek my acquaintance,but not one of them would design to marry his sister or daughter to me.I don’t believe in them.”This shows that the artists or stage actors are taken nothing more than the entertainers.They are given no social respect and prestige at all.The actors are praised highly for their skillful performance but they are considered less respectable to be considered for the marital and other intimate relationships.

In this one-act play,Anton Chekhov presents his keen observation of the human vanities and weaknesses.He creates the enduring pictures of the absurdities of life and speech in the masterful portrayal of Svetlovidov.The empty stage represents a great absurdity.Svetlovidov’s appearance on the stage with empty theatre represents the final performance of his acting career.He says that society looks upon him as “plaything for other people’s pastime.”He realizes the absurdity of the world and consoles himself by talking about the universal strength and death-defying power of art and acting.He overcomes his grief which shows that art finally triumphs over personal tragedy.In the end of the play,Nikita cries bitterly at the empty and heart-felt claim of Svetlovidov for act.Nikita cries because Nikita understands the absurdity both in the speech and life of svetlovidov.

FOUR LEVELS:

1.Literal comprehension:Svetlovidov,an old stage actor drunkenly enters the stage of a darkened and deserted theatre.For the first time in his life,he has drunk heavily and fallen asleep in the dressing room of the theatre.He has drunk to forget the emptiness,meaninglessness and bitter experience of his life.The audience and the other artists have already gone home.Svetlovidov comes upstage and begins to lament over his past and the present neglected,lonely and miserable condition.Nikita,a promptor comes to the stage and shows deep sympathy and respect to Svetlovidov.Such a great artist has no home,family,relatives and nobody to care him.He has already given his more than 45 years to the stage performing masterful and skillful role-play.He has devoted himself since long ago for the entertainment of the public and for the upliftment of art and theatre.But now he has met emptiness,hatred,frustration and meaninglessness.He says,”I am helpless.”This remark best represents the despair and failure of Svetlovidov in his old age.Svetlovidov is now in the Swan-song stage of his life and art.He recalls a lost love,sorrowfully reflects upon his unremarkable career and doubts his talent and the choices he made.He remembers his past triumphs,his service in the army and what a dashing young fellow once he was!He now feels lonely,unloved and unappreciated.He recalls a marriage proposal he made once to a beautiful woman,and her response that she would only marry him if he gave up acting.He laments the direction his life has taken and his declining health and talent.Finally,Svetlovidov admits that he is too old,tired,lonely,unhealthy and insignificant.He is like a melting icicles whose ‘song is sung’.The play ends with such a great hero’s acceptance of his old age,decline and meaninglessness.

2.Interpretation:A swan song is the last thing produced or performed by an artist for the public.This one-act play of Chekhov is a swan-song for the central character,Svetlovidov.”a Swan-song” is a powerful character study of a stage actor,Svetlovidov who has been in the theatre more than forty years.This play represents Svetlovidov’s last performance on the stage.He has already climbed many peaks of success and achievements in his long acting career.However,his present condition is pitiable.He is unmarried,lonely,old,neglected and frustrated.He has spent forty-five years in the stage acting career with great skills and masterful performance just to meet his old lonely and unhealthy life of failure.He says,”I am helpless.”These remarks best represent the despair and failure of Svetlovidov in his old age.

                                        

                  In this one-act play,Anton Chekhov presents his keen observation of the human vanities and weaknesses.He creates the enduring pictures of the absurdities of life and speech in the masterful portrayal of Svetlovidov.The empty stage represents a great absurdity.Svetlovidov’s appearance on the stage with empty theatre represents the final performance of his acting career.He says that society looks upon him as “plaything for other people’s past time.”He realizes the absurdity of the world and consoles himself by talking about the universal strength and death-defying power of art and acting.He overcomes his grief which shows that art finally triumphs over personal tragedy.In the end of the play,Nikita cries bitterly at the empty and heart-felt claim of Svetlovidov for art.Nikita cries because she understands the absurdity both in the speech and life of Svetlovidov.

3.Critical Thinking:This one-act play presents a powerful character study of a stage actor,Svetlovidov.Here,Chekhov realistically presents his keen observation of human vanities and weaknesses.He creates the enduring pictures of the absurdities of life and speech in the masterful portrayal of Svetlovidov.However,some ideas of this play are a bit less convincing.How is it possible that such a great and famous actor has no home,family and nobody to care him in his old age?If personal tragedy doesn’t affect art and artists,why does Svetlovidov lament over personal tragedy?

4.Assimilation:I am very much affected from this one-act play.Before reading it,I thought that the artists,stage actors are great,famous,happy and honorable people.But now,I have realized how such ornaments of society are looked down upon by the society and government.While reading this play,I burst into tears by seeing the pitiable condition of such a great artist.

First English detective novel:THE MOONSTONE

Introduction:Life of Wilkie Collins

               William Wilkie Collins was born in 1824,the son of William Collins,a painter and member of the Royal Academy.He was named after his father and his godfather,Sir David Wilkie,a distinguished Scottish painter.Collins’s upbringing was comfortably middle-class,but his education somewhat unconventional:his parents believed travel to be as important as schooling,and took him away from school in 1836 to tour the Continent for almost two years.Wilkie found the experience enjoyable but unsettling,and when he finally left school at the age of seventeen,he had little inclination toward a career.For a time he dabbled in commerce,and in 1846 began to study law.His main interest,however,was writing:his first book,a biography of his father,was published in 1848,and his first novel,Antonina,in 1850.

          

                 In the following year he met Charles Dickens(1812-70):it was to be the start of a long and fruitful friendship,extending to 1870,the year of dicken’s death.The year they met,Dickens was editor of Household Words,a magazine which,typically for the mid-nineteenth century,published novels in serial installments.It was through Collins’s association with Dickens that the publication of several of his novels,including The Moonstone,was arranged.In 1856 Collins joined the staff of Household Words,and in the same year travelled with Dickens to Paris.There,in a little bookstall,he discovered an account of certain famous French crimes,Recucil des causes celebres,on which he drew for the plots of some of his novels.Of these,the most famous is The Woman in White(1860),which was published serially in All the Year Round,the magazine Dickens founded after a quarrel with his publishers brought Household Words to an end.

                   

                   It was roughly at this time-in about 1859-that Collins formed a relationship with caroline Graves,a woman of whom little is now known.She and Collins lived together for some years,but never married.In 1868,she left him to marry a man named Joseph Clow,but returned to Collins in the early seventies and remained his mistress until his death in 1889.While estranged from Caroline,Collins entered into a liaison with another young woman,Martha Rudd,who bore him three illegitimate children.Little is known of her ,either,for Collins took pains to conceal his two irregular relationship from all but his most intimate friends.

                       

                      In 1862 Collins developed a condition known in the nineteenth century as rheumatic gout,which caused him great pain in his legs,feet and eyes.To alleviate the pain began to take opium,usually in the form of laudanum.As time passed,his dependence on the drug increased;it was particularly great as episodes of The Moonstone began to appear in All the Year round in 1868,for only two weeks after the first installment,with the discovery that his mother was dying,Collin’s illness became especially acute.He was so unwell for some months that he was unable to write and had to dictate portions of his novel to a secretary.At first he engaged a young man to take dictation,but he and a number of others hired subsequently found Collins’s cries of pain so distressing that they were obliged to leave.Finally he found a young woman able to disregard his suffering,who successfully recorded a number of The Moonstone’s  installment.In order to sleep at night,Collins took larger and larger doses of laudanum,and completed the last part of the novel largely under its influence.’When it was finished,’he told a friend  ,’I was not only pleased and astonished at the finale,but did not recognize it as my own.’Franklin Blake,a semi-autobiographical character in the novel,similarly acts under the influence of opium without remembering what he did.The horrors of addiction,as described by another character,Ezra Jennings,were no doubt known to Collins at first hand.

                       By 1870,the year of Dickens’s death,Collins’s dependence on opium was complete.By 1875,he was drinking a wine glass of laudanum every evening before retiring,an amount that would have been lethal to anyone who had not built up resistance to its effects.The Woman in White(1860) was written prior to his addiction and The Moonstone(1868) in its early stages.These are his greatest novels;the ones written afterwards show a marked decline in quality directly ascribable to opium.Collins died in 1889;though he is mentioned in various memoirs.His life has been most fully recorded by Kenneth Robinson In Wilkie Collins:biography(1951),and by Nuel Pharr Davis in The Life of Wilkie Collins(1956).

SUMMARIES OF THE NOVEL THE MOONSTONE

                       The novel opens in India in 1799 with an account of the Moonstone,a sacred Hindu diamond guarded by three Brahmin priests.During the British attack on Seringapatam,Colonel Herncastle murders the guardians and steals the diamond.

                      In his will Herncastle leaves the diamond to his niece,Rachel Verinder,with instructions that it is to be presented to her next birthday.Shortly after the Colonel’s death in 1848,Rachel’s cousin, Franklin blake,is given the task of delivering the diamod to her at the Verinders’ house in Yorkshire.Blake gives her the Moonstone as instructed,but is concerned that three Indians who have earlier visited the house will attempt to steal it.At the dinner held on the evening of Rachel’s birthday,there is a dispute between Blake and the local doctor,Mr.Candy,over the practice of medicine and Blake’s refusal to take drugs to help him sleep.Afterwards,the Indians appear and perform a juggling act for the guests;Mr.Murthwaite,a traveler who knows India well,tells blake that jugglers are Brahmins in disguise.The following morning the Moonstone is missing.

   

                     The local police are asked to investigate,but are so incompetent that Blake arranges for a London detective,Sergeant Cuff,to take over the case.Cuff establishes that the thief must have a mark of paint on the garment he or she was wearing when the crime was committed.Although he fails to discover the garment,Cuff concludes that Rachel has hidden the Moonstone and intends to sell it with the help of Rosanna Spearman,a servant formerly imprisoned for theft.But Rosanna kills herself for unrequited love of Blake,and Rachel denies having the diamond;Cuff is dismissed with the case still unsolved,having refused blake’s offer of marriage,Rachel goes to London;blake goes abroad.

       

                 Shortly afterwards,another of rachel’s cousins,Godfrey Ablewhite,is attacked and searched by three Indians.A money-lender named Luker is also attacked and a receipt stolen from him stating that Luker has deposited a valuable gem at his bank.Though it appears that the gem is the Moonstone and Godfrey the thief,Rachel declares that she knows Godfrey to be innocent.Later she agrees to marry him,but breaks the engagement after learning that he is chiefly interested in her money.

           

                   In the spring of 1849 Blake returns to England from the continent.Rachel refuses to see him,and he resolves to find out who stole the moonstone.He returns to Yorkshire to find a letter written by Rosanna before her death,directing him to a secret hiding-place.Here he discovers his own nightgown with a mark of paint on it,and another letter from Rosanna explaining that for love of him she has hidden the evidence of his guilt.Blake cannot believe that he stole the Moonstone.He confronts Rachel and learns that she saw him take it.Hoping to find an explanation for his unremembered actions,he decides to interview each of the birthday guests in turn.Mr.Candy,the doctor,has been ill and has lost his memory,but his assistant,Ezra Jennings,provides Blake with some valuable help.Jennings has kept a record of Mr.Candy’s delirium which reveals that the doctor secretly drugged Blake on the evening of the birthday dinner to prove to him that drugs would indeed help him to sleep.Now convinced that he took the Moonstone in an opium-induced trance,Blake still has no proof of his moral innocence.Jennings suggests an experiment:the conditions preceding the dinner will be duplicated,and Blake drugged again;witness will then observe his behaviour.

                    

                   The experiment is carried out,watched by Jennings,Rachel and a Lawyer,Mr.Bruff.Blake takes the mock diamond used in the experiment,but drops it on the floor and falls asleep shortly afterwards.He is seen to be innocent and is reconciled with Rachel,but the Moonstone is still missing;the only hope of finding it now lies in watching Luker.On returning to London,blake finds that Luker has gone to his bank,possibly to withdraw the Moonstone from the vault.Acting quickly,Blake and Mr.Bruff arrange for him to be followed when he emerges;in the event,Luker seems to pass something to several people,including a dark-skinned sailor who is seen to take lodgings in Lower Thames Street.The sailor is evidently intending to leave for Rotterdam on the following day.Blake and Sergeant Cuff(who has rejoined the case)hurry to the lodging-house,but find on arrival that the Moonstone is gone,and that the sailor has been murdered.The sailor turns out to be Godfrey Ablewhite in disguise.

                          

                    It is later discovered that Godfrey,in urgent need of a large sum of money,saw Blake pick up the Moonstone in Rachel’s room,and took it away from him.The Indians escape;Mr.Murthwaite later reports from India that he has seen the Moonstone restored to its sacred shrine.

RUDYARD KIPLING’S KIM:A NOVEL

              Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay on 30^th December,1865 and educated in Devonshire ,England.Kipling and his sister trixie were only two children of their Irish parents.Their father John Lockwood was professor of Architectural Sculpture at the school of Art in Bombay.Mother was Alice Macdonald Kipling.In their early childhood,they had been sent with the Hollow-way couple.They had bitter experiences of childhood in these people’s company.However,endurance of the fortune given by these strangers had enshaped kipling’s life well-disciplined,timid and hard.

            

               Kipling’s parents were Methodists and so there was much biblical influence on the children.As Kipling and his sister had earlier living of childhood in India,they had fluent Hindi language.

                The finest of his works,successful full-length novel is Kim that gave him much reputation in India as well as abroad was published in 1901.It proved to be a perfect masterpiece with theme set in Indian cultural,social,political and economical life.This was the book for which he had labored for several years,and as this longing was fulfilled,he came immediately along forefront literacy figures.Secular and religious ideology,real plausible characters,humane dealing and love,tripartite structure,real beautiful landscapes of mountains and crowded plains,dramatized narration,symbols,imagery and religious allusions all are profound basical features of this literary masterpiece of Rudyard Kipling.

Theme of the novel ‘KIM’

               In the background of the novel,imperialism can be seen as theme .The novel is ‘a master work of imperialism…….a rich and absolutely fascinating,but nevertheless profoundly embarrassing novel.’Kipling himself was an Imperialist,and Kim embodies attitudes towards British rule in India which these days are wholly unacceptable and unpalatable.Kipling believed it was right and proper for Britain to own India and rule its people,and the possibility that this position might be questionable never seems to have crossed his mind.At the time Kipling was writing there was a considerable ferment of revolt among Indians against British rule,and yet at points in Kim when he could have acknowledged this Kipling dismisses it.This is particularly apparent when he has an old soldier comment on the Great Mutiny of 1857,dismissing it as madness-‘A madness ate into all the army, and they turned against their officers.’ In this and  many other ways,Kipling’s imperialist attitudes dominate the novel.

                          

                 On the surface of the novel,we can see other themes as well-religious as well as secular.From secular point of view,Kipling’s Kim recounts the story of young person’s growth to maturity.Through a series of adventures in India,the young Irish orphan Kim develops an understanding of himself and his world.The book also depicts the full religious development of an old man,a Buddhist lama.The close relationship between Kim and the Lama shows how a young person’s growth can be influenced by the wisdom of an older person.Meanwhile,Kim is also an adventure story with an exciting plot involving spies and war,mystery and intrigue.

                       

                 For religious point of view,the ideal of equality and unity of men echoes across several motifs in ‘Kim’,the novel,most notably through the Buddhist teaching of Teshoo Lama.He tells Kim,”To those who follow the way there is neither black nor white,Hind not Bhotiyal.We be all souls seeking to escape.”This ideal of equality and unity of men transcends the stringest caste,on class,distinctions of the predominantly Hindu society that Kim has known.The Lama carries with him a diagram called ‘the wheel of life’,which is a symbolic representation of the Buddhist doctrine that all lives are equally bound in the cycle of life and that all souls seek release from this cycle by attaining Enlightenment.The numerous references to the wheel of life throughout the novel serve to reinforce the message of equality and unity.

                            

                  One more thematic idea can be attached here-self-identity and self-renunciation.After meeting of the two –Kim and the Lama at Lahore,the plot develops two strands which run in parallel,and to a large extent overlap.One strand concerns Kim’s discipleship to the lama in search of self-identity,and other concerns with the Lama ,who is an abbot in his own country,and now,in old age,on a Buddhist quest,following ‘The Way’ to free himself from the ‘Wheel of things’,and merge his soul with the great soul(of Lord Buddha).He is looking for the ‘River of the Arrow’,a river which legend has it,sprang from an arrow shot by Buddha.Anyone who bathes in this river shall be cleansed of ‘all taint and speckle of sin’.In short,the Lama is in search of self-renunciation.  

  Story of the novel KIM

             

                   Kim(Kimball O’Hara) is the orphaned son of an Irish soldier(Sahib).He earns his living by begging and running small errands on the streets of Lahore.He occasionally works for his friend,Mahubub Ali,a horse trader who is one of the native operatives of the British secret service.

                   

                     One day,he befriends a Tibetan Lama who is on a quest to free himself from the wheel of life.Kim becomes his chela,or deciple,and accompanies him on his journey.On the way,Kim accidentally learns about parts of the great game and is recruited by the British to carry a message to the British commander in Umballa.Kim’s trip with the Lama along the Grand Trunk Road is the first great adventure in the novel.by chance,Kim’s father regimental chaplain identifies him by his Masonic certificate,which he wears around his neck and Kim is sent to a top English school in Lucknow,but he keeps in touch with both the Lama and his secret service connections.He is trained in espionage(the game of looking at a tray full of mixed objects and nothing which have been added or taken away is still used for training spies and is still called “Kim’s Game”)

                      

                      After three years of schooling,Kim is given a government appointment so that he can begin his role in the Great Game.Before this appointment begins,however,he is granted time to take a much-deserved break.Kim rejoins the Lama and,at the behest of Kim’s superior the Babu,they make a trip to the Himalayas.Here the espionage and spiritual threads of the story collide,with the Lama unwittingly falling into conflict with Russian intelligence agents.Kim obtains maps,papers,and other important items from the Russians-who were working to undermine British control of the region.Babu befriends the Russians under cover,acting as a guide and thus ensuring that they do not recover the lost items.Kim,porters and villagers all come to the aid of the lama.

                           

                         The Lama realizes that he has gone astray.His search for the River of the Arrow should be taking place in the plains,not on the mountains,and he orders the porters to take them back.Here Kim and the Lama are nursed to health,Kim delivers the Russian intel documents to Babu,a concerned Mahbub Ali comes to check on Kim,and the Lama finds his river and achieves Enlightenment.The reader is left to decide whether Kim will henceforth follow the materialistic road of the Great Game,or the spiritual way of Tibetan Buddhism,or a combination thereof.Kim himself has to say:”I am not a Sahib.I am thy chela.”                          

Training of Kim for secret service  

                        Kim was often guided by Mahbub Ali for secret services.Kim was usually sent on mission to follow some people and collect informations about them.By chance Kim was acquainted with the regiment which sent him to St.Xavier’s school,Lucknow,for training of survey.In holidays,he liked to play game on the road.In his first holiday,he fleed from the school and disguised himself as a beggar.In his disguise,he travelled upto Delhi.He met Mahbub at Umballa in disguise of a beggar sitting at the footpath.Mahbub,then,sent him to Simla to live with Lurgan Sahib.Lurgan Sahib was also member of the Indian survey department.He learnt there all kinds of tricks,medicine’s uses,magics and religious books.He left the place and surveyed as a member of the survey helping other member in the train’s compartment.He had gone to Simla two times for the training.Then,Mahbub took him to Bikaner,to prepare a survey report of the desertland.He was introduced with Hurree Babu at Simla who took him under his service to play the Great Game.The boy who was playing minor games on the road came to play the Great Game.He was successful in his Game.He was admired everywhere.

Lama’s quest

                      The Lama was looking for annihilation of the self.For this same purpose he had visited India.Orphan boy Kim was in search of identity of the self.Kim’s search was completed after finding his father’s regiment at Umballa.The Lama’s quest was still not completed.Kim was going to play the Great Game.Kim and the Lama went to the Kulu woman’s house again.Hurree Babu was already there in disguise of a doctor.As the Lama was feeling unwell,the Bengali Babu advised him to go up the hills and mountains.He would get fresh air for his good health.Besides,the Lama had not found the Holy River yet.He believed that his quest would be fulfilled in the mountains.They climbed the mountains of Mossoorie.The Bengali Babu was in lead carrying an umbrella.This umbrella was a signal for Kim.The Bengali Babu made friendship with the Russian and the Frenchman who were supposed to have the secret letters of the king.These people were climbing down.There were many coolies with them.They were carrying the foreigners’ kiltas.On the way they encountered with kim and the Lama.The Lama had spread his paper on the ground.The lama began to explain the Foreigners about the Wheel of Life.

                      

                            The Russian desired to buy the paper.The Lama was not ready to sell it.The Russian seized the chart forcefully.There was a shot of revolver from the Frenchman.The scene was different.The Russian stroke the Lama on his face.The Lama fell by a stream.Kim also fired a shot.The foreigners ran for life.The coolies were frightened.They carried away the kiltas.Playing a trick of making a spell for their relief from a curse of the Lama,Kim got the red kilta.He took out  the letters.They came back to Kulu woman’s house.

                         

                              The Lama realized that all this happened because of his own fault.The temptation towards his selfish desires had gone all this disaster.He stayed starving for two days and two nights.He sat in meditation.He inquires into “the cause of things”.Upon the second night he felt that his soul went free.It drew near to the Great soul.He saw all places and all kinds of things in contemplation.He knew that the soul had passed beyond the illusion of time and space and of things.After a long time,his soul returned.A voice came and asked him to look  at the world.He looked upon the world,and found that the River of Arrow was at his feet.He was able to free himself from the Wheel of things through the meditation.He received the River by spiritual perception. 

Kim as a colonial novel

                     Kipling with his sister had earlier living of childhood in India.So they had fluent Hindi Language.English language and the Biblical instincts were parental gifts to them.Bombay was Kipling’s birthplace.By travelling and writing reports for the magazine,he experienced wide range of social,cultural and political Indian life.He had abundant knowledge and material for themes of his different books.He has written with remarkable experience of adventure and open-air life.His stories deal with India,the army,the navy,the jungle and its beasts.

                     

                                The total setting of the novel is of his beloved country India,among his own people and in great and beautiful land.This novel treats the biggest reality in India which is composite of different kinds of people and religions with fine setting of cold mountains and hot plains.Kipling deals with a vivid picture of the Indian culture and life as well as landscape.Gentle innocent country folks,vague and urchin town people and friendly fakirs,saddhus and jealous priests are Indian characters.In fresh holy air of Banaras,and splendid sights and horizon of Kedarnath and Badrinath one would gain much delight.In such lands there was fear of interruption of the Russian empiricism.Surveymen,or detective agents,of British empire worked hard,even with risk of their lives,to stop this interruption.The Great Game played by Kim and assisted by the surveymen is to stop the interruption.Besides,white police riding and travelling along the Grand Trunk Road,others helping the surveymen in their works are also effective to signify the domination of British empire.This novel was written in 1901 when India was still a colony.It is reason of true portrait of India in the novel.

Political Drama: The Apple Cart

                                 George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin on 26^th july,1856.He was an Irishman,son of George Carr Shaw.His father was the youngest son in the family of thirteen children.His father was a minor officer in the Dublin law court.Mother was an Irish landowner.His father was drunkard and couldn’t earn enough money for the family.Carr Shaw had three children:one son and two daughters.Bernard Shaw  learnt music from mother who was a good singer and musician.He himself became a clerk and cashier in a land agent’s office.

At the age of 73,Bernard Shaw wrote The Apple Cart,and its first performance was at the Polish theatre,Warsaw in june,1929.Being a bag of stage tricks,shaw has subtitled it ‘A Political Extravaganza’.There is hardly any plot in it.Shaw has made up the deficiency of the story by introducing two interesting and exciting incidents the interlude and interruption of true American Ambassador in the scene.Both these incidents are wholly irrelevant in the play.

Plot of the drama

                                     Shaw’s play ‘The Apple Cart’(1929) not only combines the realm of political satire and futuristic visions but is still amazingly topical and accurate in its predictions(shaw has placed the drama in a removed time-forty years in the future).The plot primarily exists as a framework for Shaw’s satire.In the first half we meet two of the king’s secretaries who introduce the general setup of the play.Then follows a long interview between the king of England,Magnus and the Labour leader,Mr.Boanerges.The first half culminates(develops)in a stormy meeting of the king,prime minister and cabinet during which the prime minister gives the king the ultimatum to remain as king with no power whatsoever,without even a veto,or else the cabinet will resign in mass.At the centre of the play is an extended interview between the king and his ambitious mistress Orinthia,a model of everything a ruler should not be,no matter how alluring(attracting).After this,the play parallels the first half with the introduction of Jemina,the king’s United States wishes to rejoin the Commonwealth.This part is certainly an amazingly imaginary interesting prediction.The second half culminates in another stormy cabinet meeting during which the king answers the ultimatum with one of his own,declaring his own abdication from kingship and forming a political party and taking participation in the election so that he can win and form a cabinet under his primeministership.The king’s ultimatum is so forceful in nature that the cabinet,particularly Proteus,the Prime minister withdraws the ultimatum.Thus,the play ends without any particular result,except the resolution of the political crisis between the king and the cabinet.

Significance of the title ‘The Apple Cart’

                                     George  Bernard Shaw has taken the title ‘The Apple Cart’ to signify the condition of the government under a certain leader,or rather a strong man.’The Apple Cart’ consists of a driver and lots of apples being carried on the cart.The cabinet of ministers functions the same role of the Apple Cart.In the play,there is a tussle between the king and the prime minister(Proteus) as well as other ministers.It is to decide who will drive the ApplenCart(government)-king Magnus or the prime minister Proteus.Both of them are stronger in their position. King Magnus is rather wise and clever than PM Proteus.It is true that if two men are on the same horse riding,only one is allowed to sit on the front.But the question arise who will sit on the front?In case of resignation from any one of them,it may upset the cart.The title itself is remarkable for political significance.Proteus plans the ‘Ace of trumps’,i.e. the threat of abdication.In fact,both of them know that they have to keep on driving the cart anyway.Shaw,in his preface,has said for the background of the play.One of his friends,who was an engineer,proposed to transport all the breakages in cheap price if the government assented.The government,instead of giving the tender of the work to him,passed the tender of other person at expensive price.This company was The Breakages Limited.Therefore,Shaw suggests here by the Apple Cart that in a democratic system the government is simply a cart which is used by the prime minister in benefits of own interests.There is no interest of running the cart wisely and with honour of the nation.The cart is full of demagogues(politicians) who humbug the public and all the time they try to upset the cart.   

             Characterization: 

1.King Magnus:The king Magnus is a wise man.His wisdom is perceived throughout the play.There has been crisis after crises,but he has been able to tackle all of them actually.The king is well known for his tactics.The new minister Mr.Boanerges has heard about him,but yet he is highly persuaded by the cordial approach.The king is the most prominent character in the play.He is most dominant and magnificent character.He has been described to be the tallish studious looking gentleman of 45 or thereabouts.His etiquette manner is very skeptical.Boanerges says that the ceremony cuts no ice with him.Yet he is deceived.The king has the upper hand.The king has good experience of politics.He has strong insight and better foresight.For him,a king or any official is only an India rubber stamp,but not wholly ,because he or she is a living soul too.So this theory breaks down in every real emergency.He knows that everybody flatters the king,and often he is made a scapegoat and puppet.Though a king has less power than a republican,his position is secure.He is quite clever to impress the new minister by introducing him with the princess.That’s the popular tactics known to the ministers,too.They laugh when they hear about the introduction .Proteus says that the king is as artful as the very devil.He is a superior player in the cards game(i.e. politics).Magnus has been exercising the constitutional right of royal veto too.But it becomes a crisis from the cabinet side.He believes that the royal veto is essential for check of any danger,but that is opposed by the ministers.Magnus shows the corruption that often happens in offices,but others ignore.They wish to make the king totally dumb and disabled by the means of ultimatum.The king,very skillfully and diplomatically,diverts the case to the parliamentary decision whether they will approve of cabinet government or monarchical government.He persuades the ministers that certainly he will lose the favor.He speaks splendidly to convince them advantages and disadvantages of different political systems as well as human attitudes.He plays with the affairs of Orinthia just like a young lover,but never lets her have upper hand.He proves his strong devotion to his married queen though she may be a cabbage,not rose,in opinion of Orinthia.He loves his nation with true soul that we can see when he refuses to shift the throne to Dublin.He has victory over the crisis,not by greater astuteness,but because he has the ace of trumps in his hand and knows when to play it.The king stands for royal dignity,respectability and tactics.

2.The Prime minister proteus:Proteus is a fool and very aggressive personality in the play.He has been subdued by the corruptive attitudes of the ministers.As all the ministers are indulged in unacceptable and disgustive manners of tempers,bullyings,sneerings,swearing,kickings and vulgar other activities,the prime minister is seen as useless horse-tamer.No any horses are in his command.He is over ambitious for power.That’s why Proteus and Boanerges argue sometimes for power.He is conscious of the king’s tactics,and tries to overcome him.He often threatens for resignation,and tries to hold the situation in his favour.Crisis, ultimatum and bitter and sometimes unreasonable arguments are brought ahead to reduce the king’s power to the India rubber stamp.Magnus flatters him,and makes him believe that he is really superior.Proteus often becomes the subject of hysterics.He holds his claim that there mst be restriction in the king’s side.He loses no opportunity of disparaging the throne’once for all’.His counter article in newspaper usually brings a crisis against the king.

Proteus has over confidence and as he has defeated all other parties and while the country was run by the king,he wants to bring the king into his confidence.But he has no right sense of right decision in right time.He is proved as democratic humbug,not responsible to the king,the public or the kingdom.Solution of the crisis is not brought out in the hall,but walking out in tempers and having private discussion.Private meeting and talk with king Magnus  in the second act of the play brings up the resolution.The king and the prime minister’s privacy is scandalous.Magnus believes that Proteus is clever fellow and he is to beat him,but it would give him no satisfaction to beat him.This statement reveals Proteus’s true nature.There is cynical tone that he is really very foolish.He is responsible for going to upset the Apple Cart.Finally,he is easily defeated.The game turns in favour of the tactful king.The same threat of resignation,arc of trumps applied by Proteus is used by the king in turn.Proteus realizes that the king is able to make a treachery in the scene,and therefore,he surrenders himself.He tears out the ultimation and quits the meeting.

 Also face the election rather than staying as weak and dumb king.He also surrenders himself helplessly.

The king’s response to the cabinet’s ultimatum as revealed in the Apple Cart

The ultimatum contains three conditions:

1.The king should not make any speeches

2.The king should not talk about the veto power anymore

3.The king should not give any articles to the newspaper or he should not run the paper from behind the palace.

                                         This ultimatum is given by the cabinet to make the king merely a puppet.When the king realizes that they are determined and insist on the ultimatum,he talks to the prime minister in private.Then he comes back to address the cabinet frankly that he is a human being.He is a king,not a puppet,and the king must work unlike the puppet.The cabinet should consider their own situation where they will be without the king.The king himself has only two options-either he should abdicate or accept the conditions and become a puppet in their hands.He is obliged to decide the same day.Most of the things that he spends are to convince the cabinet that their position is stronger than the king.He convinces them that their success is certain if they insist.The king encourages their excitement and when they are going to lose their patience,he surrenders.He asks time until five o’clock to consider his decision.Policy behind this speech and time is only to prepare the situation favourable to him.He uses his skill for the card that the prime minister has already applied.That’s why he does not alert them with any hints that he is going to play their own trick.After lengthening the time for decision,he finally brings them into unexpected confusion by the declaration of the abdication.He uses the same conventional treat-tit for tat,and he is successful too.

 Humorous argument between Sempronius and Pamphilius on the death of Sempronius’s father    

                     The beginning conversation between Sempronius and Pamphilius is very humorous and ironic as well.Sempronius’s father was a naturalist.He attended and arranged many ceremonies.He had arranged the last two coronations.He was behind the scenes with all royal people.Though he was behind,he believed they were all real.His father died of solitude.He could’t bear to be alone for a moment.It was his death to him.It so happened that he swam to an uninhabited island after the yatch(boat)struck a reef.He was alone in the island,no one to play cards with and no church to go to.Pamphilius recites a poem in praise about nature of uninhabited island.But,says Sempronius,nature to him meant nakedness and nakedness only disgusted him.He relates the argument with politics.They say that where there is nothing the king loses his rights.Where there is nothing a man loses his reason and dies.So his father died.Very humorously Pamphilius adds that in that palace that “when the king’s letters are not ready……a secretary loses his job”.Overall meaning of this conversation is that a king must have people and kingdom for rule.A man must have people and place around him for his reason and survival.