Brief overview on Old Man and the Sea

Name :-  Hetal D. Dabhi
Paper name :-   The  American Literature
Sem :- 3
Years :-  2018-20
Submitted to :-  Smt.  S. B Gardi Department of English, MKBU.

Brief overview on ‘’ Old Man and the Sea”


The Old Man and the Sea tells the story of a battle between an aging, experienced fisherman, Santiago, and a large marlin. The story opens with Santiago having gone 84 days without catching a fish, and now being seen as "salao", the worst form of unluckiness.

The Old Man and the Sea is the story of an epic struggle between an old, seasoned fisherman and the greatest catch of his life. For eighty-four days, Santiago, an aged Cuban fisherman, has set out to sea and returned empty-handed. So conspicuously unlucky is he that the parents of his young, devoted apprentice and friend, Manolin, have forced the boy to leave the old man in order to fish in a more prosperous boat.
Nevertheless, the boy continues to care for the old man upon his return each night. He helps the old man tote his gear to his ramshackle hut, secures food for him, and discusses the latest developments in American baseball, especially the trials of the old man’s hero, Joe DiMaggio. Santiago is confident that his unproductive streak will soon come to an end, and he resolves to sail out farther than usual the following day.

SUMMARY PLOT OVERVIEW
The Old Man and the Sea is the story of an epic struggle between an old, seasoned fisherman and the greatest catch of his life. For eighty-four days, Santiago, an aged Cuban fisherman, has set out to sea and returned empty-handed. So conspicuously unlucky is he that the parents of his young, devoted apprentice and friend, Manolin, have forced the boy to leave the old man in order to fish in a more prosperous boat. Nevertheless, the boy continues to care for the old man upon his return each night. He helps the old man tote his gear to his ramshackle hut, secures food for him, and discusses the latest developments in American baseball, especially the trials of the old man’s hero, Joe DiMaggio. Santiago is confident that his unproductive streak will soon.

 come to an end, and he resolves to sail out farther than usual the following day.
On the eighty-fifth day of his unlucky streak, Santiago does as promised, sailing his skiff far beyond the island’s shallow coastal waters and venturing into the Gulf Stream. He prepares his lines and drops them. At noon, a big fish, which he knows is a marlin, takes the bait that Santiago has placed one hundred fathoms deep in the waters. The old man expertly hooks the fish, but he cannot pull it in. Instead, the fish begins to pull the boat.

Unable to tie the line fast to the boat for fear the fish would snap a taut line, the old man bears the strain of the line with his shoulders, back, and hands, ready to give slack should the marlin make a run. The fish pulls the boat all through the day, through the night, through another day, and through another night. It swims steadily northwest until at last it tires and swims east with the current. The entire time, Santiago endures constant pain from the fishing line. Whenever the fish lunges, leaps, or makes a dash for freedom, the cord cuts Santiago badly. Although wounded and weary, the old man feels a deep empathy and admiration for the marlin, his brother in suffering, strength, and resolve.

On the third day the fish tires, and Santiago, sleep-deprived, aching, and nearly delirious, manages to pull the marlin in close enough to kill it with a harpoon thrust. Dead beside the skiff, the marlin is the largest Santiago has ever seen. He lashes it to his boat, raises the small mast, and sets sail for home. While Santiago is excited by the price that the marlin will bring at market, he is more concerned that the people who will eat the fish are unworthy of its greatness.
As Santiago sails on with the fish, the marlin’s blood leaves a trail in the water and attracts sharks. The first to attack is a great mako shark, which Santiago manages to slay with the harpoon. In the struggle, the old man loses the harpoon and lengths of valuable rope, which leaves him vulnerable to other shark attacks. The old man fights off the successive vicious predators as best he can, stabbing at them with a crude spear he makes by lashing a knife to an oar, and even clubbing them with the boat’s tiller. Although he kills several sharks, more and more appear, and by the time night falls, Santiago’s continued fight against the scavengers is useless. They devour the marlin’s precious meat, leaving only skeleton, head, and tail. Santiago chastises himself for going “out too far,” and for sacrificing his great and worthy opponent. He arrives home before daybreak, stumbles back to his shack, and sleeps very deeply.

The next morning, a crowd of amazed fishermen gathers around the skeletal carcass of the fish, which is still lashed to the boat. Knowing nothing of the old man’s struggle, tourists at a nearby café observe the remains of the giant marlin and mistake it for a shark. Manolin, who has been worried sick over the old man’s absence, is moved to tears when he finds Santiago safe in his bed. The boy fetches the old man some coffee and the daily papers with the baseball scores, and watches him sleep. . When the old man wakes, the two agree to fish as partners once more. The old man returns to sleep and dreams his usual dream of lions at play on the beaches of Africa.

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Major themes of '' The Tempest "

Name :- Hetal D.  Dabhi

Paper name :- The  Postcolonial Literature

Sem:- 3

Years :- 2018-20

Submitted to :- Smt.  S. B Gardi Department of English, MKBU.

Major themes of the Tempest

The Tempest Themes

• The Supernatural. In The Tempest, magic is a dazzling art form that infuses the play with a sense of wonder and a whole lot of spectacle. ...

• Art and Culture. ...

• Contrasting Regions. ...

• Freedom and Confinement. ...

• Man and the Natural World. ...

• Betrayal. ...

• Compassion and Forgiveness. ...

• The Divine.

                                                     In The Tempest, magic is a dazzling art form that infuses the play with a sense of wonder and a whole lot of spectacle. (Think "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" in Disney's Fantasia, but better.) This lends itself to a concept developed throughout The Tempest—magic is a craft not unlike that of the playwright. Although Prospero uses magic to control the natural and the supernatural worlds, the play also suggests his art is distinct from the kind of black magic practiced by the witch Sycorax.

Questions About The Supernatural

1. How did Prospero come to master his "art"? What were the consequences of his intense study of magic?

2. What difference, if any, is there between Prospero's magic and Sycorax's magic?

3. When and why does Prospero promise to give up his "rough magic"? Do we actually see him do this?

4. Are Miranda and Ferdinand under a spell when they fall in love, or is their love genuine?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Although Prospero uses magic to regain his place in Italy, magic is also the thing that got him into trouble in the first place—if Prospero hadn't isolated himself with his books, he never would have lost his dukedom.

Although the play goes out of its way to differentiate Prospero's studied art from Sycorax's black magic, at times, the play makes us wonder if Prospero and Sycorax don't share more in common.

                                                      "Now my charms are all o'erthrown, / And what strength I have's mine own" (Epilogue). So says the newly retired magician as he bids adieu to the audience. Since The Tempest is likely the last play Shakespeare wrote by himself, the epilogue has long been cited as Shakespeare's own fond farewell to the stage—sniffle.

                                            Regardless of whether or not we read Prospero the magician as a stand-in for Shakespeare the playwright, the similarities between Prospero's "art" and the "magic" of the theater are undeniable. Like Hamlet, The Tempest not only features a "play within the play" (Prospero's dazzling wedding masque) and blatant shout-outs to the theater, but it also features a protagonist who manipulates the play's action like a skillful director.

Questions About Art and Culture

1. What's the purpose of Prospero's wedding masque? How does it draw our attention to the workings of the theater?

2. In the epilogue, Prospero says the audience's applause is the only thing that can "set [him] free." Why is that?

3. Does Prospero share anything in common with master playwrights like Will Shakespeare?

4. Compare the theme of "Art and Culture" in The Tempest and Hamlet.

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.When Prospero uses his magic to produce a masque, or "some vanity of [his] art," the play makes it clear that the old magician is a lot like a master playwright.It doesn't make any sense to associate a grumpy, revenge-thirsty magician like Prospero with a playwright like Will Shakespeare.

                                            Although the play takes place entirely on an island, The Tempest dramatizes the divide between the courtly worlds and the wilderness. As the play opens, Prospero, a former Italian duke now living in exile, has already journeyed from the court to the remote island and is now trying to return. When Prospero causes his royal enemies to be shipwrecked on his isle, we learn that loyalty to the King is no longer sacred, and court members must abandon their traditions and expectations. The Tempest's foray into a kind of "pastoral" world also aligns this play with As You Like It and A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Questions About Contrasting Regions

• Does Prospero conform to the ideals of the court or the pastoral world? With which world would he most likely align himself?

• Where does Miranda fall in the pastoral/courtly divide? Is she prepared to be Queen of Naples?

• It's clear through the actions of the play that courtly laws aren't suited for the pastoral setting. Or can they be? How would the laws of the pastoral world hold up in the environment of court.

• Are there principles that differentiate courtly values from pastoral values, or are the norms.    that govern each just the same rules, interpreted differently.

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

While hierarchy still matters in the pastoral setting, the rules of the court lose authority once court members find themselves in the wilderness.

The rules of the court are abandoned by the shipwreck survivors because courtly rules have no place anywhere outside the court.

The Tempest is obsessed with the concept of imprisonment—both literal and figurative. Prospero and Miranda are forced to live in exile on a remote island, where Prospero enslaves the island's only native inhabitant (Caliban) and forces Ariel to do all of his bidding. The theme continues into the epilogue where Shakespeare suggests that, during the performance of a play, actors and playwrights are held captive by powerful audiences who may or may not approve of the artists' work.

Questions About Freedom and Confinement

• How did Ariel come to serve Prospero?

• Why has Prospero enslaved Caliban? Is Prospero justified in his treatment of Caliban?

• What is the nature of Prospero's relationship with Ariel? How does Prospero view the spirit? How is this different from how Prospero views Caliban?

• Analyze the play's epilogue and explain why Prospero insists the audience must "release [him] from [his] bonds."

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Because Prospero forces Ariel to serve him, he is no better than the witch Sycorax, who imprisoned Ariel in a pine tree before Prospero came along and "rescued" the sprite.

Prospero is not free because he is subject to his own desire for justice; he is a slave to the past wrongs done to him.

                                  Is man more "noble" in a natural state than in a state of civilization?  The Tempest returns to this question over and over again—in its portrayal of the ambiguous "monster" Caliban and in Gonzalo's utopian speech about the ideal state of the island.  Throughout the play (which paraphrases a key passage from Montaigne's famous essay "Of Cannibals"), Shakespeare also asks whether man can be at one with nature, or whether (perhaps by virtue of the biblical Fall in Eden) he is destined to make whatever he touches unnatural.

Questions About Man and the Natural World

• Is the natural state morally superior to the state of civilization (at court)?

• Can the island be considered a natural or pristine place, untouched by man, when there is so much of Prospero's magic and enchantment all around it?

• Caliban is constantly referred to as evil or deformed by nature. How can nature produce things that are unfit to exist?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Gonzalo's utopian speech in Act 1, Scene 1 suggests that man is more noble living in a natural state.

Despite Gonzalo's utopian speech in Act 1, Scene 1, the play suggests that man is not more noble living in a natural state—Caliban, after all, is in no way a "noble savage."

https://www.shmoop.com tempest

The Structure of the poem '' The Waste Land "

            

Name :-  Hetal  D.  Dabhi  

Paper name :-  The Modernist Literature 

Sem :- 3

Years :-  2018-19

Submitted to :-  smt. S. B Gardi  Department of English,  MKBU. 

The  Structure of the poem  ‘’The  Waste Land ‘’

                          The Waste Land. The Waste Land is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. ... The poem's structure is divided into five sections.

THE STRUCTURE AND THE MAJOR THEMES IN THE WASTE LAND

What makes this poem a modernist fruit is both its unconventional structure and themes Despite Pound's pruning and modification of the first manuscript, this poem remained a combination of many poems arranged into a pattern", but due to the lack of transitions between these poems, "the pattern does not unity and organize the material into a single meaning." (Gish, 1988, p. 29) With all the allusions to many other literary works, and the emotions they evoke, The Waste Land abounds in themes, and consequently in vast amount of interpretations However, the themes of futility, alienation and the quest for redemption are predominant. Just before the beginning of the poem, Eliot did not forget to employ the epigraph, "whicla serves as an introduction... Into the core of the poem." (Anchevski, 2003, p. 183) What makes this poetic device crucial in his poems is the importance of establishing the mood, before the reader goes on to the main body. As far as the poem as a whole is concerned, the final published version consists of five unequally long parts with sudden and unexpected interruptions, which impede a linear...narration." (Anchevski, 2003, p. 201) The five parts of the poem, which is 434 lines long, are titled The Burial of the Dead, A Game of Chess, The Fire Sermon, Death by Water and what the Thunder Said, the third of which is the longest one hundred and thirty nine lines, and the fourth is the shortest, consisting of only ten lines. All of these titles are allusions to other works, in one way or another

In the onset of the poem, Eliot gives us a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events" (1921, Hamlet and His Problems, para 7) to help us evoke the emotion of futility, hopelessness, impossibility of resurrection, realized in phrases and words such as dead land, stony rubbish, dead tree, dry stone no sound of water, etc. These themes, whether explicitly or implicitly, are present throughout the poem but the intensity is most felt in the first part.

In the second part we encounter two types of complex, "in a world devoid of man relationship or love", who "cant speak to each other. They are totally cut off from each otherve and manually alone" (Gish, 1988, pp. 58-59) Both of these couples suffer from dissociation of sensibility." (Abrams. 19932180 The former are alienated verbally and most important psychologically, by the continual one-sided discourse, whereas the latter couple's animal love, or senseless love is what makes them alienated. These themes are still present in the rest of the poem, but now with a slight possibility of resurrection and redemption. What heralds this possible hope is the tide nf the third part, The Fire Sermon, which is a Buddhist ritual to purity the "fires of love and other passions that destroy people and prevent their regeneration." (Abrams, 1993, p. 2152, footnote 9) After the different types of lecherous deeds given in the third part, the quest for redemption draws even nearer with the repetitive burning in line 308, which is followed by a redeeming prayer. But at the end lines 428-429, from the last stanza in the fifth part, bear the strongest reference to the desired salvation, due to the reference to the refining fire of Dante's Purgatorio and the swallow, as a symbol of spring, and hence rebith. At first reading, this poem may leave us boh flabbergasted and mesmerized With a poem elaborating themes of futility and alienation, hardly someone can not feel repulsion or at least ambivalence, but this is Eliot's view of a modem society. And in fact it is a philosophy that

he used constantly to urge us to see that there is something wrong, Indeed, and we should act as soon as possible to improve our plight. His way of doing so is by purifying ourselves of all pagan customs, lecheries and alienation, ar more precisely by regaining and maintaining the faith inGod. No matter how depressive his poetry may seem to be, it is the contrary, optimistic and hopeful, but only if we unlock the person of our own selves. (Abrams, 1993, p. 2159, fotonote .

• References,

Gish, Nancy K. (1988) The Waste Land: A Poem of Memory and Desire. New York, NY:

Twayne Publishers

Anchevski, Zoran (2003). T. S. Eliot Pesni. Skopje: Magor

Eliot, T. S. (1921), Hamlet and His Problems In The Sacred Wood. Retrieved January

23. 2014 from hp//www.banby.com/200sw9.hml#

Eliot, T.S. (1993) The Metaphysical Poets. In Abrams M. H., Donaldson, E.T., David

A, Smith, H Lewalski, B. K., Adams, R. M. Stallworthy, J. (Eds.). The Norton Anthology of

English Literature Vol 2 (6 edp. 2180. USA: W. W Norton & Company, Inc.

Elio, T. S. (1993) The Waste Land. In Abrams M. H., Donaldson, E.T. David, A., Smith,

H., Lewalski, B. K. Adams, R.M.

Stallworthy, I. (Eds.). The Norton Anthology of English

Literature Vl 2 (6 ed.) (pp. 21522159 USA: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

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