Thinkin Activity on Things Fall Apart

 

 

1. What is the historical context of Things Fall Apart?

Ans. Things Fall Apart, the first novel by Chinua Achebe, written in English and published in 1958. Things Fall Apart helped create the Nigerian literary renaissance of the 1960s.

The novel chronicles the life of Okonkwo, the leader of an Igbo community, from the events leading up to his banishment from the community for accidentally killing a clansman, through the seven years of his exile, to his return, and it addresses a particular problem. of emergent Africa — the intrusion in the 1890s of white missionaries and colonial government into tribal Igbo society. Traditionally structured, and peppered with Igbo proverbs, it describes the simultaneous disintegration of its protagonist Okonkwo and of his village. The novel was praised for its intelligent and realistic treatment of tribal beliefs and of psychological disintegration coincident with social unraveling.

 

2. What is the significant of the title?

Ans. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is a novel whose title bears the central massage of the work. The very title ‘Things Fall Apart’ foreshadows the tragedy which takes place at the end of the novel. The novel depicts the tragedy of an individual as well as the tragedy of a society. The protagonist of the novel Okonkwo who was rich and respectable at the beginning of the novel meets a tragic fate at the end of the novel. Achebe portrays how an ambitious, well-known, and respected African Okonkwo’s life falls apart. But when he suffers, his whole tribe also suffers. At the beginning of the novel, the Ibo society was a peaceful, organic society, but at the end of the novel, it falls into pieces. Thus, the novel records not only falling apart of Okonkwo’s life but also his whole society.

3. Write a brief note on the concept of 'Chi' in Things Fall Apart?

Ans. 'Chi' The concept of chi is discussed at various points throughout the novel and is important to our understanding of Okonkwo as a tragic hero. The chi is an individual’s personal god, whose merit is determined by the individual’s good fortune or lack thereof. Along the lines of this interpretation, one can explain Okonkwo’s tragic fate as the result of a problematic chi—a thought that occurs to Okonkwo at several points in the novel. For the clan believes, as the narrator tells us in Chapter 14, a “man could not rise beyond the destiny of his chi.”

 

But there is another understanding of chi that conflicts with this definition. In Chapter 4, the narrator relates, according to an Igbo proverb, that “when a man says yes his chi says yes also.” According to this understanding, individuals will their own destinies. Thus, depending upon our interpretation of chi, Okonkwo seems either more or less responsible for his own tragic death. Okonkwo himself shifts between these poles: when things are going well for him, he perceives himself as master and maker of his own destiny; when things go badly, however, he automatically disavows responsibility and asks why he should be so ill-fated.

 

4. What do you think about the incident of Ikemefuna? How does it help to understand the Ibo culture in more specific ways?

Ans.  Ikemefuna comes to Umuofia early in the book, as settlement for a dispute with a nearby village. Not knowing what else to do with him, Okonkwo lets Ikemefuna live with his first wife. Ikemefuna quickly becomes a well-loved member of the family. He serves as a role model for Okonkwo’s eldest son, Nwoye, and over time he also earns Okonkwo’s respect. But more important than the role he plays in Okonkwo’s family is the effect his death has on the unfolding events of the novel.

 

Igbo, also called Ibo, people living chiefly in southeastern Nigeria who speak Igbo, a language of the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo language family. The Igbo may be grouped into the following main cultural divisions: northern, southern, western, eastern or Cross River, and northeastern. Before European colonization, the Igbo were not united as a single people but lived in autonomous local communities. By the mid-20th century, however, a sense of ethnic identity was strongly developed, and the Igbo-dominated Eastern region of Nigeria tried to unilaterally secede from Nigeria in 1967 as the independent nation of Biafra. By the turn of the 21st century, the Igbo numbered some 20 million.

 

6. How is the difference between the fatherland and the motherland is described in Things Fall Apart?

Ans. The narrative structure of Things Fall Apart follows a cyclical pattern that chronicles Okonkwo’s youth in Umuofia, his seven-year exile in Mbanta, and his eventual return home. Each of the novel’s three parts covers one of these periods of Okonkwo’s life. The novel’s three parts also map onto a gendered narrative structure that follows Okonkwo from fatherland to motherland back to the fatherland. This gendered narrative structure functions in counterpoint with Okonkwo’s ongoing obsession with his own masculinity. Despite every attempt to gain status and become an exemplar of traditional Igbo masculinity, Okonkwo suffers from a feeling of relentless emasculation. Okonkwo’s struggle to achieve recognition repeatedly draws him into conflict with his community, eventually leading both to his own downfall and to that of Umuofia and the nine villages.

 

Part One of Things Fall Apart emphasizes Okonkwo’s coming-of-age and his attempts to distance himself from the disreputable legacy of his father, Unoka. Okonkwo’s tireless efforts and singular drive, along with his local fame as a wrestling champion, go a long way in securing him a place among the titled men of Umuofia. Yet Okonkwo’s zeal frequently leads him astray, as when he executes Ikemefuna, the young boy who became his surrogate son after being surrendered to Umuofia by another village to settle a violent dispute. When the clan elders decide it is time for Ikemefuna’s execution, an elder named Ogbuefi Ezeudu warns Okonkwo that he should “not bear a hand in [Ikemefuna’s] death.”

 

 

La Belle Dame Sans Merci: John Keats

What’s the matter, knight in shining armor, standing alone, looking rather ill? The plant life by the lakeside has shriveled up and the sound of birdsong is absent.

Again, tell me, what’s the matter? You look extremely distressed and sad. The squirrels have gathered their provisions for winter, and we humans have harvested our fields.

Your forehead is pale like a lily and moist with the sweat of a painful fever. The color in your cheeks, once bright and lively as a rose, is fading extremely quickly.

I, the knight, met a woman in the meadows. She was so enchantingly beautiful I assumed she was the child of fairy. She had long hair, she moved so gracefully she seemed to hover over the earth, and she had a mysterious wildness in her eyes.

From flowers, stems, and leaves I wove a crown for her to wear. I also wove her bracelets, and a belt strong with the scent of the flowers I used to make it. Having received my gifts, she looked at me—it was the look of someone falling in love—and she moaned sweetly.

I sat her behind me on my trotting horse, yet that whole day I saw nothing but her—as we trotted along, she would lean forward and around me, singing a mysterious fairy song.

When we stopped, she dug up sweet, nutritious roots for me. She served me wild honey, and a substance so heavenly in taste it reminded me of manna, the food that kept the Israelites alive on their journey out of Egypt. In a strange language that I nevertheless understood, she said, “I truly love you.”

Next she took me to her enchanted cave, where, overwhelmed with emotion, she wept and sighed—something pained her. I shut those wild eyes of hers by kissing her four times in an attempt to soothe her.

Next, she lulled me to sleep, and I fell into a deep dream—it still fills me with sadness and despair to remember it! That was the last dream I ever had, in that cave, which was located on a cold hillside.

In it I saw pale kings, princes, and warriors gathered around me. I saw the color of death in all of their faces. They told me that La Belle Dame sans Merci—The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy—had taken me as her prisoner.

I saw their love-starved, life-starved lips in the dying light. These lips widened as they warned me about the trouble I’d gotten myself into. Then I woke up, and found myself here, on this cold hillside.

So that's the answer to your question—that's why I linger here alone, looking rather unhealthy, even though, as you say, the plant life by the lakeside has shriveled up and the sound of birdsong is absent.

Critical Overview of 'Moby Dick'

 

Although his early adventure novels—typee (1846), Omoo (1847), Reburn(1849), and White Jacket (1850)—brought Herman Melvile a notable amount of popularity and financial success during his lifetime, it was not until the 1920’s and 1930’s, nearly fifty years after his death, that he received universal critical recognition as one of the greatest nineteenth century American authors. Melville took part in the first great period of American literature—the period that included Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, and Henry David Thoreau. For complexity, originality, psychological penetration, breadth, and symbolic richness, Melville achieved his greatest artistic expression with the book he wrote when he was thirty years old, Moby Dick.

Between the time of his birth in New York City and his return there to research and write his masterpiece, Melville had circled the globe of experience—working as a bank messenger, salesman, farmhand, schoolteacher (like his narrator, Ishmael), engineer and surveyor, bowling alley attendant, cabin boy, and whaleman in the Pacific on the Acushnet. His involvement in the mutinous Pacific voyage, combined with accounts of a notorious whale called Mocha Dick that wrought havoc in the 1840’s and 1850’s, certainly influenced the creation of Moby Dick.

The tangled themes of this mighty novel express the artistic genius of a mind that, according to Hawthorne, “could neither believe nor be comfortable in unbelief.” Many of those themes are characteristic of American Romanticism: the “isolated self” and the pain of self-discovery, the insufficiency of conventional practical knowledge in the face of the “power of blackness,” the demoniac center to the world, the confrontation of evil and innocence, the fundamental imperfection of humans, Faustian heroism, the search for the ultimate truth, the inadequacy of human perception. Moby Dick is, moreover, a unique literary form, combining elements of the psychological and picaresque novel, sea story and allegory, the epic of “literal and metaphorical quest,” the satire of social and religious events, the emotional intensity of the lyric genre (in diction and in metaphor), Cervantian romance, Dantesque mysticism, Rabelaisian humor, Shakespearean drama (both tragedy and comedy), journalistic travel book, and scientific treatise on cetology. Melville was inspired by Hawthorne’s example to give his story the unifying quality of a moral parable, although his own particular genius refused to allow that parable an unequivocal, single rendering.

In style and theme, Melville also was influenced by Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Dante, Miguel de Cervantes, Robert Burton, Sir Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Browne, and vastly miscellaneous reading in the New York Public Library (as witnessed by the two “Etymologies” and the marvelous “Extracts” that precede the text itself, items from the writer’s notes and files that he could not bear to discard). It was because they did not know how to respond to its complexities of form and style that the book was “broiled in hell fire” by contemporary readers and critics. Even today, the rich mixture of its verbal texture—an almost euphuistic flamboyance balanced by dry, analytical expository prose—requires a correspondingly unique sensitivity on the part of the reader. The most remarkable thing about the plot is that Moby Dick does not appear physically until after five hundred pages and is not even mentioned by name until nearly two hundred pages into the novel.

Whether it be the knowledge of reality, an embodiment of the primitive forces of nature, the deep subconscious energies of humanity, fate or destiny inevitably victorious over illusory free will, or simply the unknown in experience, it is what Moby Dick stands for that occupies the narrator’s emphasis and the reader’s attention through the greater part of the novel. In many ways, the great white whale may be compared to Spenser’s “blatant beast” who, in The Faerie Queene(1590-1596), also represents the indeterminable elusive quarry and also escapes at the end to continue haunting the world.

Moby Dick is often considered to be the American epic. The novel is replete with the elements characteristic of that genre: the piling up of classical, biblical, historical allusions to provide innumerable parallels and tangents that have the effect of universalizing the scope of action; the narrator’s strong sense of the fatefulness of the events he recounts and his corresponding awareness of his own singular importance as the narrator of momentous—otherwise unrecorded—events; Queequeg as Ishmael’s “heroic companion,” the folk flavor provided by countless proverbial statements; the leisurely pace of the narrative with its frequent digressions and parentheses; the epic confrontation of life and death on a suitably grand stage (the sea) with its consequences for the human city (the Pequod); the employment of microcosms to explicate the whole (for example, the painting in the Spouter Inn, the Nantucket pulpit, the crow’s nest); epithetical characterization; a cyclic notion of time and events; an epic race of heroes (the Nantucket whalers with their biblical and exotic names); the mystical power of objects (Ahab’s chair, the gold coin, or the Pequod itself); the alienated, sulking hero (Ahab); and the use of lists to enhance the impression of an all-inclusive compass. Finally, Moby Dick shares the usually didactic purpose of a folk epic; on one level, its purpose is to teach the reader about whales; on another level, it is to inspire the reader to become an epic hero.

All this richness of purpose and presentation is somehow made enticing by Melville’s masterly invention of his narrator. Ishmael immediately establishes a comfortable rapport with the reader in the unforgettable opening lines of the novel. He is both the objective observer and a participant in the events observed and recounted, both spectator and narrator. Yet he is much more than the conventional wanderer/witness. As a schoolmaster and sometime voyager, he combines his intellectual knowledge with firsthand experience to make him an informed observer and a convincing, moving reporter. Simply by surviving, he transcends the Byronic heroism of Ahab, as the wholesome overcoming the sinister.

Tughlaq

 

In the mid-’60s, Girish Karnad was a 22 year-old playwright in search of a subject. He had just completed writing about the whim of a king (Yayati) when he came upon the statement of a fellow Kannada litterateur’s dissing existing Kannada plays as costume drama. Karnad decided to rise to the challenge. His ‘Tughlaq’ is a theatrical representation strong in rhetoric of the 14th-century king who destabilised his own kingdom; marched his people from the north (Delhi) to the west (Daulatabad) to set up a new capital and marched them back; went on a killing spree; struck coins in one metal and then another – all in the name of good governance. Watching a powerful man crack up, whenever it occurs, is a bad time in history. It’s great for art though.

Tughlaq was first staged in Urdu in 1966 as part of a National School of Drama student production directed by actor Om Shivpuri, then a student. Its more famous outing was Ebrahim Alkazi’s grand set-piece at the Purana Qila, Delhi, in 1972; veteran actor Manohar Singh played the lead. A revival of the play in Delhi this weekend comes at an interesting point when books are questioning older books about dead rulers with bad press -- such as Aurangzeb – and the appropriate way to look at figures of history.

So, was Muhummad bin Tughlaq mad or brilliant? Should one laugh at him or listen to him? Was he a visionary or an insecure politician? Were his projects an expression of madness or driven by political calculation? The answers to these questions, says Karnad, may perhaps be set aside for the most important question -- is the play still contemporary or not.Home truths

“Written in the ’60s, everyone latched on to UR Ananthamurthy’s comment of it being a critique of Nehruvian socialism,” says the actor-playwright. “The point about a play is that it cannot simply be about its own time. Tughlaq is not just about Nehru. There are lines in the play when two guards talk to each other and one of them says ‘Oh, this is such a strong fort!’ The other guard doesn’t agree. He says ‘This fort will crumble due its inner weaknesses.’ An 80s’ audience watching it, interpreted it as the aftermath to Indira Gandhi’s assassination… Every audience interprets a play according to his own sense of reality. The question is whether it will connect it to Modi….”

When curtains go up

K Madavane, the director of Tughlaq that will be staged this weekend, seems to have taken forward Karnad’s aesthetics in the way he has developed the play visually. “K Madavane is a meticulous planner. The throne is not a static piece of furniture, its movement to indicate a shift of capital,” says Veena Soorma of Shri Ram Centre of Performing Arts.

The stage is bare except for a huge wooden throne atop a pyramid whose base is made up of stairs. Tughlaq climbs these stairs to issue his orders; his minions positioned at various levels on the staircase fight it out for his attention. The courtier (Najeeb), who is all hot air, grand postures and bad advice, is the one who has the king’s ears. Those who are temperate don’t stand a chance. Tughlaq’s subjects also make hay feeding into his fickle impulses to be seen as inclusive.

One of his Muslim subjects, for example, takes on the identity of a Brahmin to benefit from the king’s generosity to his Hindu subjects. The Daulatabad move, says Sandeep Singh, the Shri Ram Centre repertory chief, was, in fact guided by the motive that Daulatabad [in Maharashtra] was a centre for his Hindu subjects. “And the coming of his Muslim majority population from Delhi would make it a place of religious harmony…But it was also to secure his capital from Mongol invasion,” he adds. “Tughlaq got the people packing and everyone hated the idea.”

There were three things that were fighting for Tughlaq’s soul, says Singh. He quotes from the play to make his point: “Khuda ki azmaat (Allah’s greatness), riyaya ki bhalayi ka khwaab(the dream for the good of the people), aur zaati khwaishey (my personal desires) – jab teeno main kashmakash ho rahi ho toh mujhey soney ka waqt kanhan hai…”

Veteran actor Ayaz Khan who is playing Tughlaq for the sixth time in his career, says the character is open to various readings. Tughlaq’s mistakes, he says, “unlike today’s leaders, was not for power. He thought he was building a new world. He was rash and driven by idealism. Even if he did badly, he was a brilliant failure. To me, he is a positive character.”

She walks in Beauty

 

She Walks in Beauty is an eighteen line poem written in 1814 and published in 1815. This poem is not a love poem, but a celebration of a woman's beauty. The speaker never says he is in love with the lady, but he thinks she is really beautifu

In this poem, the speaker is enlisting different qualities of his beloved, viz. aspect, eye, face, grace, cheek, brow, smiles, mind, thoughts and love. This technique of enlisting is known as blazon. By using blazon, he is giving a verse-compliment to his beloved. Likewise, giving a verse compliment to a lady is a cavalier tradition which the poet has borrowed from romanticism. Using the tradition, both from cavalier poetry and neo-classical poetry, he defines beauty. For Lord Byron, beauty is both inner beauty and outer beauty. Mind at peace, pure thoughts and innocent love emphasize the mental, psychological or inner beauty. Likewise, aspects like eye, face, grace, cheek and smiles represent the outer or physical beauty. For Byron, both inner and outer qualities constitute the beauty. Thus, he defines beauty in totality.The poem continues the tradition of neo-classical tradition of form in poetry. Closed form and use of iamb are its examples. In the first sestet of the poem, the speaker compares his beloved with the night of cloudless climate and starry skies. This simile brightens the combination of the best aspect of the day and light. Bright and dark color have been harmoniously combined in her eyes and aspect to make her pleasant in appearance. Highlighting her mellowed appearance, he inversely compares her with the day, which lacks that beauty. The second stanza carries on contrasting between light and dark, day and night, to describe her beauty. The third stanza concludes that she's not just beautiful, she's "good" and "innocent," too.

The speaker has forgotten everything in the beauty of this lady. The speaker admires the effortless harmony of a woman's beauty, and tells us that it's all about the perfect balance of light and dark in her whole face and figure. He never says he's in love with her, but the reader can guess that he's attracted to her — after all, he can't stop talking about her hair, her eyes, her cheeks. By the end of the poem, it seems like the speaker is protesting a little too much. By insisting repeatedly that the lady is pure and that her "love is innocent," it is hard not to suspect that he perhaps wishes that weren't the case.

As we observe the description of the lady we realize the inclusive definition of beauty in the poem. For Byron, beauty is both physical and spiritual. Eye, face, cheek, brow, and smiles represent the physical beauty whereas mind, heart and thought to represent the spiritual beauty.

The poem is divided into three stanzas of six lines each, with an ABABAB rhyme scheme, in iambic tetrameter with the Pyrrhic form that bring variation. The contrast between night and day, and dark and light, is the image that sets up the whole poem. If we observe the form of this poem, neo-classical tradition has been continued. It shows that the neoclassical tradition has not completely lost during romanticism. It has somehow been continued, especially by Lord Byron.

Among the cavalier poets, there was the tradition of giving a verse compliment to a lady. The cavalier poets used to forget everything seeing the beauty of their beloved. The same tradition of giving a verse compliment to a lady is continued by Lord Byron. The subject matter of this poem is borrowed from cavalier poetry and format from the neoclassical poetry.  It is said that the poem is inspired by actual events in Byron’s life when he met a beautiful woman at a ball. She was his cousin by marriage. But some other critics claim that the beautiful lady might be his half-sister Augusta. Some consider this poem as the tribute to the beauty of the art.

The technique of enjambment has been used in this poem. In this technique, the first statement is presented without any punctuation marks and is followed by another line to clarify the aforementioned statement. The reinforcement of the imagery of light and dark in the poem justifies the good and bad aspects of any work of art, but still it is beautiful. Art is represented as the combination of both qualities of life. Art has contrasting parts, yet the whole art is beautiful and meaningful. In terms of the lady, she is inwardly beautiful and outwardly too, she is charming, but she may have some follies which are shadowed by her soft nature and innocent face. Byron accepts the concept of beauty as a whole that consists of both bright and dark aspects of life.

Ghashiram Kotwal

 

Protagonist or the central character is Ghashiram, a poor Brahmin from Kanauj who had came to Pune for better life. But here he faces humiliations. The city was ruled by Nana who was full of lust. He was married seven times and still continue.

Here Ghashiram works at bavannkhani, a red light area with Gulabi, who entertains Nana. Ghashiram meets Nana here. Nana  joines in dance with Gulabi and hurts his ankle and Ghashiram saves him by offering his back to rest his injured leg. Nana gives necklace in reward. But servants of Gulabi snatches away it and throws him out.

Another time in Dakshina ceremony Ghashiram tries to take alms but other Brahmins throws him out saying that he had theft a purse. He was innocence but punished.

Nobody was ready to accept him a Brahmin. People were saying, where is your shaved head? Where is your holy thread? Where is your pios look? Where is your holy book?

These kind of humiliations makes him from good person to evil man. He was angry for the society of hatred, jealousy, immorality, lust, adultery etc. and decided to take revenge of his insults and wants to make the city moral.

It is turning point of the play. Ghashiram comes to know that Nana is womaniser and can do anything for getting woman. So he uses his own daughter Lalita Gauri as a bait. In a religious ceremony Nana sees Gauri and goes mad for her. Ghashiram knows this and deals with Nana that he will give his daughter but he wants to become Kotwal(police) of Pune. Nana agreed and Ghashiram becomes Kotwal of Pune.

Ghashiram does his job sincerely and gives orders like no whoring without permit, no cremation without permit, eat with a lower caste is a crime. These type of rules makes people angry. Ghashiram believes he had bring peace in the city. Now he had power and he thought he will find husband for his daughter and will arrange wedding. But he soon came to know about his daughter's death because she was pregnant by Nana and so he was interested no more and was going to another marriage. Ghashiram shatters. He repents but what can he do now?

The play goes to end when some Brahmins comes to Pune. They were hungry and eat mangoes from the garden without asking Ghashiram. Ghashiram gives order of lock them into jail, but it was very small and twenty two Brahmins dies because of suffocation.

People complaints to Peshwa. Peshwa meets Nana and Nana gives sentence to death for Ghashiram. Ghashiram before dying repents which shows how he was feeling guilty. He says, "I danced on your chests but I wasted the life of my little daughter. I should be punished for the death of my daughter. Beat me. Heat me. Cut off my hands and feet. Crack my skull. Come on. Look! I'm here. Oh, that's good. Very good"

Here tragedy of Ghashiram ends. Themes of the play is revenge, lust for power, politics, search for identity, etc. It follows the rules of Aristotelian tragedy. In this play we have tragic hero who is not thoroughly bad or fully good. He has hamartia like ambition of power, revenge. His position was high in society so his fall affects whole city of Pune.

Othello

 

The play opens in the powerful city-state of Venice, famous as a center of trade and banking and for its military might. It's early in the morning, and two men રો Rodrigo, a young gentleman and Senator Brabantio's daughter Desdemona's ex-suitor, and Etho, who claims to have passed through Othello for a promotion છે are outside Senator Brabantio's house. To tell him the news of his daughter's partnership with Othello, Moore.

After sharing the news of the secret marriage in words he considered to be of pride, the treacherous and insolent ego quickly left Rodrigo to confirm the story. Demonstrating feelings of friendship and concern, Igo then meets up with Othello and tells him about Brabantio's reaction. Brabantio, Othello and Desdemona appeared before the Duke of Venice. However, Brabantio accused Othello of tricking his daughter into sorcery, Othello explains that he won by telling Desdemona about his adventures, and Desdemona, who was called to testify, assured the senators that she had freely accompanied Othello. And married her for love.

The Duke appoints Othello as General of the Defense Forces against the Turks, and he must immediately depart for Cyprus. Requests permission to go to Cyprus with Othello of Desdemo. With the Duke's permission, Othello arranges for Desdemona to follow him on another ship with Igo, whom he mistakenly believes is a trusted friend, and Igo's wife, Emilia. Iago assured Rodrigo that Desdemona would soon be fed up with Othello and that he should follow Cyprus. On his own, Igo decides to use Casio, the man he deeply respects and whom he himself promoted as a tool to destroy Othello.

In Cyprus, Igo conspired against Othello, sowing seeds of doubt about Desdemona's loyalty and trapping Cassio as her lover. Using Rodrigo, Igo arranges a fight that eventually results in the demolition of Casio. It is believed that she is more likely to be reinstated if Desdemona has filed a case with her husband, Casio, while arranging a private meeting with Desdemona, who has promised to make a promise on behalf of Othello until a settlement is reached with Othello.

As Casio emerges, Ego and Othello appear. Othello noted Casio's quick departure, and Igo quickly jumped at the chance to point out that Casio seems to be trying to avoid Moore. Desdemo's urgency and enthusiasm begin to plead with Cassio to pardon Othello, as he had promised, and Othello will not stop her plea until he agrees, immersed in other thoughts. At the moment Desdemona and Emilia emerge, however, Igo begins to sow the seeds of doubt and suspicion in Othello's mind.

Othello, surrounded by uncertainty and uneasiness, later demands Igo that Desdemona be unfaithful. Then, using Desdemo's innocently dripping handkerchief, Igo reassures Othello that she is unfaithful, and he communicates with the innocent Cassio who hardens Moore's heart against his wife and his believing lover. Othello, betrayed by his wife and backed by anger and grief, rushes to the steps and agrees with Iago that he will kill Othello Desdemona, and Iago will dispose of Casio.

Desidemona, true to his word for Casio, continues to advocate on his behalf, inadvertently confirming his infidelity to Othello. He accuses her of being wrong, and Desdemona, not knowing what she did to commit the crime, can only assure him that she loves him.

In the meantime, this flawless Rodrigo has given up all hope for Desdemona, but Iago urges him to kill Cassio and revive his hopes. Late at night, they attack Casio on the street, but it is Casio who injured Rodrigo. Iago runs out and stabs Kasio in the leg. Othello, hearing Cassio crying for help, believes that half of the revenge is over and he is in a hurry to fulfill his promise.

Othello is in Desdemo's bed when he enters. She is told to pray the final prayer because she does not want to kill her soul. Knowing that she planned to kill him, Desdemona protested the innocence of having done anything wrong to him. Knowing she didn’t trust him, she begged him to let her live a little longer, but she smiled at him with a pillow.

Emilia, Desdemo's servant and Iago's wife, after discovering this discrepancy, raises the alarm and declares Iago to lie to Montano and Gretia. He explains how Desdemona's handkerchief came into Casio's possession, and when he refused to remain silent, Iago stabbed him. Wounded Casio confirms Emilia's story. The last soldier, Othello, is in his honor. Knowing this was the end, he "loved one who was not sensible but very well loved." He then stabs himself and falls on the bed next to his wife, where he dies.

Far From The Madding Crowd

 

At the beginning of the novel, Bathsheba Everdene is a beautiful young woman without a fortune. She meets Gabriel Oak, a young farmer, and saves his life one evening. He asks her to marry him, but she refuses because she does not love him. Upon inheriting her uncle's prosperous farm she moves away to the town of Weatherbury.

A disaster befalls Gabriel's farm and he loses his sheep; he is forced to give up farming. He goes looking for work, and in his travels finds himself in Weatherbury. After rescuing a local farm from fire he asks the mistress if she needs a shepherd. It is Bathsheba, and she hires him. As Bathsheba learns to manage her farm she becomes acquainted with her neighbor, Mr. Boldwood, and on a whim sends him a valentine with the words "Marry me." Boldwood becomes obsessed with her and becomes her second suitor. Rich and handsome, he has been sought after by many women. Bathsheba refuses him because she does not love him, but she then agrees to reconsider her decision.

That night, Bathsheba meets a handsome soldier, Sergeant Troy. Unbeknownst to Bathsheba, he has recently impregnated a local girl, Fanny Robin, and almost married her. Troy falls in love with Bathsheba, enraging Boldwood. Bathsheba travels to Bath to warn Troy of Boldwood's anger, and while she is there, Troy convinces her to marry him. Gabriel has remained her friend throughout and does not approve of the marriage. A few weeks after his marriage to Bathsheba, Troy sees Fanny, poor and sick; she later dies giving birth to her child. Bathsheba discovers that Troy is the father. Grief-stricken at Fanny's death and riddled with shame, Troy runs away and is thought to have drowned.
With Troy supposedly dead, Boldwood becomes more and more emphatic about Bathsheba marrying him. Troy sees Bathsheba at a fair and decides to return to her. Boldwood holds a Christmas, to which he invites Bathsheba and again proposes marriage; just after she has agreed, Troy arrives to claim her. Bathsheba screams, and Boldwood shoots Troy dead. He is sentenced to life in prison. A few months later, Bathsheba marries Gabriel, now a prosperous bailiff. 

The Hairy Ape

The firemen, workers who shovel coal into the engine of a Transatlantic Ocean Liner, sit in the forecastle of the ship drinking and carrying on with each other. They are an hour out of New York City and have seven more days aboard ship. The men are burly and muscular. Yank, the fiercest looking of the men, sits in the foreground quietly. Whenever Yank speaks the men immediately hush. Yank asks for a beer and the men immediately give one to him. As Yank and the men drink, Yank remains in control as the leader of the group. Yank and the men joke about thinking as they drink. Yank, in a joke repeated during the play, tells the men to be quiet because he is trying to "tink." The men mockingly repeat after him, "think" and then erupt into a chorus of "Drink, don't think!" Cutting through the general mayhem, a drunken tenor sings a tune about his lass at home. Talk of home outside the ocean liner infuriates Yank and he tells the tenor to be quiet. Long, quite drunk, stands up and makes a Marxist speech, preaching to the men that if the ship is home, their home is hell and the Upper Class put them there. Yank tells him to join the Salvation Army and get a soapbox. Paddy, a wise, older fireman tells the men that life on an Ocean Liner is hell by comparison to his life on a Clipper Ship. Paddy reminisces about the freedom he enjoyed, the purpose he had and skill for which he was valued. Yank tells Paddy that he is dead, "living in the past of dreams" and glorifies his own job as the strength of the ship's speed and force.

Mildred and her Aunt lounge on the promenade deck of the Ocean Liner. Mildred and her Aunt discuss Mildred's need to do service for the poor. Mildred worked with the poor in Manhattan's Lower East Side and is currently on her way to do more service projects in Europe. Mildred's Aunt characterizes Mildred's service as "slumming" and does not understand why she has to do it internationally. Mildred's Aunt tells Mildred that her service work just makes the poor feel poorer. Mildred is currently waiting for the second engineer to take her down into the stokehole. Mildred told a lie that her father, the president of Nazareth Steel, has given her permission. When he arrives, the second Engineer escorts Mildred, clad in a white dress she refused to change out of, down into the stokehole.

Yank and the men are hard at work shoveling coal in the noisy stokehole at the opening of Scene Three. Yank leads the men at work. The men take a break and an anonymous whistle-blower overhead in the darkness commands the men to keep working. In a rage, Yank screams up at the whistle-blower. Yank suddenly realizes that the men have stopped working. Still fuming, Yank turns to face Mildred. At the sight of Yank, Mildred whimpers for the men to take her away from the filthy beast and faints into the arms of the engineers
The men have again gathered in the stokehold in Scene Four. They replay and rehash the Mildred scene and mock Yank, the "filthy beast." Paddy tells Yank Mildred looked at him like he was a big "hairy ape." Infuriated, Yank lunges toward the door to find Mildred, but is restrained by the other Firemen.

Yank and Long have traveled to 5th Avenue in New York City in Scene Five. Long means to show Yank that all upper class people are like Mildred. Yank tries to attract attention to himself by bumping into people and accosting a young woman, but receives no response but "I beg your pardon." Finally, Yank is arrested because he makes a Gentleman miss his bus. Yank is imprisoned on Blackwell's Island and converses with the other prisoners in Scene Six. The men tell him that if he wants to get even with Mildred and her father's company he should join the Wobblies or the Industrial Workers of the World. Yank realizes that Mildred's father built both the physical and metaphorical cage he is trapped in. In a fury, Yank actually bends the bars of his cell, but is restrained by the guards.

Yank visits the local I.W.W. in Scene Seven, but is rejected because the Secretary thinks he is a governmental spy. Yank's radicalism, willingness to blow things up and preoccupation with "belonging" make them suspicious of him. Yank is thrown out on the street. Yank spends the night at the Battery and the next morning visits the Monkey House at the Zoo. In Scene Eight, Yank attempts to befriend the ape. He tells the ape that they are alike—both caged and taunted. Yank believes he and the ape belong to the same club and calls him brother. Yank releases the gorilla from his cage and approaches the ape to shake his hand. The gorilla springs on Yank, crushes Yank with his massive arms and then tosses Yank into his cage. Yank dies in the gorilla's cage.

The Bluest Eye

 

Nine-year-old Claudia and ten-year-old Frieda MacTeer live in Lorain, Ohio, with their parents. It is the end of the Great Depression, and the girls’ parents are more concerned with making ends meet than with lavishing attention upon their daughters, but there is an undercurrent of love and stability in their home. The MacTeers take in a boarder, Henry Washington, and also a young girl named Pecola. Pecola’s father has tried to burn down his family’s house, and Claudia and Frieda feel sorry for her. Pecola loves Shirley Temple, believing that whiteness is beautiful and that she is ugly.

Pecola moves back in with her family, and her life is difficult. Her father drinks, her mother is distant, and the two of them often beat one another. Her brother, Sammy, frequently runs away. Pecola believes that if she had blue eyes, she would be loved and her life would be transformed. Meanwhile, she continually receives confirmation of her own sense of ugliness—the grocer looks right through her when she buys candy, boys make fun of her, and a light-skinned girl, Maureen, who temporarily befriends her makes fun of her too. She is wrongly blamed for killing a boy’s cat and is called a “nasty little black bitch” by his mother.

We learn that Pecola’s parents have both had difficult lives. Pauline, her mother, has a lame foot and has always felt isolated. She loses herself in movies, which reaffirm her belief that she is ugly and that romantic love is reserved for the beautiful. She encourages her husband’s violent behavior in order to reinforce her own role as a martyr. She feels most alive when she is at work, cleaning a white woman’s home. She loves this home and despises her own. Cholly, Pecola’s father, was abandoned by his parents and raised by his great aunt, who died when he was a young teenager. He was humiliated by two white men who found him having sex for the first time and made him continue while they watched. He ran away to find his father but was rebuffed by him. By the time he met Pauline, he was a wild and rootless man. He feels trapped in his marriage and has lost interest in life.

Cholly returns home one day and finds Pecola washing dishes. With mixed motives of tenderness and hatred that are fueled by guilt, he rapes her. When Pecola’s mother finds her unconscious on the floor, she disbelieves Pecola’s story and beats her. Pecola goes to Soaphead Church, a sham mystic, and asks him for blue eyes. Instead of helping her, he uses her to kill a dog he dislikes.

Claudia and Frieda find out that Pecola has been impregnated by her father, and unlike the rest of the neighborhood, they want the baby to live. They sacrifice the money they have been saving for a bicycle and plant marigold seeds. They believe that if the flowers live, so will Pecola’s baby. The flowers refuse to bloom, and Pecola’s baby dies when it is born prematurely. Cholly, who rapes Pecola a second time and then runs away, dies in a workhouse. Pecola goes mad, believing that her cherished wish has been fulfilled and that she has the bluest eyes.

Heart of darkness

 

Heart of darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad and it was published in 1899. The main theme of the novella is colonialism. The character of Kurtz mainly remains in the center.
     The narrator of the novella is Marlow. Who tells the whole story.  It criticizes the so-called idea of civilization.  For that writer has used the symbols of the river Thames and Congo.
       It seems that they are so civilized but it is not so,  as we have seen in the novel that how cruel and cunning Kurtz is.  In the end, we can see the situation becomes that much worst that he couldn't get out from the "station." The last words of Kurtz suggest a deep meaning..." The Horror,  The Horror!

Heart of Darkness tells a story within a story. The novel begins with a group of passengers aboard a boat floating on the River Thames. One of them, Charlie Marlowe, has an experience with his fellow seafarers, which happened together on another river-the Congo River in Africa. Marlowe's story begins with what he calls a "secular city" somewhere in Europe. There the "company" - an anonymous organization operating a colonial enterprise in the Belgian Congo - would make him captain of the river steamer. He is optimistic about what Africa will get.

But his expectations are rapidly rising. From the moment he arrived, he was exposed to the evils of imperialism, witnessing the violence that falls on the African people he exploits. As he moves on, he begins to hear about a man named Kurtz - a colonial agent who doesn't match his ability to get ivory from the interior of the room. Kurtz is rumored to have fallen ill (and perhaps even mad), thus putting Congo's entire venture in the company at risk.

Marlowe is ordered on his steamer and allowed to enjoy it by a crew of Europeans and Africans, after which Conrad brutally called the re-experiments "cannibals." As he enters the jungle, it becomes clear that the people around him are affecting him mentally: his journey not only in the geographical "heart of darkness", but in his own mental interior - and perhaps the dark psyche of Western culture. Also in the interior. Good.

After encountering several obstacles along the way, Marlowe's steamer finally takes him to Kurtz. Kurtz has taken over the reins of a tribe of natives, who now employ him to raid the surrounding areas. The man is clearly ill, physically and mentally. Marlowe has threatened to go with him, so Kurtz is going to run his "plenty of plans." Returning to the way the steamer arrived, Marlowa's crew previously fired on a group of indigenous people under Kurtz's influence, including the queen-figure described by Conrad with a great deal of eroticism and eccentricity.

Kurtz died on a backup trip to the river, but it wasn't long before he revealed to Marlowe a horrible glimpse of human evil. “This horror! Horror! ”He tells Merlo before he dies. Marlowe almost dies, but he brings her back to the cemetery town. He is disgusted with the petty calamities of Western culture that everyone around him feels. When he heals, he is visited by various characters from Kurtz's pre-life - the life he led before finding his dark interior in Africa.

A year after returning to Europe, Marlowe visits Kurtz's partner. She is represented - as there are many female characters in Hart Df Darkness - a naive refuge from the horrors of the world, a state that Marlowe hopes to maintain. When he asks about Kurtz's final words, Marlowe lies: "Your name," she said. That’s where Marlowe’s story ends. The Heart of Darkness itself ends up as the narrator, one of Marlowe's audience, gathering a mass of brooding clouds on the horizon, which he feels is the "heart of abundant darkness."

 

Paper No.13, The New literatures , topic- critical analysis the White Ti...

Da Vinci code group task

 

Da Vinci code group task from SanjayJogadiya

Thinking Activity: Testing and Evaluation

 

Dimension of Difference

Content: timing, primary purpose

Assessment: Formative ongoing,

to improve learning.

Evaluation: Summative: final,

to gauge quality.

Orientation: focus of measurement

Assessment: Process-oriented:

how learning is going.

Evaluation: Product-oriented:

 what’s been learned.

Findings: uses thereof

Assessment: Diagnostic:

 identify areas for improvement

Evaluation: Judgmental:

arrive at an overall grade/score

 

 

 

2) Reliability

Reliability is one of the most important components of test quality. It has to do with relevance, or fertility, or the test taker’s performance on the test. If a test receives inconsistent scores, it may be unethical to take any significant action based on that test. There are several methods for calculating the reliability of a test, including test-reassessment reliability, the reliability of parallel forms, decision consistency, internal consistency, and interrelation reliability. For many criterion-related tests, the relevance of the decision is often the right choice.

 

3)What is Validity and Reliability? 

Validity pertains to the connection between the purpose of the research and which data the researcher chooses to quantify that purpose. 

Reliability, on the other hand, is not at all concerned with intent, instead asking whether the test used to collect data produces accurate results. In this context, accuracy is defined by consistency whether the results could be replicated.

 

 

4) Difference between assessment and evaluation?

 

 

 

5)How do you define good Assessment?

 

Assessments refer to "the various methods that teachers study for academic readiness, learning progress, and students' acquisition, evaluation, measurement, and documentation of skills." Simply put, assessment is how instructors and teachers evaluate whether students have learned the material taught. Assessments can range from a pop quiz to a final exam.

Thinking Activity: Harry Potter: Worksheets

Click hear to see Webquest

1)      Feminist reading of Harmione’s character in Harry Potter: How do the character portrayal of Harmione and other female characters support feminist discourse?

 

Ans : Harmione as courageous and strong character , an integral part of ' The trio ' . Hermione's greatest strength is a vast intellect combined with her magical ability. She portrayed as an emotional character , Harry not means it is boycentric narration here. Sometimes Hermione self- conscious about physical appearance , that can be seen as feminist reading. That women cares for it much not men. She also feel jealous when Ron dating anyone.

Sometimes common patriarchal gender roles have been reversed and Hermione is given the power to take control of the situation, while harry just follows her. McGonagall holds powerful position in Hogwarts against professor . Tom Riddle uses Ginny for power , Rowling criticising the immorality of society where men feel free to victimize women. nowadays fight against patriarchy in real world for own identities and empowerment.

 

 

 2)  Discourse on the purity of Blood and Harry Potter: How do the novels play with the thesis of pure blood (Master Race) giving an anti-thesis by belonging protagonists to half-blood / Mud-blood? What sort of synthesis is sought in this discourse in Harry Potter series?

 

Ans: Pure blood for Wizards and Witches who have no muggle blood or muggle born. They are supremacists , weasly , potter and lang bottoms are old pure blood families.

Half- blood for those Wizards and Witches who have magical and muggle ancestors in their family trees.Half- blood inferior to pure blood.The malfoy family , Voldemort and Severus Snape belongs it. Harry himself is a Half- blood , his father married to muggle born Lily.

Muggle born is the term applied to those whose parents were muggles. Malfoy used the term mudblood to insult Hermione.

 (3) Confronting reality by reading fantasy: How does reading Harry Potter make us confront the reality of our everyday existence?

 

 

Ans: Fantasy stories are commonly used to represent a particular reality that is present and visible in the society.

Harry 's frustration, desires and loneliness are based on emotions and feelings that is very typical for real people to experience.

Social moral issues such as greed , power, fame and superiority became one of the dark theme also present in current society. Discriminatioin Gryffindor , Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw  and Slytherin ,in school house produces that also in our society and culture.

 

4)      Self-Help culture and Harry Potter: How does it stand by an argument that Self-Help Culture serves as a tool of social control: it sooths political unrest . . . one blames oneself for not getting better off is society and remains in one's own pursuit of self-invention, blaming oneself for the failure rather than the systems?

 

Ans : From this series , we are able to recognize ourself in that character and understand the struggle , thus might have better understanding our own.

From Harry 's character sense of deciding own Fate. Some relationship, friends and siblings very important in life.

Feelings of hopeless , lost friends, life and love , felt triumph and loss , this reading make us wiser and disillusioned with the world. Characters gave us our own experience and inspire hope when we are struggling with our own experience.

5. The discourse of Power and Politics in Harry Potter

 

Ans : Harry Potter very deeply making statement on the power and politics. Foucault's power and knowledge. knowledge is always an exercise of power and power always a function of knowledge and knowledge is created by those who are in power position. In Harry Potter the ministry of Magic which has power and rules over the Hogwarts school. Prof. Dolores Umbridge declares theoretical education rather than practical. Voldemort and his death eaters has ultimate power and practices on the mudbloods and Muggles. Role of ministry of magic, considered as the power, ministers like Dolores Umbridge who seeks the power make their own rules. Author very well observed the discourse of power and apply in the novel.

 

(6) Children’s Literature and Harry Potter

 

Ans: Harry potter was written as children literature because it deals with fantasy world, mystery story, school story, adventure novel, humorous story, and epic. after four books it doesn’t remain as a children’s literature. Along with children’s literature It contain some aspect of adolescent literature as well. It took children to the reality that if you know magic then also you can’t bring the death ones back. After fifth and sixth part it doesn't remain as much of it. Harry deals with power and politics, the dark lord. The different perspective of this novel like racism, ministry, politics, which is more than children's literature.

 

 

 7. Speculative literature and Harry Potter

 

Ans: Speculative writing is defined as looking at a photo or reading a short scenario and then writing a fictional story about what could happen next. This novel has aspects of speculative fiction. Speculative means do not exists in real world, often in the context of supernatural, futuristic or other imaginative themes. It includes science fiction, fantasy, superhero, horror and supernatural fiction. 'Harry Potter’ also considered as speculative fiction, it has supernatural powers, magical world, horror, mystery. The novel refers imaginative kind of animals, places, which we never listen. Like, Basilisk, nicknamed the King of Snakes by wizards, fluffy- three  headed dog.

 

 

 8. The theme of Choice and Chance

 

Ans: Choice determines the outcomes not chance. In the life we all have choices and chance, it is upon us what we have to choose. Choices are most important than abilities. Voldemort and Harry both have almost same abilities but it’s choice that makes them different. Harry has a good intentions, he was chosen one, but Harry chooses to make it own self. Sorting hat putting Harry in the Gryffindor house, as Dumbledore says him that if you want then hat put you in Gryffindor house. And he also says that it is not our abilities that make us, it is our abilities who define us. Voldemort both have same abilities but choices makes them different. Person's choices and actions defines the morality. Hermione chooses to destroy the horcruxes. Peter Pettigrew chooses the wrong path. Neville chooses in Deathly Hallows to fight on at Hogwarts even after the Death Eaters take over. In a way it is upon us what we are chooses.

 

9. The theme of Love and Death

 

Ans : Love is one the central theme of the novel. Harry stands for love, friendship, bravery. Love and death are major concern in the novel. Because of the for each of everyone is ready to sacrifice for Harry and for the sake of good things. In the first part Lily sacrifice for her son. That's why Harry was able to defeated the Quirrell. Harry is loved by his friends while Voldemort is far away from the concept of love and he never knew that, what love is. Harry says to Ron and Hermione that Voldemort has not what we have that is love and friendship. Harry's selfless love for friends and family. Death also played an important role. Many of the characters are died till the end. In fourth part Cedric dies, Sirius Black, the godfather of Harry, also dies. Harry's parents, Dumbledore, one of the twin brother dies. In the end Voldemort also dies. So, love and death are major theme in the novel.

 

10. Moral and Philosophical reading of Harry Potter

 

Ans: Harry and Voldemort, different moral values. Harry's moral values becomes the weapon to defeat the Voldemort. In his acceptance of his mortality, “the boy who lived” is able more fully and wholly to live. Voldemort in the quest to be immortal he loses his moral values. In the end of many books Dumbuldore give Harry some kind of moral lessons like about love, choices, friendship.  Throughout the Harry Potter series there are two distinct types of characters, morally good and bad. On the good side there is characters such as, Harry, Hermione, Ron, Dumbledore. While on the bad side Draco, Umbridge, Voldemort. Those who are in the favour of good moral values they gain the love of readers.

 

11. Christianity and Harry Potter Series

 

Ans: In the novel, directly not shown Christianity, no church, no prayer. But Harry's self sacrifice, love for humanity can be compared to Jesus. In the series we can not find any kind of religious discussion, no church at all, no prayer. In life threatening situations also Jesus is not remembered While fighting with Voldemort God's grace not shown to save Harry. But if we look the events we can find Christian imagery. In beginning we can assume, as Jesus saved, Harry also saved. Last part connected with resurrection. Directly it doesn't shown the optics of Christianity.

12. What is your opinion on this:-

 

Ans : Harry Potter, the novel conveys the message which is don't like by reader and many who watched the movie. Because protagonist, the half blood wins over the pure blood, which can be not digest. And what can be assume about media and press it can not  be truth also.