Nurul ‘Ain Abdullah 1013750
World Literature in English (ENGL 4820) Section 1
Question 2
Examine how Tagore acts as champion of the humanity beyond race, color, caste or gender. Elaborate your arguments in light of any 3 short stories
Rabindranath Tagore , although primarily a poet, had written many short stories that are simple yet powerful in delivering the philosophy that Tagore himself holds firm to. Tagore’s short stories usually begins suddenly, and develops around some trivial and ordinary incident or situation that ends with a twist when the readers’ interest about the story is almost heightened, or simply ends, as it should end, leaving readers provoked. The way Tagore presents life as vignettes and not in its totality or as a whole is enough to show the humanity in the characters. Tagore believes in humanity and champions this beyond race, colour, caste or gender in his short stories. In this essay, three of his short stories will be used to dissect how Tagore champions humanity beyond race, colour, caste or gender and the short stories are Kabuliwala, The Postmaster and Ruined Nest.
Kabuliwala is a simple story about a man who sell trinkets. He befriends a young girl named Mini . In this story, what strikes readers is the way the concept of friendship and love is presented. Friendship exists despite the difference of age and gender, nor the typical societal custom and norms restriction. Rehmet become friends with Mini simply because they find each other’s company pleasing, there need not be any other reason than that.They are of different religion and different social class. Mini being well-off and Rehmet, an outsider who sells odd things to get by. Their differ...
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...es depict moving human relationships within a simple, relatively uneventful plot. With this he is able to propagate his message and aim to champion humanity above all other differences that seems so strong in dividing people and preventing people from simply loving one another, as human beings. The recurring theme of the stories is the tears in things, the heartaches at the core of life, the truth that defiles the lie, all the things that each human being experience, in some point in their lives. The clash between religious notions and humanistic essence and the final triumph of humanism provide a realistic illustration of the whole human life that Tagore successfully portrays. Hopes and desires, failures and victories, happiness and grief in human life are portrayed through the three above mentioned short stories and in the end, humanity prevails and triumphs.
First of all, in chapter five, Atiq went to the mosque for the Isha Prayer. Then, he left and wandered around the city. Unknowingly, he arrived at the jailhouse. He decided to spend the night there. So, he lit up the lamp and lied down. Suddenly, he got scared to see Nazeesh behind him. As you can see, Atiq met Nazeesh a decade ago, when he was a mufti in Kabul. Then, Nazeesh told the sad story of his old father. He also told him that he wanted to die by walking into the ocean. He was describing the way of his coming death for a long time. Furthermore, after the discussion on his old father and his plan of death, he left that place. After that, Atiq also headed towards his home again. On the way, he started to think about his wife and whether she was continuing her role of sacrificial victim. Finally, he decided to stop her from doing any kinds of works and to treat her much more gently and nicely.
Searing the mind with stunning images while seducing with radiant prose, this brilliant first novel is a story of damaged lives and the indestructibility of the human spirit. It speaks about loss, about the urgency, pain and ultimate healing power of memory, andabout the redemptive power of love. Its characters come to understand the
The ideals and morals evident through techniques in both texts are consistent, despite their context. Thus through the texts, it is our ideals and morals that shape our image of humanity. Both texts highlight important facets of human nature in relation to context and its values, urging the audience to reflect on their own morals.
After reading this short story, “Recitatif,” it sums up the story exploring the relationship between the two girls never revealing the ethnic background from any of the characters. Even though the story shows many controversies that should pull the girls apart from one another based on their ethnic background it does not stop the girls from knowing each other better only letting their similarities and the memories bring them close together as friends at the end.
The emotions throughout the society are shared with the individuals throughout their confusing times, and by their shared experiences. The times spent together of the characters brought the individuals closer together through the dark negative times, and through the light positive situations of society. The confusing part of peoples lives are brought together and are shown throughout the status of society. The stories of the “Encounter,” “Eveline,” and “The Dead” come together with similar experiences of situations of light and dark. The society bring the individuals closer together by shared times.
I choose this extraordinary novel because the story is very heartbreaking and heart-touching, about many culture issues such as women life which dependent on fathers, husbands and especially sons, the bearing of male children being their only path to an accepted social status, the story of an illegitimate daughter who finally forced at young age into marriage, the portrait of friendship and love in the middle of conflicts, the cruelty to women is endorsed by custom and law, and social document covering Afghan history from before the Soviet war until after the Taliban rule.
There are many kinds of love, relationships and companionship in the world. However, during some sensitive periods of time, some love is marked as forbidden love or guilty love. Some people had to give up their love, some people had to decide to hide their love forever, some people had to get rid of the result of the love to protect themselves under that background. Wayson Choy, the author of The Jade Peony, tries to use the conflicts in the novel to tell people what real love is. Therefore, in the novel, the three relationships are three kinds which are not easily accepted by people at that time. Love has nothing to do with nationality, love has nothing to do with age, love has nothing to do with gender.
Some people believe that opposites attract. Others believe that people who are more similar will have a better relationship. Some prefer relationships with older people, and some prefer them with younger people. Jhumpa Lahiri, author of the short story collection Interpreter of Maladies, explores the dynamic of relationships in her works. In her short story “Interpreter of Maladies” a married woman confesses a secret to a man she barely knows. In her story “This Blessed House” a couple fights over the religious relics they find in their new home. While one reads Lahiri’s stories, a theme begin to emerge that shows the woman of the relationship behaving like an adolescent and the man behaving like her father due to the internalized idea of
...d to exhibit the harsh treatments many citizens living there do in recent years. Moreover, Hosseini and Amir explain the importance of having a father figure who would be support their son’s interests in life and helping them thrive for success in the careers they would like to pursue. Neither Hosseini or Amir had a father who supported their long term goals. Hosseini’s and Amir’s high social class in their hometown Kabul, made life easier for them as they were growing up because they were able to afford education which helped them a lot in the careers they pursued in. When both Hosseini and Amir came to the United States, they had a tough time learning the lifestyles of an American, but for the most part, it brought them to how successful they became. Ultimately, Khaled Hosseini creates a protagonist in his novel who serves as a parallel to his own life experiences.
As part of this task, I decided to discuss the presentation of first person experience of conflict in John Agard’s “Half-Caste” and Benjamin Zephaniah’s “No Problem”. I came to the conclusion after looking through various poems within the anthology to choose these two poems as they share a similar theme of racial discrimination and conflict. Firstly, in “Half-Caste”, Agard presents his first person experience of racial conflict using ridicule, a mockery tone and intentional use of poor standard English to belittle and be sarcastic to readers whom use racist terms and ideology in the time period he wrote it in 1996. An example of mockery and poor standard English within Agard’s poem is the line “standing on one leg”.
In both of these short stories, both Naipaul and Lessing explore the topic of post-colonial cultural identity though a diverse lens. Primarily, these authors explore the context of race, and class, something that prevalent in all of our lives wherever we come from. By opening these diverse lanes of communication through literature, each author has only made their country a better but the world as well, i.e. the mission of Nobel Laureates.
A Bengali mystic and artist, Rabindranath Tagore was a great poet, philosopher, music composer and a leader of Brahma Samaj who became a prominent voice of the Indian heritage. Best known for his poems and short stories, essays, novels articles etc., Tagore largely contributed to the Bengali literature in the late 19th and early 20th century and created his masterpieces such as Ghare- Baire, Yogayog, Sandhya Sangeet, Naibedya, Gitanjali and Gitimalya. As a Bengali polymath, he redesigned his region’s literature and music and became the first Non- European to win the Nobel Prize for literature for “Gitanjali” the book of poems.
...s, so as to hone the contrast between Africa's creation, colonisation and post-colonialism periods. In stanza one, Tagore explores the creation of Africa and cleverly establishes a setting so primal and yet so admirable. This is followed by drastic tone changes in the following stanzas which disturbingly make Africa a victim of imperialism, thereby imparting to readers just a morsel of the hardship of African history. The poem also clearly illustrates the hypocrisy of Western imperialism in the final stanza, where Tagore's juxtaposition of images and words amplify this idea. Eventually, we recognise that the only form of redemption for such Western nations is through a plea for forgiveness that will come when they experience their own downfall.
...hadows his relationship with the girl. The girl is probably apart of the high class end of the society whereas he is poor. There will always be a social gap so their “relationship” would never work. That's why the boy in the story left the bazaar in anger, he realized that it would never work due to their social gaps.
This essay focuses on the theme of forbidden love, The God of Small Things written by Arundhati Roy. This novel explores love and how love can’t be ignored when confronted with social boundaries. The novel examines how conventional society seeks to destroy true love as this novel is constantly connected to loss, death and sadness. This essay will explore the theme of forbidden love, by discussing and analysing Ammu and Velutha's love that is forbidden because of the ‘Love Laws’ in relation to the caste system which results in Velutha’s death. It is evident that forbidden love negatively impacts and influences other characters, such as Estha and Rahel, which results in Estha and Rahel’s incestuous encounter.