IGCSE

 A Different History

       In A Different History by Sujata Bhatt, the poet is trying to tell the history of the commonwealth countries in a poetic way. She also asks a few disturbing questions about the present day world.

As the British Kingdom slowly rose to power, the Greek and Roman culture died a slow death and lay buried till the renaissance. Even after the Renaissance, there has been a cultural dominance by the colonialist powers whether in Indian subcontinent or in the American continents.

Great Pan is not dead;

he simply migrated

to India.

The poet argues that the great European classic culture did not die away. She cites the example of the Great Pan, the Greek God. Everything, from nature worship to rituals and customs that this God stood for can be seen in India even today.

Here, the gods roam freely,

disguised as snakes of monkeys;

In India the gods are treated like human beings and pantheism or ‘the belief that everything from tress to monkeys are gods’ is not frowned upon but considered as a part of the common belief system. The poet herself doesn’t consider them snakes and monkeys; she considers them gods disguised as snakes and monkeys. This stance that she takes is crucial to the poem. You are not supposed to be rude to other life forms, insult a tree or touch a book with your foot. She has a great admiration for this culture.

After a very simple statement about the cultural migration in the first line, she gives us a composite picture of the things considered sacred and sinful in India. Even though all of these are moral issues, none of them is about human relationships or interactions of any kind. But the composite picture with its comprehensive nature shows us in a flash how everything in this world is connected in one way or another.

You must learn how to turn the pages gently

without offending Saraswathi,

without offending the tree

from whose wood the paper was made.

In the second part of the poem she raises questions which are not often asked by the offender or the offended. She considered language as the strongest element of culture. She asks,

Which language has not been the oppressor’s tongue?

This is not a reference to any particular language but a statement that there have been oppressors in every language and that it was used as propaganda, scriptures, maxims and laws to oppress the helpless. However, language was never meant for that. It only turned out to be a weapon in the hands of the oppressors. Language is the soul of a culture and we see it being

                                     cropped

with along scythe swooping out

of the conqueror’s face-

The poet finds it strange that the unborn grandchildren of the oppressed grow to love the language of the oppressor. She is pointing out a phenomenon that we witness in our world today. The oppressors are not only pardoned by the oppressors, they are also admired by the future generations of the oppressed for the power they wielded. This could be attributed to the lack of awareness of history. They are not aware of the atrocities the language and its speakers unleashed on their ancestors. This may be why she wanted to write a ‘different history’.

The poem is of full of strong images which gives us snapshots of all the things that the poet wants to refer to.

Horses

In Horse Edwin Muir is trying to catch the power and majesty of horses he saw in his childhood. Fort this he uses images which are from his contemporary life. Thus what is unfamiliar and old is seen in terms of what is new and familiar.

At the end of the poem, we are told that what he has been describing was a vision.

Ah, now it fades! It fades! and I must pine

Again for the dread country crystalline,

These lines remind of what Shelley said about poets;

                          We look before and after and pine for what is not

It is the poet’s interest in history that finds its expression throughout the poem. The image of horses the poet saw in his childhood comes again to him in his adulthood. He sees a couple of horses attached to a steady plough. Now in his adulthood they seem terrible and strange to him.

He tries to recall an old scene from his childhood. He remembers having seen these horses moving their hoofs up and down. He compares them to pistons with which he is more familiar now. He remembers in great detail how the hoofs were seen treading down the stubbles in the field while they moved about like happy monsters, turning the field brown.

He describes in detail how the horses ploughed the land and how they glowed in the sun while the furrow looked like a snake behind them. They were not tired even by the evening when the returned home. They were warm and glowing with mysterious fire that heated up their bodies.

The poet goes on to describe the horse as if they are some strange monsters. He talks about their dark eyes and how they gleamed with hellish fire. The wind is nothing but their manes leaping up with ire and rage. It is invisible.

The poem is remarkable mainly for the strong images and also for the strong abstract words. The basic element of fire appears in different forms throughout the poem. We come across several words like ‘blackening’ ‘sun’ ‘light’ ‘dusk’ ‘warm’ ‘glowing’ ‘smouldering’ ‘night’ ‘apocalyptic’ ‘invisible’ ‘blind’ which all have some connection with fire or light. Thus a subtle reference to hell and monsters permeates the poem giving it a gothic beauty and strength. The horses look like horses no more but as some magical creatures from another world. Thus even when the poet is being nostalgic about his childhood, he paints a dark and sinister picture of what he experienced as a child. He admits that the

                           ...black field and the still-standing tree

                          Were bright and fearful presence to me.


Where I Come From

Where I Come From by Elizabeth Brewster catches our attention through the use of unusual and powerful images.  On the one hand she is strongly stating that we are all the product of our environment and that our surroundings leave an indelible mark on our personalities.

People are made of places.

On the other hand, she is describing the various elements of nature which have a strong impact on human psyche.

                           They carry with them

hints of...

            where they come from.

The poem is in three sections. The last part is rather short, only two lines. She first describes the rural folk, those who come from the jungles, mountains, the tropics or those who go sea-faring. She argues that they carry with them hints of where they come from. She then describes those who come from the cities and says that they often smell of smog in the cities or the faint smell of tulips

...the almost-not-smell of tulips in the spring,

 from tiny gardens in the city with a fountain in the centre. They may also smell of museums with artefacts plotted exactly in the same order as given in a tourist guide book. Still others smell of their work places like factories of posh offices and crowded subways.

The poet is trying to say that what we consider as the identity of people is actually the identity of where they dwell the most. Their personalities are chiselled by the different aspects of their environment. Though smell is the predominant hint the poet states here, it is only in a metaphorical sense. It is not the actual ‘smell’ that the poet has in her mind. She is only talking about the effect these places and things have on people. But she states it in a poetic way using fresh and striking images. As we visualize the various aspects of these places, we can’t help forming images of the different people who are associated with them.

In the second part the poet takes us to her own native land amid the mountains of Canada. She says she comes from a much wooded land and the people there carry woods in their minds. They live among acres and acres of pine woods, with blueberries growing among the burned out bushes. Here one gets to see old, wooden farmhouses which need a coat of paint and hens and chickens circle about them, clucking aimlessly. Obviously she is only describing the images she has seen in her real life without letting loose her imagination like the Romantic poets. However, her skill of observation is remarkable. She also remembers the schoolhouses which had violets growing behind them. She says that mind cares only about two seasons: spring and winter. One is ice and the other is breaking of ice. She is referring to the lack of warmth in people and how the ‘ice breaks’ when situations change. And it is then that spring blossoms in our mind.

Her introspection makes her get in touch with her inner self and she senses that she carries with her a frosty wind from a field of snow.

Thus while trying to understand human nature by analysing where people come from, she brings us close to nature and shows us the wide variety present there. We are forced to agree with her that it should be rather hard not to be affected by such a strong element as nature.

 Sonnet: Composed Upon Westminster Bridge

  

This poem, in the form of a sonnet, is different from other poems by Wordsworth in several ways. Romantic poets, usually fed up with what is contemporary and just near them, went for themes which refer to things long ago and far away. Wordsworth too did the same in most of his nature poems. But here we find him right in the centre of the city, awed by the beauty of the city early one morning. The bridge referred to in the poem is across the River Thames in London.

, this is an Italian sonnet. There are fourteen lines which are split into an octave and sestet. The split is demarked using the difference in the rhyme scheme which is abbaabbacdcdcd.  The poem is written in iambic pentameter, with ten syllables per line, each syllable in each feet stressed alternatively. This metre, being close to the rhythm of common English speech gives the poem a certain simplicity and ordinariness.  

The poem begins with an extreme eulogy,

                              Earth has not anything to show more fair:

The poet now adds another statement in praise of the scene he is witnessing. He says that anyone who could just pass by without noticing the beauty of the scene might be dull in his soul. He calls the scene majestic.

He notices that at this time of the day the beauty of the morning drapes the city ‘like a garment’. It is to be noticed here that, while the city is not beautiful on its own, it is the beauty of the morning that adds charm to the city’s otherwise dull landscape. At this time of the day the city atmosphere is quite clean, ‘bright and glittering’. The temples, ships in ports, towers, domes and theatres lie bare and open in silence to the fields below and the sky above. The reader gets a holistic view of the scene without it getting fragmented into a patch work of visuals. It is the conglomeration of different things that makes the poet use the word majestic which is suggestive of its expansive nature.   

          Surprisingly, the poet who has extolled the way the countryside and sylvan surroundings excel the urban landscapes tells us that,

Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendor…

 any other place than this. Here is a hidden reference to his other poems where he has been talking about ‘valleys, rocks and hills’. The only thing that has appeared in those poems and again here is the river.

         The river glideth at his own free will:

The poet feels exactly the same way he felt when he confronted the rural landscapes in his other poems. Rather than talk about what he sees, the poet prefers to tell us the effect the sight has on his mind. This, in fact, is the identity of Wordsworth’s poems.

Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

          The poet personifies the elements in the scene, giving life to the sun, the river, the houses, and finally to the whole city, which has a symbolic heart. The reader imagines that the city's heart beats rapidly during the day, while everything and everyone in it is bustling about, but now, in the early morning hours, the city's heart is "lying still." By using personification in his poem, Wordsworth brings a kind of spirit to the city, which is usually seen as a simple construction of rock and metal.

However, it should be noted that the poet is impressed by the city as it is experienced during a time when its urban nature is most hidden. It is the hustle and bustle of the city that account for it not being a favourite place for those who love peace and quietness. But the city, as Wordsworth describes it, is very quiet.

Dear God! The very houses seem asleep:

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Thus it can be argued that, even though this is a poem about an urban landscape, the poet is only finding it beautiful at a time when it most resembles a rural setting. The busy nature and the noise that we associate with a city, the aspects that gives it its identity is not what is highlighted here. What has caught the attention of the poet is exactly the same things that have caught his attention in and around the Lake District—the peace, quietness and tranquility.

The City Planners
  

The City Planners by Margaret Atwood is a poem about the changing cityscapes. It conveys the poet’s thoughts feelings and ideas as she passes through a suburban residential area. She takes the reader along with her on the ride with a very common word- ‘these’. This word is followed by the strange phrase ‘residential Sundays’ which suggests routine and boredom. It talks of a group of people who live in their houses and stay away from work only on Sundays which were actually days of mirth and merriment in olden times. When we read ‘dry August sunlight’ the picture is fairly clear. The poet’s sensitivity has been offended by something she saw. She says it is the sanities.

                                      ‘the houses in pedantic rows, the planted

                                        sanitary trees…’

The urban landscapes keep expanding into the suburbs and changes take place overnight. Instead of the wild and chaotic growth of wilderness, the city grows in artificial rows. In the name of security and sanity at the expense of wild beauty, an uncanny order is brought into the cityscapes. She is amused and saddened in a way at the area’s orderliness, perfection and uniformity.  

The trees which were not planted for the sake of beauty but for sanitary purposes assert the mindset of the people. It is all pragmatic and unaesthetic. We hear echoes of Dylan Thomas’s poem ‘The Force That through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower’ and Robert Frost’s Mending Wall when Margaret Atwood talks about the invisible power against which human aggression seems to have no chance.

The poet is almost feeling intimidated by the perfection of the place. She thinks the levelness of the surfaces is sneering at a dent on her car door, an aberration which she thinks may not be accepted in a place like this. She describes the deafening silence there.

‘No shouting here, or

shattering of glass’

The only sound welcomed here is the mechanical whirring of the motor of a lawn mower which is cutting off the already ‘discouraged grass’ which suggests the insensitive nature of the place. The fact that the place is very quiet adds to its already ‘boring’ atmosphere. Words like rational ’, ‘straight swath and ‘levelness of surface’ suggest an eternally boring place. The silence of the area almost seems to kill the poet. It is too overpowering and unnerving. Shouting is not welcome nor is the sound of a sheet of glass breaking into pieces, however musical that sound may be. Glass is an artificial object but people don’t want to hear it being broken or destroyed while they are happy about a power lawn insensitively mowing down the tender leaves of grass. Even this is done for the sake of leveling and uniformity. This imagery, along with the earlier one of ‘the planted sanitary trees,’ shows man’s futile but dogged attempt to control nature.

The drive ways avoid the wild hysteria of nature by being even and the roofs are all slanted in the same way as if they are unwilling to face the sky directly. However, there are certain things which still keep the wildness of life: the smell of spilt oil, a faint sickness lingering in the garages, a splash of paint on bricks which looks like a bleeding bruise, a plastic hose coiled like the viciousness of a venomous snake.

even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows

give momentary access to

the landscape behind or under

the future cracks in the plaster

Mortar and cement have been thrown lavishly over nature and its beauty and the poet foresees that the past will come out one day in future. Through the cracks in the plaster, the poet sees what has been submerged and is waiting to show its head. She foresees that all these houses which are against chaos which is the golden rule of nature will one day collapse and like a ship sinking tilt to its side and disappear into the earth. 

Like the movement of glaciers, the change is slow and steady and hard to see. This idea is something that sprouted from the annoyance and frustration that is lingering in her mind. She predicts the destruction of perfection in the streets at the hands of the powerful forces of nature such as the earth, seas and glaciers. This destruction will come as a consequence of having dared to control nature and not allowing nature to grow wild. Restricted and controlled, nature strikes back. Natures anger brims up and at a certain point will just burst , throwing wildly its unrestrained forces of displeasure and annoyance which is shared by the poet in the first stanza. The image of the ship slanting and sinking obliquely into the clay sea reminds us of Titanic which also was a man made wonder and was famed as the unsinkable.  

The poet says that this is what brings in the City Planners, the urbanizers. They have the insane face of political conspirators.

‘…scattered over unsurveyed

territories, concealed from each other,

each in his own private blizzard;

When one world collapses they barge in to build another one right there. They guess directions and make plans which are rigid and stern. Uncompassionate (as wooden borders) plans (transitory lines) for humanity’s future are envisioned by them. The present vanishes like a cloud into thin air. The insane planners bank on the panic of a suburb which has lost its roots. They ring in (order in) the future as maddening sketches on sheets of white paper.
Thus, the poem extols the power of nature to take care of itself and build anew. It mocks at man’s sense of superiority. This is where the poet rises to the level of the great poets of nature who worshiped nature more as a power than as a sensual experience.

The Sandpiper 

Ahdaf Soueif was born in Cairo and educated in Egypt and England. She studied for a PhD in linguistics at the University of Lancaster. Her debut novel, In the Eye of the Sun (1993), set in Egypt and England, recounts the maturing of Asya, a beautiful Egyptian who, by her own admission, "feels more comfortable with art than with life." Her second novel The Map of Love (1999) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, has been translated into 21 languages and sold over a million copies.  She has also published two works of short stories, Aisha (1983) and Sandpiper(1996) - a selection from which was combined in the collection I Think Of You in 2007, and Stories Of Ourselves in 2010. Soueif writes primarily in English,  but her Arabic-speaking readers say they can hear the Arabic through the English. She was married to Ian Hamilton, a famous English literary critic.She lives in London and Cairo.

The short story Sandpiper by Ahdaf Soueif reads more like a poem than a short story. The basic elements air, water, fire and earth interplay with one another in this story highlighting the events that happen in the life of the main character. There are very few specifics; even the names of the main character are not mentioned. The place names are mentioned very rarely which gives this story a certain universality and timelessness.The story is told from the first person point of view of the central character, Lucy's mother and Um Sabir's daughter-in-law. This is a typical example of feminist writing.There is no intriguing plot in the story and the conflicts are mainly internal. Marital discord due to cultural differences can be cited as the theme of the story.
The narrator, Lucy's mother, herself a writer, takes us into her first short utterance itself. It is a simple sentence which sounds like part of a private casual conversation and it sets the mood of the story.
Outside, there is a path.

The rest of the story is about how she is unable to find her own path to happiness. She had met her husband, an Egyptian, in her own country. After a long courtship of four years, they got married and every year she has

been six months in her husband's place at Alexandria near Cairo, Egypt.

"...:twelve years ago, I met him. Eight years ago, I married him. Six years ago, I gave birth to his child."

This cold objectivity is also heard when she talks about her motherhood.

As the story opens we see her at the beach near her husband's home in Alexandria. She is describing how she used to spend her time at the beach. Her description tells us a lot about how she loves to see the basic elements interacting with one another. They are very gentle to each other. They chase, cajole, fondle, unite, get into each other's being. This even forms a cycle. She is very passionate about everything in her life. She takes an interest in everything around her. The stranger the subject of her interest, the stronger her involvement. She is hungry for more and more varied experiences.

On the other hand her in-laws are very protective of her like they are generally of the women folk. It has been spelled out to her at the Cairo airport that women are considered second sex in Egypt. Coming from a more liberal land like Europe, it mattered much to her though she managed to adapt herself  to that.

After her first child was born, he husband became less passionate about her. He would have tried to harmonize her with his culture for long and then gave it up when he got really frustrated. She would have lavished all his love and time on her child, ignoring him. From the way she talks about how expectant she was when she was expecting this sound only natural. The part where she talks about how she played with her child even when it was still inside tells us that certain things are universal and do not pertain to any single culture.

Summer Farm 

Summer Farm by Norman MacCaig is a very philosophical poem. Like Frost’s poems, it has a deceptive simplicity about it. In the beginning the poet observes simple things around him but ends up in introspection. He realizes his own place in the universe. He looks at an ordinary pastoral scene. Living and non-living things attract his attention. He does not find them especially beautiful or attractive. Each image is self-contained and there are no similes or metaphors. It is rather a factual recording like,

Nine ducks go wobbling by in two straight lines

The poet is observing it all but he is not thinking. He says he is afraid where a thought might take him. Then he strikes a comparison between himself and a grasshopper. He thinks that like a grasshopper which,

Unfolds his legs and finds himself in space

He might also discover himself and go into another level of perception. The next moment he is at another level thinking about himself as a multi-layered entity, with all those selves threaded on time. Then he realizes that he is the center of his existence and that there are layers of farms around him. He says that with a metaphysical hand he has lifted the farm like a lid.

This poem is remarkable for its thought content and the subtle ways in which the poet conveys his thoughts. 

There are several simple words that the poet has strewn all over the poem with a view to give the poem a different level of meaning. A wisp of straw is made to look like tame lightning. This is to show that a different perspective can change the very nature of things. The comparison is between two things which are entirely different from each other. Water and glass which usually have no colour of their own are presented as colourful. Along with this the poet gives factual descriptions to show that he doesn’t see any difference between reality and appearance.

There is indeed a reference to perception when he talks about the eye of a hen.

A hen stares at nothing with one eye

Except owls, the birds see two different things with their eyes and then choose between them. Even such a simple phrase like ‘then picks it up’ is loaded with meanings. The hen has picked up nothing. Or whatever it has picked up is nothing. This idea of void is repeated in the following lines when he says ‘empty sky’ ‘dizzy blue’  ‘not thinking’ and ‘finds himself in space’.

So the poet ponders on nothing and everything. He does not think they are different. He looks at the face of a grasshopper and thinks it is made of several plates like an armour. The face of a grasshopper indeed has this look. The poet uses this image to suggest the idea that there are layers of existence.

The next moment the poet goes into introspection and thinks of his own existence as multi-layered. He thinks he is also a pile of selves which are revealed to him one at a time (threaded on time). He now explores it in depth.

To explore himself in depth, he has to assume a different perspective. He does this by adopting a metaphysical point of view (with metaphysic hand). He removes the veil of illusion that one is different from the other. Metaphysics say that the world is one and the difference is due to our senses. They believe that there is a higher reality which is hidden by our senses. It is when these senses do not operate that we can have a vision of the higher reality. Usually, this happens only in our deep sleep.

But the poet has adopted that view point deliberately and sees his existence as a farm which produces or presents the back ground for an illusion. He sees farm after farm around himself. We should think of a matrix when he says this. The mind is such a matrix which generates images. The world is another one which produces things. By lifting the lid on one of them, we get a clear idea about the next one. When we understand our mind we see the world more clearly.

The poet ends with the words ‘and in the centre, me’. He establishes his own existence as primary. The ‘farms’ around him produces visions for him just like the farm he is on. Since he is able to see the farms too, they are also part of his illusion. They too come and go as in deep sleep and wakefulness. The real self, ‘me’ is the only permanent entity.

Thus, though this poem sounds like a nature poem, it actually explores our real nature.

The Destructors 

The Destructors by Graham Greene is an interesting short story which has allegorical touches. The story tells us how some unruly boys, vying with one another for leadership in their gang, go beyond all levels of evil and redefine it as a motiveless act.

There are three levels of characters in the story: Old Misery who owns the house, the gang of unruly boys and a truck driver. People at the church are also mentioned. The story happens near a car park overlooked by buildings which have been partly destroyed by ‘the last bomb of the first blitz’. The house owner Mr. Thomas whose nick name is Old Misery is actually nice to the children. But that doesn’t prevent Trevor, one of the boys,  from proposing to the gang that they should destroy Old Misery’s house completely when he is away. This proposal impresses the others and Trevor is voted up as the next leader and the old leader Blackie has to step down. None could come up with a worse mischief they could enjoy during the week. The story reminds us of Lord of the Flies by William Golding.

Houses have always been symbols of security and refuge. Hence they also stand for human institutions. Even the parliament is referred to as a house. House as a symbol appears in several parables in the Bible. Old Misery’s house stands for the established religions which were attacked more than a little by the two World Wars. People who had always been living in misery (old misery from the first sin?) had sought refuge in religions. But the religions lost their strength when the atrocities of war eroded many people’s trust in humanity and human kindness. This made e.e.cummings, a famous poet,  coin the phrase ‘human unkind’ in place of human kind.  The unruly gang is worse in its evil than those who steal or murder. They have no motive. It is motiveless malignity. They think there is no point in being vengefully evil.  Insisting that nothing should be stolen from the house they are destroying, the hero of the story Trevor says about the house owner, “There’d be no fun if I hated him.”

The truck driver who sees Old Misery’s house being pulled down by unseen hands laughs at it, not realizing that they might destroy his house the next day. At another level, those who passively watch the age-long institutions like religion and family disintegrate or made to disintegrate do not realize that the society and its institutions came into being to protect people and if they vanish we are again defenseless against evil.

More than the descriptions, it is in the dialogues that we find suggestions about the hidden meanings of the story.

“Wren built that house, father says.”

“Who’s Wren?”

“The man who built St. Paul’s”

“Who cares?” Blackie said. “It’s only Old Misery’s.”

In these lines we hear the echo of Satan addressing the other fallen angels in the pandemonium. Through the name of Wren, the man who built St.Paul’s Church, we are reminded of the people who organized the religions. However, now the religions belong to the miserable masses.

Again,

“What do you mean a beautiful house?” asked Blackie. They all hate beauty and culture.  They are things that flow along with the flow of life down the ages. It is interesting to see that they also consider the flow of things as a power against them. The pipes through which water flows are broken, the wires through which current flows are clipped and currency (that which moves around) is burned.

In very few words we are shown what we stand to lose when social institutions symbolized by Old Misery’s house are taken away from us. Old Misery’s helplessness is revealed when he wails over his disappeared house:

“He gave a sobbing cry. “My house,” he said, “Where is my house?”  The truck driver is passive but still makes fun of him. “Search me,” the driver said.

Thus, it is easy to see that The Destructors has more to it than meets the eye. As we read the story, we also want to see the children being successful. If the destruction was checked at some point, most of the readers would be disappointed. Thus it makes the additional point that we are not free of aggression and destruction. The popular movies and novels are all about destruction though they uphold constructive values at some point towards the end. There is a basic instinct in man to revel in his own aggression and it is through culture, art, religion and other similar activities that we overcome such tendencies.

Pike

Ted Hughes’ poem Pike shows the famous fish pike in different shades of fear and scare. In two simple lines the poet paints a complete physical picture of a pike and then spends the rest of the long poem to show pike in its real nature to enrich the experience of even those readers who may never see a pike in their life. The description ‘green tigering the gold’ has become a very famous example for terseness in descriptive writing.

The poet describes the movement and nature of the pike in a very cryptic manner. They are killers from the moment they hatch. They have a ‘malevolent aged grin as they move on the surface among the flies. The reference to the flies is intended to show how puny and short lived other life forms are in comparison with them. In their brightly coloured world ‘of submarine delicacy and horror’ they have their own grandeur and are a hundred feet long among comparatively smaller life forms. By describing the dark world where the pikes dwell, the poet is actually delving deep into the inner recesses of our mind and bringing it out for us to see. Thus, even as the poet is describing pikes, a fish which we need not fear, he is in fact fishing for the fear in us and he succeeds in his attempt through the stunningly clever deploy of images and chosen words.

The jaws’ hooked clamp and fangs

Not to be changed to this date;

A life subdued to its instrument;       

The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals.

While the description of jaw and the fangs tell us how the fish is equipped to attack, the poets tells us that the nature of the fish grew according to its natural weapons (subdued to its instrument). The gills kneading quietly and the pectorals in similar movements remind us of a wild beast crouching and waiting to pounce on its prey.

After describing the pikes which are in the poet’s aquarium, he describes pikes in their natural settings and then comes back to describe them again in his aquarium. Here we are told of how they prey upon each other too. He had kept three in his aquarium and fed fry to them. However they killed one another and only one remained.

The scene again shifts to a pond outside where the poet saw two pikes weighing six pounds each ‘dead in the willow–herb’

One jammed past its gills down the other’s gullet

The outside eye stared; as a vice locks-

The poet gives a clear and sinister description of the pond. Interestingly, the poet gives the width of the pond in terms of years and not in metres.

Whose lilies and muscular tench

Had outlasted every visible stone

Of the monastery that planted them

It is clear that the poet is making a reference at the religion which has shaped his thoughts. Evil has outlasted the religion which has deteriorated and disintegrated in the modern times. At close examination we find that the poet is describing the unconscious part of our mind. The mind too has a ‘stilled legendary depth’. This surfaces much in the lines:

It was as deep as England. It held

Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old

That past nightfall I dared not cast

The next lines are a clear description of nightmares:

But silently cast and fished

With the hair frozen on my head

For what might move, for what eye might move.

The still splashes on the dark pond,

Clearly, the poet is trying to tell us how fish or animals only trigger the fear which is always deep in us. Like watching tragedies on stage, we sort of enjoy the feeling of fear. This accounts for our interest in myths, monsters and dragons and whatever is evil and sinister.

last stanza is filled with sounds and images which are perfect in spelling fear in our minds.

                                            ...the dream

Darkness beneath night’s darkness had free,

That rose slowly towards me, watching.

This, in fact, is the description of a nightmare that rises in our minds. The pike is only instrumental to it, not the absolute cause. The three ponds the poet describes can be seen as the three levels of our mind, those which Freud named as Id, Ego and Super Ego. They all hold fear in three different ways as the three different kinds of pike that the three different water bodies, the aquarium, the pond and the larger pond hold. Short words and terse expressions adds to the hidden fear lurking in our mind and thoughts.

At Hiruharama

At Hiruharama  by Penelope Fitzgerald is a well crafted story which sustains the reader’s attention through its sympathetic treatment of life. Though there is no winding plot, the story catches our attention and maintains tension and suspense because of the realistic portrayal of adorable characters.

The story is about Mr. Tanner and his wife Kitty who end up in New Zealand and make the best out of the worst. Through farming, they manage to live in an almost barren land with not many neighbours. They live away from the city and so when Kitty gets pregnant, her husband is very worried about the medical help that she may need. He visits a doctor in the city and buys two pigeons which he hopes to use to communicate with the doctor through the man who sells them. He sees to it that nothing is overlooked. But he makes the worst foolishness when he mistakes one of the babies for the afterbirth and dumps it in the dustbin. It is this girl who becomes a lawyer and raises the family’s hopes for a better living.

The story seems to be part of a longer novel because of its abrupt opening. This is very effective since it sounds like the writer is taking the reader into his confidence with such ease and frankness.  The writer amazes us with his story tellingtechniques and informal style.

The land Mr. Tanner and Kitty selected to settle down in had only one good thing about it. There was a standpipe and constant clear water from an underground well. This source of water later turns out to be the symbol of the limitless love and affection Mr. Tanner possesses. Human relationships and the need to love and be loved loom large in the story.

Though the story is written like a chronicle, the writer is able to provide it with interesting moods and subtle tones. Along with the barrenness of the land we are also told about an insensitive neighbor who comes to dine with the couple twice a year. His name is Brinkman. He doesn’t have much to do with the plot of the story but he serves an important purpose. We find that there is a kind of softness deep in him too. He has no family since he couldn’t persuade a woman to live with him in that godforsaken land.

He arrives for his half-yearly dinner when Kitty is about to have labour pains. This disappoints him and he talks endlessly about his last dinner with them. He is not bothered about the trouble the family is going through. Still, it touches us deeply when he says why he comes to visit the Tanners. He insists he doesn’t come for dinner or to enjoy the scenic beauty. He says,

“No, I’ve come today, as I came formerly, for the sake of hearing a woman’s voice.”

This touch is important for the story since the story is feminist in its content and treatment. It is a celebration of femininity. This is brought forth through the character of Kitty and how the other treat Kitty. It is Kitty who inspires Mr. Tanner to learn to read and write and he manages to accomplish it before he marries her. Her mildest suggestion to him that he should write to his sister “how it is between us” inspires him to live up to her expectations. Since she asks him to ‘write’ to his sister, Tanner knew she expected him to be literate.

Unlike Mr. Tanner, Kitty was educated even before she came to New Zealand. She came as a governess                                                                                                                                  and ended up as a servant. It is with her help that Mr. Tanner is able to run a farm.

Tanner might be finding Kitty so committed since she has chosen to live with him and share his hardships. He tells the doctor the reason why his neighbor is not married.

“You couldn’t ask a woman to live out there.”

To this the doctor says,

“You can ask a woman to live anywhere.”

Against the doctor’s and Brinkman’s apparent insensitivity, Mr. Tanner comes out as man with such a good heart.

When Mr. Tanner visits the doctor, we see him very anxious about his wife’s condition. He wants to know how many women die in childbirth. He has no questions about the baby, even though the doctor  makes a prophetic statement,

“Well don’t ask me if it’s going to be twins. Nature didn’t intend us to know that.”

Mr. Tanner is very resourceful and is very proactive. He tells the doctor, “I can do anything about the house.” We find this to be true.

‘He told the doctor he’d managed to deliver the child, a girl, in fact he’s wrapped it up in a towel and tucked it up in the washbasket.’

Even on the day of his wife’s delivery, in the midst of all the problems and in spite of his anxiety and desperation,  Tanner is a good host to Brinkman, his neighbor whom he hasn’t seen for the last six months. His good nature goes unnoticed by his neighbour, but that doesn’t deter him from serving his guest. He wins the love of all the people he meets including the doctor and the Maori boy who sells pigeons.  When the doctor says the Brinkman is a crank, Tanner objects and says that he should be called a dreamer at the worst.

Tanner is not only endowed with a good heart, he also has a smart brain. He is resourceful and plans things in advance.

“Tanner turned over in his mind what he’s say to his wife when she told him she was going to have a child.” But when he finally tells him, he doesn’t say anything but straightaway goes to the town to consult a doctor.

The language of the story is informal to a great extent though there are two instances of the writer’s skill to write in different styles. When Tanner writes to his sister his style resembles the Bible since it is probably the only book he is able to read after he became literate. Another change in style in when Brinkman talks. His English is fairly elegant. All the other characters speak in dialects.

The story ends with Brinkman’s  thoughts. His words tell us how simple are the characters that we come across in this story. In fact, these words throw much light on the theme of the story. In spite of deserts and barren lands, the earth is still beautiful. Likewise, in spite of hardships and accidents, life is still beautiful in its own terms.

“All the time Brinkman continued to sit there by the table and smoke his pipe. Two more women born into the world! It must have seemed to him that if this sort of thing went on, there should be a good chance, in the end, for him to acquire one for himself. Meanwhile, they would have to serve dinner sometime.”