Themes

GRANDFATHER Grandfather By Jayanta Mahapatra Grandfather is a poem written by

Jayanta Mahapatra. He is an Indian Poet.His style is simple and dealing with real-life prob-
lems and situations.The themes are often philosophical.He treats human emotions and suf-
ferings in a very realistic way. The poem is based on the 1866 famine which struck
Orissa.The poet writes about how the famine- affected the lives of the people and in partic-
ular his grandfather whom a staunch Hindu was compelled to convert to Christianity to es-
cape the deadly clutches of hunger and poverty.He also deals in detail with the dilemma,
fear, and humiliation experienced by the grandfather. The themes of the poem are mental
Agony, Death of his Identity, and Effect of hunger (the hopeless situation of a man). The
poet is reading the old diary of his grandfather.The words in the diary express the pain and
suffering undergone by the grandfather. By reading it the poet comes to know about the
painful and struggle-filled life of his grandfather and about the life at that time. The climate
was very hot and dry.The land was fallow and barren.The people are wasting away due to
lack of food. Everything and everybody is at a blank not knowing what to do. The grandpa is
faced with the very toughest question in life.He has become weak and is standing on the
edge of life between living and dying.He was thinking about the decision he is forced to take
for the sake of his family.He stands thinking about the dangers facing his and his family’s
life and wondering what he should do. The grandpa has spent several sleepless, cold, and
hungry nights foreseeing his death and lacking the strength and ability to even cry at his
fate. The grandpa was very young.He was defeated by the force of hunger and was made
into a coward.So to protect himself and his family from dying due to hunger he converted to
Christianity.His willpower has abandoned him and he abandoned the faith into which he
was born and lived so far including all the rituals and practices and even the deities he has
worshipped so far. The pangs of hunger had completely changed him.The poet asks that if
the faith and religion did not provide food and comfortable living then what’s the use of
sticking on to it is, so he left his faith and took a new faith which he did not know anything
about. The life as a Christian chosen by the grandpa let him live while he continued to be a
Hindu deep in his heart.Now, in the time of comfort and plenty, the poet and the on try to
talk about the famine about which they have no real knowledge. A gap year an understand-
ing is between the poet and his son and between the poet and his grandfather.For the son,
his future is very clear, bright, and achievable.The poet wonders how his son will look at the
life of the father and the grandpa.He thinks that he will think their lives were nothing but a
loss or failure.
Now the poet and the son look at the life of the grandpa in silence. The poet says that there
is
hope for the present generation. But the hope away from the grandpa.He refers to the
chessboard and says how the move made by the grandpa whom he has not met has changed
the life of the poet and his son. The knowledge of the suffering and the sacrifice made by
the grandpa makes the poet and his son is silent.They want to know more about him and
the type of life he had lived.They want to know how it will be to live to give the dignity to
escape from dying.(Abandoning religion is considered an indignity). The poet ends the
poem with the note that the life of the grandpa and the decision made was terrifying and
puts in prayer that those situations should not repeat. “No uneasy stir of cloud Darkened
the white skies of your day; the silence Of dust grazed in the long after in sun, ruling The
cracked fallow earth, ate into the laughter of your flesh.” Here the poet wants to say that at
the time of scarcity and famine, the sky was clear and there was no hope for rainfall. There
was silence all around after a long run of the scorching heat of the sun. The earth seemed to
be cracked like a piece of dry cake. This hunger-stricken famine has swallowed the happi-
ness in the lives of people. “For you it was the hardest question of all. Dead, empty tress
stood by the dragging river, Past your weakened body, flailing against your sleep. You
thought of the way the jackals moved, to move.” Grandfather was suffering from the greatest
dilemma of whether to convert to Christianity or not. Here, a comparison is made between
trees and humans. The dead, empty trees lying beside the dry river is compared to the
weakened hunger-stricken malnourished body of the humans. Another comparison is that
the sound made by the hungry stomach was similar to the sound made during the call of
the jackals. “Did you hear the young tamarind leaves rustle In the cold mean nights of your
belly? Did you see Your own death? Watch it tear at your cries, Break them into fits of un-
natural laughter?” Here the poet asks the protagonist, i.e., the grandfather a sequence of
rhetorical questions that whether they could hear the similar sound of the rustle of dry
tamarind leaves in their belly; whether they saw their death. This condition of crisis is grad-
ually affecting their mental stability. It is converting their hunger into a burst of hard natu-
ral laughter. “How old were you? Hunted, you turned coward and ran, The real animal in
you plunging through your bone. You left your family behind, the buried things, The pre-
cious clod that praised the quality of a god.”

Literary devices

Personification: A figure of speech in which the poet describes an abstraction, a thing, or a

nonhuman form as if it were a person. For example, “The yellowed diary’s notes whisper in
vernacular.”

Enjambment: It is the continuation of a sentence or clause across a line break. For example,
“We wish we had not to wake up with our smiles/ in the middle of some social order.

Questions

What kind of moral dilemma does the poet discuss in Grandfather?

Can we say that this poem deals with the tragic compulsions of abject poverty? Give reasons
for your answer.

Discuss the various themes in this poem