BBS Second Year Business Communication Summary (

Krishna sir)

BBS Second "Vision" Summary

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I. Culture and Society

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This
09-11-poem is composed by Shiddicharan Shrestha. The poet spoke for
the hopes and frustrates of a politically suppressed people who were
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struggling for democracy. For writing revolutionary poems he was jailed
for eighteen years. In this poem also, he prayed Nepalese people to
speak up for their rights.
It is a political poem translated into English by shreedhar Lohani. The
poem encourages Nepalese people to rise above the inequities of the
past and bring in a revival (resurgence) of freedom and self-respect.This
poem was written during Rana’s rule. People were not able, courageous
enough to speak anything against cruelty. If anyone tried to speak, that
person would be punished. A lack of courage resided in the heart of
public due to massive domination of the past. They could not bring new
thoughts. Through this poem, the poet wanted to inspire innocent
people, who had been suppressed by Rana’s rule and their atrocity as
well as suffered from racial, political, cultural economical discrimination
and ignorant.
He prayed to wake up, raise their voice against such ill-treatment,
answer their injustice. He told the reader to speak truth, show
bravery, and move forward to bring a bright day. He requested
mother Nepal to bless us with courage and caution, bless us with
power and union. Our unity can make it possible. He advised us
not to follow distasteful rituals, heartless class divisions, and
chains of discrimination. And to eliminate (remove) completely
such evil elements to change our Nepal into a new Nepal.

Looking for a Rain God by Bessie Head

Summary
Characters:
Mokgobja- over seventy years old, head of the family
Ramadi - son of Mokgobja
Tiro - Ramadi's wife
Nesta - Tiro's unmarried sister
Neo and Boseyoung - Tiro's and Ramadi's daughters

This story is about an African villagers' miserable life without rain

and the criminal outcomes of their frustration. An African village
that had all kinds of happiness changed into desert due to seven
years of drought from 1958. Several men hung themselves at the
beginning of the seventh year of drought. The majority of the
people had lived without crops. Only the charlatans, incanters, and
witch doctors were able to make money.

That year in November little rain fell and soften the earth. All
villagers went to plough their fields. Mokgobja's family also went
to plough their field. Mokgobja had a son, Ramadi, Ramadi's wife
Tiro her unmarried sister Nesta and two granddaughters Neo and
Boseyong. They ploughed land. But suddenly, by mid-November,
the rain flew and the sun dried all moisture of the earth. It was
impossible to plant anything in the dry earth. So they were
disappointed.

The two girls, unknown from the effects of drought were quite
happy in their little-girl world. They imitated the behaviour of
their mother towards them and played. They scolded their rag
dolls and then beat the dolls with severe expressions. This actually
showed how they were mistreated in their home. Instead of loving
and advising in their mistakes, their mother used to beat them. It
showed they were valueless for their family.

Being frustrated with future starvation the two women started

wailing each night. Mokgobja remembered an ancient ritual of
sacrificing children's bodies to make rain god happy. He consulted
it with his son and daughter-in-law and decided to sacrifice two
girls. They spread the bodies of the two little girls across the land
but the rain did not fall.
Soon people in the village noted the absence of the two little girls.
Police came to investigate. The family told them that the girls had
just died and burial at lands. As they didn't know what the
children had died of, police asked to see the graves. At this, the
mother of the children broke down and told everything. Ramadi
and the old man were arrested and got the death penalty for ritual
murder. Actually, it was the two women who caused the death of
the little girls. Due to their nightly wailing, Mokgobja tried to find a
solution to their problem which was a crime and Ramadi became
irrational and ready to kill his own daughters.
summary in short.
This story is about an African village where there were all kinds of
pleasure but from 1958, a seven-year drought fell upon them.
Predicting next year's starvation several people hung themselves.
In November little rain fell, people's hopes ran so high but soon
again dryness covered the village. Mokgobja family to come out
from coming starvation decided to follow their ancient ritual of
sacrificing children's bodies. Mokgobja sacrificed his own two little
granddaughters to make rain god happy and to make rainfall.

The worst thing was that in Mokgobja's misdeed Ramadi, the girls'
father, and Tiru, the girls' mother supported him. Soon villagers
noticed the absence of the two girls and suspect the whole family.
The two little girls' mother revealed everything to the police.
Ramadi and Mokgobja got the death penalty for ritual murder.

Dover Beach
Summary
Written in 1851, Dover Beach is Matthew Arnold's best-known
poem. It was inspired by two visits he and his wife Frances made
to the south coast of England, where the white cliffs of Dover
stand, just twenty-two miles from the coast of France.
This poem of consists of 39 lines, and addresses the decline of
religious faith in the modern world, and offers the fidelity of
affection as its successor. Many claim it to be a honeymoon poem
and that is understandable because romantic love, albeit
(although) of a Victorian nature, features strongly. But there's no
doubting the poem goes much deeper, into the notion of happiness
and humanity's spiritual state.

The speaker laments the loss of true Christian faith in England

during the mid-1800s as science captured the minds of the public.
The speaker, considered to be Matthew Arnold himself, begins by
describing a calm and quiet sea out in the English Channel. He
stands on the Dover coast and looks across to France where a small
light can be seen briefly, and then vanishes. This light represents
the diminishing faith of the English people, and those the world
around. Throughout this poem the speaker crafts an image of the
sea receding and returning to land with the faith of the world as it
changes throughout time. At this point in time though, the sea is
not returning. It is receding farther out into the strait.

Faith used to encompass the whole world, holding the populous

(overcrowded) tight in its embrace. Now though, it is losing ground
to the sciences, particularly those related to evolution (The Origin
of Species by Charles Darwin was published in 1859). The poem
concludes pessimistically as the speaker makes clear to the reader
that all the beauty and happiness that one may believe they are
experiencing is not in fact real. The world is actually without
peace, joy, or help for those in need and the human race is too
distracted by its own ignorance to see where true assistance is
needed anymore.

SUMMARY:
One night, the speaker of "Dover Beach" sits with a woman inside a
house, looking out over the English Channel near the town of
Dover. They see the lights on the coast of France just twenty miles
away, and the sea is quiet and calm. The poem represents the clash
between science and religion. It opens on a beautiful naturalistic
scene. The poet (speaker) stands on the cliffs of Dover Beach. He is
gazing out at the majesty of the beauty of nature. Sadness is
creeping in, and the poet is reminding us about how the recent
scientific discoveries have forever changed human values with the
relation to nature. In this way, he brings science and faith into
conflict. The poem presents all the theology and scientific theory
with the message that all such things in the world can’t make life
meaningful if there is no love.
When the light over in France suddenly extinguishes, the speaker
focuses on the English side, which remains tranquil. He trades
visual imagery for aural imagery, describing the "grating roar" of
the pebbles being pulled out by the waves. He finishes the first
stanza by calling the music of the world an "eternal note of
sadness."
The next stanza flashes back to ancient Greece, where Sophocles
heard this same sound on the Aegean Sea and was inspired by it to
write his plays about human misery. It was the tradition of
Victorians to refer to the classical poets and writers in their works.
The poet says that Sophocles had already heard this eternal note
of sadness while sitting on the shores of Aegean.
‘The turbid ebb and flow” mean the movement of water in and out.
It also refers to the loss of Faith. Sophocles compared eternal
movement with the miseries of humans which like them are also
never-ending. This is how he succeeded in composing painful
tragedies. According to the poet, he can hear the same sound of sea
sand and retreating tide by sitting, like Sophocles, on the Shore of
the Northern Sea (English Channel). Distant means far from
Sophocles. The term ‘We’ in a context refers to the poet and his
bride but in a broader sense, it refers to every human. In this
sense, the poet draws out attention to the universality and eternity
of sadness.
Stanza three introduces the poem's main metaphor, with: "The Sea
of Faith/Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore." The
phrase suggests that faith is fading from society like the tide is
from the shore. The speaker laments this decline of faith through
melancholy diction. He hears its sadness, longings and roars of
pulling away of faith as night wind is hovering over the sky. What
remains there are the naked stones which have been pulled out of
the earth by the tides. The poet is mixing the natural happening
with the human faith. As we know the poem was written during
the Victorian age. At that time there was a development of
industrialization that led to capitalism which further led to
individualism and greed.
In the final stanza, the speaker directly addresses his beloved who
sits next to him, asking that they always be true to one another and
to the world that is laid out before them. He warns, however, that
the world's beauty is only an illusion since it is in fact a battlefield
full of people fighting in absolute darkness.
The poet believes that the world which was like the Land of
Dreams or how he described it, in the beginning, is, in reality,
hollow from inside. There is no joy, love, light, certainty, peace,
sympathy in it. Both the poet and his beloved are on a ‘darkling
plain’ i.e. a dark and ugly world. They hear the sound of struggle
and fights of the people who are fighting without seeing each
other. This fight can be regarded as the fight of opposing ideologies
in the mind of man or that of forces of materialism or trivial
battles of age and youth or also selfish and political forces. The
poem thus ends with the terrible picture of society during the
Victorian Age.
Shooting An Elephant
George Orwell

Characters :
The narrator : The writer himself who was a British police officer.
A large crowd of Burmese people who demanded that the elephant
must be Shot.
Setting :
Moulmein, Lower Burma in 1920's
Theme :
Writers personal experience of being police officer in Burma
(present Myanmar)
Impact of British Imperialism.
A dilemma in which someone is forced to do something that
they did not want to do.
Feelings and attitude of the Burmese towards the British.
Shooting an elephant summary by George Orwell :
The essay describes the writers personal experience of a police
officer in a town in Burma, the present Myanmar. When he was
working as a sub-divisional police officer in Burma. The Burmese
had a bitter feeling towards the Europeans. The writer was young
and ill-educated, however the Burmese had a great trust and belief
upon his power and capacity as a representative of the British
Empire.
When he was having his duty at a police station, he got
information that an elephant had broken its chain and had
escaped form its shelter to the market place damaging houses,
crops and injuring people. Its mahout had been away and nobody
was to take it under. No sooner had the writer had been informed
about this incident then he rode on a pony, took a rifle and moved
away to see the activities of the elephant.
There were around two thousands Burmese who were following
the writer expecting him to shoot at the elephant quickly and
avoid the danger. But the writer didn't want to shoot the elephant
and kill it because it was a precious animal and it seemed to be
enjoying in the field tearing up bunches of grass beating them
against his knees and stuffing them into his mouth. It looked no
more dangerous than a cow. But when he observed the crowded
people, he sensed their expectation that the elephant must be
killed.
In the eyes of the Burmese he was a representative of white men
and he could kill the elephant easily. From their views he could
understand that a white man should satisfy their demand and
should not be frightened to use the rifle. Finally, He pulled the
trigger of his rifle and shot the elephant. There was a loud roar of
the elephant, However it didn't die at once. After the writer fired
several times into the same spot of the elephant, it trumpeted for
the last time. It was a merciless killing.
In the end, he couldn't stand there any longer and went away. He
heard later that it took the elephant half an hour to die. Then, the
Burmese people brought heavy knives and baskets and stripped its
body by the afternoon. The writer come to hear later that the
owner of the elephant was quite furious. Some Europeans said that
he did well by killing the elephant as it was acting like a mad dog
and younger Europeans thought that it was shameful act.
Whatever was the incident the writer realized that it was not a
task of bravery and it was compulsion to shoot the elephant in
order to remain peaceful and courageous in the eyes of the
Burmese.
The Unknown Citizen
- W.H Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden was an Anglo-American poet born and raised
in a heavily industrial section of northern England. He was born in
1907 and died in 1973.
Main Idea of the poem The Unknown Citizen
The poem exposes how a person in a modern age loses his identity
and becomes an unknown citizen. Modern society is like a huge
machine that has its own systems to run with the fast pacing time
and a person has to live following certain rules and regulations of
the machine like society. Although he is a human, he has no time to
fulfill his human feelings to serve his humanity. Therefore, this
poem shows how we humans have to live like a machine.

Summary of the poem The Unknown Citizen By W.H Auden

The 'unknown citizen' is an ironical portrayal of a modern man in
this modernized machine like world. The poet describes the life of
an unknown man through a dystopian report.
This poem addresses a marble monument of a person who died of
war and his funeral and monument was made by the state. While
he was alive, no official complaints were made against him
according to the bureau of statistic. Reports shows that he was the
perfect citizen who served his community well. He had a saint like
persona. He worked in the same factory fudge motors Inc till he
retired and never got fired as all his employers were satisfied with
his professionalism. He had a normal outlook on life and politics
and he also contributed to the trade union, but never participated
in strikes. The psychology institution established that he had good
relations with his friends and was quite likeable and popular and
he used to hangout with his friends drinking and having fun.
According to the official media, he bought a paper regularly to
keep up with news and reacted to advertisement very normally.
He had a proper insurance and was admitted to hospital once but
left it cured.

He approved of the state's vision and the public opinion

department asserts that he always held the right view on big
issues. when there was peace he was for peace and when there
was war he was for war.
He knew how to live in a modern society and had everything
necessary for a modern man, like a car, a telephone, a fridge and a
radio. He was married with 5 children, which was a right number
of kids to have at his time. He never interfered with their
education nor ever questioned their teachers. It is almost absurd
to ask if he was happy, if he was free because a modern man has
lost his freedom as he is bound to obey the rules of the society like
a machine. His wishes and desires hold value in this chaotic world.
Therefore, the poem is a satire to the so called modernity and
modern lifestyle of humans which brings nothing but loneliness
and sadness.
Another question to be raised is, what did the state do for him? He
was a good citizen who followed all the rules and regulations and
always served the greater community, the state. He was kind,
likeable and did everything in his power to served his state. He
had no criminal records, no official complaints were insured and
lived like a modern man and even dedicated his life fighting for
the state and yet all that the state provided him was a monument
with a code, JS/07 M378. The state couldn't even find his real name.
So, there is a loss of identity. Even though he dedicated his
precious life to his state, the state didn't even recognize him. The
state couldn't fulfill their responsibility to such people. Hence a
man is rendered as the state showed no respect to him, they left
him unknown and unidentified which seems to be the destiny of
the modern man.
The poem is a satire written in praise of a dead man who lived a
life that the government deemed to be exemplary. He never
deviated from the society's standards and expectations. On the one
hand, the poem implicitly critiques the standardization of modern
life, where people loose the sight of what it means to be an
individual as they focus exclusively on the same status symbol and
markers of achievement like having the right job, right number of
kids, the right car, etc. and on the other hand, the poem shows a
world ruled by total conformity and states oppression in which
bureaucrats government dictates and spies on its citizens daily
life.

Augustus Does His Bit: Summary

A True-to-Life Farce (1916) is a comic one-act play
by George Bernard Shaw about a dim-witted aristocrat who
is outwitted by a female spy during World War I.

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Characters
· Lord Augustus Highcastle
· Horatio Beamish
· A Lady
Summary
In the small town of Little Pifflington, Lord Augustus
Highcastle tells his secretary Horatio Beamish that the war
is a very serious matter, especially as he has three German
brothers-in-law. He soon learns that a female spy is after an
important document in his possession. A glamorous
woman visits him. After flattering him by saying how
important he is, she tells him that she suspects her sister-
in-law of being the spy. She explains that Augustus' brother,
known as "Blueloo", has made a bet that Augustus can be
easily tricked, and intends to use this woman to prove it. If
she can get the document, a list of British gun
emplacements, and take it to "Blueloo", Augustus's
incompetence will be exposed.
Beamish enters holding the document, which Augustus had
left on a coffee table in the hotel. The lady manages to
switch the document for a fake one and leaves. Having
secured the document before witnesses, she returns to
telephone the War Office. She tells "Blueloo" that she easily
outwitted Lord Augustus. Augustus then realises that she
was the spy and the document he has is a fake.
Production and reception
The play was produced on 21 January 1917, at the Court
theatre for the Stage Society. Like its predecessor The Inca of
Perusalem it was originally presented anonymously,
advertised as a "play in one Act by the author of The Inca of
Perusalem." Shaw commented that some critics were not
pleased by the satire of the war effort: "The shewing up of
Augustus scandalized one or two innocent and patriotic
critics, who regarded the prowess of the British Army as
inextricably bound up with Highcastle prestige, but our
Government Departments knew better. Their problem was
how to win the war with Augustus on their backs, well
meaning, brave, patriotic, but obstructively fussy,
selfimportant and imbecile." The play contains several
typical Shavian themes: women outwitting men and the
incompetence of the aristocratic ruling class, most notably.
The references to the aristocracy's German family
connections corresponds with the views Shaw expressed in
his booklet Common Sense about the War.

Parrot in The Cage

(Lekhanath Paudyal)
About Poet
Lekhanath Paudyal was born in Kaski who moved to
Kathmandu.
He obtained his higher education in Sanskrit from Baranasi
India.
His famous publications are Rituvichar (1916), Buddivinod
(1916), Lalitya (1912), Satyakalisamvada (1919), Tarun Tapasi
(1953) and Mero Rama (1954).
'The parrot in the cage' is the English translation of Nepali
poem 'Pinjara ko suga' rendered by Laxmi Parsad Devkota.

In this poem bird as a symbol of Nepali citizens freedom is

trapped in a cage of Rana Regime.
This poem also exposes the cruelty and injustice of human
dominance over animals.
The parrot in a cage is written by Lekhanath Paudyal which was
translated by Laxmi Parsad Devkota.
Pattern :
The poem consists of 23 stanzas each containing lines with aabb,
ccdd, ccff pattern. The lines don't have any metrical consistency.
Summary :
The parrot is known for its mimicking. It can imitate human
sounds and can be quite vocal too. So, the parrot has been
presented as a person who has been captured and placed in a
prison. It symbolizes someone whose freedom and rights have
been taken away from them.
So, this poem represents a bitter satire on the autocratic Rana
Regime that deprived Nepalese people of freedom. For 104 years,
men had to live away from their family, home, they had to suffer
only for pleasure and entertainment of Rana Rulers. And if
someone tried to fight against this dominance, they were laughed
at. Innocent people were abused. Their right to good education,
food, clothing, job, etc. were all controlled by Ranas.
In the poem, the parrot fate has been taken as the 'oppressor' (a
person or group that oppress other people). The poem sketches a
realistic picture of Nepali political environment during Ranarchy.
The poem is a dramatic monologue where a parrot laments
(expression of sorrow) its life condition inside the cage, shares its
story of pain and loss of separation from its near ones. The parrot
regards its fate and bemoans (express sorrow) his imprisonment to
fate and to the god.
Stanza-wise Explanation :
Stanza 1:
The parrot is compared to a twice born child. The parrot used to
have a free and wandering life which was its first life then it was
caged and forced to live like a prisoner. We normally associate
birth to a new positive beginning but for this part, his second part
was a curse. A twice born child signifies dual life as well. One that
of the parrot and one that of poet himself.

The parrot explains how he has been trapped into an iron cage by
fate and pleads to the god about how he can neither rest nor find
peace. He feels oppressed not only in reality but also in his dreams.
Stanza 2 :
He expresses how his family and friends are a far from him in the
forest living freely while he has been caged in to a prison where he
has on one to listen or sympathies to his agonies> He has no other
option but to cry with lump in his sore (hurting) throat.
Stanza 3 :
The parrot has no other option other than to cry to himself to a
point that his eyes are swollen. He expresses how he feels so
lifeless even if he is still alive. He feels as if he is a spiritless corpse
at time as all he does in the cage is sit there doing nothing, only
entertaining his 'prisoners' and at times he starts jumping and
acting mad thinking of the woodlands that he used to travel
through in his life.
Stanza 4 :
There was a time when he enjoyed his life, freely wandering in the
little forest he lived in. But now he has been tempted into a cage by
humans. He blames fate for somehow tricking him into a cage. So,
fate ha been presented as ' beguiling' (charming in deceptive way),
'oppressor' and 'strange'.
Stanza 5 :
He thinks of how far he could have flown if he wasn't trapped
here. He dreams of the countries he could have soared but
sadly fate has tricked him into a dungeon because of his natural
gifts of speaking. He recalls how loved he was by his friends.
Stanza 6 and 7 :
He recalls how he used to fly and wander around. He recalls the
cool water flowing through the jungle and the cool shades off
verdant woods which provided him shadow from the
hotness/warmth of the sun. He thinks about the delicious food that
he used to pick up to eat whenever he wanted. Now all that is a
part of dream an he lives his life in a fear.

II. Money and Management

Advertise your Business
Summary
This lecture written in 1882, sets the tone for advertising which is
relevant even today. In this lecture, Barnum assumed that a
conventionally moral life is the best path to business success.
The writer has advised us what to do and not to do in business and
life.
Be polite and Kind to your Customers
He advises that businessmen should be polite and kind to their
customers otherwise they will lose them. Politeness and civility are
the best capital ever invested in business. Who sells qualitative
goods in lower profits will succeed best in the long run. Sharp
bargaining will lose customers. The writer suggests us not to insult
or whip costumer even if he insults you otherwise he and his
friends never come again as a customer. Customers’ bad manners
must be dealt respectfully.

Be Charitable (generous/ helpful)

He says be charitable because it is a duty and a pleasure. He means

to say this is if we have money it is our responsibility to help needy
people to make their life better similarly it provides happiness and
relief. According to Soloman in Bible if you scatter money it will
increase but if you hold it unnecessarily then it will set out to
poverty. It means if you become greedy or miser, you will be poor.
Miser people are poor in heart. Charity should be given to those
who are struggling and willing to help themselves. Otherwise, it
will be fruitless. He says instead of blessing give food to hungry.

Don’t Blab (talk)

He advises not to share business secrets because nothing is gained

by this. Say nothing about your profits, your hopes, your
expectations, your intentions, or your losses otherwise, you will
lose your reputation. And this should apply to letters as well as to
conversation. While writing business letters must know what not
to write.

Preserve Your Integrity (honesty)

Honesty is more precious than diamonds or rubies because if you
lose diamonds or rubies you can buy them again but once honesty
is lost you can not buy or get it again. Therefore, your politeness
will be of no use if customers suspect your goods and weight. A
strictly honest man may be poor, but people believe in him and are
ready to help. Honesty person has peace and joy that no amount of
money, or houses, or land s can purchase. Therefore, Dr. Benjamin
Franklin said, “honesty is the best policy.”
To become rich does not always mean being successful. There are
many rich poor men who are poor in heart and restless they hoard
( store) money. It is like storing dusk because it is not used wisely.
Using money properly blesses us with prosperity and happiness.
The money should not be gathered it must be used for benefit of
mankind so that other people also make their life better.
Therefore, he appeals to earn money honestly and utilize it
properly.

Summary in short
Speak and behave politely with customers even if they show bad
manners handle them respectfully. Sell qualitative products at the
best price. Never share your business secrets it will affect your
business reputation. If you are earning money and becoming rich,
use money wisely. Donate some money to needy and struggling
people. Instead of blessing give food to the hungry.
“Honesty is the best policy” is a true maxim and applicable in both
business and life. Everyone easily trusts an honest man. And in
business customers believe in the honesty of your qualitative
products, not in your talks. If you waste money or store money
without proper use, you will be poor in heart. Similarly, if you
utilize the money properly you will be blessed with happiness and
joy. Not only an individual will be blessed but all the human race
will be blessed with that utilized money.

Eveline summary (James Joyce)

Characters:
1)Eveline Hill - main character, an Irish girl of 19
2)Frank - a sailor with a house in Buenos Ayres, he loves
Eveline
3)Eveline's father - drunkard and abusive
4)Eveline's mother - made a lot of sacrifices for her family, she
died of an unspecified illness.
5)Earnest - Eveline's oldest brother and her favourite. He is
also dead.
6)Harry - her another brother, works in church decorating
business.
7)Miss Gavan - the owner of the store where Evenline works.
The story is about Eveline Hill, a nineteen years old girl who fails
to take action due to her lack of conscious will. She also fails to
manage her life at both the social and economic levels. She lives in
Dublin with her father. Her mother and oldest brother Earnest
were dead. Her another brother Harry lives out of the house he
works in the church- decorating business.
Eveline’s father was nice to her when her mother was alive but
later on, he started threatening her. She has to work hard both in
the house and shop. Her father takes all her earnings and gives her
little money to run the house. In the shop also the owner of the
store Miss Gavan single out her and scrutinize (check/spy) more
heavily in front of customers. She is fed up with her life she wants
to escape from her house in search of happiness. Then she meets
Frank a sailor, a kind and open-hearted man with whom she plans
to elope.
She is sitting at the window, watching outside, dusty cretonne’s
odour is coming in her nostrils. She remembers her past and looks
around her house. As being grown up in an Irish Catholic family
she is confused about her plan to elope with Frank. On the one
hand, she thinks Frank will provide her respect and happiness on
the other hand she questions herself whether eloping is wise or
not? She appreciates the familiarity and comfort of house. How
will be her life after marrying is not sure. Somewhere she
mistrusts Frank.
She has to elope with Frank by the night boat to be his wife. Their
passage has been booked. She writes two letters. One for her father
another for her brother Harry. She thinks her father is becoming
old and will miss her. The odour of dusty cretonne is coming. She
remembers the same odour had come just before her mother’s
death. It reminds her of the promise to her mother, her promise to
keep the home together as long as she could. She recalls her
mother’s voice saying “Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!” (it
means maybe “the end of pleasure is pain!”)
She stands up in a sudden impulse of terror. She says she must
escape to get happiness and to have a better life. Now she is in the
station. She prays God to direct her. The boat arrives and Frank
board the ship calling her to come again and again but she stands
still. She is in dilemma: remain at home like a dutiful daughter or
leave Dublin with Frank to get happiness. There is still conflict in
her mind regarding her decision. She becomes unable to take
action due to her lack of conscious will.
In the end, Frank boards the ship alone. It means she decides not
to go with Frank remembering her promise to her mother and her
responsibilities for her father and siblings. Moreover, she feels
much safer in her own house. She cannot escape just to enjoy her
happiness. Now there is no sign of love and recognition in her eyes
for Frank.

Summary in Short

Eveline is the main character of the story. It surrounds around her

thoughts, her past memory her present situation, and her desire to
come out of her circumstances to have a better life. We know
about other characters through her. She has an abusive father who
used to be nice to her when her mother was alive. She has to run
her house with little money and work in a shop too. She grows up
in an Irish Catholic family where girls have strict rules. Her father
takes all her earnings. Her brother Harry lives out of the house.
Therefore, she lives with her father. Her life is full of hard work.
Thus, she wants to escape from her house to get a better life.
She meets Frank, a sailor then she likes him. He tells her different
stories. When her father comes to know it, he forbids her to meet
him. According to him, he is not a nice man. She decides to elope
with him. When the time comes to go in a night boat with Frank
who is calling her again and again, there is no sign of love in
Eveline’s eyes for Frank. She cannot go with him remembering her
promise to her mother to keep the home together as long as she
could. She cannot trust Frank at the last moment. In spite of her
hard life, she feels comfortable staying at home rather than going
to an unknown place.
The company man
Ellen Goodman
About Author Ellen Goodman:
The company man is an essay which is written by Ellen Goodman.
She was a journalist who was born on 1941. 'Close to home' and 'At
large' are collections of her essays. In the essay the company man
she has described about a workaholic person 'Phil'.
Main Point Of the essay the company man:
The company man describes about a man named Phil who
worked himself to death at 3:00 am Sunday morning.
The obituary (a news article that reports the recent death of a
person) said that he died of a coronary thrombosis (a
dangerous medical condition in which the flow of blood to the
heart is blocked.
He was a perfect type of person. A hardworking, ambitious,
quick, competitive person, one of six vice presidents who dies
at the age of 51.
He spent much of his time at office avoiding every
extracurricular activities.
He was conscious of his health and many people worked for
him.
He had a wife and 3 children and he had fulfilled every
responsibility towards them,

Even though the youngest son was his father's favorite, they
rarely spent time together.
At the funeral, the 60 year old company president told
everyone that Phil was a hard-working asset to the company.
Phil used to be in his office all the time and it was a great loss
to the company.
After the funeral the president made queries for Phil's
replacement asking everyone around "who has been working
the hardest"?
Summary of the essay The Company Man by Ellen Goodman
In the essay, "the company man", a hard working business man
named Phil eventually works himself to death. The writer uses the
name 'company man' to show that the Phil was not just a man but
he was an extension of his work. Phil spent so much time on his
office that he rarely had time for his family, friends or himself as
well to a point that even when he was alive his wife missed him.
He lived wo work not work to live but even after showing such
dedication, as soon as he died his boss started asking around for
another hard working employee to replace him. This is a way of
showing Goodman mocking the modern culture where there is no
time to waste, but only time to work. The writer is trying to show
her readers that the 'hustle and grind life' is not as meaningful as
people pretend it to be. Goodman points that one should spend his
life earning memories and gaining love from loved ones rather
than living only for monetary gains.
The intention of the writer is to make readers understand the
value of spending time wisely and spending their energy on things
that mean something to them, A sarcastic and bitter tones is used
in the story showing us that the writer looks down on Phil. She
also uses pathos to evoke sympathy for the family. Goodman is
displaying the argument that perfection in one side can create a
pitiful imbalance in one person entire life
The Company Man Summary
Ellen Goodman
Summary
In "The Company Man," Ellen Goodman describes a man who worked
himself to death at fifty-one. She presents fact about the man's life and
work.
Phil was fifty-one years old and vice president. If the president died or
retired he could be the president, he knew that. He was a hard-working
man, a workaholic. He worked six days a week, five of them until eight or
nine at night. Even on holidays, he went to work. He thought himself as
an important person for his company. He had no outside extracurricular
interests. He was overweight because of eating egg salad sandwiched
everyday.
He had a wife and three children. He had never spent time with them
due to that he was like a stranger to his children. His wife Helen of forty-
eight had left her job after mothering and had spent her whole life
missing her husband. On the day he died, he was working, he worked
himself to death, at 3: 00 A.M. Sunday morning. It was a holiday.
Before the funeral, Phil's elder son asked neighbours what his father
was like. They were embarrassed. At the funeral, the sixty-year-old
company president told Helen that her husband meant much to the
company. It would be hard to replace him. Helen didn't want to listen to
these things, she wants to listen to finances and the stock options. On
the evening of the funeral, the company president had begun inquiries
about Phil's replacement.
The author shows that some people only focus on work instead of
focusing on more important things such as family. She used irony and
sarcastic tone to show that Phil's beliefs were insignificant and wrong.
She gives us a message that you are always replaceable, no matter how
hard you work.

Light My Lucky
This essay shows how commercial advertisements mislead the
people and how important it is for the consumers to make a
critical watch of the ads. Here, they describe a promotional
advertisement of a cigarette named 'Lucky Strike' and how the
designers of the ad try to mislead the people showing symbolic and
metaphorical connections of the cigarette with health, beauty and
sexuality instead of the health hazards. The ad does not tell it
directly but it is implied by the perfectly healthy and beautiful
image of a young lady in the ad. Such ads make the meaning
unconsciously in the mind of the consumers.
Summary of light my lucky
In this essay, the writers would like to describe an advertisement
for the cigarettes named 'Lucky Strike' because they find the ad
cleverly designed, technically perfect and attractive to allure the
consumers. On the surface, the ad is simple. It presents a photo of
a beautiful young woman perhaps 23/4 years old in a sweater
wearing a scarf with one hand in her pocket and the other resting
lightly on her windblown hair, holding an unlighted cigarette. She
is looking straightly with somehow sexy looks. The words 'Light
My Lucky' appear in quotation marks below her chin. In the lower
right corner, there is a large image of an opened package of the
cigarette. At the bottom, there is a well-known warning from a
surgeon which says 'Smoking by pregnant woman may result in
fetal injury, premature birth, and low weight.'

The ideal of craftsmanship

- C. Wright Mills
About writer and essay :
Written by C. Wright Mills who was a popular sociologist was born
in 1916 and dies in 1962. He taught at Columbia University for
many years. He is best known for writing ‘the power Elite’.
The Ideal of Craftsmanship bbs 2nd year
Main idea :
As the title imply, this essay deals with some ideas which are
related to the craftsmanship. Here, the craftsman is a person who
makes beautiful things by hand like a painting, wood carving,
stone carving, making beautiful statues, composing music, writing
literature and creating artistic monuments. A craftsman is an artist
and his craftsmanship is his skill in creating art. Now, the ideal of
craftsmanship refers to the guiding principles of a craftsman that
make him so skillful, hard-working and satisfied. So this essay is
about the basic principles of a craftsman that make him so much
devoted to his work. Craftsmen create art which are really eye
catching and the people enjoy looking at it. The craftsman gets
pleasure in creating and the people get pleasure looking at it. Such
pleasure the art provides is called aesthetic pleasure.
The Ideal of craftsmanship by C Wright Mills
Summary of the ideal of craftsmanship By C. Wright Mills
In this essay, the writer discusses on the guiding principles that
make an artist so much hardworking, creative and satisfied. He
talks about how they create art and what encourages them to be
involved in such work. He says that the artist gets a great pleasure
in creation which does not let him think about any other thing
than the product. He is not interested in money and matter even
though life is difficult for him. In the same way, the writer says that
there are six major features of the craftsmanship such as:
A. Work gratification or pleasure at work :
According to the writer, why an artist is devoted to his work so
much is that he gets more pleasure in his creation. The hope of
getting pleasure in his product pays the continuous attention for
the quality and completion of his art. It creates a will-to-work
spontaneously on a particular project of his art. All other motives
like earning money and improving his lifestyle are not focused.
After the work is completed, he gets a kind of pleasure and
satisfaction which is called work gratification.
B. The tie between the product and producer :
Another working principle of an artist is the psychological tie
between his mind and his product. All the time, even after so many
years, the artist thinks that it is his art and its ownership goes to
him. Sometimes he does not have legal ownership to his art
because he is paid for that; but his psychology believes that it is his
own. He never stops to think so. Of course he also gets consumer
satisfaction but his creator satisfaction is greater.
C. Freedom to control his work :
The craftsman is always free to begin, design or modify his work
no matter whether it was paid art or preordered. He has a freedom
on how to make plans, how to begin, and how to accomplish. Both
plan and performance are one for him because he is the master of
his art. His problems and difficulties during the making should be
dealt by himself alone.
D. Learning from his work and developing his skills :
The craftsman's work a continuous process of learning from his
work and developing his skill until his death. The more he creates,
the more he learns and the better his product is. Such cumulative
skill is obtained by his devotion and practice. An artist is a self
learned craftsman at a higher level. Famous artists like
Shakespeare and Leonardo da Vinci learned from themselves they
didn't have superior teacher above them.
E. No split of work and play :
For the ideal craftsman, there is no difference between his work
and play. He feels that he is fairly while he is creating his art. It is
an activity done for himself, exercised for his own shake, not for
economic value or any ulterior purpose. He also compares his
work with culture. The means of being better cultured is his work.
Work is the means and culture is the end.
F. Craftsmanship determines the mode of living :
Finally, the writer says that artists never flee from their work into
a separate sphere of leisure. All the time, day and night they think
about their work but still they do not have stress. Instead, they
have happiness, satisfaction and pleasure in life. Art and artists
are never separated. His work of art is his faithful daily
companion. Apart from mere animal rest, he is always with his art
which makes him peaceful and clam both mentally and physically.
So his work determines his mode of living.
 III. Science and
Environment
Religion and Science
Alfred North Whitehead

Main Idea :
This essay deals with the conflict between religion and science that
came to be a great debate after 19th century. Earlier, people
believed in religion more than science, but after the scientific
theories of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton and Darwin,
science developed a lot and religion got challenged. A great
turmoil of thought and discussion was held all around the world
on religion and science. Some said religion is greater than science
and some claimed just the opposite. In 1859, Charles Darwin
published his well known book 'Origin of Species' which brought a
revolt that human beings are not created by god but they were
developed gradually from the microorganism to reptiles and the
reptiles to monkeys and the monkeys to human beings. This
thought challenged the religious thought that human beings were
created by god. In the same context, this article was written by
Whitehead to be delivered at Harvard University in 1925. Here, he
wants to say that religion and science are not hostile to each other,
but they can develop together. Still he observes that religion is
fading away and science is getting more powerful in the modern
world.
Summary of Religion and Science by Alfred North Whitehead
The writer expresses his views on religion and science on four
sections. At first, he says we need to understand the relation
between religion and science. As people think, it is not so much
related to each other. Neither they are closely related nor are they
enemies to each other. They are totally different fields of studies.
But many people believe that religion and science are straight
opposites. These two subjects seem to be at open and frank
disagreement to each other. Here, his opinion is that they are not
so much related to each other and both of them can develop in
their own ways. When we look back to the history, both religion
and science have come through continual development. There
were many misconceptions on religion and the same in science. In
both field, we find the additions, deletion and modifications of
ideas.
In the second section, he says that a 'clash of doctrines is not a
disaster but an opportunity'. Here he says that when these matters
came into discussion, both religion and science are highlighted
and both of them have got their own logic. Both of them gained
new ideas to establish their foundations. Such clash of ideas made
it clear that religion is the contemplation of the spiritual inner
thought but science is a concerned with the external physical
phenomena. It is best to allow both of them to flourish and develop
if they could. He gives some examples of developments both in
religion and science and he explains the geocentric and
heliocentric world views.
In the third section, he says that religion is at the defense, rather
weak defense but science is at the attack. Both are free to present
their logics but one seems to have overruling the other very soon.
Religion will not get its old power until it can justify its ideas like
science. If religion takes help of scientific ideas, it will be good for
religion. But the problem is that most of the religious ideas cannot
be justified. For example in the middle age, people thought that
heaven is in the sky and hell is underground and volcanoes are the
fire from the hell. But such beliefs are not justified by science and
religion became weak.
In the last section, the writer says that there are some causes for
the fading of religion in the public. Religion is just the reaction of
human beings on the search for god and his worship, which is
beyond reach. Some people say that religion is valuable for the
ordering of life and its right conduct. This idea is also fading since
there is morality to guide us at right conduct. Religion is something
real but not yet realized, something final good but not reached, it is
a search for god but a hopeless result. In fact, human life is a flash
of occasional enjoyments lighting up a bagatelle of transient
experience. The power of god is the worship he inspires in such a
transient life. In the end, he says that the death of religion comes
with the repression of the high hope in it.

The New Physics by Fritjof Capra - summary

Physics is the branch of natural science that deals with the things like
motion energy, space, time, force, etc. In 1900, when a number of
revolutionary new concepts about the nature of matter were proposed
there comes a division in the field of physics and divided into classical
and modern physics.
At the beginning of modern physics, there is a great role of Albert
Einstein's intellectuality. Einstein strongly believed in nature's inherent (
inborn) harmony. Throughout his scientific life, his keen interest was to
find a unified foundation (base) of physics. He set out toward this goal
by building a common framework for electrodynamics and mechanics.
These are two separate theories of classical physics. This framework is
known as the special theory of relativity according to which time and
distance are not absolute. It brought a change in the traditional
concepts of space and time and thus weakened one of the foundations
of the Newtonian world view.
In 1905 he published two articles one is the above given special theory
of relativity (ten years later he included gravity in it and proposed this
theory as general theory of relativity) another is the theory of atomic
phenomena - it was a new way of looking at electromagnetic radiation
which was to become characteristic of quantum theory. Relativity theory
was almost entirely completed by Einstein. However, the complete
quantum theory was worked out twenty years later by a whole team of
physicists. these articles revolutionized scientific thoughts and changed
the way people view space, time, mass, and energy. Einstein's scientific
papers are intellectual monuments that mark the beginning of
twentieth-century thought.
Experimental investigation of atoms in the 20th century brought other
major development, physicists discovered several phenomena
connected with the structure of atoms, such as X-rays and radioactivity
which were unimaginable in terms of classical physics.
In the history of physics, Darwin and Copernicus gave the revolutionary
theory which introduced great changes in the general understanding of
the universe and shocked many people. In the 20th century for the first
time, physicists faced a serious challenge to their ability to understand
the universe. They had struggled to understand the strange and
unexpected reality revealed to them in their exploration of atomic and
subatomic phenomena, their way of thinking, basic concepts, language
were insufficient to describe atomic phenomena. Later they realized that
paradoxes are encountered whenever one tries to describe atomic
phenomena in terms of the classical concept. Then they began to learn
to ask nature the right question in atomic experiments to avoid
contradictions.
Finally, they found the mathematical formulation of quantum theory but
its conceptual framework was not easy to accept. The foundation of
physics had begun moving. A consistent, organic, holistic, and
ecological world view is now emerging. This view is being discussed by
scientists who are deeply interested in the philosophical implications of
modern physics. The universe is no longer seen as a Machine, made up
of a multitude of objects (mechanistic Cartesian view of the world) but
has to be pictured as one indivisible, dynamic whole whose parts are
essentially interrelated. In the end, Capra tries to bring together science
and physics because both are observations. However, Physicists derive
their knowledge from experiments and mystics from meditative
insights. Mystical thoughts provide a consistent and relevant
philosophical background to the theories of contemporary science.

Root cellar
- Theodore Roethke
About writer :
Root cellar written by Theodore Roethke who was born in 1908
and died in 1963. His father, who was a German immigrant owned
a 25-acre greenhouse and ran it through his life.
Main idea of the poem Root cellar :
This poem describes a detailed scenario of an underground cellar
where some plants and microorganisms are germinated even in
the hostile environment. The poet goes into the depth of their
survival existence and he appreciates their tough persistent life.
He appreciates the strength and stamina of plant life which grows
even in such unfriendly underground storehouse. By the way, the
poet was grown up observing the large greenhouse farm of his
father. He noticed closely how the plants germinate and the insects
produce their progeny. He realizes that all of them have their lives
and they want to survive at any cost. So the theme of the poem is
that this world is a living entity where life of the plants and
animals begin with such a strong force to survive and generate
progeny even in so tough environment. In this sense, this is an
ecological poem.
Summary of the poem root cellar by Theodore Roethke BBS
2nd year
The poet talks about the fruits and vegetables kept in the
underground cellar where some of them are sprouting even in
such tough environment. He says that nothing would sleep in that
cellar which is damp and fungi. There is no sunlight but their
bulbs break out of their seeds looking for some light in the
darkness. Some shoots have grown longer hanging down or lolling
secretly from the fungi crates. They are hanging down in yellow
color like the heads of the snakes.
Then he describes the environment of the underground cellar and
he says that there is a congress of stinks, which means that there is
the mixture of all types of bad smell stinking a lot. The seeds and
their roots are fully ripe and decayed from which soft pulpy stems
are grown. There is the hard rank smell of the granary, the storage
of the fruits, vegetables and grains. Some of them are decayed into
manure, sour smell, and soft material.
All those different types of seeds of the plants are sprouting and
trying to grow. In fact, they would need different type of care,
protection and different environment for better growth. They
would need sunlight and protection in the farm. But the poet finds
that they are growing up even in the common hostile environment
of the underground cellar because they do not like to give up their
lives. He finds that nothing would give up there. Even the dirt
keeps breathing a small breath. The last two lines of the poem are
especially significant because it gives the theme that everything
has so strong force of survival and growth of their progeny.
 On Warts
by Lewis Thomas
Summary
On warts is an essay where the writer discusses warts and their
treatment. According to the writer, warts are wonderful structures. They
appear on any part of the skin like mushrooms on a damp lawn. warts
are both useful and essential as the exuberant (very energetic) cells of a
wart are the elaborate reproductive apparatus of a virus.
Warts can be made to go away by thinking by hypnotic
suggestions. For the writer, it is more surprising than cloning or
recombinant DNA, or acupuncture. No one really understands
exactly how the cure works. Is it by science or by magic? And the
strangest thing is they vanish without a trace. In hypnotic
suggestion, instruction is given in a state of hypnosis to patients'
unconscious mind to cure warts. He presents a study in which
warts patients were hypnotized, and the suggestion was made that
their warts would begin to go away. The results were positive.
The unconscious mind is powerful in the sense that you give
yourself thoughts and listen to opinions from others on how to
treat and get rid of warts. Therefore, the writer himself wishes to
have warts to see how the unconscious mind works. It is
mysterious how the unconscious mind can prompt warts to
disappear. The writer being a doctor gives hypnotic suggestions, to
cure warts. At last, he says to start a war against warts, warts and
all.

The Etiquette of Freedom summary

Gary Snyder
Summary
Etiquette: a “customary code of polite behavior in society.”, good
manners In Snyder’s view, what is often missing in human
behavior is graceful conduct. The essay “The Etiquette of
Freedom,” reminds us of our ethical (moral) obligation that we are
indeed (truly) connected to everything else. Learning the birds and
the flowers is local etiquette. It is rude not to know the creature
near us. He concludes in this extract that ‘ The lessons we learn
from the wild become the etiquette of freedom. To know the wild
is to be truly free. Here wild means uncontrolled freedom. There is
wildness in us everything comes from there. We need to manage
and understand its nature to know the true meaning of freedom
According to the writer, we are an animal because we are
mammals. Our ancestors were animals. Our bodies are wild. Both
animals and humans have the same features. Both quickly and
automatically turn their head at a shout, feel fear of the danger,
breathe, feel relaxed in the quiet moment, to survive both eat food.
Therefore, he says our bodies are wild.
It would be a mistake to think that human beings as superior
because of language and society. Animals also communicate
extensively (widely). Language is learned in the house and in the
fields, not at school. Without having ever been taught formal
grammar we speak correct grammar. We learn vocabulary from
the mind. The mind is also wild because the mind takes it
automatically or freely. Likewise, other creatures learn a language
from their surroundings. In school, language is refined and
grammar is taught.
There is social order not only in society, it is found in nature too. In
fact, it is in nature before the age of books and legal codes.
Actually, we are followers of nature's rule. The lessons we learn
from the wild become the etiquette of freedom. We human beings
only are not present in this world within us other creatures also
share equally this earth. They have similar features. The depth of
mind, and the unconscious, are our inner wilderness areas.
Memories, images, anger, and delights, arise spontaneously in the
mind. We balance it with the outer world. There is uncontrolled
freedom in it. We need to manage it to enjoy a true sense of
freedom. Freedom doesn’t mean we harm other creatures. As we
all share the same planet. We must live in harmony with each
other and establish an etiquette relationship with nature.

Just like George Bernard Shaw by James Heriot [Summary]

“Just like George Bernard Shaw” by James Heriot is the twenty-
third chapter of The Lord God Made Them All. In this anecdote,
proving that the events that inspire a good story don’t have to be
earth-shaking, the vegetarian describes one family’s reaction to the
news that playwright Bernard Shaw has suffered a mishap. The
story uses medical knowledge to illumine an interesting human
situation.

Who is George Bernard Shaw?

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) was an Irish playwright, critic,
and Nobel laureate who spent his life on the British Isles. He wrote
more than 60 plays during his lifetime, many of which enjoyed
great success in Britain and America, as well as countries all over
the world where they were translated into many languages. His
plays are still performed regularly today all over the world to wide
acclaim, and he remains one of the most celebrated and popular
playwrights in history.
Just like George Bernard Shaw poem by James Heriot

Summary of Just like George Bernard Shaw

For James Herriot, a playwright, George Bernard Shaw, who was
one of his heroes, recently broke his leg while pruning apple trees
in his garden. His broken leg got popularity in entire England.
Being a vet, once Herriot was called by Casling family to cure the
broken leg of a calf. Casling family farm sets high in Yorkshire. His
farm was in an isolated place and difficult to find.
To reach there, one had to walk through gloomy, garlic-smelling
places. As Herriot got out of the car, Mr. Casling and his two sons,
Alan and Harold welcomed him. Father was sixty years old while
his sons were in their thirties. At that time, the calf was in the field.
To cure the cow, he demanded a bucket of water. Then, they laid
the calf on the sparse turf. Harold stayed by the head (of calf), Alan
in the middle, and their father sat by the middle. At that time, the
writer felt irritated at such gathering.
Then, the writer dipped a plaster bandage in the water and applied
it to a fractured leg. The calf was very small about a month old.
While curing the calf, nobody spoke to him. He wanted somebody
would say anything. In order to avoid silence, he said the calf was "
just like Bernard Shaw ". He was trying to say that like Shaw, the
calf also had a broken leg. For about half a minute, nobody
responded because they didn't know about Shaw. They thought
that he was from a rustic place, Darrowby. Later, the writer told
them the fact that Shaw lived in London but they had thought that
like them; he was also a farmer. After this incident, the writer
thinks that all fame is related so that in the future, he would pay
special attention to sharing such facts with the people.
Just like George Bernard Shaw [question answer]
In Just like George Bernard Shaw, what prompts Herriot to start
talking to the three farmers about Shaw's broken leg?
Ans: In order to break out silence, Herriot starts talking to the
three farmers about Shaw's broken leg as he was caring for the
fractured leg of the calf.
What is the veterinarian's attitude toward Mr. Casting and his sons
in Just like George Bernard Shaw?
Ans: The veterinarian's attitude toward Mr. Casling and his son is
irritating and boring.
What does the author mean when he says, in the final paragraph,
that "all fame is relative"?
Ans: It is true that all fame is relative. In the eyes of Herriot, Shaw
was so important, and hoped that farmers know him. A strange
thing has happened as he shared Shaw's broken leg, they do not
show any interest to know or hear. It means that they do not know
about Shaw, Fame also bounds with time and place. As time flows,
same fame cannot be with us.
Why do you suppose Herriot chooses to fall into Yorkshire's speech
in his narrative's closing word?
Ans: I think that Herriot Chooses to fall into Yorkshire’s speech in
order to convey the message what innocent farmers may think
about Shaw.
Why does the writer use so many technical terms in the anecdote
in "Just like George Bernard Shaw?"
Ans: In Just like George Bernard Shaw, the writer uses so many
technical terms in the anecdote because he is a vet and has come
to cure Mr. Castling's calf.
Sum up, in a paragraph or two, the reasons for the communication
gap between the veterinarian and the Caslings.
Ans: There are a few reasons for the communication gap between
the veterinarian and the Casling in Just like George Bernard Shaw.
Firstly, Casling family only wants to cure their calf. It was their
property so they only pay attention to their calf. Secondly, being
uneducated and remote area farmers, they as a respect, do not
want to talk more with the writer. Thirdly, as the vet talks about
Shaw, they do not know about Shaw and his popularity.
"All fame is relative." Do you agree? Why or why not?
Ans: Yes, I agree that all fame is relative because name and fame
are bound to time and place. Almost everyone dreams about being
famous and popular. Most people would like to be admired and
loved by others who surround them, but the price of fame is high.
Celebrities or famous people are generally very wealthy people,
who are able to allow themselves to have everything that they
want. As a consequence, they live in big, luxurious apartments and
houses, spend their money on decorated clothes, and have
expensive cars, and so on. Celebrities ' fortunes let them do not
worry about their future. Not only do they have financial
protection for themselves, but also for their families. In addition,
the fame means being recognized by almost everyone.
Therefore, if you are on top, you will appear everywhere on TV, in
magazines or in commercials. It must be a fantastic feeling, when
your fans ask you for an autograph or taking photo. However,
fame has always been said to be very annoying and all fame is
relative and certain.

The Rights of Animals summary Brigid Brophy

The Rights of Animals by Brigid Brophy
summary

In "The Rights of Animals" (1066) written by Brigid Brophy. She

wittily argues that it is the responsibility of the human beings to
behave decently towards the animals. She asserts (claims) that our
relationship to animals is one of "unremitting (endless)
exploitation" and argues that we are under moral obligation to
respect their rights and spare them pain and terror (save them
from pain and terror)
We employ their work, we eat and wear them, exploit them,
sacrifice them to gods, kill them for scientific experiments, and put
wild animals in prison i.e zoos and circuses.

Cranks and Kill animals

The essayist says that every new voice for rights seems cranky.
Talking about the rights of slaves would have been crank in the
ancient world similarly in the future it will seem unbelievable that
we do not notice the immorality of our oppression of animals.
Animal exploiters justify themselves by saying that they are saving
animals from winter and calve do not mind being tied up because
they have never known anything else.
The writer is a vegetarian. She says we eat meat to get joy but by
killing an animal we put an end to all the animals' joys along with
its life.

Sentimentality
Here she rejects of being a sentimentalist and ignorant of
economic realities. She says that she won't kill an animal in order
to eat it, but she will willingly eat an animal which had died of old
age and the body is kept in hygiene. In this sense, she is not a
sentimentalist because she is no respecter of dead bodies whereas
other never will eat a dead animal. In this sense, she can save the
food that could go waste. It means she is well aware of economic
realities than others.
According to her, it is our moral obligation not to give pain to
domestic animals. They also feel hurt. Even if we save them from
pain, we don't have the rights to kill them just only because we like
their taste.

The only genuine moral problem

If there is a direct clash between an animal's life and a human one
then only we have the only genuine moral problem to choose
human life over an animal's life. Meat is not essential to human
life, our diet doesn't propose such clash.
Vivisection, hunting, and sacrificing activities are an atrocity
(cruelty). One of the saddest and most foolish of our superstitious
beliefs about sacrificing animals is our belief that by killing them
we can somehow survive. If we ban animals acts from circuses
many unemployed acrobats and jugglers will get jobs.
she does not keep animals superior or equal to human beings. She
just wants that being superior species, rational beings who are
capable of moral choice- it is our moral obligation and duty to
recognize and respect the rights of animals.

Professions for Women" by Virginia Woolf - Summary

Virginia Woolf is addressing a group of women seeking

employment in a workforce predominated by men. She speaks of
the struggle present for all women writers, and that is to break out
of the conventions society has for women- being pure, and
conservative, and sycophantic towards men without a mind of
their own. This is a mental barrier that she was able to break, with
great difficulty, in order to incorporate her own voice into her
writing. She was able to do so thanks to her financial
independence, which allowed her to not depend on writing for a
livelihood and allowed her to break conventions. Now that women
will join the workforce, Woolf says that it is important to ask
questions regarding what all of this implies, and how women are
to behave once they are professionals, and to explore the
individual voice that women will need to bring to their jobs.
Virginia Adeline Woolf (1882-1941) was an English novelist and
essayist, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures
of the twentieth century. She was one of the leaders in the literary
movement of modernism.
The speech of Professions for Women was given in 1931 to the
Women’s Service League by Virginia Woolf. It was also included in
Death of a Moth and Other Essays in 1942. Throughout the speech,
Virginia Woolf brings forward a problem that is still relevant
today: gender inequality. Woolf’s main point in this essay was to
bring awareness to the phantoms (illusions) and obstacles women
face in their jobs. Woolf argues that women must overcome special
obstacles to become successful in their careers. She describes two
hazards she thinks all women who aspire to professional life must
overcome: their tendency to sacrifice their own interests to those
of others and their reluctance to challenge conservative male
attitudes.
She starts her speech by describing how female writers before her
have made an easier path to her becoming successful. She speaks
of the struggle present for all women writers, and that is to break
out of the conventions society has for women- being pure,
conservative, and sycophantic towards men without a mind of
their own. This is a mental barrier that she was able to break, with
great difficulty, in order to incorporate her own voice into her
writing. She was able to do so because of her financial
independence, which allowed her to not depend on writing for a
livelihood and allowed her to break conventions.
Professions for Women reveals Woolf to be a bold, hungry, and,
more importantly, ambitious woman. Woolf declares, “this
freedom is only a beginning; the room is your own, but it is still
bare. It has to be furnished; it has to be decorated; it has to be
shared” (Woolf, 1931). Woolf claims that in order for a woman to
be a writer one must overcome a few obstacles that are inflicted
upon women writers. One obstacle to her success is “The Angel in
the House.” Woolf uses an allusion to a nineteenth-century
Victorian poem, “Angel in the House” to reference her obstacles as
“phantoms” and the “Angel” as society telling her that she's doing
wrong by not following the woman stereotype of the 1930s. The
Angel or society tells Woolf that she shouldn't think freely and that
she should be flirtatious and seductive. This is one of the phantoms
or obstacles that Woolf encounters in her profession of writing.
This angel prevents her from fully writing what she wants since it
persistently tells her what society is expecting. The phantoms
(illusions) she mentions are what people expect from women. For
instance, Woolf is “suppose” to be sympathetic, respectful, pure,
charming, and unselfish. She constantly kills the phantom, but it
always manages to find a way back. Therefore, she advises other
writers to have an unconscious mind due to the fact that it will
help them write what they truly want. Writing consciously leads to
writing what society wants, thus not being able to express one’s
true opinion. Woolf wants women to continue trying to fight these
phantoms and obstacles. For instance, she uses a metaphor of an
empty house and asks questions like how it will be decorated, who
it will be shared with, etc. Just because one has rights does not
mean that they should give up on fighting the injustices they are
still bound to face. She inspires women to fight for equal rights for
men and women and to try and put an end to stereotypes.
The Use Of Force
William Carlos (1883 -1963)
The use of force is a story written by William Carlos. Inside of this
article you can find the summary of this story for bbs 2nd year
business English. The use of force is a story which is inside bbs 2nd
year course of vision under new course.

About writer
William Carlos was a modernist who prioritized clear, concise
imagery and economy of language. He was influenced by imagist
movement. He was born in 1883 and died in 1963.
Characters in the story :
• The narrator : the writer himself as a doctor
• Mathilda : A sick child suffering from fever (diphtheria)
• Mathilda's parents
Main theme of the story use of force
• Mental and physical conflict that arises during the doctors
visit to a sick child
• Use of force for benevolent purpose
• doctor effort in diagnosing the cause of sickness of child
• Love for the patient and hatred towards the parents
Summary of the story the use of force by William Carlos
The use of force by William Carlos is a story which begins with the
arrival of an unnamed doctor at the residence of Olson for a house
call. Their daughter, Mathilda has a high fever 'Diphtheria', an
infection of the nose and throat had been making the rounds at
Mathilda's school and children were dying of it.
Though the parents had called the doctor, his presence makes
them nervous and they seem to distrust him and are not especially
forth coming. Mathilda was sitting on her father's lap. Though
she's suffering from high fever and breathing problem the doctor
can't resist himself of taking note of her beauty and impressive
blonde hair. He thinks that she is a sort of photogenic child that
are featured in advertisement.
The doctor asks if Mathilda has a sore throat but parents claim
that Mathilda denied it but the parents admit that they haven't
been able to physically examine inside her mouth because
Mathilda wouldn't let them. The mother insist that the doctor is a
nice man who won't hurt Mathilda. The doctor is privately
annoyed by the mother's attempt to persuade Mathilda, believing
that merely mentioning the word 'hurt' is counter productive in a
situation like this. As the doctor moves closer, Mathilda strikes out
unexpectedly knocking his glasses of his face as she tries to claw
his eyes and screaming that 'stop it'! you're killing me and the
mother interfered for which the dad told the mother to get out of
the room.
When the doctor used a spatula, the child resisted. The mother
yelled at the child if she's ashamed acting like that in front of a
doctor. Then the doctor was compelled to use force to open her
mouth in order to check for sore throat. The child's tongue was cut
and was bleeding during the use of force. The doctor had a fury
towards a child and explained that he felt pleasured to attack her
to protect her form her own idiocy. So, he overpowered the child's
neck and jaws and he found out that she had been hiding that sore
throat for 3 days.
This made the child even more furious and attacked the doctor.
Hence, showing that she had diphtheria.
What is the nature of the conflict in the story use of force?
The use of force shows a conflict between a doctor and his patient
at one level and doctor and the parents at the other level. The
conflict between doctor and patient is physical while that of doctor
and parents is psychological. The story tells that the use of force
for the benevolent is ethical and justifiable.
Generally, force is unjustifiable but if used with good motives to
save someone's life it becomes a necessity. The basic conflict
between doctor and parents is because the doctor use force
because of social responsibility while the parents don't want the
use of force. Their love towards the child could potentially lead to
the cause of death of the child. The parents concentrate on
immediate pain without thinking about the consequences of
deadly disease. So, the doctor loves the child but finds her parents
contemplable.
Write a paragraph on the reaction of the child during the crisis of
using force.
Mathilda was very scared of the doctor even though her mother
kept on calling the doctor a nice man. Being a child she wasn't
aware of the fact that the doctor was there to save her life. So, her
behavior changed from being indifferent to violently offensive.
Everyone considered her actions to be shameful, but no one
actually cared enough to understand her perspective. She was in
pain because of the sore throat and on top of that, she was scared
that the doctor would hurt her. OS, she reacted negatively to the
force being used against her and she shrieked hysterically,
screaming 'stop it' 'stop it' you're killing me because of which she
went from defensive to attack mode and attacked the doctor.
The Stronger summary August Strindber
The Stronger
August Strindberg(1849-1912)

Characters:
MME. X- an actress, married
MME.Y- an actress, unmarried
Bob- MME. X's husband (never appears in the play)
Scene - The corner of a ladies' cafe. Two little iron tables, a red
velvet sofa, several chairs. Enter Mme. X dressed in winter clothes,
carrying a Japanese basket on her arm.
The Stronger is a play where only one character speaks while the
other listens and reacts only, written by August Strindberg. Miss Y
is Mrs. X's husband's ex-girlfriend. Mrs. X met Miss Y in a cafe. She
greeted her and then made fun of her because she was alone there
on Christmas Eve. To make Miss Y jealous, Mrs. X showed gifts that
she bought for her family
She revealed that Miss Y whose name is Amelie was her friend, she
made her husband to be friendly with her. Later, they fell in love.
When Mrs. X knew this, their friendship broke. When Miss Y and
Bob were in love, Miss Y used to offer him tulips in everything that
Mrs. X had often noticed. In fact, Mrs.X hates tulips but to please
Bob she had bought a decorated tulip slipper on Christmas Eve for
him.
Mrs. X said that Miss Y had destroyed her life. Due to Miss Y, she
had to like everything that Miss Y liked only to impress her
husband. Mrs. X expressed that Miss Y had eaten her like a worm,
therefore, she didn't like her. It means she changed a lot to be
similar to Miss Y, and she pretended to be the stronger.

She said that Bob didn't love her anymore. She invited her to come
home to see their love. At last, she said that she had everything but
Miss Y had nothing. She couldn't keep a man's love with tulips and
thanked her for teaching her husband to love and left the cafe
saying that she was going home to love her husband.

Who is stronger?
At one level Miss Y seemed stronger than Mrs. X because she
became successful to get Mrs. X's husband's love but at the end, we
found that Mrs. X succeeds to keep her husband with herself and
her children. She did all that she could to get her husband back. In
fact, she has changed herself totally into Miss Y to make her
husband happy like Miss Y. Therefore, at the festival time she is
with her husband and children and Miss Y is alone at the cafe.
Personal view
We should be ourselves and should not change completely just to
keep someone in our life. Otherwise, we are insulting ourselves.
Here Mrs. X tried her best to keep her husband with herself but
she completely changed herself. This is not good.

Here I Love You: Pablo Neruda - Summary and Critical

Analysis
The poem Hear I Love You expresses the sadness of separation.
The speaker is (here) in this world and his beloved is (there) far
away in the world beyond the mortal’s reach. The speaker in this
poem loves his departed beloved. He passionately recalls the sweet
moments he spent in her company.

Pablo Neruda
But his companion is there far away in another world. Thus “here”
contrasts with “there”. Here in the poem refers to the dark pine
wood, moonlit waters, snowy evenings and all those places the
speaker travels alone with the memories of his beloved. As against
this “there” in this poem signifies the world where the speaker’s
beloved has already reached and now dwells. The grief of
separation is immense in this poem because the speaker is alone
here in this physical world. However, he still loves her as faithfully
as before but the horizon hides her in vain. He looks at the ships
sailing out of sight if he could send his kisses to his beloved.
He recalls the times he spent with her in the natural surroundings
of the moonlit waters, snowy evenings in the pine forests and the
coastal areas. He remembers the black cross of the ship, the
symbol of his beloved’s funeral. So the speaker feels that he is
alone in this world. He feels that days are passing monotonously.
Sometimes he wakes up early. His whole body is sweating because
of some kind of bad dream. Even his soul is wet and he feels as if
he had no energy. He feels that he had heard the sound of the sea
far away. He loves her although he is here in this world.
Although she is there beyond the horizon in the other world he
loves her. Sometimes he sends the message of love to her but gets
no reply. He feels that he is forgotten like the old anchors. In the
afternoon he feels sad. He is hungry and fired. His life has no
purpose. He loves her who is not with him. He finds difficult to
pass the evening and hates it. But he likes the night because he
meets her regularly in his dream. When the big stars look at him,
he feels that his beloved is looking at him. And he feels that the
pine trees are singing her name.

The Kiss summary Kate Chopin

Characters
Brantain - an unattractive, shy rich man, is in love with Nathalie.
Nathalie (Nattie) - main character, very handsome, lives with her
brother.
Mr. Harvy- is in love with Nathalie, a close friend of Nathalie's
brother, doesn't have the money and social position that Brantain
has.
Theme: money over love.
It is a short story about a beautiful woman called Nathalie who
has affair with Harvy but wants to marry the shy, unattractive rich
Brantain for his wealth. Thus, she makes plans to marry him.
Nathalie and Brantain are in Nathalie's room. There is dim light in
the room. Brantain is sitting under the shadow. They are talking
slowly. Nathalie knows that he loves her. She is waiting for his
purpose. That time without ringing the doorbell Harvy enters into
the room. He doesn't notice Brantain's presence there. He kisses
Nathalie. Brantain feels uneasy, therefore, goes out of the room.
She becomes angry with Harvy. He apologizes and tells her that he
came there with her brother. Her brother went upstairs and he
came into her room to find her. He didn't notice Brantain. Nathalie
doesn't forgive her.
Next time she meets Brantain at a party. She lies that there is
nothing between her and Harvy. Harvy is like her cousin. She tries
to ensure Brantain does not misunderstand them. Brantain
believes her. And the day comes when they are getting married.
Harvy is also invited to their wedding. Brantain sends him to kiss
Nathalie. She feels happy as if she wins the game. Her eyes are
bright with a smile looking at Harvy. Her lips are eager to get a
kiss. She feels disappointed when Harvy rejects to kiss her. He tells
that he has stopped kissing women because that is dangerous.
Natalie can learn that people cannot have everything in this world.
Nathalie can have the wealth of her husband but she cannot have
another love from the man she loves, Harvy.

SUMMARY: “GIRL”
Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” was first published on June 26, 1978 in The
New Yorker and was later included in Kincaid’s debut 1983 short
story collection, At the Bottom of the River. According to Kincaid,
her works, including “Girl,” can be considered autobiographical.
Kincaid grew up on the Caribbean island of Antigua and had a
strained relationship with her mother before Kincaid moved to
New York City. These same cultural and familial contexts are
present in “Girl.”

This study guide cites the 1978 version of the text found in The
New Yorker. Since the text is rather short and compact, references
to direct quotes will include the respective line numbers in
citations.
“Girl” is a dramatic monologue told predominantly in the second
person. The text, which is considered a prose poem, follows no
chronology and lacks a traditional plot structure. The speaker is
presumed to be a mother preaching to her daughter, although
their relationship is never clearly stated. The mother’s voice is
exacting, and her speech cautionary. The story is a single
paragraph comprised of a series of commands and instructions
connected with a semicolon. The girl, having reached sexual
maturity, receives instructions intended to help her become a
respectable woman and is told how adults should behave. On two
occasions, the daughter’s voice interrupts the mother in protest,
but the mother merely continues with her monologue in a distant
and often accusatory tone, using “don’t,” “do,” and “how to.” The
story explores the detrimental gender roles and expectations
imposed upon young girls who are emerging into womanhood.

Although the narrative is not linear, there is a tonal shift as the

mother’s intention progresses from educating her daughter in
domestic duties to empowering her to assert her individuality. The
daughter’s voice also occasionally breaks through that of her
domineering yet caring mother, giving readers a glimpse at the
young, innocent girl who will soon be a woman.

Many of the mother’s directions include practical advice that will

aid the girl in keeping a house of her own one day. She tells the girl
to place freshly washed white clothing on a stone heap on
Mondays and to save the color clothes to wash on Tuesdays. The
mother also tells the daughter how to properly soak salt fish, cook
pumpkin fritters, iron her father’s clothes, grow okra and dasheen,
and sweep the house and yard. From these regional details,
readers can infer that the story takes place in the British West
Indies. The instructions suggest that the women reside in a poor
rural setting in which imparting such advice is vital for daily life.

It also soon becomes apparent that the girl has approached sexual
maturity. The speaker’s instruction to “soak your little cloths”
when she removes them—a reference to menstruation—alludes to
this fact. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that many of the
mother’s directions are intended to prevent the girl from turning
into the “slut” that her mother obviously believes the girl will
become. She tells her not to sing benna (suggestive Antiguan folk
songs) while in Sunday school, never to speak to the “wharf-rat
boys,” and not to eat fruit on the street, as it will cause flies to
follow her.

Such advice is interspersed with guidance about practical matters

such as cleaning and cooking. She also tells the girl to avoid
walking bareheaded in the sun. However, the mother’s main aim is
to keep the daughter from becoming or being perceived as a “slut.”
The mother’s commentary begins to introduce more serious issues
such as etiquette and respectability, telling her to always walk like
a lady and to be the “perfect” woman to fit into the community in
which they live. The speaker also tells the girl about a medicine to
induce abortion and observes that if her advice on how to love a
man does not work, the girl should not regret giving up. She warns
that men and women oftentimes “bully” one another.

The mother also provides social advice, telling the girl how to
smile at anyone she does not like, as well as at those she sincerely
likes. Furthermore, she informs her about how to avoid evil spirits.
For example, she says what appears as a blackbird may indeed be
something else entirely.

The delivery of the mother’s instruction suggests the ways in

which adults model actions and behaviors for their children.
Seemingly, the daughter is learning as she watches. Meanwhile,
the speaker’s negative tone implies she has little hope that her
daughter will progress into a decent state of adulthood, such that
the girl’s protestation contributes to the tension of the story. In any
case, the mother has the final word. At the end, when the daughter
asks what she should do if the baker will not allow her to test the
freshness of the bread by squeezing it, the mother wonders
whether the girl will become the “kind of woman the baker won’t
let near the bread” (Lines 52-53).

The mother’s advice comes across as castigating, caustic, and

condescending. She passes on to her daughter the litany of female
duties and attributes, developed and sanctified over generations,
likely in the same manner the woman’s own mother had passed
them on to her. The mother presents a generational gender
mandate in the presence of an inevitable mother-daughter
distancing typically signified by impending adolescence.
Farewell: Federico Garcia Lorca - Summary and Critical
Analysis
The poem Farewell presents the condition of the poet who is
approaching death or who must be an old person. Farewell is an
expression which we use when we leave someone or when we are
left by someone. However, the farewell here in the poem is the
final leave of the world. Death is regarded to be the final and the
most unpleasant of farewells.
The main focus of the poem is a poet’s intense desire to feast on the
pleasures of life even after death. The poet says if I die, please keep
the balcony open. From the balcony I can see the boy eating
oranges. I can also see the reaper harvesting the wheat and
singing.
I can also enjoy the songs if the balcony is kept open. I can enjoy
the sights and sounds of the world even after my death. The
speaker wants the balcony left open because he thinks that even
after his death the open balcony would allow him to enjoy the
familiar views. He knows that he is dying shortly but his love for
life is unending. He would like to see the little boy eating oranges
and reaper singing and harvesting the wheat, which are the
symbol of life. The poet conveys a message to the reader that this
world is a very enjoyable place and the delights of living are really
great.
In this short poem; the word 'balcony' has been repeated four
times. The speaker asks his companion to leave the balcony open
so that he could enjoy the sights, sounds and smells of the
surrounding even after his death. The balcony is the most
powerful image in the poem from where the speaker can have a
clear view of the world. The repetition of 'balcony' shows that the
speaker is interested more in celebrating the pleasures of life
rather than the death.
Finally, the poem may be trying to say that life and death are
natural phenomena. They are unavoidable.
Popular Mechanics
Popular Mechanics, a very short story by Raymond Carver. It was
included in Carver's 1981 collection called "What We Talk About
When We Talk About Love" and later appeared under the title
"Little Things" in his 1988 collection, "Where I'm Calling From.”
The story describes an argument between a man and a woman
that rapidly escalates into a physical struggle over their baby. The
man, woman, and baby don't even have names, which emphasizes
their role as universal archetypes (prototypes). They could be
anyone; they are everyone.
The word "mechanics" shows that this is a story about the process
of disagreeing more than it is about the outcome of those
disagreements. Nowhere is this more evident than in the final line
of the story: "In this manner, the issue was decided.”
Summary:
It’s slushy outside and getting dark. Inside, a man is in the
bedroom, hurriedly packing his suitcase. A woman says she's glad
he's leaving. She starts crying. She takes a picture of the baby from
the bed and leaves the room. He wants the picture back. He
finishes packing, puts on his coat, and turns out the light. He goes
to the living room. The woman stands in the doorway of the
kitchen, holding the baby.
He wants to take the baby. She refuses. The baby starts crying. He
moves toward her. She retreats into the kitchen, standing in a
corner by the stove. He grabs hold of the baby. They argue over
him. The baby is screaming. They knock down a flowerpot. He
crowds her, trying to break her grip on the baby. He grips the baby
under an arm and tries to pull the woman's fingers apart. She feels
her grip loosening. As the baby slips away, she screams and grabs
for the baby's other arm. She has one wrist and leans back. The
man pulls very hard.
The issue gets decided.
What happens to the baby? This is the main point of speculation in
the story. It is not certain what happens to the baby. The two likely
possibilities are:
• The baby gets injured or is killed either from a fall or the
pulling.
Popular Mechanics, a very short story by Raymond Carver. It was
included in Carver's 1981 collection called "What We Talk About
When We Talk About Love" and later appeared under the title
"Little Things" in his 1988 collection, "Where I'm Calling From.”
The story describes an argument between a man and a woman
that rapidly escalates into a physical struggle over their baby. The
man, woman, and baby don't even have names, which emphasizes
their role as universal archetypes (prototypes). They could be
anyone; they are everyone.
The word "mechanics" shows that this is a story about the process
of disagreeing more than it is about the outcome of those
disagreements. Nowhere is this more evident than in the final line
of the story: "In this manner, the issue was decided.”
Old Man at the Bridge Summary & Analysis
Plot Summary / The Storyline
The story “Old Man at the Bridge” by Earnest Hemingway is set in
the backdrop of Spanish Civil War in 1938. It starts with the
description of an old man who was sitting at a bridge. It was a war-
like situation as the Fascists forces were advancing towards Ebro.
Our narrator, a war correspondent, was in the charge to cross a
pontoon bridge to check the advancement of the enemy forces. He
saw that an old man with steel rimmed spectacles and dusty
clothes was sitting beside the road at the bridge while carts, trucks
and people were crossing the bridge to get to a safe distance from
the enemies. The old man looked too tired to walk any further.
Seeing the old man sitting there for a long time, the speaker went
to him and asked him where he came from. The old man answered
that he was coming from San Carlos, his native town, twelve
kilometers away from there. The man smiled as it was a pleasure
to him to mention his native land.
Then the speaker had a chat with that man and came to know that
the seventy-six years old man had no one but pets — two goats, a
cat and eight pigeons. They were his family and he spent his time
looking after the animals. Now that the enemy forces were
approaching, he was asked to leave the place. So he was forced to
leave his pets on their fate. The old man is not anxious about what
would happen to his family — the animals. He thinks that the cat
would be able to look after itself. But what about the pigeons and
the goats? He asks the narrator to guess what would happen to his
pets? The speaker consoles him that they will be fine.
He asks the old man if he left the dove cage unlocked. As the old
man answers in the assertive, he suggests that they will fly. But he
cannot throw light on the future of the goats.
Then our narrator urged the man to get up and try to walk further
as he would now leave. The man tried to walk but could not. He sat
down again in the dust.
The narrator mentions that it was Easter Sunday and a gray
overcast day. He finishes his story by commenting that there was
nothing in favour of the old man except the facts that the enemy
planes were not up in the sky for the overcast weather and that the
cats can look after themselves.
Old Man at the Bridge: Commentary on the story
Published in 1938, The story “Old Man at the Bridge” is about a
conversation between a war correspondent and an old man who
had to leave his hometown during the Spanish Civil War.
Hemingway was appointed by the North American Newspaper
Association (NANA) but he apparently decided to write it as a short
story instead of a news article. As the title “Old Man at the Bridge”
suggests, the story revolves around the old man. This very short
and simple story is a powerful depiction of how war affects the
lives of common people who are “without politics”. The old man
has nothing to do with the impending war. But still, he had to leave
his home and his beloved pets whom he regards as his family.
The man’s love for his native town is expressed in his smile while
uttering the name of San Carlos. Moreover, his innocence and love
for the animals are quite evident in the story. But such an old man
was forced to leave his native place and his pets — his only
purpose of life. And he is now left on the hands of fate. The author
has tried to draw our sympathy for the man by portraying the
goodness in his character.
So the themes present in the short story “Old Man at the Bridge”
are —
• Suffering of common people in war
• Man’s love for animals
• Love for one’s native place
One striking achievement of Hemingway here is the vivid
portrayal of the character of the old man, the protagonist of the
story in such a short length.
The story is narrated in first person narrative technique where the
speaker tells the story from his angle. The language used is very
lucid and the conversational style makes the story more live. The
story is a great example of unadorned and simple style peculiar to
Hemingway.
ONCE MORE TO THE LAKE - E. B. White (1898-1985)
ONCE MORE TO THE LAKE
Once More to the Lake, a narrative non-fiction essay written by E.
B. White and first published in 1941, is a story about how the
narrator, who grew up going to a lake in Maine, returns with his
son when he is older. This essay is a depiction of the writer’s
experience as he visits a lake once again – the lake that he has
been fond of since childhood. He describes all the great memories
that were made with his family at this lake, specifically mentioning
the times with his father. When he arrives back at the lake, he
comments on how everything has stayed the same.
The essay moves in a non-chronological way, as White weaves in
and out of the past and present, following the flow of his mental
process, or as what many would call stream-of-consciousness. By
the essay's end, White has come full circle, accepting his own
mortality. In his son's image, he no longer sees himself. He is clear
that his son's maturation is a sign that White is getting closer to
death.
White begins by describing his family’s first visit to the lake in
1904 when he was just five years old. Despite a few interruptions,
“the vacation was a success and from then on none of [White’s
family] ever thought there was any place in the world like that
lake”. Although his family’s annual visits to the lake are well in the
past, White finds himself longing to go back and plans a vacation
with his son. On his way to the lake, White wonders “how time
would have marred” the campsite and whether “tarred road
would have found it out”. He finds that the paved road does,
indeed, extend nearly all the way to the lake but is delighted to
find that the campsite is more or less the same as he remembers.
This revisiting is a journey in which White delights in memories
associated with his childhood and the lake. In effect, his mindset
transforms to go back to his childhood. This transformation is
necessary for him to find enjoyment in the journey. However, the
transformation also emphasizes an altered perception of the actual
lake. For instance, instead of viewing the lake as it is, he uses his
childhood eyes to perceive the lake. This condition creates an
interesting departure from reality into what he wants to see based
on his childhood experiences.
White’s experience brings him to the lakefront, at which he finds
himself staring at the same lake, virtually unchanged. This means
that White considers some things that do not really change in spite
of the changes around him and the changes that White
experiences in his life. White wants to emphasize the permanence
of some things, or at least the memory of some things, despite the
continual change that happens in the world.
Even though the lake did not change, White’s essay indicates that
there are some changes in things that are separate from the lake.
For instance, when White arrives at the lakefront, even though he
wishes to enjoy the scene and the experience of being at the lake
once again, he becomes somewhat bothered by the noise of the
new boats that are on the lake. The new boats have noisier
engines.
White wants to show that technology can be disruptive. Even
though technology can, indeed, make things become faster and
more efficient, technology can also make things noisier and more
disruptive. Thus, White emphasizes the negative side of new
technologies. Nonetheless, as White continues his story, it is
indicated that he has a liking for old engines. This liking started in
his childhood. Thus, even though he first views technology as
something disruptive, there is also an emphasis on the personal
perception factor, which means that White did not like the noise of
the new engine and, arguably, did not like the new engine, because
of the fact that he wants and expected to see boats with the old
engines that he saw in the childhood.
Some things do not change. All things change on the basis of the
underlying principle that nothing is constant in this world and that
every little thing changes. However, there are some things that do
not change, such as the thought of a person, the feelings toward
other people that one has, the longing for something, and so on.
Perhaps, E.B. White shows the lake is unchanged, but this may be
only in his own perception. The lake could have already changed
when he arrives at the lakefront as an adult, but his perception of
the lake does not change. He still likes what he sees and feels.
His experience of being at the lakefront brings him back to his
childhood years when he experiences the lake. Considering that
White shows that his perceptions actually switch from that of an
adult and that of a boy, it is arguable that his actual experience of
the lake as an adult is marred (disfigured) by such switching
between perceptions. Thus, it is possible that the actual lake that
he revisits is already different, but his perception, as a boy, does
not change, thereby making the lake virtually unchanged. Also, the
technology that he refers to, in the form of the new and noisier
engines, may have also been affected by such switching in his
perceptions. Perhaps the new and noisier boats are not really that
disruptive. It is just that he was used to the old and less noisy ones,
thereby making his claims more personal and not necessarily real.
E.B White’s lake is a symbol of the role of physical spaces in
personal development. For example, the essay shows that the lake
serves as a setting for familial (family) interactions, especially in
the author’s past. In relation, the lake serves as a venue for
reflection. For instance, when White goes back to the lake, it
facilitates his reflection on change and development. The lake
helps him think back and develop a better understanding of his
situation.
“Once More to the Lake” also supports the idea of the necessity of
permanence, to some extent, in life. Even though the lake has
changed over the years, it remains a lake that the author can visit.
It stands as a reminder of his childhood experiences. In this
regard, the lake sheds light on the benefit of having some form or
degree of permanence in life. Such permanence can help anchor
the person and his psychological development.
HER HUNDREDTH DOVE - Jane Yolen (1939)

Characters:
Hugh: (fowler/someone who hunts wild birds for food)
The King
The Queen (lady Columba)
White Dove
• What was Hugh’s Job?
Hugh was the fowler for the king.
• How many doves does he catch?
100 (99 alive, 1 dead)
• Who was the white dove?
Lady Columba was the dove.
• What are the rewards the white dove offers Hugh?
Fame and fortune, gold and silver, and the love of the Queen
• What does the king ask Hugh to do?
He asks him to catch 100 birds for the wedding feast.
• What motto does Hugh wear and what does it mean?
Hugh wears the motto servo, meaning I serve.
• What happens when Hugh tries to catch the white dove?
The dove slips through the net and flies away.
• What are two ways Hugh hunts birds?
He uses nets and bows. If it is a big bird he uses a bow and arrow,
and for small birds like doves he used net
• After the king tells Hugh his request, how does lady Columba
react?
She gasps, holds her hand up and tells him not to serve the doves.
• What two things does Hugh serve? Which comes first?
Hugh serves the king and the forest. The king comes first.
The Hundredth Dove raises an important question: when faced
with choices, do you follow your head or your heart? It is a tale of
the misuse of power and the triumph/victory of love, which are
dominating themes in human life. This story is about a man who
values his word more than anything.
A man named Hugh (fowler) is ordered to capture a hundred
doves in one week for his king's wedding. This task seems nearly
impossible for almost anybody else, but Hugh is determined to do
his best. After all, he is the King's Fowler and has to obey orders.
Hugh catches many fat doves a day. One keeps getting away, and
he is determined to catch it. After 5 tiring days of hunting, he has
still not caught the slim white dove that keeps getting out of his
grasp. This is when the part gets much worse for Hugh. The fifth
day comes and he still does not catch the bird. In anger, he kills it
instead.
Some parts of symbolism almost fit in a perfect way. A dove is a
symbol of romance, and that is what the story is mainly based on.
From what the story says it seems to be about spring to
summertime, which is when romances take place. The parts of the
King's house also sound like a romance. That is also a big symbol.
Her First Ball - Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923)
Her First Ball is a 1921 short story by the New Zealand author
Katherine Mansfield, first published in The Sphere magazine and
later included in Mansfield’s collection The Garden Party and
Other Stories. “Her First Ball” follows country girl Leila as she
attends a dance with her city-dwelling cousins the Sheridans.
Leila’s joy and excitement are briefly punctured by one of her
dancing partners, an older man who paints a bitter picture of
Leila’s future.
A young girl named Leila is about to attend her first ball, escorted
by her cousins, Meg, Laurie, Laura and Jose Sheridan. Leila is from
the New Zealand countryside, and she has never been to a ball
before, to the surprise of her wealthier and more experienced
cousins. The story opens in a cab: Leila is on her way to her first
ball with her cousins the Sheridans. The Sheridans tease her gently
for never having been to a ball before, and Leila explains that her
country home is very remote. She feels very excited about the ball,
and about being part of a family: as an only child, she feels a little
jealous of the Sheridan sisters and their brother. Leila tries to copy
the Sheridans’ calm indifference to the ball, but she cannot.
When Leila and the Sheridans arrive at the drill hall, Laura helps
escort Leila to the ladies’ room, where women are busy getting
ready. Though Leila focuses only on the noise and excitement, the
women are clearly stressed out, competing for mirror space and
worrying about their appearances. Once the dance programs are
passed out, Meg brings Leila to the drill hall. Leila is amazed by the
beauty of the room.
At first, the ladies are lined up on one side of the room, and the
men on the other. On the stage at the far end, sit the “chaperones,”
(protectress) older women in black dresses.
Meg introduces Leila to the other girls as “my little country cousin
Leila.” Leila notices that the girls she meets aren’t seeing her: their
attention is on the men. Suddenly, the men approach as a group,
and Leila finds her program marked by several men, including
“quite an old man–fat, with a big bald patch on his head.” It takes
the old man a long time to find a dance they both have free. He
asks Leila, “Do I remember this bright little face?...Is it known to
me of yore?” before he disappears for his first dance. The old man
at first believes he recognises Leila from another ball, which of
course is impossible, given that this is Leila’s first one.
Leila remembers learning to dance in a “little corrugated iron
mission hall” at her boarding school. Her first partner arrives, and
she “floats away like a flower that is tossed into a pool.” Her
partner comments that it’s “Quite a good floor,” and Leila replies
that it’s “beautifully slippery,” which seems to surprise him. Leila
thinks that he is a good dancer, and she compares him to the girls
she had to dance with while she was learning. She tells him that it
is her first ball. He replies indifferently: “Oh, I say.”
Her second partner is much the same as the first. He opens with a
remark about the floor, and he is not very interested in the fact
that it is Leila’s first ball. She finds this lack of interest surprising,
because “it was thrilling. Her first ball! She was only at the
beginning of everything. It seemed to her that she had never
known what the night was like before.”
Leila’s next dance is with the balding older man. She sees that his
outfit is “shabby,” and dancing with him is “more like walking than
dancing.” Nevertheless, he recognises at once that Leila is at her
first ball. She asks him how he knows this, and he replies that he
has been coming to balls for thirty years. Leila is surprised. The fat
man says “gloomily,” “‘It hardly bears thinking about,’” and Leila
feels sorry for him. She makes a kind remark to cheer him up. He
responds:
“Of course…you can't hope to last anything like as long as that. No-
o… long before that, you'll be sitting up there on the stage, looking
on, in your nice black velvet. And these pretty arms will have
turned into little short fat ones, and you'll beat time with such a
different kind of fan—a black bony one.’ The fat man seemed to
shudder. ‘And you'll smile away like the poor old dears up there,
and point to your daughter, and tell the elderly lady next to you
how some dreadful man tried to kiss her at the club ball. And your
heart will ache, ache’—the fat man squeezed her closer still as if he
really was sorry for that poor heart—‘because no one wants to kiss
you now. And you'll say how unpleasant these polished floors are
to walk on, how dangerous they are. Eh, Mademoiselle
Twinkletoes?”
Leila is upset. The man’s words strike her as “terribly true.” She’s
angry at the old man, whom she believes “spoiled everything” by
cluing her into her fate. The two stop dancing and Leila chooses to
lean against the wall rather than return to the floor. The old man
tells her not to take him seriously, and Leila scoffs but remains
petulant (annoyed), thinking that she’d like to go home. Then she
realises she will have to keep dancing until she can find her
cousins. Soon, however, another partner approaches and the two
begin dancing. Suddenly, the ball seems beautiful again. Leila’s
partner bumps into the old man, but she doesn’t recognise him
and simply smiles.
The Allegory of the Cave - Plato (428-347 B.C.)
Plato is an ancient Greek philosopher, born in approximately 428
BCE. Plato spent much of his time in Athens and was a student of
the philosopher Socrates and eventually the teacher of Aristotle.
He is also one of the most important philosophers in history. He
made notable contributions to ethics, the study of values and
morality, metaphysics, the study of the basic assumptions and
ideas that frame the world, and epistemology, the study of
knowledge.
Most of Plato's works are dialogues, in which two or more people
engage in a conversation about one or more theoretical topics. The
dialogues are not records of actual conversations, but Plato,
nevertheless, bases the characters in his dialogues on real people.
The most notable recurring character is based on his teacher
Socrates.
Plato, in Allegory of the Cave, attempted to answer some of the
philosophical questions, most notably about the nature of reality.
He tells the 'Allegory of the Cave' as a conversation between his
mentor, Socrates, who inspired many of Plato's philosophical
theories, and one of Socrates' students, Glaucon.
The dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon is probably fictitious
and composed by Plato; whether or not the allegory originated
with Socrates, or if Plato is using his mentor as a stand-in for his
own idea, is unclear.
In the dialogue, Socrates asks Glaucon to imagine a cave, in which
prisoners are kept. These prisoners have been in the cave since
their childhood, and each of them is held there in a
peculiar/strange manner. They are all chained so that their legs
and necks are immobile, forced to look at a wall in front of them.
Behind the prisoners is a fire and between the fire and the
prisoners is a raised walkway, on which people can walk.
These people are puppeteers, and they are carrying objects, in the
shape of human and animal figures, as well as everyday items. The
prisoners could only see these flickering images on the wall since
they could not move their heads; and so, naturally enough, they
presumed the images to be real, rather than just shadowy
representations of what is actually real. Plato theorises that the
echoing sounds the prisoners hear are perceived as reality.
This false reality is all that the people in the cave know. They have
no true knowledge of the real world. However, they fully believe
that what they see on the cave wall is reality, and even try to name
the shadows they see passing by.
Plato further adds to the allegory by stating that the prisoners will
play a game. The game is guessing which shadow appears next.
When one prisoner guesses correctly, he receives praise from the
others, who call him “master.” Socrates would point out, that this
was hollow praise, since, in fact, the images were not real.
Then Socrates offered a twist in the plot - what if one of the
prisoners were to be freed and made to turn and look at the fire?
The bright light would hurt his eyes, as accustomed as he was to
the shadows, and even in turning back to the wall and its
flickering images (which would only be natural), the prisoner
couldn't help but notice that they weren't real at all, but only
shadows of the real items on the walkway behind him.
After understanding greater reality, the prisoner returns to the
cave to try to compel the other prisoners to experience this new
world, but when he returns to the cave, his eyes can no longer see
in the darkness.
Now, the prisoners mock the freed prisoner because he cannot see
the shadows of objects on the wall in front of him. Plato theorises
that they may even become violent to the other prisoner as he
continues to describe the outside world, and descending back into
the cave becomes dangerous.
BEAUTY - Susan Sontag (1933-2004)

"Beauty" first published in Vogue magazine in 1975, Susan Sontag

traces the history of a word which was once defined as "general
excellence" but which has often been used to characterise "female
appearance." Her purpose in this essay is to show how a woman's
beauty has been degraded while being called beautiful and how
that conceives their true identity as it seems to portray innocence
and honesty while hiding the ugliness of the truth. The feminist
author shows that over the centuries Westerners have significantly
altered their idea of beauty; the Greeks thought of it as the quality
of personal excellence, whereas now the Westerners think of it as
a surface attractiveness that gives power to its possessor.
Sontag uses narrative structure to express the conventional
attitude, which defines beauty as a concept applied today only to
women and their outward appearance. The essayist introduces her
essay to the audience by establishing a focal point around the fact
that women viewed today are copied from the religious
perspective of how women were viewed in history.
During ancient times, Greeks and Christians practised their own
methods of analysing and critiquing women and their beauty. The
Greeks believed that the lack of ‘inner” beauty could be
compensated with “outer” beauty. For them, beauty was a virtue a
kind of excellence. To them, excellence included beauty, character,
morality, and ability. They expected that inner beauty would be
matched by the beauty of the other kind. They distinguished the
two beauties in a way that suggested that both were
interconnected to one another within an individual. For Greeks,
beauty means overall excellence. Therefore, it was quite
contradictory that Socrates was so brave, so honourable, and so
intelligent yet so ugly. His outside appearance didn't reflect the
knowledge and wisdom that were inside him. His disciples had
observed the inside beauty in their teacher.
Christianity, on the other hand, gave moral significance to beauty;
in defining beauty, a person could have an attractive appearance,
but lack virtue(goodness). So, Christians made a distinction
between inner goodness and outer beauty. Beauty was considered
to have no real value. It was not nearly as important as character.
In modern times, the concept of beauty changed and is used to
refer to a female appearance. When people hear the word 'beauty',
they think of "female appearance" and not her intelligence or
quality. We say a beautiful woman and a handsome man in
English. (In French and Italian, the word 'beauty' is not reserved
for women only. A man may also be called beautiful.) Even society
teaches women to judge each part of their bodies separately and if
any part is found slightly imperfect, they are called imperfect. it
will certainly make them more inferior and dependent on males.
But for males, such imperfections are trivial (not important)
things.
According to a famous artist, beauty is a form of power. According
to Susan, it is the only form of power to attract men that most
women are encouraged to seek. It is not a power to do but a power
to reject itself. As a result, women try to get it makes them inferior
to what they actually are. That's why Susan objects to woman's
striving to attain beauty as a source of power.
Even if a woman gets success in her intelligence, she will be
doubted. If she takes care of her appearance and looks smart she
will be criticised. If she doesn't look attractive, she will also be
criticised and ignored. Whatever she does is considered wrong.
Society has a prejudice against women.
Women should not limit their attention to being beautiful
outwardly but also emphasise inner beauty too- i.e. vision and
wisdom, which is long-lasting and more fruitful. They should be
competent, independent, and thoughtful in order to revive the
ideal value of beauty and preserve their identity in society.
An Essay in Aesthetics by Roger Fry
Aesthetics - the philosophical study of beauty and taste.
Moralist - a person who teaches or promotes morality. (नैतिकतावादी)

Puritanical - people who are very strict in moral or religious

matters
Here in this essay, the writer has expressed his feelings for art.
According to him, art is an expression of human's imaginative life.
Art is free from our daily necessities. It doesn’t fulfill our daily
needs but provides pleasures. We feel sensations (संवेदना, अनुभूति) in
art. An artist expresses his/her imagination in art. Art brings out
the imagination of the artist that matches with spectators'
(दर्शकहरुको) feelings, therefore, art evokes feelings and emotions in
their minds.

Graphic art (visual art), is an expression of the imaginative life. It

is not a copy of actual life, separated from actual life. He uses the
example of children, who never copy what they see but use their
own imagination to freely draw. In Actual life, there is responsive
action. In art we have no such responsive action for example if we
see a wild bull, we feel afraid and run away but in imagination, we
can stare at it and observe for as long as we.

To the pure moralist, art must represent ethical values and right
action, otherwise, it is useless. The Puritanical view is the life of
the imagination is worse than the life of sensual pleasure. The
essayist is not agreed with them. He is close to Ruskin a moralist to
whom imaginative life helps to promote morality and it is an
absolute necessity.

Roger now speaks of religion. Religion is also a representation of

imaginative life. A religiously intelligent person cannot say that
religion can impart complete moral knowledge. In fact, religious
experiences are said to be based on human nature and spiritual
ability.

He thinks that pleasures derived from art are different and more
fundamental than merely sensual pleasure. It is not temporary
and material. The feelings of an imaginative life that an artist has
shown in his/her art, the same feelings, emotions, and attachment
spectators or viewers find when they observe it. Because graphic
art represents more or less mankind’s feelings and emotions. He
says that we can justify actual life by its relation to the imaginative
and justify nature by its likeness(similarity) to art.

People have different imaginations at different times they always

do not match up with the general level of the morality of actual
life. Thus in the thirteenth century, we read of barbarity and
cruelty. He admits that today humans’ moral level and general
humanity are higher but the level of imaginative life is lower.

At last, he says that imaginations that are in our control are

desirable but imaginative life that we see in dreams and under the
influence of drugs are undesirable. This desirability separates
imaginative life from actual life. Art is the chief organ of the
imaginative life. Art encourages and controls it. The imaginative
life is distinguished by the great clearness of its perception, and
the greater purity and freedom of its emotion. (काल्पनिक जीवन यसको
धारणाको ठू लो स्पष्टता, र यसको भावनाको ठू लो शुद्धता र स्वतन्त्रताद्वारा छुट्याइएको
The Lunatic | Summary

Summary of "The Lunatic" ( पागल ) was written by Mahakavi Laxmi

Prasad Devkota. Devkota was born on 12 November 1909 as the
third son of Pandit Til Madhav Devkota and Amar Rajya Laxmi
Devi. He was born in Dilli Bazar, Kathmandu on the day of Laxmi
Puja, the Festival of Lights, which is celebration of Laxmi, the
Goddess of Wealth. He died on 14 September 1959 in Kathmandu.
Devkota contributed to Nepali literature by bringing the Sanskrit
tradition to its end and by starting modern Romantic Movement in
the country.
" The Lunatic " is a satirical ( व्यांगात्मक ) poem composed by Devkota.
In this poem, the poet presents the supermacy of emotion. This
poem is his auto-biography where he expresses his anger at the
inhumanity of mankind by weraring the persona of a lunatic. This
poem is also a modern expression of his deepest personal feelings
and a surgical exposure of the emptiness of the so-called
intellectual aspirants of the time. The poet also focuses on the
social, cultural, and political scene of the Nepal.
The Lunatic" by Laxmi Prasad Devkota expresses different modes
of thought of the speaker. The poem also expresses different layers
of the speaker's faces like, madness, imagination, revolt,
aggression, etc. The first stanza consists of two lines to show the
lunacy of the poet. He accepts that he is mad but is a great satire to
his critics, who think that he was abnormal.
The second stanza exposes the abnormal behavior that the poet
seems to think. He says that he works abnormally; he is different
than other people. He can see words and hear the scene and taste
the smell. He can comprehend the existence of many things which
the common people cannot. He can see a beautiful flower in the
stone. He comprehends the language of the birds and talks to
them. They can communicate each other but they cannot speak
like human beings. Other people cannot understand the language
of birds only he can.
In the third stanza, the poet shows his sensitivity. He shows the
differences between him and other people who call him lunatic.
Other people use five senses but he uses his sixth sense that is his
heart. His dreams and imaginations are meaningful to him. Due to
his sixth sense, he is emotional and imaginative. To others, the
world is only a concrete thing, but for the poet, the world is
abstract too. He is ready to sacrifice like Jesus for humanity.
The fourth stanza deals with the misreading of the people to have
a wrong impression on him. As he used to watch the mystery of
the heaven in cold night and people called him mad. He feels
happy hearing the cuckoo's song and feels uncomfortable by the
extreme silence, but they think that he has gone mad. People see
him mad in his every activity.
The fifth stanza deals with the revolt of the speaker. He does not
like those things which the others like. He says that the aristocrats (
ध्वनी ) drink the blood of the poor. Even the king and the emperor
are like the poor. Common people are far better than the highly
scholarly people. He has no belief on all important and valuable
things. That is why, the world calls him mentally disturbed.
In the sixth stanza, the speaker revolts against society and
balances blind leaders are leading the world. The leaders of the
world do not see the reality. He believes that spiritualists have
disappeared from the society. This is not good for all. He loves the
backward people.
The poet criticizes the cunning ( बाठा ) people because they have
exploited people from getting their rights. The leaders and
prostitutes are compared as they have similar character. They run
after money. They snatch the rights of the common people. They
never tell a lie to the intellectual people. The innocent people are
cheated and looted. The poor people are innocent and fair. The
poet attacks all the disorders and wants a revolution to bring a
complete change in society and the world.
He says that he is different in many ways as he sees the sound,
hears the visibility, tastes the perfume and touches the things
whose existence the world denies. He sees flower, he talks with
birds, animals and mountains. He works with the six senses. The
wine of the king is the blood of people and prostitute are corpses
for him. He sees Helen and Padmini in the beauty of the rose. In
his mathematics, one minus one is always one. He dances with the
song of the cuckoo. The heaven of the rich is hell for him. The gold
is iron and the great religion of the rich is sin for him. Because of
these perceptions of the poet, he is called the lunatic and sent to
the Ranchi. But in real sense he is not a mad; the people and
society who think him mad are mad or they lack the capacity to
understand his view and talent. So, the poet satirically accepts
himself mad; he is opposite to the other world and people.
In this autobiographical poem 'The Lunatic', Devkota wears the
persona of a lunatic as if it were a mask. Each stanza brings out a
different aspect of the speaker’s character, confidence,
abnormality, imagination, sensitivity, rebellion, aggression, anger
and awful majesty.
Above all, this poem is at once a very modern expression of the
deepest personal feelings of the poet and a surgical exposure of the
hollowness of the so called intellectual aspirants of the time. The
persona in the second stanza shows abnormal behavior. He does
what a normal person can’t do. For example, he can see sound and
hear the sight and taste the sweet smell. He can touch those things,
the existence of which the people in the world deny. He is so
imaginative that he can see a flower in the stone and the
enchantress of the heaven smiling unto him. He understands the
language of the birds and talks to them.
The third stanza show how sensitive and tender-hearted his is. He
contrasts his situation with the addresses. The addressee is the one
who uses his brains and senses to find out the harsh reality. But
the speaker uses his sixth sense and finds out what the heart
thinks to be correct. Dreams and imagination are meaningful to
him.
The fourth stanza tells how the speaker’s hypersensitivity led
people to have a wrong impression of him. When he watched the
mystery of the heaven in cold winter night, when he was sad at the
death of people and the old age of a fair lady, people called him
mad. When he would be happy hearing the cuckoo’s song and
uncomfortable by the dead silence, they would think that he had
gone mad. They would punish him saying that he should be
admitted to a mental hospital. Even his friends would not regard
him a normal person.
In the fifth stanza, the persona has upset the accepted values. He
does not appreciate those things which the world praises highly.
What the aristocrats drink is the blood of the poor people. Due to
lack of affection, prostitutes are no better than dead bodies.
Because of high ambition, the king and the emperor are no better
than the poor. The common men are far better than the highly
learned me. The better place for the world is the worse place for
the speaker. So the world calls him mentally deranged.
In the sixth stanza, the speaker revolts against the society which is
being led by blind leaders. He thinks that penances have run away
from the society and they hate humanity. He rather sympathizes
the weak people.
Finally, the speaker behaves like a rebel. He criticizes the flatterers
because they have deprived people of their rights and they have
underlined the false actions. The poor people accept their falsity as
good action, and then the speaker gets so angry because he thinks
these man-haters must be punished. The persona in this poem
attacks all the ugliness and wants to bring a complete change in
the society.
In this autobiographical poem 'The Lunatic', Devkota wears the
persona of a lunatic as if it were a mask. Each stanza brings out a
different aspect of the speaker’s character, confidence,
abnormality, imagination, sensitivity, rebellion, aggression, anger
and awful majesty.
Above all, this poem is at once a very modern expression of the
deepest personal feelings of the poet and a surgical exposure of the
hollowness of the so called intellectual aspirants of the time. The
persona in the second stanza shows abnormal behavior. He does
what a normal person can’t do. For example, he can see sound and
hear the sight and taste the sweet smell. He can touch those things,
the existence of which the people in the world deny. He is so
imaginative that he can see a flower in the stone and the
enchantress of the heaven smiling unto him. He understands the
language of the birds and talks to them.
The third stanza show how sensitive and tender-hearted his is. He
contrasts his situation with the addresses. The addressee is the one
who uses his brains and senses to find out the harsh reality. But
the speaker uses his sixth sense and finds out what the heart
thinks to be correct. Dreams and imagination are meaningful to
him.
The fourth stanza tells how the speaker’s hypersensitivity led
people to have a wrong impression of him. When he watched the
mystery of the heaven in cold winter night, when he was sad at the
death of people and the old age of a fair lady, people called him
mad. When he would be happy hearing the cuckoo’s song and
uncomfortable by the dead silence, they would think that he had
gone mad. They would punish him saying that he should be
admitted to a mental hospital. Even his friends would not regard
him a normal person.
In the fifth stanza, the persona has upset the accepted values. He
does not appreciate those things which the world praises highly.
What the aristocrats drink is the blood of the poor people. Due to
lack of affection, prostitutes are no better than dead bodies.
Because of high ambition, the king and the emperor are no better
than the poor. The common men are far better than the highly
learned me. The better place for the world is the worse place for
the speaker. So the world calls him mentally deranged.
In the sixth stanza, the speaker revolts against the society which is
being led by blind leaders. He thinks that penances have run away
from the society and they hate humanity. He rather sympathizes
the weak people.
Finally, the speaker behaves like a rebel. He criticizes the flatterers
because they have deprived people of their rights and they have
underlined the false actions. The poor people accept their falsity as
good action, and then the speaker gets so angry because he thinks
these man-haters must be punished. The persona in this poem
attacks all the ugliness and wants to bring a complete change in
the society.

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