The Guide Plot summary Railway Raju (nicknamed) is a disarmingly corrupt guide who falls in love with a beautiful dancer, Rosie, the neglected wife of archaeologist Marco . Marco doesn’t approve of Rosie’s passion for dancing. Rosie, encouraged by Raju, decides to follow herdreamsand start a dancingcareer. They start living together and Raju’s mother, as she does not approve of their relationship, leaves them. Raju becomes Rosie’s stage manager and soon with the help of Raju’s marketing tactics, Rosie becomes a successful dancer.
Raju, however, develops an inflated sense of self-importance and tries to control her. Raju gets involved in a case of forgery and gets a two year sentence. After completing the sentence, Raju passes through a village where he is mistaken for a sadhu (a spiritual guide). Reluctantly, as he does not want to return in disgrace to Malgudi, he stays in an abandoned temple. There is a famine in the village and Raju is expected to keep a fast in order to make it rain. With media publicizing his fast, a huge crowd gathers (much to Raju’s resentment) to watch him fast.
After fasting for several days, he goes to the riverside one morning as part of his daily ritual, where his legs sag down as he feels that the rain is falling in the hills. The ending of the novel leaves unanswered the question of whether he did, or whether the drought has really ended. The last line of the novel is ‘Raju said ” Velan, its raining up the hills, I can feel it under my feet. ” And with this he saged down’. The last line implies that by now Raju after undergoing so many ups and downs in his life has become a sage and as the drought ends Raju’s life also ends.
Narayan has beautifully written the last line which means Raju did not die but saged down, meaning Raju within himself had become a sage. Character of Rosie Rosie is one of the main characters in the novel. She is presented in the novel as a beautiful dancer, of the Devadasi type of temple dancers, and the wife of Marco. Her marriage is like a curse in disguise to her as Marco is totally engrossed in his career and is totally apathetic and unemotional to her. She is very passionate about dancing but her husband does not allow her to dance.
She tries to persuade her husband and bears all the insults by him just for the sake of getting his permission to dance. When she is left in Malgudi by Marco to live with Raju, she devotes herself completely to dancing. She wakes early in the morning and practices hard for three hours everyday. She is always eager to talk about dance and even tries to teach Raju some of it. She is religious and believes in Goddess Saraswati and has a bronze statue of Nataraja, which is an image of Shiva as the cosmic Lord of Dance, in her office. She does not believe in discriminating between people on the basis of their financial status.
When Raju meets rich and influential people, Rosie does not seem to care much about them. Being herself an artist, she respects the arts and likes to be in the company of artists and othermusiclovers. Her success does not get to her head even after becoming a very successful professional dancer. Raju becomes upset when Rosie spends a lot of time with different artists rather than with him. He tells her that these artists come to her because they are inferior to her and she replies that she is tired of all these talks of superior and inferior and does not believe in any of these.
She is also portrayed as a traditional Indian wife. Her husband is like God to her. Marco calls her dancing skills as street acrobatics and compares it to monkey dance. Despite all these insults she continues to be his wife. When Marco comes to know about the intimacy between her and Raju he gets very upset and doesn’t talk to her and completely ignores her presence. She apologizes to him and keeps on following him like a dog hoping that his mind would change one day but that does not happen. This incident shows her tremendous tolerance power and her optimistic attitude.
Even after she becomes very successful in her career and independent of her husband Marco she still has his photograph which conveys that she still considered Marco to be her husband and highlights her traditional Indian wife kind of character. However, she is often referred as ‘The Serpent girl’ by Raju’s mother, because his mother thinks that she was responsible for the ruined condition of herfamilyand her son. Raju also seems to dislike her at the end of the story and holds her as the culprit. Rosie was also disliked by Raju’s friends, Gaffur and Sait due to her intimacy with Raju.
What is the summary of the Novel The Guide written By R. K. Narayan? Answer:- Raju is a railway guide who becomes obsessed with Rosie, a neglected wife of an archeologist Marco. Rosie has a passion for dancing which Marco doesn’t approve of. Rosie, encouraged by Raju, decides to follow her dreams and walks out on her husband. Raju becomes her stage manager and soon with the help of Raju’s marketing tactics, Rosie becomes a successful dancer. By giving Rosie the opportunity to dance, Raju is also giving her freedom, freedom which Marco has suppressed by refusing to let her dance.
Raju, however, develops an inflated sense of self-importance and tries to control Rosie. But a man should not live off a woman. On the other hand, what if she is successful only because of that man? The relationship between Raju and Rosie is strained. Marco reappears and Raju inadvertently gets involved in a case of forgery and gets a two year sentence. After completing the sentence, Raju is passing through a village when he is mistaken for a sadhu (a spiritual guru). Being reluctant to return in disgrace to Malgudi, he decides to play the part of the swami and makes the village temple his home.
There is a famine in the village and Swami Raju, like the sadhu in one of his stories that he used to narrate to the villagers, is expected to keep a fast to get the rains. And he does go on a fast. Despite grave danger to hishealth, he continues to fast until he collapses. ‘Can there be any connection between one man’s hunger and the rains? ‘ ‘Is there someone up there and does he listen to you? ‘ He is undergoing a spiritual transformation and the place has become a shrine. ‘Will it rain? ‘ Well, the villagers have faith in him and he has faith in their faith.
Despite grave danger to his health, he continues to fast until he collapses. His legs sag down as he feels that the rain is falling in the hills. The ending of the novel leaves unanswered the question of whether he dies, or whether the drought has really ended. The EnglishTeacherThe English Teacher is a 1945 novel written by R. K. Narayan. This is the third and final part in the series, preceded by Swami and Friends (1935) and The Bachelor of Arts (1937). This novel, dedicated to Narayan’s wife Rajam is not only autobiographical but also poignant in its intensity of feeling.
The story is a series of experiences in the life of Krishna, an English teacher, and his quest towards achieving inner peace and self-development. Plot As an English teacher at Albert Mission College, Krishna has led a mundane and monotonous lifestyle comparable to that of a cow, but this took a turn when his wife, Susila, and their child, Leela, come to live with him. With their welfare on his hands, Krishna learns to be a proper husband and learns how to accept theresponsibilityof taking care of his family.
He felt that his life had comparatively improved, as he understood that there’s more meaning to life than to just teaching in the college. However, on the day when they went in search of a new house, Susila contracts typhoid after visiting a dirty lavatory, keeping her in bed for weeks. Throughout the entire course of her illness, Krishna constantly tries to keep an optimistic view about Susila’s illness, keeping his hopes up by thinking that her illness would soon be cured. However, Susila eventually succumbs and passes away.
Krishna, destroyed by her loss, has suicidal thoughts but gives them up for the sake of his daughter, Leela. He leads his life as a lost and miserable person after her death, but after he receives a letter from a stranger who indicates that Susila has been in contact with him and that she wants to communicate with Krishna, he becomes more collected and cheerful. This leads to Krishna’s journey in search of enlightenment, with the stranger acting as a medium to Susila in the spiritual world.
Leela, on the other hand, goes to a preschool where Krishna gets to meet the Headmaster, a profound man who cared for the students in his school and teaches them moral values through his own methods. The Headmaster puts his students as his top priority but he doesn’t care for his own family and children, eventually leaving them on the day predicted by an astrologer as to be when he was going to die, which did not come true. Krishna gets to learn through the Headmaster on the journey to enlightenment; eventually learning to ommunicate to Susila on his own, thus concluding the entire story itself, with the quote that he felt ‘a moment of rare immutable joy’. PLOT Krishna, is spending his married days in a College hostel, living like cattle, far from marital bliss until one afternoon he receives a letter from his father wishing him to settle a home in Malgudi with his wife and child. What follows next is a series of light hearted chatter about Krishna adapting to the domestic responsibility which convert him into a man (from cattle! ). One day, when Krishna and Susila go out to look for a house, Susila falls ill and dies after a spell of typhoid.
Krishna’s life is deserted, but he has to keep solace in his bundle of joy, Leela, his daughter. In the next few months he learns and executes household chores, takes charge of child and goes out to college until one day he receives a letter from his wife Susila!!! Krishna embarks on a journey to attain nirvana to bridge with the spirit of his wife Susila, as per her wish in the letter and future correspondences. Parallel to this the child has grown up enough and starts attending school. The school Headmaster is a man of strong will and has dedicated his whole life for theeducationof small children.
Hisphilosophyattracts Krishna and it’s the incidents in Schoolmaster’s life which help Krishna turn around and attain Nirvana, which he had been trying to achieve since long time. Finally, the child is sent to the grandparents and Krishna resigns from his job as the English teacher. He takes up work in kindergarten and succeeds in uniting with his ‘ soul mate’. How? Find out! Apart from Krishna, Susila and Leela, another significant character is Leela’s schoolmaster. He is a revolutionary educationist who wants his pupils to be happy in life.
His wife doesn’trespecthim and discard his principles and his children live miserably due to this domestic discord. One day, he decides to leave his family for good to fulfill his dream. Its his way of life which helps Krishna in his journey. The high points: twice while reading this otherwise effortless book, comes two small accounts which are treat for your literary buds. First, the scene where Susila has died and Krishna is sitting all night alongside her corpse and then next day the journey to cremation ground and back is presented in a first class narrative, profoundly touching and flamboyant.
It’s noticeable that RKN was capable of composing ornate literature but chose to be simple for good. Secondly, in the last chapter, the narrative is dynamic, first with the farewell party scene in college where his colleagues and students are biding Krishna bye bye, and second when he reaches home and is into the state of peace at last. The supernatural plot in the story is well constituted and angelic. It doesn’t look ‘ forced’ because it is well justified and aesthetic. The happenings in Krishna’s life play important role in his journey from a novice learner to a successful master of thisscience.
It’s a joy to read through his experiences which make him a betterhuman being. To simply put, narration is ordinary but nonetheless ecstatic. The characters are well sculptured and blend in the story smoothly. It is as lucid for a fifth standard student to comprehend but as intricate for an adult to conclude. Another delight is that the size of the book is just apt. Only 184 pages make it a fast, easy and enjoyable read with no frills & no insignificant blah blah. Untouchable This article is about the Mulk Raj Anand novel. For the John Banville novel, see The Untouchable (novel).
Untouchable is a novel by Mulk Raj Anand published in 1935. The novel established Anand as one of India’s leading English authors. [1]The book was inspired by his aunt’s experience when she had a meal with a Muslim person and was treated as an outcast by his family. [2] The plot of this book, Anand’s first, revolves around the argument for eradicating the caste system. [3] It depicts a day in the life of Bakha, a young ” sweeper”, who is ” untouchable” due to his work cleaning latrines. Plot Untouchable’ is the story of a single day in the life of 18 year old untouchable boy named Bakha, who lives in pre-independence India.
Bakha is described as `strong and able-bodied`, full of enthusiasm and dreams varying from to dressing like a ‘ Tommie’ (Englishmen) in ‘ fashun’ to playing hockey. However, his limited means and the fact that he belongs to the lowest caste even amongst untouchables, forces him to beg forfood, to often face humiliation, and to be at the mercy of the whims of other, higher caste, Hindus. The day described in the story is a difficult one for Bakha. Over the course of the day, he is slapped in public for ‘polluting’ an upper caste Hindu through an accidental touch and has food thrown at him by another person after he cleans her gutters.
His sister is molested by a priest, he is blamed for an injury received by a young boy following a melee after a hockey match, and he is thrown out of his house by his father. In the story, Mulk Raj Anand presents two choices, or ways in which Bakha in particular and untouchables in general can be liberated from the life they are born into. The first choice is that of Christianity, a religion that does not recognize the caste system. The second comes from the teachings of Gandhi who calls for the freeing of Harijans. Preface
After the very long duration of time, I am here to present my exposition of an English Poem “ The Queen’s Rival” composed by Sarojini Naidu who was a celebrated woman of letters of her times as the great poetess and was also honored with the title of “ The Nightingale of India”. The theme of the poem in exposition is based on a tale from a book “ Arabian Nights’. The original author of the book is unknown, but it is translated in many languages of the world. The book with the title as “ New Arabian Nights’ in English was translated by Robert Louis Stevenson. Andrew Lang also had written the same book in English.
In Gujarati also, we can have the said book under the Title “ Arbastaan-ni- Vaato. Over the centuries, the countless editions of the Arabian Nights have been published. The original text of the poem in three parts is as follows: The poem is taken from “ The Golden Threshold”, the first volume of verse published in 1905 by Sarojini Naidu. “ The Queen’s Rival” I QUEEN GULNAAR sat on her ivory bed, Around her countless treasures were spread; Her chamber walls were richly inlaid With agate, porphyry, onyx and jade; The tissues that veiled her delicate breast, Glowed with the hues of a lapwing’s crest;
But still she gazed in her mirror and sighed “ O King, my heart is unsatisfied. ” King Feroz bent from his ebony seat: “ Is thy least desire unfulfilled, O Sweet? “ Let thy mouth speak and my life be spent To clear the sky of thy discontent. ” “ I tire of my beauty, I tire of this Empty splendour and shadow-less bliss; “ With none to envy and none gainsay, No savour or salt hath my dream or day. ” Queen Gulnaar sighed like a murmuring rose: “ Give me a rival, O King Feroz. ” II King Feroz spoke to his Chief Vizier: “ Lo! ere to-morrow’s dawn be here, “ Send forth my messengers over the sea,
To seek seven beautiful brides for me; “ Radiant of feature and regal of mien, Seven handmaids meet for the Persian Queen. ” Seven new moon tides at the Vesper call, King Feroz led to Queen Gulnaar’s hall A young queen eyed like the morning star: “ I bring thee a rival, O Queen Gulnaar. ” But still she gazed in her mirror and sighed: “ O King, my heart is unsatisfied. ” Seven queens shone round her ivory bed, Like seven soft gems on a silken thread, Like seven fair lamps in a royal tower, Like seven bright petals of Beauty’s flower Queen Gulnaar sighed like a murmuring rose “ Where is my rival, O King Feroz? III When spring winds wakened the mountain floods, And kindled the flame of the tulip buds, When bees grew loud and the days grew long, And the peach groves thrilled to the oriole’s song, Queen Gulnaar sat on her ivory bed, Decking with jewels her exquisite head; And still she gazed in her mirror and sighed: “ O King, my heart is unsatisfied. ” Queen Gulnsar’s daughter two spring times old, In blue robes bordered with tassels of gold, Ran to her knee like a wildwood fay, And plucked from her hand the mirror away. Quickly she set on her own light curls Her mother’s fillet with fringes of pearls;
Quickly she turned with a child’s caprice And pressed on the mirror a swift, glad kiss. Queen Gulnaar laughed like a tremulous rose: “ Here is my rival, O King Feroz. ” -Sarojini Naidu Synopsis of the poem: Feroz is the king of Persia. Gulnaar is his queen. In spite of the pompous palace life, the queen is not satisfied at heart. Though she is beautiful, she is longing for her rival. Sighing like a murmuring rose, she asks the king to give a rival to her who can compete with her beauty. On demand of Gulnaar, the king marries seven beautiful brides and asks them to live with Gulnaar as her maid-servants.
The seven queens were supposed to be Gulnaar’s rivals, but she continues to gaze in her mirror saying all the times that her heart was not satisfied with all those so called rivals. After some years, the queen Gulnaar gives birth to a baby-girl. When the princess becomes two years old, she runs to her knees to the Queen and snatches the mirror away from her hand. Then she wears her mother’s hair-band around her head and presses her swift kiss on mirror. This very innocent gesture of the child makes Gulnaar laugh like a rose trembling on a plant with soft wind.
She exclaims with joy, ‘ Here is my rival, O King Feroz. ” Exposition: When we go through the poem under discussion, we do come to the concluding outcome of our study that Sarojini Naidu was really a natural, proficient and born poetess of her times. The narrations of Gulnaar’s bed, her chamber and her fabric are such attractive with flower of speech that we would like to read those stanzas again and again in spite of the use of difficult words for various gems. The colorful muslin covering her delicate chest is compared with the crest of a bird named lapwing.
But, in spite of herhappiness, she gazed in her mirror and sighed saying, “ O King, my heart is unsatisfied. ” While proceeding further, we come across the romantic dialogues spoken by both King Feroz and Queen. Gulnaar as below: “ Is thy least desire unfulfilled, O Sweet? Let thy mouth speak and my life be spent. To clear the sky of thy discontent” said the King. The Queen said, “ I tire of my beauty, I tire of this, Empty splendor and shadow-less bliss; With none to envy and none gainsay (rejoin), and savor (taste) or salt hath my dream or day. ” Queen Gulnaar sighed and said, “ Give me a rival, King Feroz”.
King Feroz ordered to his chief Vizier to send messengers over the sea to look for seven beautiful brides. The King said that the brides should be of glowing beauty and be appointed to be in attendance to the Queen. They all stood with such stunning beauty that they looked like a necklace of seven gems of attractive colors on a silken thread. In other words to say, the queens looked like seven beautiful lamps in a royal tower and seven bright petals of a most beautiful flower. Yet, Queen Gulnaar sighed and expressed her dissatisfaction saying, “ King Feroz, where is my rival? Against this background, Queen Gulnaar sat on her ivory bed adorning her delicate hair with precious jewels. She gazed in the mirror and sighed, “ O King, my heart is still dissatisfied”. Prior to the concluding part of the poem, the poetess highlights a delicate psychological point that any power, prosperity or beauty if vested in one person becomes the cause of dissatisfaction at long. Rivalry in any field or aspect of life is the most essential factor for mental happiness and satisfaction. Monopoly, at long last, becomes like boredom. Human mind always longs for competition. It is the human nature that wishes that the fficiency, richness, strength, capability or beauty should be challenged by somebody. One should have opportunity of being tested one’s own worthiness of merits. Here, the Queen Gulnaar is unhappy in absence of any rival in case of her beauty. She was not satisfied with the rivalry of seven queens. When the poem seems advancing to its end, a turning point arises all of a sudden. Gulnaar is then lucky enough to have a powerful competitor. Her competitor is nobody else but her two years old daughter herself. One day, Queen Gulnaar’s two year old daughter was adorned with precious dress.
The child, like a fairy in a forest, rushed to the Queen and snatched the mirror away from her hand.. Then the child quickly wore her mother’s hair-band. Suddenly, with a child-like move, she planted happily a kiss on the mirror. Queen Gulnaar laughed like a quivering rose, saying, “ O King Feroz, look, here is my rival”. Summing up, Gulnaar realized that her daughter was the real rival of hers. Then the poem dramatically ends with the reality of life that the parents are always happy when they see their young ones playing and doing various innocent actions and tricks around them.
The poetess has successfully presented the psychological point of mothering and motherhood through these sonnet-like three parts of the poem. The Soul’s Prayer Inchildhood’s pride I said to Thee:‘ O Thou, who mad’st me of Thy breath, Speak, Master, and reveal to meThine inmost laws of life and death. ‘ Give me to drink each joy and painWhich Thine eternal hand can mete, For my insatiate soul would drainEarth’s utmost bitter, utmost sweet. ‘ Spare me no bliss, no pang of strife, Withhold no gift or grief I crave, The intricate lore of love and lifeAnd mystic knowledge of the grave. ’
Lord, Thou didst answer stern and low:‘ Child, I will hearken to thy prayer, And thy unconquered soul shall knowAll passionate rapture and despair. ‘ Thou shalt drink deep of joy and fame, And love shall burn thee like a fire, And pain shall cleanse thee like a flame, To purge the dross from thy desire. ‘ So shall thy chastened spirit yearnTo seek from its blind prayer release, And spent and pardoned, sue to learnThe simple secret of My peace. ‘ I, bending from my sevenfold height, Will teach thee of My quickening grace, Life is a prism of My light, And Death the shadow of My face. ’ The Soul’s Prayer by Sarojini Naidu: Summary and Explanation
What a beautiful prayer. Sarojini Naidu understands that both “ good and bad things” in life are necessary for a satisfactory completion of one soul’s agenda. First the question Everything is perfect exactly as it is. We can’t see the other side because we are not there – but we know that within the frame of time we will get there and be able to see the whole of the mosaic image. At the moment certain things don’t make sense; but that doesn’t deter Naidu to accept life as it is: with the bitter and the sweet. This shows great understanding of how the soul uses the body and the body-brain as mere tools to develop spiritually.
The spiritually blind will want to reject the painful parts of life, failing to envisage that the only way the soul can be cleansed of residue or simple unorganized illusory perceptions is to have the calling of pain. Pains serve two important purposes: when knocking at the door they grant vision to our spiritual; as the physical ones can only see the wound and the wound doesn’t always present itself when a crack in the thought system needs to be sealed (cleansed). The second purpose of the “ pain calling” is to remind us, each and every time, that our little plans and designs won’t heal the root of the problem.
In a chaotic world God is needed at the root; the soil surpassing any logic within our human limited comprehension of the workings of Truth and Knowledge. We have been made of God’s breath, so our very essence goes further than resembling His. We are his breath and like it, when it is expired (exhalation) we experience human life as it presents itself now; when inspired (inhalation) we make an attempt to go back home through the death of the body. Each breath represents a state in our being, death the beginning of our spiritual life, birth the end of it.
Human birth and death imply a simple reversal: spiritual death and birth. The never-ending moment and movement of inspiration and expiration are very much stated in the words of the song “ The Windmills of your Mind”: Round, like a circle in a spiralLike a wheel within a wheel. Never ending or beginning, On an ever spinning wheel Sarojini writes this poem with the voice of a child and it is impressive to see someone so eager to go back to God (to wake up). By asking God to withhold nothing (“ Withhold no gift or grief I crave”) she is delighted because the soul might not have to come back to deal with vagabond issues.
The knowledge of the grave is mystic (“ And mystic knowledge of the grave”) because we simply don’t know. What happens at the grave goes beyond our ordinary senses; we can’t experience it while in this body. Neither do we remember how it was nor what it was before human birth, something needed if we are to work on our toxic character defects with a full blown amount of fairness. Purity doesn’t come at a low price; we must endure the difficulties we chose for this life as souls and live with the consequences of our choices and actions – choices and actions that define us as we go along.
Then God answers God grants Sarojini her wish, and this is interesting because it is what differentiates the boys from the men. The boys cry because God “ brings” suffering to the world. The men understand that suffering is only part of the game. Life is just another “ genre” of the Spinning or Cosmic Wheel. This particular version of “ us” is played out with drama as well as through time intervals, obvious script techniques needed for our development as central characters. For the “ arch” to take place, ups and downs are necessary.
A good shaping of this arch determined by our behavior will make the play more or less dynamic but that doesn’t take away the overall theme: spiritual growth expanding into an inevitable awakening. ‘ Thou shalt drink deep of joy and fame, And love shall burn thee like a fire, And pain shall cleanse thee like a flame, To purge the dross from thy desire. These are part of the inevitabilities required for the awakening. First we need to go through the experience of desiring joy, fame, love. The problems are not in these very things (joy, fame, love), but in the desire we feel for them.
Desire pushes us into manipulation, which comes at the price of expectation, which ends in resentment when outcomes are not met. The line fails to be linear and the ups and downs manifesting from our erroneous perception carry pain along the way. Desire, then, is not desirable. It always implies suffering as well as other dirty little tricks like judgment and punishment. We might have to go through the pain many, many lives. But eventually the lesson is learned – pain “ cleanses us like a flame, purging the dross from our desire”. The Spirit’s yearn, a seeking cry, comes not from us but from God Himself!
God cries for us, His children, begging us to come home. The release is a call to the waking up that takes place when blind prayer turns into a sighted realization: we never actually needed to learn through pain, and there was never anything to fear. Mystic mystery is a simple secret, nothing more. It’s God’s peace. The last verse discloses a loving God; a God that bends with care to teach His children that where the sun has never shone there is also light, His light. Shadow and Light are just like birth and death, like night and day, like inhaling and exhaling. Pain and joy are just part of the windmills of your mind.
And the Mind – deep and calm in its Real state – when filtered through the body is just a memory of something else. Biography of Kamala Das Kamala Surayya / Suraiyya formerly known as Kamala Das , (also known as Kamala Madhavikutty, pen name was Madhavikutty) was a major Indian English poet and litterateur and at the same time a leading Malayalam author from Kerala, India. Her popularity in Kerala is based chiefly on her short stories andautobiography, while her oeuvre in English, written under the name Kamala Das, is noted for the fiery poems and explicit autobiography.
Her open and honest treatment of female sexuality, free from any sense of guilt, infused her writing with power, but also marked her as an iconoclast in her generation. On 31 May 2009, aged 75, she died at a hospital in Pune, but has earned considerable respect in recent years. Early Life Kamala Das was born in Punnayurkulam, Thrissur District in Kerala, on March 31, 1934, to V. M. Nair, a former managing editor of the widely-circulated Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi, and Nalappatt Balamani Amma, a renowned Malayali poetess.
She spent her childhood between Calcutta, where her father was employed as a senior officer in the Walford Transport Company that sold Bentley and Rolls Royce automobiles, and the Nalappatt ancestral home in Punnayurkulam. Like her mother, Kamala Das also excelled in writing. Her love ofpoetrybegan at an early age through the influence of her great uncle, Nalappatt Narayana Menon, a prominent writer. At the age of 15, she got married to bank officer Madhava Das, who encouraged her writing interests, and she started writing and publishing both in English and in Malayalam.
Calcutta in the 1960s was a tumultous time for the arts, and Kamala Das was one of the many voices that came up and started appearing in cult anthologies along with a generation of Indian English poets. Literary Career She was noted for her many Malayalam short stories as well as many poems written in English. Das was also a syndicated columnist. She once claimed that ” poetry does not sell in this country [India]”, but her forthright columns, which sounded off on everything from women’s issues and child care to politics, were popular.
Das’ first book of poetry, Summer In Calcutta was a breath of fresh air in Indian English poetry. She wrote chiefly of love, its betrayal, and the consequent anguish. Ms. Das abandoned the certainties offered by an archaic, and somewhat sterile, aestheticism for an independence of mind and body at a time when Indian poets were still governed by ” 19th-century diction, sentiment and romanticised love. ” Her second book of poetry, The descendants was even more explicit, urging women to: ” Gift him what makes you woman, the scent of Long hair, the musk of sweat between the breasts.
The warm shock of menstrual blood, and all your Endless female hungers … ” – The Looking Glass This directness of her voice led to comparisons with Marguerite Duras and Sylvia Plath At the age of 42, she published a daring autobiography, My Story; it was originally written in Malayalam and later she translated it into English. Later she admitted that much of the autobiography had fictional elements. Kamala Das wrote on a diverse range of topics, often disparate- from the story of a poor old servant, about the sexual disposition of upper middle class women living near a metropolitan city or in the middle of the ghetto.
Some of her better-known stories include Pakshiyude Manam, Neypayasam, Thanuppu, and Chandana Marangal. She wrote a few novels, out of which Neermathalam Pootha Kalam, which was received favourably by the reading public as well as the critics, stands out. She travelled extensively to read poetry to Germany’s University of Duisburg-Essen, University of Bonn and University of Duisburg universities, Adelaide Writer’s Festival , Frankfurt Book Fair, University of Kingston, Jamaica, Singapore, and South Bank Festival (London), Concordia University (Montreal, Canada), etc.
Her works are available in French, Spanish, Russian, German and Japanese. She has also held positions as Vice chairperson in Kerala Sahitya Academy, chairperson in Kerala forestry Board, President of the Kerala Children’s Film Society, editor of Poet magazine and Poetry editor of Illustrated Weekly of India. Although occasionally seen as an attention-grabber in her early years, she is now seen as one of the most formative influences on Indian English poetry. In 2009, The Times called her ” the mother of modern English Indian poetry”. Conversion to Islam
She was born in a conservative Hindu Nair (Nallappattu) family having royal ancestry, After being asked by her lover Sadiq Ali, an Islamic scholar and a Muslim League MP, she embraced Islam in 1999 at the age of 65 and assumed the name Kamala Surayya. After converting, she wrote: ” Life has changed for me since Nov. 14 when a young man named Sadiq Ali walked in to meet me. He is 38 and has a beautiful smile. Afterwards he began to woo me on the phone from Abu Dhabi and Dubai, reciting Urdu couplets and telling me of what he would do to me after our marriage. I took my nurse Mini and went to his place in my car.
I stayed with him for three days. There was a sunlit river, some trees, and a lot of laughter. He asked me to become a Muslim which I did on my return home. ” Her conversion was rather controversial, among social and literary circles, with The Hindu calling it part of her ” histrionics”. She said she liked being behind the protective veil of the purdah. Later, she felt it was not worth it to change one’s religion and said ” I fell in love with a Muslim after my husband’s death. He was kind and generous in the beginning. But I now feel one shouldn’t change one’s religion. It is not worth it. “. Politics
Though never politically active before, she launched a national political party, Lok Seva Party, aiming asylum to orphaned mothers and promotion of secularism. In1984she unsuccessfully contested in the Indian Parliament elections. Personal Life Kamala Das had three sons – M D Nalapat, Chinnen Das and Jayasurya Das. Madhav Das Nalapat, the eldest, is married to Princess Lakshmi Bayi (daughter of M. R. Ry. Sri Chembrol Raja Raja Varma Avargal) from the Travancore Royal House. He holds the UNESCO Peace Chair and Professor of geopolitics at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education. He was formerly a resident editor of the Times of India.
She had a sexual relationship with Sadiq Ali, an Islamic scholar who was much younger in age. She herself describes her visit to Sadiq Ali’s home as follows: “ I was almost asleep when Sadiq Ali climbed in beside me, holding me, breathing softly, whispering endearments, kissing my face, breasts … and when he entered me, it was the first time I had ever experienced what it was like to feel a man from the inside. ” Womanhood in her Poetry Das’ uncanny honesty extends to her exploration of womanhood and love. In her poem ” An Introduction” from Summer in Calcutta, the narrator says, ” I am every/ Woman who seeks love” (de Souza 10).
Though Amar Dwivedi criticizes Das for this ” self imposed and not natural” universality, this feeling of oneness permeates her poetry (303). In Das’ eyes, womanhood involves certain collective experiences. Indian women, however, do not discuss these experiences in deference to social mores. Das consistently refuses to accept their silence. Feelings of longing and loss are not confined to a private misery. They are invited into the public sphere and acknowledged. Das seems to insist they are normal and have been felt by women across time.
In ” The Maggots” from the collection, The Descendants, Das corroborates just how old the sufferings of women are. She frames the pain of lost love with ancient Hindu myths (de Souza 13). On their last night together, Krishna asks Radha if she is disturbed by his kisses. Radha says, ” No, not at all, but thought, What is/ It to the corpse if the maggots nip? ” (de Souza 6-7). Radha’s pain is searing, and her silence is given voice by Das. Furthermore, by making a powerful goddess prey to such thoughts, it serves as a validation for ordinary women to have similar feelings. Eroticism in her Poetry
Coupled with her exploration of women’s needs is an attention to eroticism. The longing to lose one’s self in passionate love is discussed in ” The Looking Glass” from The Descendants. The narrator of the poem urges women to give their man ” what makes you women” (de Souza 15). The things which society suggests are dirty or taboo are the very things which the women are supposed to give. The ” musk of sweat between breasts/ The warm shock of menstrual blood” should not be hidden from one’s beloved. In the narrator’s eyes, love should be defined by this type of unconditional honesty.
A woman should ” Stand nude before the glass with him,” and allow her lover to see her exactly as she is. Likewise, the woman should appreciate even the ” fond details” of her lover, such as ” the jerky way he/ Urinates”. Even if the woman may have to live ” Without him” someday, the narrator does not seem to favor bridling one’s passions to protect one’s self. A restrained love seems to be no love at all; only a total immersion in love can do justice to this experience. Much like the creators of ancient Tantric art, Das makes no attempt to hide the sensuality of the human form; her work seems to elebrate its joyous potential while acknowledging its concurrent dangers. FeminismDas once said, ” I always wanted love, and if you don’t get it within your home, you stray a little”(Warriorinterview). Though some might label Das as ” a feminist” for her candor in dealing with women’s needs and desires, Das ” has never tried to identify herself with any particular version of feminist activism” (Raveendran 52). Das’ views can be characterized as ” a gut response,” a reaction that, like her poetry, is unfettered by other’s notions of right and wrong.
Nonetheless, poet Eunice de Souza claims that Das has ” mapped out the terrain for post-colonial women in social and linguistic terms”. Das has ventured into areas unclaimed by society and provided a point of reference for her colleagues. She has transcended the role of a poet and simply embraced the role of a very honest woman. Death On 31 May 2009, aged 75, she died at a hospital in Pune. Her body was flown to her home state of Kerala. She was buried at the Palayam Juma Masjid at Thiruvanathapuram with full state honour. Awards and other Recognitions
Kamala Das has received many awards for her literary contribution, including: Nominated and shortlisted for Nobel Prize in 1984. Asian Poetry Prize-1998 Kent Award for English Writing from Asian Countries-1999 Asian World Prize-2000 Ezhuthachan Award-2009 Sahitya Academy Award-2003 Vayalar Award2001 Kerala Sahitya Academy Award-2005 Muttathu Varkey Award She was a longtime friend of Canadian writer Merrily Weisbord, who published a memoir of theirfriendship, The Love Queen of Malabar, in 2010. Kamala Das’s Works: English 1964: The Sirens (Asian Poetry Prize winner) 965: Summer in Calcutta (poetry; Kent’s Award winner) 1967: The Descendants (poetry) 1973: The Old Playhouse and Other Poems (poetry) 1976: My Story (autobiography) 1977: Alphabet of Lust (novel) 1985: The Anamalai Poems (poetry) 1992: Padmavati the Harlot and Other Stories (collection of short stories) 1996: Only the Soul Knows How to Sing (poetry) 2001: Yaa Allah (collection of poems) 1979: Tonight, This Savage Rite (with Pritish Nandy) 1999: My Mother At Sixty-six (Poem) Malayalam 1964: Pakshiyude Manam (short stories) 1966: Naricheerukal Parakkumbol (short stories) 968: Thanuppu (short story, Sahitya Academi award) 1982: Ente Katha (autobiography) 1987: Balyakala Smaranakal (ChildhoodMemories) 1989: Varshangalkku Mumbu (Years Before) 1990: Palayan (novel) 1991: Neypayasam (short story) 1992: Dayarikkurippukal (novel) 1994: Neermathalam Pootha Kalam (novel, Vayalar Award) 1996: Chekkerunna Pakshikal (short stories) 1998: Nashtapetta Neelambari (short stories) 2005: Chandana Marangal (Novel) 2005: Madhavikkuttiyude Unmakkadhakal (short stories)2x 2005: Vandikkalakal (novel) 1999: My Mother At Sixty-six (Poem) Kamala Das’s ” The Sunshine Cat”
They did this to her, the men who know her, the man She loved, who loved her not enough, being selfish And a coward, the husband who neither loved nor Used her, but was a ruthless watcher, and the band Of cynics she turned to, clinging to their chests where New hair sprouted like great-winged moths, burrowing her Face into their smells and their young lusts to forget To forget, oh, to forget, and, they said, each of Them, I do not love, I cannot love, it is not In my nature to love, but I can be kind to you. They let her slide from pegs of sanity into A bed made soft with tears, and she lay there weeping,
For sleep had lost its use. I shall build walls with tears, She said, walls to shut me in. Her husband shut her In, every morning, locked her in a room of books With a streak of sunshine lying near the door like A yellow cat to keep her company, but soon Winter came, and one day while locking her in, he Noticed that the cat of sunshine was only a Line, a half-thin line, and in the evening when He returned to take her out, she was a cold and Half dead woman, now of no use at all to men Summary In the poem ” The Sunshine Cat”, the poetess rants over the disillusionment in her yearning for love.
The ones who took advantage of her emotional instability are termed as ‘men’ in general This so-called community inevitably included her husband too. He turned out to be a mere objective observer without any emotional attachment. Being selfish he did not exhibit the slightest display of love. And, being cowardly he did not dare to give in sexually to her, for it would mark the relegation of his ego: his perspective of masculinity.. He was a relentless onlooker to the extent of being insensitive for he watched her encounters with other men like a carnival affair.
This is why Kamala Das employs the word ‘band’. She ” clinged” on to this band of ” cynics”. The word ” cling” is very significant, as one clings out of desperation, as in clinging onto dear life. A cynic is a person who believes that only selfishness motivates human actions. Her live revolved around these egocentric people. Nevertheless, she ” burrows’ herself in the chest of these men. Note the word ” burrow” is generally used with reference to mongooses or rats that dig holes to hide themselves of for security. For the poetess, this was a temporary refuge to render herself secure as long as it lasted.
The hair on their chests were like ” great-winged moths” that came like parasites between them. The lovers were younger than herself and told her that they could not love her, but could be ‘kind’ to her. The word ‘kind’ is utilized to connote condescension: a patronizing attitude on part of these superior lovers. In Girish Karnad’s ” Nagamandala”, Appanna locks Rani in the house, as he leaves for work. In the case of the poetess in the prescribed poem, the husband jails her in a room full of books. However, Kamala Das does not crave for intellectual company, but emotional companionship.
She seeks solace in the streak of sunlight beneath the door. This is her ray of hope: her Sunshine Cat: the sunny impulse in her. Nevertheless, as her life approached its winter, her husband notices her while locking her , one day, that this streak had reduced to a thin line. The evening made him realize that she had mellowed down, partly due to age and partly owing to her despondency. The fire in her (evocative of the Sunshine Cat) had died away. Hence, she was of no use to any man; as though the sole purpose of the woman in a man’s life is for sexual gratification. A Hot Noon in Malabar
This is a noon of Beggers with whinning Voices, a noon for men who came from hills With parrots in a cage and fortune-cards, All stained with time, for brown Kurava girls With old eyes, who read palm in light singsong Voices, for bangle-sellers who spread On the cool black floor those red and green and blue Bangles, all covered with the dust of roads, Miles, grow cracks on the heels, so that when they Clambered up our porch, the noise was grating, Strange……… This is a noon for strangers who part The window-drapes and peer in, their hot eyes Brimming with the sun, not seeing a thing in Shadowy rooms and turn away and look
So yearningly at the brick-ledged well. This Is a noon for strangers with mistrust in Their eyes, dark, silent ones who rarely speak At all, so that when they speak, their voices Run wild, like jungle-voices. Yes, this is A noon for wild men, wild thoughts, wild love. To Be here, far away, is torture. Wild feet Stirring up the dust, this hot noon, at my Home in Malabar, and I so far away American Literature Biography of Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts. He would live the majority of his life in that same town and die there in 1862.
His father, a pencil manufacturer named John Thoreau, and mother Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau christened him David Henry but always called him Henry. As an adult, Thoreau began to give his name as Henry David but never had it legally changed. The Thoreaus had three other children in addition to Henry – Helen, five years older than Henry, John, Jr. , two years older, and Sophia, two years younger. In 1821, the family moved to Boston, where they lived until 1823, when they returned to Concord. Thoreau later recalled a visit the family made to Walden Pond from Boston when he was four years old.
When he was sixteen, Thoreau enteredHarvardCollege, his grandfather’s alma mater. His schooling was paid for by themoneyhis father made as a pencil manufacturer, combined with contributions from his elder siblings salaries from their teaching jobs. While at college, Thoreau studied Latin and Greek grammar and composition, and took classes in a wide variety of subjects, includingmathematics, English, history, philosophy, and four different modern languages. He also made great use of the Harvard library holdings before graduating in 1837. After graduating, Thoreau accepted a job as a schoolteacher in Concord.
His refusal to beat his students led to his dismissal from the position after only two weeks. That same year, Thoreau began keeping the journal in which he would write for the rest of his life and became friends with Concord residents Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Ellery Channing, and became a follower of Transcendentalism. Emerson provided a letter of reference for young Thoreau, when he traveled to Maine in search of a teaching position at a private school. Unable to find a job in Maine, Thoreau returned to Concord and opened a school with his brother John.
Concord Academy differed from other schools in its lack of corporal punishment and encouragement of learning by doing ? as by scientific experiments and nature walks. The school was successful in attracting students but lasted only three years. When John became sick, Henry decided not to continue the school alone. He later worked as a handyman at odd jobs throughout Concord and assisted in the family’s pencil manufacture business. During this time, both Henry and John fell in love with and proposed to a young woman named Ellen Seawall, whose younger brother Edward was a student at their school.
Her father’s disapproval of Thoreau’s Transcendentalism led her to refuse his proposal. They sent her to New York to end the romance, and she there met and married Joseph Osgood, though she remained friends with the Thoreaus throughout her life, maintaining a correspondence with Sophia Thoreau and having Henry as a guest in her home. Thoreau lived at the Emerson house for a time during 1841, working as a handyman. He had a romance with Mary Russell, a young woman who stayed with the Emersons during the summers of 1840 and 1841.
He wrote her a love poem in 1841 but never proposed, and she eventually married Marston Watson, a friend of Thoreau’s from Harvard. In 1842, Thoreau’s brother John became ill with lockjaw, the result of a small untreated wound. John died in Henry’s arms, and Henry developed a sympathetic illness, exhibiting some of the symptoms of lockjaw, for several months. The following year, Thoreau made his most extensive break from Concord when he moved in with Emerson’s brother’s family on Staten Island as a tutor for his children, hoping that he could succeed as a writer closer to the New York publishing industry.
Upon returning home in December of 1843, Thoreau began to write an account of canoe trip he had taken with John in 1839. That book would become A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, combining poetry, historical background, and philosophical reflections with the narrative of the trip. Realizing he needed fewer distractions in order to concentrate on his writing, Thoreau decided to simplify his life by building and living in a cabin by the banks of Walden Pond, about a mile and a half from the center of Concord. On July 4, 1845, the day before the anniversary of his brother’s death,
Thoreau moved into the cabin he had begun constructing during the spring. He stayed there for two years, sometimes traveling into Concord for supplies and eating with his family about once a week. Friends and family also visited him at his cabin, where he spent nearly every night. In 1846, he made the first of three trips to Maine that would become the basis for a later series of essays entitled The Maine Woods. It was while Thoreau lived at Walden that he spent a night in the Concord jail that became the basis for the famous essay now known as ” Civil Disobedience. Thoreau had not paid his poll tax to the town for several years because he opposed the use of town revenues tofinancethe US war with Mexico and enforcement of slavery laws. The town constable, when arresting him, offered to pay the tax himself but Thoreau refused and spent a night in jail. The tax was paid that very night, most likely by Thoreau’s aunt Maria Thoreau, but Thoreau was not released until the morning. In 1848, Thoreau gave a speech to the Concord Lyceum that would be adapted to be the essay ” Resistance to Civil Government,” published in 1849.
In 1847, Thoreau spent the fall living at the Emerson household, looking after the family while Emerson was in England. After that, he returned to his parents’ home where he remained for the rest of his life. The curiosity of Concord residents regarding the reasons for the two years Thoreau spent living in a cabin in the woods led him to give a series of lectures in 1847 about his life at Walden. During this time, he also completed a preliminary drafts of both Walden and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. The latter book was published by James Munroe & Co. n 1848. Thoreau had agreed to pay for any copies of the book which were not sold; ultimately few were sold, and he lost $275 on the deal. Between 1847 and 1854, Thoreau continually redrafted and revised Walden. Ticknor and Field published an edition of 2, 000 copies in 1854. Reviews were predominantly positive, and 1, 700 copies sold during the following year. Though Thoreau attempted to arrange a nation-wide lecture tour, only one city made an offer, and Thoreau limited his lectures to the Concord area. Also in 1854, Thoreau gave a speech on ” Slavery in Massachusetts. Though he was not a member of any abolitionist societies, because he opposed the notion of societies, he was fervently opposed to slavery. Five years later, he gave an impassioned ” Plea for Captain John Brown,” defending the morality of Brown’s violent uprising at Harper’s Ferry and condemning the US government for supporting slavery. Another speech that year was called ” The Last Days of John Brown. ” Both demonstrated that Thoreau had proceeded from passive resistance to the institution of slavery to support for armed rebellion as a means of ending the unjust institution.
During 1851 and 1855, Thoreau suffered bouts of tuberculosis, whose symptoms he felt even as he continued to lecture. Thoreau spent the remainder of his life concentrating heavily on detailed, scientific naturalistic writing. His Maine journals were published in Atlantic Monthly in 1858. James Russell Lowell, with whom Thoreau had long had a contentious relationship, was the editor of the publication and deleted a sentence from the essays, considering it blasphemous; in response, Thoreau refused to speak to him for the rest of his life.
Ticknor and Fields, the publishers of Walden, purchased the magazine in 1859, and in 1861, James Fields suggested 250-book reprinting of Walden. He also agreed to republish the unsold copies of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Thoreau had become quite ill with tuberculosis in 1861. On April 12, Fields visited Thoreau in Concord to take hold of the unsold copies of his book for republication. A year later, on May 6, 1862, Thoreau died at the age of 44. A month later, the reprintings of his two books were finally published.
Essays published about Thoreau after his death, written by Lowell and Emerson, emphasized Thoreau’s ascetic, Spartan qualities without giving adequate weight to his philosophical contributions. Thus, Thoreau was not well-appreciated during the nineteenth-century and was often seen as a lesser imitator of Emerson. Only beginning in the 1890s, after critical evaluation of his writings, did Thoreau come to be appreciated for his literary merit. In the twentieth-century, he has come to be seen as one of he most significant nineteenth-century American writers. Civil Disobedience Summary Thoreau opens his essay with the motto ” That government is best which governs least. ” His distrust of government stems from the tendency of the latter to be ” perverted and abused” before the people can actually express their will through it. A case in point is theMexicanwar (1846-1848, which extended slavery into new US territories), orchestrated by a small elite of individuals who have manipulated government to their advantage against popular will.
Government inherently lends itself to oppressive and corrupt uses since it enables a few men to impose their moral will on the majority and to profit economically from their own position of authority. Thoreau views government as a fundamental hindrance to the creative enterprise of the people it purports to represent. He cites as a prime example the regulation of trade and commerce, and its negative effect on the forces of the free market. A man has an obligation to act according to the dictates of his conscience, even if the latter goes against majority opinion, the presidingleadership, or the laws of society.
In cases where the government supports unjust or immoral laws, Thoreau’s notion of service to one’s country paradoxically takes the form of resistance against it. Resistance is the highest form ofpatriotismbecause it demonstrates a desire not to subvert government but to build a better one in the long term. Along these lines, Thoreau does not advocate a wholesale rejection of government, but resistance to those specific features deemed to be unjust or immoral. In the American tradition, men have a recognized and cherished right of revolution, from which Thoreau derives the concept of civil disobedience.
A man disgraces himself by associating with a government that treats even some of its citizens unjustly, even if he is not the direct victim of its injustice. Thoreau takes issue with William Paley, an English theologian and philosopher, who argues that any movement of resistance to government must balance the enormity of the grievance to be redressed and the ” probability and expense” of redressing it. It may not be convenient to resist, and the personal costs may be greater than the injustice to be remedied; however, Thoreau firmly asserts the primacy of individual conscience over collective pragmatism.
Thoreau turns to the issue of effecting change through democratic means. The position of the majority, however legitimate in the context of a democracy, is not tantamount to a moral position. Thoreau believes that the real obstacle to reform lies with those who disapprove of the measures of government while tacitly lending it their practical allegiance. At the very least, if an unjust government is not to be directly resisted, a man of true conviction should cease to lend it his indirect support in the form of taxes.
Thoreau acknowledges that it is realistically impossible to deprive the government of tax dollars for the specific policies that one wishes to oppose. Still, complete payment of his taxes would be tantamount to expressing complete allegiance to the State. Thoreau calls on his fellow citizens to withdraw their support from the government of Massachusetts and risk being thrown in prison for their resistance. Forced to keep all men in prison or abolish slavery, the State would quickly exhaust its resources and choose the latter course of action.
For Thoreau, out of these acts of conscience flow ” a man’s real manhood and immortality. ” Money is a generally corrupting force because it binds men to the institutions and the government responsible for unjust practices and policies, such as the enslavement of black Americans and the pursuit of war with Mexico. Thoreau sees a paradoxically inverse relationship between money and freedom. The poor man has the greatest liberty to resist because he depends the least on the government for his own welfare and protection. After refusing to pay the poll tax for six years, Thoreau is thrown into jail for one night.
While in prison, Thoreau realizes that the only advantage of the State is ” superior physical strength. ” Otherwise, it is completely devoid of moral or intellectual authority, and even with its brute force, cannot compel him to think a certain way. Why submit other people to one’s own moral standard? Thoreau meditates at length on this question. While seeing his neighbors as essentially well-intentioned and in some respects undeserving of any moral contempt for their apparent indifference to the State’s injustice, Thoreau nonetheless concludes that he has a human relation to his neighbors, and through them, millions of other men.
He does not expect his neighbors to conform to his own beliefs, nor does he endeavor to change the nature of men. On the other hand, he refuses to tolerate the status quo. Despite his stance of civil disobedience on the questions of slavery and the Mexican war, Thoreau claims to have great respect and admiration for the ideals of American government and its institutions. Thoreau goes so far as to state that his first instinct has always been conformity.
Statesmen, legislators, politicians–in short, any part of the machinery of state bureaucracy–are unable to scrutinize the government that lends them their authority. Thoreau values their contributions to society, their pragmatism and their diplomacy, but feels that only someone outside of government can speak the Truth about it. The purest sources of truth are, in Thoreau’s view, the Constitution and the Bible. Not surprisingly, Thoreau holds in low esteem the entire political class, which he considers incapable of devising the most basic forms of legislation.
In his last paragraph, Thoreau comes full circle to discussing the authority and reach of government, which derives from the ” sanction and consent of the governed. ” Democracy is not the last step in the evolution of government, as there is still greater room for the State to recognize the freedom and rights of the individual. Thoreau concludes on an utopic note, saying such a State is one he has imagined ” but not yet anywhere seen. ” Civil Disobedience Themes The right to resistance Thoreau affirms the absolute right of individuals to withdraw their support rom a government whose policies are immoral or unjust. He takes issue with the brand of moral philosophy that weighs the possible consequences of civil disobedience against the seriousness of the injustice. The methods of resistance Thoreau condones in his essay are pacifist and rely principally on economic pressure; for example, withholding taxes in order to drain the State of its resources and hence its ability to continue its unjust policies. The ultimate goal of civil disobedience is not to undermine democracy but to reinforce its core values of liberty and respect for the individual.
Individual conscience and morality Only an individual can have and exercise a conscience. By definition, both the State and corporations are impersonal, amoral entities that are nonetheless composed of individuals. ” It has been truly said, that a corporation has no
