EE- 305, The Post Colonial studies

 Assignment Paper:-E.E. 305 Post- Colonial Literature

Topic:-Two essays from ‘Imaginary Homelands’         

Name: - Saiyad Nargis I.

Roll No:-14

Semester: - 1

Batch:-2011-12

                                         Submitted to,

                                                   Dr. Dilip Barad

                                                   Dept. of English

                                                   Bhavnagar

                                                  Essays - ‘Imaginary Homelands’         

                                     Essayist - Salman Rushdie

About the essayist-

                           Salman Rushdie was born on 1947 in Bombay. He was a novelist and an essayist, too. The genres in his writing are magic realism, satire and post-colonialism. His main subjects are criticism and travel-writing. His style is often classified as magical realism mixed with historical fiction and dominant theme of his work is the story of many connection disruptions and migrations between the eastern and western world. He won the Booker prize in 1981 for his second novel ‘Midnight’s Children’. Much of his fiction is set on Indian continent. His latest novel is ‘Luca and the Fire of Life’ published in November, 2011 for which he announced that he has begun writing his memoirs.

About the ‘Imaginary Homelands’-

                        ‘Imaginary Homelands’ is a collection of essays which covers a wide variety of topics like, ‘Imaginary Homelands’, ‘Commonwealth Literature doesn’t exist’, ‘The New Empire within Britain’, ‘Attenborough’s Gandhi’ etc…

Introduction-

                             In this, the essayist talks about his experience of London seminar.

                          In the beginning, he says that the essay is taken from contribution in a seminar which was held in 1982 in London. He first tells about the condition of different countries. He says that this time was the time of festival in India and in these days Indira Gandhi was back as India’s premier. In Pakistan, Zia regime was consolidating after the execution of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Britain was in the Thatcher revolution and in America. Ronald Reagun was still a cold warrior. This was the structure of the world. He says that the upheavals of 1989 and 1990 changed all these.                       

                   It was such a situation that the old was dying and yet the new was not coming. There were new possibilities, uncertainties, and dangers with a transforming international scene. Gramci says about this,

   ‘In this interregnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms.’

                         Rushdie says that this is an incomplete book of 1980s’s views told by him and Rushdie says that there were not all the symptoms morbid. He says so, because he had published his second novel ‘Midnight’s Children’ in 1981 which was much appreciated by accepted by the people. He was enjoying writing it and he says that first time the people liked his book. He had written the novel ten years ago but it was rejected and after ten years he could begun to write and he felt good. After telling all these, now Rushdie starts to talk about his experience of London seminar.

                     In the seminar, there were perhaps all the ‘Indo-Anglian’ writers like, Nirad C. Chaudhari, Anita Desai, Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao etc…Only R.K.Narayan was absent. Someone told the essayist that,

“Narayan is so courteous that he always accepts, but he never shows up.”

                    Now Rushdie was eager to listen all these writers. It was exhilarating for him to meet and listen them but there were worrying moments, too. One novelist started his speech by reciting Sanskrit sloka. Then instead of translating it, he says that every educated writer would understand, educated Indian would understand it. But there were many writers like Rushdie who couldn’t understand it but it doesn’t mean that they were not Indian.

                      Then he talks about one the paper of one Indian academy in which they had ignored minor community. After it he talks about the volumes of his work. At the end, he writes the acknowledgement. He especially thanks to Susannah Clapp because his phrase was first the title of the essay and then of this book.

Attenborough’s Gandhi-

            In this essay, Rushdie talks about Attenborough’s movie ‘Gandhi’.

                           He says that deification is an Indian disease. In India, Gandhi is higher than anyone but he has a question which he asked to people many a time. He asks;

“Why American academy wish to help him by offering in a temple eight glittering statuettes to a film?”

                      The answer may be that he satisfies certain longings in the western psyche. It can be divided in three answers,

A.   The exotic impulse to see India as the fountainhead of spiritual-mystical wisdom,

B.   The Christian longing for a ‘leader’ dedicated to ideals of poverty and simplicity,

C.    A political desire that revolutions should be made purely by non-violence alone.

                            Rushdie says that the British have been mangling Indian history for centuries. Much of debate has been done about this movie that Why not Subhas Bose? Why no Tagor? , Why not Nehru? The answer is that the center is important for any artistic work because that creates meaning.

                           There are many powerful sequences in this movie. For example, the American massacre. In court-martial an Englishman asks the question about Jaliawala Bagh to Dyer. The scenes say that his actions were those of a cruel and immediately after condemned by Anglo-India. It was false.

                          The British in Punjab in 1919 were afraid of second Indian mutiny. When Dyer goes to England, he was welcomed as a hero. The meaning was completely changed here.

                        In the movie, Gandhi’s assassination comes in the beginning as well as in the end, also. In between this there is nothing about assassination. In the movie, Nathuram Godse is a member of the Hindu-fanatic RSS, who blamed Gandhi as a reason for the partition. In the movie, he is in crowd that represents him differently,

o   It may be that he represents the crowd that turned against Gandhi,

o   Godse was ‘one lone nut’,

o   Gandhiji is a Christ and his assassination is the crucifixion which is done by Godse

               In the movie, Godse was not the representative of mob because he was not alone in his work. The awkward aspects are there in the movie. The movie also omits Gandhi’s fondness for Indian billionaire industrialists. He died in Birla House in Delhi.

                 Gandhiji also represents the portraits of most of the leaders, who struggled for the independence. Patel is a hardworking man whereas he is like a clown here; Jinnah is portrayed as count Dracula, the most important change is in the personality of Nehru.

                  Nehru was not Gandhiji’s disciple. Their debate was famous. Nehru was the urban sophisticated person who wanted to industrialize India while Gandhi was a rural man, handicraft-loving and so, there was conflict in their ideas. In this film, Nehru becomes acolyte of Gandhi.

                Here, Bose was violent. He improved the movie. The message of Gandhi was to fight against oppressors without weapon, without violence but it was all non-sense. The leaders in India didn’t succeeds because they were more moral than British. The British were smarter, craftier who fought with politician than opponents.

                 Rushdie says that it was a best film of 1983, God help the film industry. It was expensive movie. Ben Kingsley performs the role of Gandhi.

             Thus, Rushdie gives his views about Attenborough’s film and at the end, he writes a very significant line,

‘Rich men, like emperors, have always had a weakness for tame holy men, for saints’.

Imaginary Homelands-

                 Rushdie remembers his past life in this essay. He saw a hanging picture on the wall. It was of 1946 on when he was not yet born. The house may be three-storeyed.

                   He remembers the famous sentence of L.P.Hartley’s novel ‘The Go-Between’ and the sentence is

                                ‘The past is a foreign country’.

                   A few years ago he revisited Bombay which was his lost city. He found a telephone directory and he saw his old address, a telephone number. It was an eerie discovery. Then he saw a photograph in the house and stood there. He was overwhelmed. It was in black and white colour but the colour of his mind filled the colour in that picture.

               Then he talks about his novel ‘Midnight’s Children’. When he was writing it reminds him his past and he thought to capture his all past not only in photos. He says that Bombay is a city built by foreigners. He says that when he was writing a book in North London, he was looking out of the window. It was totally new. It was totally like that that he saw in the news-paper in childhood.

                  He also talks about Saleem. His mistakes were of memory. He gives his experience that before he started to write ‘Midnight’s Children’, he recalled his past memory, past Bombay. Then he remembers the Bombay of the 1950s and 1960s. He also remembers Bombay-Kashmir and Delhi-Aligarh. He recalls Bombay’s dialogues, ads for Binaca and for Kolynos.

He remembers the board,

                         ‘Drive like Hell and you will get there.’

                 He also remembers Saleem’s theme song ‘Mera Joota Hai Japani’.

                He says that the writer who is out of country and even out-of-language may experience this loss in intensified form. He says that John Fowles begins ‘Daniel Martin’ with the words like whole sight: or all the rest is desolation. He says that we are not Gods but we are wounded creatures, cracked lenses.

                 He recalls the conference in which he took part in New College, Oxford. The conference was about of modern writing. He says that the black American writer Richard Wright wrote that black and white were in war but their description was incompatible.

                  He tells about his one topic of ‘Midnight’s Children’ –Indian pessimism. He says that Indian writers of England are the same animals. He asks what ‘Indian’ means out side India. He agrees with the writer Ralph Ellison who wrote a collection ‘Shadow and Act’ in which he writes that he is happy of being black in America at that time.

              Art is a passion of mind and the imagination works best when it is free.

            At last, he remembers Saul Bellow’s latest novel ‘The Dean’s December.’ In this novel, the dog barks and Rushdie says that dog is barking for its limits and dog says to open the universe. Rushdie then says that it is for everyone and so, everyone says,

                     “For God’s sake, open the Universe a little more!” 

 

 

   

 

E.C.304 E.L.T

Assignment Paper:-E.C 304 E.L.T.

Topic:-English as a ‘second language’ in India

Name: - Saiyad Nargis I.

Roll No:-14

Semester: - 1

Batch:-2011-12

                                         Submitted to,

                                                   Dr. Dilip Barad

                                                   Dept. of English

                                                   Bhavnagar

vIntroduction-

                              Kapil Kapoor represents his ideas about the international language English in India. In our country, English plays a role of second language. Let’s see his views about it.

vAbstract -

              

                       In abstract, Kapil Kapoor says that we have to understand the role and goal of English as a foreign language and we have to choose teaching theories and practices otherwise no any methodology and technology would be helpful in changing the views successfully.

v What do we mean by ‘second language’?-

         We can understand it in two ways:

                            i.            After one or more Indian languages, which are important and essential, there comes English as a ‘second language’.

                         ii.            In school, after the primary stage, second language is introduced.

vHistorical perspective of English-

                           To know the effect of English as a second                    language, we should understand its historical perspective. English    has become centre language, so we can say it is a symbol of        linguistic centralism. Other languages can be seen as a linguistic regionalism. After freedom from Britain, the main two questions   aroused-

          i.            The status of English,

       ii.            Relationship of English

                               Those who knew English demanded English, to achieve this, conceptual structure developed and it has three parts:

1.    modernization,

2.    mythology,

3.    language policy

                               Both modernization and internationalism became same and the implication of English made other Indian languages ‘traditional’ means anti-modern and backward.

                              The second question aroused was the relationship of English with other Indian languages. To define the relationship, ‘language-planning’ came out. It gave new mythology.Other languages became regional languages. Even Hindi became regional language and it was used in official language and many states made it a regional language.No any other language can be seen with English, so it became the language of national integration, a ‘pan-Indian’ language and it helped in promoting.

v English as a ‘window’-

                      Because of the role of English, Kapoor says that it is the ‘window’ because

1)   It is a language of knowledge especially in the reference of science and technology,

2)   It is a language of modern thinking,

3)   It is the language of reason,

4)   It is a link language,

5)   It is the language of the world,

6)   It is the lingua-franca.

                 Indian languages are ‘the walls’ and English is the window and it gives the light of modernization.

vLanguage-planning-

            

                 To know the importance of ‘language-planning’, Kapil Kapoor has given the example of the report of the Education Commission of 1964-66. It says,

“…….most complicated problem that the country has faced since independence and one that has resisted a solution. It goes on to add that on account of educational, cultural and political reasons.”

                    It shows that this problem was since independence and it is the most complicated problem.

vThree-language formula-

                In 1956, Central Advisory Board on Education proposed the three-language formula. This idea was adopted at the chief minister’s conference in 1961 with a modification. The chief aim for formula was to make English an integral part of school. It creates negative effect, too.The students who really want to learn another language, they would certainly learn English now. It made Hindi less important than English. The students have a choice now to choose between Hindi and English. Three-language formula has affected even our classical language-Sanskrit. Sanskrit is now on its decline. What a tragedy!!!!! It is the language of God and it is being destroyed. The political purpose is cleared in Macaulry’s 1813 report in which he has said,

           “No Bangalee who undergoes this education has any respect left for anything Hindu.”

                   A student should be allowed to choose any second or third language.

vFailure in teaching English-

               The teaching of English has got failure to some extent. Many committees or education commissions tried to solve this problem by taking information about the weightage, teacher-training, methodology, teaching theories etc…Kapoor has given the significant example of the meeting of ELT experts that they gather like Egyptologists meet every year when the Nile has reeded after floods. Inappropriateness of accepting English as a second language may be the cause of failure. The ELT experts have given the definition of English in the reference with the specific functions of English and the educational planners have defined English by comparing it with Hindi. Hindi is more effective in reference to English.

vEnglish as a library language-

                        The Education Comission, 1964-66 has said                about teaching that in higher education, English will be as a library language and it should be taught from std.5 though we know that for many students who come from the rural areas, can’t begin their study before class 7!!!!

vWhat are the first language, L2 and L3?-

                            The first language is used in the school level as a medium of instruction and a medium to express and for communication and it is generally the mother-tongue or the regional language.

                                   The second language (L2) comes after the first language. It is used to make the speaker able to speak for wider participation. It is generally the state official language or national language.

                                  The third language (L3) comes after the second language. It helps to prepare the learner for all-India mobility. The aim to introduce third language is to make the learners be able to make the learners express correctly in that language.

                                 The NCERT-1986 has presented a report and in the report, the picture is like this:

           Stages                 Class                Languages

a)   Lower primary    1 to 5          mother-tongue/state                                                                                                                                                                           

b)  Upper medium    6 to 8          state+Indian+English

c)    Secondary           9 to 10        state+Indian+English

d)  senior secondary  11 to 12      state+ESP+optional

                           This report also tells about the role of English.

vProblems of English as a second language-

                        The second language helps people to keep their personal relations with others, it helps in business, in their socio-cultural activities and in the identity with a large group. In India, we study a foreign language as a second language, as an Indian language. So, we don’t get necessary competence. U.G.C. sponsored many seminars, tests but all seem to do nothing. English as a second language creates problems. It can be solved by removing English as a second language and make it a third or optional language.

                           The major problems are the use of language drill, use of simple text, not sufficient reading, role of grammar etc…A second language is generally considered as a language of repeating not for thinking!!! Any teacher can’t teach limited language. If he wanted to teach one sentence, he will have to teach grammar, vocabulary, sentence pattern. There are some conceptual problems, too. For example, the standard of English is falling.

                          We have failed to make-up our mind to one appropriate language theory. The west gave up grammar-centered language teaching and adopted behavioural models. Direct method,     

Audio-visual techniques help in language teaching but these all are costly and now even mother-tongue is taught with the help of these things. India was first grammar centered. Grammar and mathematics are principal instruments to sharpen the mind and now the west has also discovered that the grammar is a cognitive and primary to understand the language properly.

                         ‘Method’ and ‘methodology’ are the most important in the west. It is believed that if we have right method, we can achieve our goal. ‘Technology’ is used in methods. Audio-cassettes, language laboratory, television, radio, computer-use of internet all are used in the technical method and these all have made the teaching expensive. The tradition of teaching with the black-board and text book is being lost.

vConclusion-

                 Thus, we can see Kapil Kapoor in his essay ‘Teaching English as a ‘second language’ in India’ has cleared the concept of English as a second language, he has mentioned the problems in teaching English as a second language, what is the function of English in India, what are L1, L2, L3, the use of technique in teaching English all are explained in this essay. This essay helps us to understand the advantages and disadvantages of English as a second language.

                     

                                

                     

     

E.C.303 American Literature

Assignment Paper:-E.C 303 American Literature

Topic:-‘Mending Wall’

Name: - Saiyad Nargis I.

Roll No:-14

URL: - http://saiyadnargis14201112.blogspot.com/

Semester: - 1

Batch:-2011-12

                                         Submitted to,

                                                   Dr. Dilip Barad

                                                   Dept. of English

                                                   Bhavnagar

              

                                                                      Poet - Robert Frost

                                               Poem - ‘Mending Wall’

                                           Period of life - 1874-1963

About Poet-

                                   Robert Frost Lee was born in San Francisco in California. He is an American poet. He was named after a commander of an army. Because of tuberculosis, his father died when he was only eleven years old. He started to write the poems when he was in high-school in Lawrence. In England, he got his first success.

Frost’s poems-

     i.            ‘An Old Man’s Winter Night’,

 ii.            ‘Birches’,

iii.            ‘Putting in the Seed’,

iv.            ‘Snow’,

  v.            ‘A Time to Talk’,

vi.            ‘The Road not Taken’,

vii.            ‘Mending Wall’ etc….

                                 We will evaluate the characteristics of his poems.

Characteristics of his poems-

                          We can see the influence of his life in his poetry. There is nothing complicated about his use of the structure in his poems but we can interpret the words in different ways. Frost’s poetry is the link between the American poetry of 19^th century and 20^th century.

Theme of ‘Mending Wall’-

                        The poet tells about the stone wall that the poet doesn’t want to keep but his neighbour wants to mend it. This wall was between their houses that separates their houses.

                              As shown by P.K.Thakar, we can interpret this poem in three levels.

vPhonological level,

vMeaning level,

vStructural level

vPhonological level-

                         This is a level of sound. The poet has used the lexical category of alliteration. The words ‘there’ and ‘that’, ‘sends’ and ‘swell’, ‘spills’ and ‘sun’, ‘have’ and ‘hiding’, ‘then’ and ‘them’, ‘we’ and ‘walk’, ‘us’ and ‘again’, ‘some’ and ‘saw’, ‘we’ and ‘wear’, ‘apple’ and ‘across’, ‘mischief’ and ‘me’, ‘his’ and ‘head’, ‘what’, ‘was’ and ‘walling’, ‘elves’ and ‘exactly’, ‘he’, ‘himself’ and ‘having’, ‘he’ and ‘having’ alliterate each other.

vMeaning level-

              “SOMETHING there is that doesn’t love a wall”

                        This is a first line of the poem in which the poet says that there is something that doesn’t like a wall. The speaker doesn’t like a wall. His neighbour tries to mend the wall but the poet asks him why he is doing so, there is no need for a wall but the neighbour was a determined person and he resorts to an old adage:

                       “Good fences make good neighbours”.

                         If we read this poem more and more, we interpret the poem in a different way. We can see the simple poem in a different way. We can see the simple poem tells something more than its literary meaning. What does the poem really wants to convey through the boundary? , Who is the real wall-maker, his neighbour or he himself?

                       Like Frost’s other poems, this poem also starts with simply traditional way but    it becomes more and more complex. In this poem, the speaker may dislike the activity of his neighbour of mending wall but actually he goes to see the wall once in a year and only to see the damage done by hunters because at that time hunters following the rabbits damaged the wall many a time. This line presents that reference,

                     “The work of hunters is another thing;”

                       It shows that one man looks at his relation after it was torn out.

                       The poem shows the unconsciousness of his neighbour. By mending the wall, the neighbour wants to fill the gap between human beings.

                       In the poem it is asked, Where is the wall; in between their houses or in between their hearts?

                      The poet remembers that one friend of the poet was punished to recite the poem for some mischief but at the same time, he says that it was a real poem but no-one should force to recite because it will make it loose its charm.

                        This poem also reminds a story from Greek mythology in which Sisyphus is condemned to push a boulder up a hill but he fails many a time and of course it was a useless task. Just like that, both of the men push boulder at the top of the wall but it rolls down.

                       All the poems of Frost start with the simple straightforward way but slowly and steadily at the end, the poems become complex one.

                      Wall-building is one of the ritual terms. Rules and regulations are the walls. These rules show the human-nature. The wall building is a social activity. So, if we look at something as a barrier, may be it is a good sign of our development.

                       In many of his poems, there is a characteristic of creative process. ‘Mending Wall’ is no exceptional to it. Creativity is a good act. Even destruction is a creation, how? We can say that if something is destroyed, another new creative thing would be made but yes, it is that if something is destroyed, it looses its real identity.

                        In the poem, the speaker sees no reason to have a wall. He says that there are no cows and only apple and pine tree. This can be understood by these lines,

                     “He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

                       My apple trees will never get across.”

                         The speaker believes that it is his neighbour’s old mind-set and he tells him to remove the old-fashioned folly but the neighbour doesn’t understand this and sticks to the old adage and the line,

                    “Good fences make good neighbours.”

                      comes twice in the poem. It shows the importance of the line in this poem. It shows the need of boundary in the life of men. If barrier would come, a man would automatically make or create another thing. Barrier is an encourageous thing, it gives the freedom and it offers the productivity, it is really a challenging. Frost didn’t like to write in a free verse. So, he wrote all things of writing in considering the rules and regulations of the verse and it helped him to make a good verse. Thus, in the poem, the poem becomes complex when we try to understand who is the mender and who is the breaker.

vStructural level-

                Structural level shows the level of grammar used in the structure of the poem.

                    This is a long poem. The line,

                      “Good fences make good neighbours”

                    comes twice in the poem. It shows that the device of repetition is used. The words like ‘it’, ‘and’, ‘the’, ‘he’, ‘I’, ‘him’, ‘was’, ‘wall’ are repeated in the poem.

                    The poet has used baseless metre, blank verse while writing the poem. The poet has used five stressed words in the poem. There is an internal rhyming scheme in the worlds like ‘wall’ and ‘balls’, ‘thing’ and ‘mean’ etc…There is no any fancy word is used except ‘another’.

The views of others-

ü George Montiero-

                 George Montiero says that walls and fences are really instrumental in the renewal of human relationship or not, is a question. The poet doesn’t clarify it. For the speaker, a neighbour is

                              “like an old stone savage”

                  He remembers the tradition of the Rome. Terminus is the God of the Romans. He was a God of boundaries. The Romans celebrated the festival ‘Terminala’ on 23^rd February. In that festival, the neighbours with their family used to gather at a wall and joined a feast. They enjoyed the festival like this.

                  He remembers H.D.Thereau, who asked,

                             “Who are bad neighbours?”

                 He says the bad neighbours are those who let the cattle to enter the house because they don’t wan to make them angry. H.D.Thereau again asked,

                           “Who are good neighbours?”

                 One can now easily answer that those who make a wall or distance and don’t let their cattle come or go are good neighbours. These all is written in his ‘Unlinked Myth in Frost’s ‘Mending Wall’’.

ü Frank Lentricchia-

                  Frank Lentricchia’s ‘Robert Frost: Modern Poetic and the Landscapes of self’ gives his view about ‘Mending Wall’.

                   He says that ‘The Death of the Hired Man’, ‘Home Burial’, ‘The Black Cottage’ and ‘A Servant to Servant’ deals with hysteria and ‘Mending Wall’ is opposed to human existence. It is an opening poem of his second volume ‘North of Boston’.

                   He says that Frost has used his imagination interestingly in the poem. There is a line.

                                “that doesn’t love a wall”

                    In this line, he doesn’t clarify that it is frost and this way, he makes fun. The play of mature man is grounded ironically.

                   He gives the example of the selves dramatized, ‘Going For Water’, ‘The Tulf of Flowers’. In which the character doesn’t like to be alone in his imaginative journey. ‘Mending Wall’ is a political allegory. There is one man who wants to be free from ritual work and there is another one who wants to tie his father’s words. He remembers the theory of Kant. The difference between the two is that one lives in a freedom, in his imagination and the other who is unaware of the imagination.

                  He remembers Schiller who distinguishes the civilized man from close minded men.

ü John C. Kemp-

                 John C. Kemp has given a very minute description of this poem in his ‘Robert Frost and Ne England: The Poet as Regionalist’.

                     

                 He concentrates on the beginning, conflict, structure etc…At the beginning, persona talks with himself, talks about the wall. Frost uses informal language. The three active verbs ‘sends’, ‘spills’, ‘makes’ suggest his close observation of the destruction. The first line of the poem is very significant and the apothegm comes twice in a poem, once in the middle and at the last. The farmer is sticked to his apothegm and doesn’t escape. Frost shows the seriousness of wall-building. The allusion ‘out-door game’ evokes competition. The competition, not only in repairing but also in destructing. If the wall-builders will play the game together, they will play against wall-builders, too.

              Frost has used very fanciful fabrication like,

                   “He is all pine and I am apple orchard”

                In the poem, the farmer speaks less but his adage speaks a lot. It is a memorable line. It has truth. The poem is full of irony.

                                  “an old stone savage”

                 has ironic tone. The speaker thinks that they are making a wall but the Yankee farmer thinks that it is only fence-mending. The farmer doesn’t explain his thought and thinks that the communication would not be successful. Here, fences are good so, it should also be in relation. It means unnecessary close-up between the two neighbours is undesirable.

                In the end, the poet doesn’t clarify who was right and who was wrong.

  Conclusion-

      Thus, in the poem, Frost’s style and the way of writing is clearly shown. We can see this in the views of John C. Kemp, Frank Lentricchia, George Montiero etc… ‘Mending Wall’ represents the different mind-set of the people. It shows the reality. It is not a poem of only the process of mending a wall but it tells something more. Frost takes us in the imagination in flight.