Gulliver's Travels

ASSIGNMENT

PAPER-2

Q. Colonialism in Gulliver’s Travels:

A:  Swift has at least two aims in Gulliver's Travels besides merely telling a good adventure story. Behind the disguise of his narrative, he is satirizing the pettiness of human nature in general and attacking the Whigs in particular. By emphasizing the six-inch height of the Lilliputians, he graphically diminishes the stature of politicians and indeed the stature of all human nature. And in using the fire in the Queen's chambers, the rope dancers, the bill of particulars drawn against Gulliver, and the inventory of Gulliver's pockets, he presents a series of allusions that were identifiable to his contemporaries as critical of Whig politics.-

Within the broad scheme of Gulliver's Travels, Gulliver seems to be an average man in eighteenth-century England. He is concerned with family and with his job, yet he is confronted by the pigmies that politics and political theorizing make of people. Gulliver is utterly incapable of the stupidity of the Lilliputian politicians, and, therefore, he and the Lilliputians are ever-present contrasts for us. We are always aware of the difference between the imperfect (but normal) moral life of Gulliver, and the petty and stupid political life of emperors, prime ministers, and informers.

The object of the book is to vex the world. Swift had written to pope that his chief object was to vex the world rather than divert it. What he meant was that he wanted to arouse among his readers a feeling of dissatisfaction with themselves and their fellows for their vices and follies and thus to stimulate them to amend them and shortcomings of mankind. While the book does succeed in vexing and even disturbing and shocking its readers, there is also much in it to divert and amuse them. The satire is often cruel and in part IV it is almost horrifying. But there is planty of pure fun and comedy in the book also.

In the second book of the Travels, Swift reverses the size relationship that he used in Book I. In Lilliput, Gulliver was a giant; in Brobdingnag, Gulliver is a midget. Swift uses this difference to express a difference in morality. Gulliver was an ordinary man compared to the amoral political midgets in Lilliput. Now, Gulliver remains an ordinary man, but the Brobdingnagians are moral men. They are not perfect, but they are consistently moral. Only children and the deformed are intentionally evil.

In Books I and II, Swift directs his satire more toward individual targets than firing broadside at abstract concepts. In Book I, he is primarily concerned with Whig politics and politicians rather than with the abstract politician; in Book II, he elects to reprove immoral Englishmen rather than abstract immorality. In Book III, Swift's target is somewhat abstract — pride in reason — but he also singles out and censures a group of his contemporaries whom he believed to be particularly depraved in their exaltation of reason. He attacks his old enemies, the Moderns, and their satellites, the Deists and rationalists. In opposition to their credos, Swift believed that people were capable of reasoning, but that they were far from being fully rational. For the record, it should probably be mentioned that Swift was not alone in denouncing this clique of people. The objects of Swift's indignation had also aroused the rage of Pope, Arbuthnot, Dryden, and most of the orthodox theologians of the Augustan Age.

From the start the Lilliputians arouse our interest and win our   liking. The pigmies of Lilliput ingeniously capture the giant whom chance has caste on their shore. They humanly solve the problem of feeding him. Their pretty land and their fascinating little city capture our fancy.But in the end they prove to be proud, envious, rapacious, treacherous, cruel, revengeful, jealous and hypocritical. Their social and political system have to become corrupt. They are governed by an emperor who aims at destroying the neighbouring kingdom. The courtiers and ministers pigmies here are chosen not for their fitness but fot their skill in walking on the tight rope and leaping over sticks or creeping under them. The pigmies of Lilliput are an example of the disproportion of man like Gulliver himself. Their vices, their appetites, their ambition and their passions are too big for their small stature. They appear to Gulliver to be venomous and petty even as Gulliver and his kind must appear to some higher order of being.

His voyage to the land and is descriptions are representing the England. The land is the miniature of the Motherland of the Gulliver i.e. England. Refusal of ‘female’ is the refusal of mother Land here. The reason why reader can'’ find female protagonist.

Political satire in part 1of the book in that we find Swift satirizing the manner in which political offices were distributed. Dancing on a tight rope symbolizes Walpole’s skill in parliamentary tactics and political intrigues. Swift here seems to be satirizing the activities of that Whig committee.       

Swift is here mocking at the English King’s conferment of distinctions on political favourites and supporters. Gulliver’s account of the conspiracy against him and his impending impeachment is Swift’s satirical description of court intrigues which were a feature of political life. Swift here gives us amusing glimpses of what went on at the court of George 1.when sir Robert Walpole was the most influential of the politicians. Swift’s satire becomes more amusing when Gulliver speaks of the conflict between the Big-Endian and the Little-Endians in Lilliput. In this account Swift is ridiculing the conflicts between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants. He is making fun of hair-splitting theological disputes. Swift also pokes fun at the political parties in England the two factions being distinguished by their high heels and low heels respectively.

In part II, the satire becomes general. Here Gulliver first gives us his reaction to the coarseness and Brobdingnag who are giants I structure. We also get a brief satire on the great scholars of this new country. The philosophers, however agree about one point that Gulliver could not have been produced according to the regular laws of nature, and that he is a freak product.  The king mocks at the human race of which Gulliver is a representative, a face which as compared to the people of Brobdingnag, consists of insects. Swift is here ridiculing human pride and pretension. Human beings who have such lofty ideas about themselves are no better than insects in the eyes of the King of Brobdingnag.

The description of the crowd of beggars whom Gulliver happens to see is intended as a satire on the beggars who actually existed. The sight is indeed, horrible and disgusting. most hateful sight is that of the lice crawling on their clothes. This description reinforces Swift’s view of the ugliness and foulness of the human body .The bitterest satire in part II of the book comes when the king comments on Gulliver’s account of the English parliament .the English courts of justice, and other institution in England. The kings view is that Gulliver’s country seems to him a series of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments etc. all these are a result of hypocrisy, pertidy, cruelty

The king concludes the people of Gulliver’s country are the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth. Swift’s own cynical views about mankind in general. King reacts with scorn and disgust to Gulliver’s account. According to the King, only common sense, reason, and justice and not books are needed to run government. The satire in the part III is not so bitter as in the closing chapters of part II.

Part III is light hearted making fun of the people whose sole interest are music and geometry and who do not even have the time to make love to their wives. Swift here ridicules scientists, academics, planners, intellectuals, in fact all people who proceed according to theory and are useless when it comes to actual practice. In Laputa, Swift also satirizes the English system of administration Swift satirizes historians and literary critics through Gulliver’s interviews with the ghosts of the famous dead. In the portrayal of the Struld-brags. Swift satirizes the human longing for immortality.

Part IV of Gulliver’s Travels contains some of the most corrosive and offensive satire on mankind. In this part the Yahoos are intended to represent human beings. Gulliver describes them as abominable. The Houyhnhnms are  noble and Beneyolentanimals. A bitter criticism of the human race to represent the Houyhnhnms as being superior mentally and morally to the yahoos. The Yahoos are brutal, unteachable, and mischievous. The Houyhnhnms on the contrary are morally so good that there is no word in their language for lying or falsehood.

The account which Gulliver gives of the political life in his country is really a bitter criticism of the evils that prevail not only in England but in all countries of the world. The vast numbers of the people of his country, Gulliver says, live by begging, robbing, stealing, cheating, pimping, forging, whoring and so on. Indeed, this is not just but denunciation and invective.

By contrast the Houyhnhnms are excellent beings whose grand principle is to cultivate reason and be wholly governed by it. Swift’s purpose here is to horses certain qualities which would normally be expected in human beings but which are actually lacking in human beings. The main quality is reason or the rational quality which human beings , according to Swift do not value enough.

Gulliver’s reaction to what he has seen in the land of the Houyhnhnms fills him with so much admiration for them and with so much hatred and disgust for the race that he has no desire even to return to his family. This reaction shows that Gulliver has become a complete cynic and misamthrope. Gulliver concludes his account with a severe condemnation of human pride so that pride may be regarded as yet another target of Swift’s satire in this book.

Swift shows himself as a great satirist in this book by giving us comic satire and corrosive satire by his successful exposure, sometimes witty and sometimes indignant of human irrationality by his claver use of irony and by other devices to makes us acutely conscious of the defects of mankind.

Swift’s vision of mankind is too dark and pessimistic and that his counset is the counsel of despair, Swift’s scornful and incisive satire on humanity.

Renaissance in India by Shree Aurobindo

Assignment

Paper-4

Q Renaissance in India- Shree Aurobindo.

Shree Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on 15 August 1872. He stood first in King’s College, Cambridge in England. He also passed the final examination of the Indian Civil Service.

When he was professor in Baroda College, he joined revolutionary society and took a leading role in secret preparations for an uprising against the British Government in India.

The essay was written in 1918. In it he presented the old Indian spirit and how it should be converted into renaissance. It also shows the Indian culture and its soul, the creativity in it. The strength due to the spirit, the outcome of it is shown in this essay.

“Spirituality is the master key of the Indian mind. The sense of infinity is native o it.”

He believes that Indian civilization is the best civilization as it stands on spirituality which is infinite. The sole creativity and sheer intellect are the children of it. It has its own high spiritual aim. With the help of effective mannerism, it forms & effect the rhythm of life. In his words:

“A spiritual aspiration was the governing force of this culture”

He also believes that the spirituality is the highest aspect of life as it tries to be and ruling the passion of a single man. And he also turns the core of the man towards it.

Foe him ‘Renaissance’ is the new birth of India. It is very important for her. Here he personified India as ‘Mother India’. He wants to put her on the world in such a way that it evokes the new creativity in the mentality. She should relearn the age-old ideas and light up the spirit within and emboss herself among other nations’ eye. So that it help her to govern her future. The important is what India makes her own life must precede the wider question what her new life may be mean to human race.

He also compares the term of renaissance with the European ones due to Greek-Latin with special reference to India. He denies the likeness with European renaissance. It is the long period of eclipse as India is under the baseless and confusing influences of different culture of West. There are various loop-holes in it and it gives new self-consciousness or just it creates an illusion of modernization.

But the wholeness, the feeling of fulfillment, from within is not there. The influence can’t touch the soul of every common man. But the louder call of the pioneers had shaken the inner soul of the “general minds of the people”. They represent the advanced movement. On the whole we see is a giant Shakti who is awakening the whole world a new and alien environment. In doing so India finds herself bond with past strings and scratches, wounds and weakened minds. She tries herself to be free from it, to arise and proclaim herself. And impose her importance and set her seal on the world. “The bud of the soul” is partly open.

He further adds that none can come from outside with the knowledge and reforms India. It is not the basic need of it. It should break the shackles of other countries’ influences. Her true reawakening is that gave her rebirth as a whole and enlightens the spirit.

He praises the Indian spirit. The spirituality is very vital & is always maintains itself. It is that which saved India always at every critical moment of her destiny. It has been the starting point of the renaissance. It is the vitality of the spirit that saves India every time and under the rule-its soul and body soon destroyed. The spirit is the strength of India to fight and stand against the circumstances.

Now it’s time for India to shed all her fears & influences as it reaches nowhere and become still.  The stagnation of spirit mars the liveliness of the India. The spirit will keep her going. It sharpens herself with new philosophical, artistic, literary, cultural, political and social forms and rejuvenises itself. It reestablishes the old truths with new undefeated strength, completeness and permanence.

The master key of the dead lock is spirituality. She was alive of the greatness of material laws and forces; she had a keen eye to see beyond it and also had great hold on the insight. She could see the complexity of the universe as well as the unity in the spirit. She is also well aware about the hidden powers of human kind about which he himself is ignorant. She had seen God behind many Gods. And knows about the vastness of spirituality. Then with that calm audacity of her intuition which know no fear and littleness and shrank from no act whether of spiritual or intellectual, ethical or vital courage, she declared that there was none of these things which man could not attain if he trained his will and knowledge; he could conquer these rages of mind become the sprit, become a God, become one with God, become the ineffable Brahmin. Here Aurobindo talks about the real Brahmin. It shows the relation between national spirit and castisism. The cast is based on the form od one’s freewill about learning, work and sphere of knowledge and spirituality. The person who is high in spirit, having great carving of the rising of soul and longing to reach the capability flourish from within is true Brahmin. And with the help of the Brahmins vast knowledge of logic, science, with the sense of management and practicality she set forth the way to progress.  But this spirituality and this prolific abundance of the energy and joy of life and creation do not make all that the spirit of India has been in its past.

Indeed without this opulent vitality and opulent intellectuality India could never have done so much as she did with her spiritual tendencies. It is a great error to suppose that spirituality flourishes best in an impoverished soil with the life half-killed and the intellect discouraged and intimidated. The spirituality that so flourishes is something morbid, hectic and exposed to perilous reactions. It is when the race has lived most richly and thought most profoundly that spirituality finds its heights and its depths and its constant and many-sided fruition. In modern Europe it is after a long explosion of vital force and a stupendous activity of the intellect that spirituality has begun really to emerge and with some promise of being not, as it once was the sorrowful physician of the malady of life, but the beginning of a large and profound clarity. The European eye is struck in Indian spiritual thought by the Buddhistic and illusionist denial of life. But it must be remembered that this is only one side of its philosophic tendency which assumed exaggerated proportions only in the period of decline. In itself too that was simply one result, in one direction, of a tendency of the Indian mind which is common to all its activities, the impulse to follow each motive, each specialisation of motive even, spiritual, intellectual, ethical, vital, to its extreme point and to sound its utmost possibility. Part of its innate direction was to seek in each not only for its fullness of detail, but for its infinite, its absolute, its profoundest depth or its highest pinnacle. It knew that without a “fine excess” we cannot break down the limits which the dull temper of the normal mind opposes to knowledge and thought and experience; and it had in seeking this point a boundless courage and yet a sure tread. Thus it carried each tangent of philosophic thought, each line of spiritual experience to its farthest point, and chose to look from that farthest point at all existence, so as to see what truth or power such a view could give it. It tried to know the whole of divine nature and to see too as high as it could beyond nature and into whatever there might be of supradivine. When it formulated a spiritual atheism, it followed that to its acme of possible vision. When, too, it indulged in materialistic atheism, - though it did that only with a side glance, as the freak of an insatiable intellectual curiosity, yet it formulated it straight out, boldly and nakedly, without the least concession to idealism or ethicism.

Everywhere we find this tendency. The ideals of the Indian mind have included the height of self-assertion of the human spirit and its thirst of independence and mastery and possession and the height also of its self-abnegation, dependence and submission and self-giving. In life the ideal of opulent living and the ideal of poverty were carried to the extreme of regal splendour and the extreme of satisfied nudity. Its intuitions were sufficiently clear and courageous not to be blinded by its own most cherished ideas and fixed habits of life. If it was obliged to stereotype caste as the symbol of its social order, it never quite forgot, as the caste-spirit is apt to forget, that the human soul and the human mind are beyond caste. For it had seen in the lowest human being the Godhead, Narayana. It emphasised distinctions only to turn upon them and deny all distinctions. If all its political needs and circumstances compelled it at last to exaggerate the monarchical principle and declare the divinity of the king and to abolish its earlier republican city states and independent federations as too favourable to the centrifugal tendency, if therefore it could not develop democracy, yet it had the democratic idea, applied it in the village, in council and municipality, within the caste, was the first to assert a divinity in the people and could cry to the monarch at the height of his power, “O king, what art thou but the head servant of the demos?” Its idea of the golden age was a free spiritual anarchism. Its spiritual extremism could not prevent it from fathoming through a long era the life of the senses and its enjoyments, and there too it sought the utmost richness of sensuous detail and the depths and intensities of sensuous experience. Yet it is notable that this pursuit of the most opposite extremes never resulted in disorder; and its most hedonistic period offers nothing that at all resembles the unbridled corruption which a similar tendency has more than once produced in Europe. For the Indian mind is not only spiritual and ethical, but intellectual and artistic, and both the rule of the intellect and the rhythm of beauty are hostile to the spirit of chaos. In every extreme the Indian spirit seeks for a law in that extreme and a rule, measure and structure in its application. Besides, this sounding of extremes is balanced by a still more ingrained characteristic, the synthetical tendency, so that having pushed each motive to its farthest possibility the Indian mind returns always towards some fusion of the knowledge it has gained and to a resulting harmony and balance in action and institution. Balance and rhythm which the Greeks arrived at by self-limitation, India arrived at by its sense of intellectual, ethical and aesthetic order and the synthetic impulse of its mind and life.

The Spirit is a higher infinite of verities; life is a lower infinite of possibilities which seek to grow and find their own truth and fulfilment in the light of these verities. Our intellect, our will, our ethical and our aesthetic being are the reflectors and the mediators. The method of the West is to exaggerate life and to call down as much - or as little - as may be of the higher powers to stimulate and embellish life. [Mr. Cousins' distinction between invocation and evocation.]

But the method of India is on the contrary to discover the spirit within and the higher hidden intensities of the superior powers and to dominate life in one way or another so as to make it responsive to and expressive of the spirit and in that way increase the power of life. Its tendency with the intellect, will, ethical, aesthetic and emotional being is to sound indeed their normal mental possibilities, but also to upraise them towards the greater light and power of their own highest intuitions. The work of the renaissance in India must be to make this spirit, this higher view of life, this sense of deeper potentiality once more a creative, perhaps a dominant power in the world. But to that truth of itself it is as yet only vaguely awake; the mass of Indian action is still at the moment proceeding under the impress of the European motive and method and, because there is a spirit within us to which they are foreign, the action is poor in will, feeble in form and ineffective in results, for it does not come from the roots of our being. Only in a few directions is there some clear light of self-knowledge. It is when a greater light prevails and becomes general that we shall be able to speak, not only in prospect but in fact, of the renaissance of India.

In the second essay, he rephrases them.  The Western impact reawakened “a free activity of the intellect”; “it threw definitely into ferment of modern ideas into the old culture”; and “it made us turn our look upon all that our past contains with new eyes”.  These are a revival of “the dormant intellectual and critical impulse”; the rehabilitation of life and an awakened “desire for new creation”; and a revival of the Indian spirit by the turning of the national mind to its past.  It is this “awakening vision and impulse” that SriAurobindo feels is the Indian renaissance.  Such a renaissance would have three tasks to accomplish: in the light of Indian spirit, the endeavour to formulate a greater synthesis of a spiritualised society is one of the most difficult. 

Nothing in the many processes of Nature, whether she deals with men or with things, comes by chance or accident or is really at the mercy of external causes. What things are inwardly, determines the course of even their most considerable changes; and timeless India being what she is, the complexity of this transition was predestined and unavoidable. It was impossible that she should take a rapid wholesale imprint of Western motives and their forms and leave the ruling motives of her own past to accommodate themselves to the foreign change as best they could afterwards. A swift transformation scene like that which brought into being a new modernised Japan, would have been out of the question for her, even if the external circumstances had been equally favourable. For Japan lives centrally in her temperament and in her aesthetic sense, and therefore she has always been rapidly assimilative; her strong temperamental persistence has been enough to preserve her national stamp and her artistic vision a sufficient power to keep her soul alive. But India lives centrally in the spirit, with less buoyancy and vivacity and therefore with a less ready adaptiveness of creation, but a greater, intenser, more brooding depth; her processes are apt to be deliberate, uncertain and long because she has to take things into that depth and from its profoundest inwardness to modify or remould the more outward parts of her life. And until that has been done, the absorption completed, the powers of the remoulding determined, she cannot yet move forward with an easier step on the new way she is taking. From the complexity of the movement arises all the difficulty of the problems she has to face and the rather chaotic confusion of the opinions, standpoints and tendencies that have got entangled in the process, which prevents any easy, clear and decided development, so that we seem to be advancing under a confused pressure of circumstance or in a series of shifting waves of impulsion, this ebbing for that to arise, rather than with any clear idea of our future direction. But here too lies the assurance that once the inner direction has found its way and its implications have come to the surface, the result will be no mere Asiatic modification of Western modernism, but some great, new and original thing of the first importance to the future of human civilisation.

In the second essay, Sri Aurobindo goes on to outline the three phases of the renaissance:

The first step was the reception of the European contact, a radical reconsideration of many of the prominent elements and some revolutionary denial of the very principles of the old culture.  The second was a reaction of the Indian spirit upon the European influence, sometimes with a total denial of what it offered and a stressing both of the essential and the strict letter of the national past, which yet masked a movement of assimilation. The third, only now beginning or recently begun, is rather a process of new creation in which the spiritual power of the Indian mind remains supreme, recovers its truths, accepts whatever it finds sound or true, useful or inevitable of the modern idea and form, but so transmutes and indianises it, so absorbs and transforms it entirely into itself that its foreign character disappears and it becomes another harmonious element in the characteristic working of the ancient goddess, the Shakti of India mastering and taking possession of the modern influence, no longer possessed or overcome by it.

Sri Aurobindo predicts that if the last were to happen, “the result will be no mere Asiatic modification of Western modernism, but some great, new and original thing of the first importance to the future of human civilization”.

In the third essay, Sri Aurobindo offers an overview of some of the movements and figures of the renaissance, all the while pointing to what lies ahead.  Finally, in the fourth essay, he once again stresses that the best course of action to India lies in being herself, recovering her native genius, which is a reassertion of its ancient spiritual ideal.  It only in “the knowledge and conscious application of the ideal” that the future of both India and the world lies.  Whether she can rise up to this task or not is a question that he leaves open.

If we were to evaluate the recent cultural history of India in the light of this essay, we will clearly see that the course of post-independence India has stressed the regaining of material, even military might, not necessarily the reaffirmation of India’s spiritual ideal.  So, to that extent, Sri Aurobindo has been proved both right and wrong.  Right in that the spiritual is realized not in the denial of the material but actually in the robust plenitude of the material subordinated to the spiritual ideal.  We see in present day India a great effort to attain such material prosperity.  But whether the spiritual idea of India remains intact is a question that is not easily answered.  To all appearances, India has gone the way of the rest of the world, worshipping mammon.  Our religion, too, is consumerism.  To say that spirituality is the master key to the Indian psyche these days would seem more the exception than the rule.      

When we re-examine Sri Aurobindo’s ideas today, we can even conclude that the true gift of the renaissance was the modern Indian nation.  Despite all its drawbacks and failings, this nation seems to be the best means that we have to preserve our culture and to express our own destiny.  This nation has not only survived the ravages of the partition, but every conceivable threat, both internal and external, its very existence.  But having met and overcome these challenges, it seems to be poised to take our civilization to new heights.  This is not an inconsiderable achievement.  Can India embody the best of its unique cultural heritage and also become a modern nation?  This is the question that we must wait for the future to answer.      

The most important contribution of Sri Aurobindo to the discussion on the Indian renaissance is, as is often the case with his work, in what is yet to be realized.  Sri Aurobindo says that the rise of India is necessary for future of humanity itself.  The third and most difficult task for the Indian renaissance has been the new creation that will come from a unique fusion of ancient Indian spirituality and modernity.  This fusion will be instrumental in spiritualizing. the world and in brining about what many have called a global transformation.  In our present times of the clash of civilizations, such an idea may seem utopian, but the very survival of the planet depends on a hope and belief that something of this sort is not only possible but inevitable.

Faminism In Shakespearean Play "Hamlet'.

Assignment

Paper-1.

Q. Feminism in Shakespearean play ‘Hamlet’’.

In the beginning of Hamlet; audience came to know about King Hamlet’s death through the ghost of King Hamlet. The protagonist – Hamlet: Prince of Denmark is also introduced. Hamlet’s grief is shown. His soliloquies and because of  the marriage of Claudius and Queen Gertrude. The anger of Hamlet towards Gertrude because of her adultery is shown. He also takes the pledge to take revenge after knowing that his father was murdered before the Ghost of King Hamlet.

Hamlet behaves cynically and his anger shown through his madness. Hamlets and Ophelia’s relationship are shown here. Ophelia’s father tries to convince Gertrude and Claudius that Hamlet behaves like mad person because he is in love with Ophelia. Hamlet came to know that Ophelia is puppet of his father’s hand. The famous sentence ‘frailty thy name is woman’ is spoken here. Nunnery scene is take place.  Hamlet argues with Ophelia in serene tone. He told her to become nun. Polonius’ son Laertes went to France to serve the King over there.

 Hamlet presents himself as melancholic character. Audience came to know about the Gertrude and Claudius’ relationship and also about the meanness of Claudius for the throne of Denmark. We are also introduced the King Fourteenbrass.

. The play within play can be seen the part of Hamlet’s trick to confirm the guilt of the Claudius. Hamlet arranges the play to confirm the fault of the Claudius. He asks to play the method of his father’s murder as the part of the theme of the play.  Watching this play, Claudius come to know that Hamlet knows about his crime and to hide his facial expression changed and to repent his sin he went from the site. This confirms the Hamlet’s doubt. Here the famous conflict of Hamlet’s mind is shown: ‘to be or not to be’ when he has the chance to kill his father’s murderer-Claudius. But at that time Claudius was repenting to God for his sin and thoughtful Hamlet could not kill him.

Hamlet spoke with his mother Gertrude about his anger towards her. Feeling some suspicious behind the curtain he just stab the sword and by mistake, he killed the Polonious. This makes Claudius more alert. Claudius sent Hamlet to England with the summons to kill Hamlet as soon as possible.

Ophelia came to know about her father’s death and become mad. She commits suicide. Hamlet comes back as he was attacked by some pirates on the way to England. Knowing that Polonious was killed by Hamlet, Laertes came back to Denmark.  He wants to take revenge so he conspires with Claudius. He becomes the mean for Claudius. They plan to defeat Hamlet in sword fight. Thus with the King Claudius he conspire the duel between him and Hamlet.

Meanwhile Hamlet also comes to know why he was sent to England. And he gave his letter to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and sent them to England.

The duel has taken place. Laertes stabbed Hamlet with poisonous sword. But before it Hamlet kills the Claudius. Claudius always has the backup plan. If Hamlet would win, he made him drink the poisonous drink. Hare the twist is caused. Gertrude died as she drinks the poisonous drink. Final tragedy happened. Fourteenbrass takes over the charge.

We can find two female characters in Hamlet. They are not mentioned in detail though they both are important. They are: Gertrude and Ophelia. Both are highly connected to the hero’s life. And both play critical role in his life. 

Gertrude is one of the most important characters of Hamlet’s life. She is the Queen of Denmark and also the mother of Hamlet. In the beginning we can see the anger and embarrassment of the Hamlet for her early marriage with Claudius. We also find it strange as Claudius says:

“therefore our sometimes sister…now our Queen..

‘th imperial jointress of this warlike states…

have we as ‘twere with a defeated joy…..

………….in equal scale in delight and dole..

Taken to wife…”

That on one side he introduced her as his sometimes sister now becomes the wife …in place of the widow of the King Hamlet. This hurts the Hamlet. And he can’t tolerate that within two months she got married… how could she forgot his father’s recent death.

This shows the nature of Gertrude. By the time passes she marries to his so called brother. Just because she doesn’t want to lose her power, position and all other aristocrat desired comforts. She even doesn’t care for her late husband-neither has she had any feeling for him. At this point we have question if she had any feeling for King Hamlet, when he was alive.

    Another question was that if she was involved with the Claudius in his sin. Or did she know the deed well before it was committed. There is less possibilities of it. There is not much written about it. But when the Ghost appears he told Hamlet that

“That incestuous beast, with witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifs O wicked wits and gifts-- that have the power so to seduce – won to his shameful lust the will of my most seeming- virtuous Queen…”

This shows the very nature of the Queen. She is found of the luxurious things so it is easy for Claudius to seduce her as having soft corner for her. He is lustrous man. For him throne and woman is important. She became the way to achieve it. Secondly, the word ‘most seeming-virtuous man’ puts the question on her character.

 iIt means that Gertrude herself is adulteress and contaminated by Claudius. She would be the almost certainly been involved in Claudius’ plan of murder and therefore she would be played villainess. But if it was so Hamlet mentioned it first while blamed her for her marriage. So it could not be possible in context of her.

When she saw the Hamlet in grief, she said-“Thou know’st ‘tis common…if it be, why seems so particular with thee?” and hamlet replied “Seems madam? Nay, it is… I know not ‘seems’...” this shows that Gertrude believes in showiness and gave importance to practicality. It also informs us that Gertrude loves her son a lot but fails to understand his inner conflict and to feel his sensitivity regarding King hamlet and herself. But in the very next scene we can see her love for Hamlet while she asked him to stay in Denmark. At some extent we come to know that Gertrude was just the mean to fulfil the lustrous desire of man i.e. Claudius.

Gertrude presents herself well through the play. She is solicitous of Hamlet asking him to sit near her to given him a sense of belonging to the new court, and her speech to Laertes upon Ophelia’s death is model of decorum and sensitivity. She is the mother of tragic hero and could not reciprocate the Oedipus of his son having towards her. She also as we can see is keeping aside in King’s life. She failed to become a good wife. She is aware about her fault. She tried to convince the fact with extra care.

Hamlet rails against his mother and even violently seizes her in Act III, she betrays no knowledge of the murder. She admits her lust and sees it as sinful, but this is different from being and accomplice to murder. She thinks Hamlet made and promises she will mot betray him and she does not. We do not know her motives for marring Claudius perhaps she feared for her life and really did not have a choice but she is honest enough to admit that sex had something to do with it. Hamlet is not able to face such a thing honestly. It is interesting that he assumes she had a choice in marring Claudius perhaps he sees her as much more powerful them she really is in the situation.

Their relationship is most significant for a feministic reading since Gertrude’s body is the literal and symbolic ground of all conflicts in the play. Her body and soul are contested by her son, husbands and courtiers.

Hamlet was affected greatly with Oedipus complex i.e. his love for her mother as male child. He was quite embarrassed and annoyed for his mother’s early marriage with his father’s cousin, Claudius. His name itself symbolizes his complex very well. Generally it is said the son chooses the girl whom he can pampered like the father. Here also we can see two fatherly complexes in Hamlet one is quite powerful; towards Gertrude and another is towards Ophelia which is in his subconscious and hurted bitterly when he came to know about her cheat or she became the mean for her father. With the reference he called him ‘fishmonger’.

 According to Fraud’s theorem there are two father images in the male child’s mind; i) the powerful  and good one And ii) powerful and bad one( with reference of having intimate relation with mother). These two images are depicted with two characters King Hamlet and Claudious. This creates the chief conflict in Hamlet’s mind and the tension in the play. The conflict causes the delay of Hamlet’s revenge. As at some extent he believed that there is the fault of Gertrude. His mind questions why she let herself become means to fulfill the lustrous desire of the King. Gurtrude lost herself completely; son and father. Though she could not get enough importance.

 Another Character is Ophelia. She was the beloved of the Hamlet. She is capable enough to be the tragic heroine of the Hamlet. She herself plays the counter part of the Prince Hamlet. Although she had very minor role in the play, it is quite important. She knows the real nature of Hamlet. We come to know about the real self of the Hamlet through her mouth. It also shows the big shock and grief lies deeply inside the Hamlet.

With her brother her bonding is good enough to discuss about the relationship of Hamlet & herself. She overhears the warning given by her brother about the relationship. It shows her trust regarding the relationship. Here we can see the seriousness of female mind-sets regarding their relationship. But both the males concerned with the relationship, never prior to it. Her Electra complex is also hurted though her father.

Her father had exploited her feelings. When Claudius and Gertrude are worried about Hamlet’s madness, Polonious gave the reason  may it be the love towards Ophelia. On the other side he orders her not to have any intimacy with Hamlet inwardly and continue the show of love outwardly. She is always keeping at the distance by Hamlet and Claudius. It is her misfortune that she has not got complete devotion from both.

 She is more sympathetic and reliable character. She also is the better judge of Hamlet’s character. Ophelia interrupts him and is greeted as “nymph”; Hamlet asks her to pray for him but then begins to berate her savagely. The first time he really let his emotions to go in front of someone else.  He demands to know whether she is ‘honest’ as well as ‘fair’, and his demands escalate into his shouting’ “ Get thee to a nunnery”. And his words recall the advice about young man she had heard from her father and brother. Hamlet accusing her that all women making monsters of man. In a classic case of repression and projection , he takes out his anger on her instead of its real object Claudius. “Heavenly powers restore him!” Ophelia prays after he leaves, adding: ”O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown.”

She has to follow what her father and brother had told her. She is nothing but puppet for them.  When her father died by mistake she lost her all senses and turned mad. And she ends her life. At her grave Hamlet cried loudly about his feeling but in vain!!!

In the end we can say that both the female characters are inwardly fighting for her existence in their man’s life. The play shows the place of women in the society of the era i.e. during the time of Queen Elizabeth I. 

Aristotle’s Poetics and his theory about Plots and Shakespearean Plots:

ASSIGNMENT

PAPER-3

Q. Aristotle’s Poetics and his theory about Plots and Shakespearean Plots:

A: According to Aristotle tragedy can be divided into six components or parts. They are:

a)   The spectacle: - Overall visual appearance of stage and actors.

b)  Melody/ Songs: - Chorus was there to add charm and inform about entries of characters and events…

c)   Diction: - Which has to do with the composition of verses, of dialogues.

d)  The characters: - Character shows the moral qualities.

e)   Thoughts: - thoughts show the intellectual qualities.

f)    The Plot (Fable):- The harmonious combination of incidents and action in the story.

Among these components plot is very essential as it collaborates the actions and events which defines the character. The character serves to advance the action of the story. Tragedy is not reflecting the life of a man but the life of a man in action because Aristotle believed that happiness consists in a certain kind of activity rather than in a certain quality of character.

“The way in which the action works itself out, the whole casual chain which leads to the final outcome.”

-      David Daiches

“The harmonious arrangement of incidents”

-      Aristotle

Both the definitions are about the plot. Plot is the soul of the tragedy. The outcome of the tragedy i.e. catharsis depends upon the strong plot construction. Plot means not the incidents itself but the way incidents are presented to the audience. The strongly constructed plot presents the chain of cause-and–effect (actions) in such a way that it leads to the catharsis. There are some criteria which must be followed according to Aristotle.

1.   The plot must be as a ‘whole’ i.e. beginning-middle-end. The play must have strong beginning-middle-end.

The beginning has the start of cause-and-effect chain. In it the emphasize should put on effect, not on the cause.

The middle caused by earlier incidents and itself come the incidents that follow it. It is also calls the climax.

The end should solved or revolve the problem.

Aristotle calls the chain of cause-and-effect, developed from the beginning to the middle the ‘tying up’. In modern terminology it is known as complication.

The end- the chain of cause-and-effect from the middle or climax to the end or resolution is called ‘the unraveling’ by the Aristotle. In modern time it is called ‘dénouement’ (context).

If we see the plot of Oedipus the King we can see that there is the beginning is situated at Thebes and sows that plague is spread in the society. In the middle we come to know that it is just because of Queen marries his own son and in the end the plot revels to the secret that the Oedipus is the son of the Queen of Thebes.

2.   According to Aristotle the plot should not be distributed by other element. The plot must be structure perfect.

It should be flow in a single direction without adding any outer subplots. It should be present as a whole not in parts. The events should be woven so nicely that it gives the feel of oneness, presenting smooth and perfect play.

Any act or subplot should not be presented individually; it should be dependent upon each other.

3.   The play should not be too short to be involved with. It should be qualitative. If the writer lengthens the play than quality of interest must be maintained.

For more acts and incidents, writer should choose the qualitative, universal theme so the viewer or audience can connect themselves with it. A unity in theme should be maintained.

4.   Best plot should have the complexity as it tightens the plot. The chance of sudden enlightenment of the reality (peripeteia) and the turn or sudden change in event (anagnorisis) can only their effect then.

The complexity sudden change enlightenment of reality add charm to the plot and helpful to keep the consistency in the flow of plot.

5.   “Without action there cannot be a tragedy; there may be without character.”

-Aristotle

            He gives importance to the action which articulates the thoughts i.e. plot of the play. Action denotes the idea and theme of the play very clearly. He also believes that character is merely the medium of the action.

6.   He emphasizing action rather than dialogues because he believes that merely speaking of dialogues is not creating the tragedy.

He also emphasizes the peripety and anagnorisis rather than the powerful soliloquies and reading. And that only can be express through the action and character.

7.   The Character is not the destiny. The character is doomed before the birth.

The destiny itself plays the character. Character is merely the medium to express. According to fate the character should behave or live life.

8.   The good plot is important. Without it everything is useless. Action dominates the character without it drama cannot be the drama itself.

Shakespearean Plot:-

A Shakespearean tragedy can be divided into six distinct structural elements.

1.   Exposition

2.   Existing Force

3.   Rising Action

4.   Climax

5.   Falling Action

6.   Conclusion

The Shakespearean play shows a close-inwoven texture of personal thinking with some objective and pre-existent story. Philosophy is entwined with action and event.

1.   Exposition:-

Generally Act-1 is introductory act which shows the exposition. All the main characters are introduced.

The play also begins the primary action, which involves the audience and connects the audience with play.

2.   Existing Force:-

In this stage, play starts to develop the circumstances. Characters are starting to present themselves more openly. Hence the audience is introduced the real character and natures of the characters.

3.   Rising action:-

The word itself suggest that it is the play’s part which drawn the plot to the climax. The circumstances are woven in such a way that it shows actions related to the chief conspiracy.

4.   Climax:-

A breathe taking moment for the audience is here. The play is at the pick. The circumstances are about to unlock the secret, the fate of the leading character face the reality.

5.   Falling Action:-

The leading character has already come to know what the matter is. He informed about where he is mistaken. His suffering, grief and salvation can be expressed here... The catharsis is done here.

6.   Conclusion:-

In conclusion everything is getting normal except the victim of the fate or circumstances. It restores the standards and moral values.  But for that character pays the high cost.

The characters in Shakespearean pays are presenting action, moment and purpose in such a way than it keeps the attention and interest of the audience continuously through the play. But none can realize the irrelevancy of the p [lot. And Shakespeare has somehow stood alone as a solitary figure of irrelevant magnitude.

 Let’s co-relate the plot structure with the Hamlet’s plot. Hamlet is five acts play. In each act we can see the typical Shakespearean plot construction.

In the first act of Hamlet; audience we came to know about King Hamlet’s death through the ghost of King Hamlet. The protagonist – Hamlet: Prince of Denmark is also introduced. Other characters like Queen Gertrude, Horasio, and the platform for upcoming circumstances are in it. We can call it EXPOSITION.

Hamlet’s grief is shown. His soliloquies and the marriage of Claudius and Queen Gertrude prepare the platform for upcoming circumstances. The anger of Hamlet towards Gertrude because of her adultery is shown.The famous sentence ‘frailty thy name is woman’ is spoken here. He also take the pledge to take revenge after knowing that his father was murdered before the Ghost of King Hamlet. This situation shows the style of Shakespeare for tragedy that one sad scene followed by one happy scene.

In the second act the action related to the chief issue is taken place. Hamlet’s anger, Hamlets and Ophelia’s relationship are shown here. Ophelia’s father tries to convince Gertrude and Claudius that Hamlet behaves like mad person because he is in love with Ophelia. Hamlet came to know that Ophelia is puppet of his father’s hand.  Nunnery scene is take place. Polonius’ son Laertes went to France to serve the King over there.

 Hamlet presents himself as melancholic character. Audience came to know about the Gertrude and Claudius’ relationship and also about the meanness of Claudius for the throne of Denmark. We are also introduced the King Fourteenbrass.

In the third act play is at its CLIMAX. The play within play can be seen in this act. Hamlet arranges the play to confirm the fault of the Claudius. He asks to play the method of his father’s murder as the part of the theme of the play.  Watching this lay, Claudius come to know that Hamlet knows about his crime and to hide his facial expression and to repent his sin he went from the site. This confirms the Hamlet’s doubt. Here the famous conflict of Hamlet’s mind is Shown: ‘to be or not to be’ when he has the chance to kill his father’s murderer-Claudius. But at that time Claudius was repenting to God for his sin and thoughtful Hamlet could not kill him.

Hamlet spoke with his mother Gertrude about his anger towards her. Feeling some suspicious behind the curtain he just stab the sword and by mistake, he killed the Polonius. This makes Claudius more alert. Claudius sent Hamlet to England with the summons to kill Hamlet as soon as possible.

In Forth act Ophelia become mad and commits suicide. Hamlet comes back as he was attacked by some pirates on the way to England. Knowing that Polonious was killed by Hamlet, Laertes came back to Denmark.  He wants to take revenge so he conspires with Claudius. He becomes the means for Claudius. They plan to defeat Hamlet in sword fight. Thus with the King Claudius he conspire the duel between him and Hamlet.

Meanwhile Hamlet also come to know why he was sent to England. And he gave his letter to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and sent them to England.

In the fifth act the duel has taken place. Laertes stabbed Hamlet with poisonous sword. But before it Hamlet kills the Claudius. Claudius always has the backup plan. If Hamlet would win, he made him drink the poisonous drink. Hare the twist is caused. Gertrude died as she drink the poisonous drink.

The plot unknots itself here. The dénouement is takes place. Final tragedy happened. Fourteenbrass takes over the charge. The curtain unfolds.

Aristotelian theory of plot construction is of the beginning of literature, while Shakespeare was the dramatist of Elizabethan age. So the characteristics of the era reflected in the dramas. In old Greek plays there is simplicity in it. In Shakespearean plays we can see the complexity. Same way in there is the three dimensional unity of place time and action was there. The playwrights liked to follow it firmly. Aristotle himself favors it.

 Let’s compares the characteristics of plot of both: Aristotle and Shakespeare.

In Greek tragedy there is not any supernatural element appeared. They believed that it should not be there. It should not be presented on the stage. They made their play simple. In Shakespearean plays especially in tragedies the supernatural elements were presented. It also performed on the stage. It shows the renaissance spirit or the spirit of the era that enjoys the supernatural elements.

 In Hamlet also we can see this element. It arouses the feeling of mystery among the audiences. It brings the feeling that there is some element above nature works in the universe. The element rules over the human life and it is able to destroy his ambition, dreams and motifs.

The conflict was not seen in Aristotelian plot, it was there in Shakespearean plot. It shows the conflict lies in the mind of the characters.  It is the essence of the Shakespearean tragedies. It can be either i) outward or ii) inward. In Hamlet the outward conflict takes place between Hamlet and Claudius. The inner conflict takes place in the mind of Hamlet. We are confronted with it through the soliloquies.

Aristotle gave the importance to the action rather than dialogues. In Oedipus the king we can see the action. Through action only the catharsis and feeling of pity and fear aroused.  The mistake of the hero is shown through the misfortune or course of plague. In Hamlet the inner conflict is there in place of mistake. The delay in the revenge cause the death of hero. That conflict is shown with the help of soliloquies. This differs the plot of Shakespearean drama.

Aristotle gave importance to the fate rather than the characters. Means whatever happen to the hero is due to fate. He was doomed by the fate before his birth. Heroic quality is maintained here. We feel pity and sympathy for hero’s sufferings. The Shakespeare's play shows a close inter-woven texture of personal thinking with some objective and pre-existence story. Philosophy is entwined with action and event. Shakespeare’s  philosophy is infinitely variable, not static.

 The tragic heroes of Shakespearean tragedy are built on grand scale. The greatness of a hero in Shakespearean tragedy has two results; i) since the hero is represented as noble and morality great, the effect of the tragedy is never depressing. Or ii) such greatness perishing and getting destroyed fills us with the sense of waste. In Hamlet we can feel both the aspects of the character.

“ A change from ignorance to knowledge” says Aristotle. The sentence is referring the peripeteia and analogy. In Greek plays the character is the same till the end. He is just unaware of the truth.  In Shakespearean tragedy character transform himself during the play. In Hamlet also there is a transformation. In the beginning he is in the state of depression. But through Ophellia’s mouth we have come to know that he had been ideal Renaissance prince-soldier, scholar, courtier etc. And afterwards we can sense his qualities during his converse with Horatio. Thus tragedy helps to understand the very nature of human being. Shakespeare and Greek are successfully done that but in the different way.

Aristotle firmly believed that there should not be any need of any subplot or outward story.  In Oedipus the King we can see the smooth flow of the play. It has not any irrelevancy in it. We can see it as whole.

In Hamlet there is subplot of Polonius- Ophelia and Laertes. Also has the irrelevant scene. As if something is incomplete. The scene when pirates attacked the ship of the Hamlet audience can’t connect it relevantly.

Aristotle put stress on the flow of the play. It should be smooth and interesting. While in Hamlet the flow‘s smoothness and speed is not maintained.

The middle action of Hamlet starts with long scene of Ordinary conversation. The player’s speech whips up the action for a while then falls back. Hamlet’s addresses to the players working up shortly to the scene, from now the speed increases rapidly. But after killing th Polonious Hamlet is now limp. It is his bolt shot, the Queen too; the whole action is limp. The scene drags on like a wounded snake, with repetitions: an intentional climax. It is Shakespeare’s art to create the rising action followed by fall. After a fall there is continuation: he never cuts off his action as precipice.

At the end we can say that the plot is somehow different from the Aristotelian criteria for plot (specially for tragedy) though it reaches the height in the literature where it create a permanent mark and honestly be the Shakespearean tragedy.