Skip to main content

People and human beings



In George Eliot’s novel, Silas Marner, the eponymous hero is a man who felt deceived by both god and man.  His close friend deceived him by implicating him in a theft committed by the former.  Since Marner was known for his honesty and goodness, the matter was taken to God.  The lot drawn before God after the ritual of a prayer incriminated Marner again.  The worst stab in the innocent heart of Marner was when his fianceĆ© abandoned him to marry the man who had done the terrible injustice to him.

Marner leaves the place heartbroken and settles down in Raveloe as a solitary weaver who does not socialise at all.  He cannot bring himself to join any human company.  He has lost faith in mankind.  He has lost faith in God too.  However, when he sees Sally Oates suffering from the same disease which his mother had suffered from, the natural goodness in Marner well up.  He prepares a concoction for Sally and it heals her.  Marner becomes famous in Raveloe as a man with occult powers to heal incurable diseases.  People flock to him for medicines.  He drives them away telling them the truth that he has no such powers as they imagine.  But people are people.  They accuse him of being wicked.  They blame him for all the ills that befall them.

The novel is set in the beginning of 19th century.  Two centuries later, today, has the human nature altered anyway in this regard? 

Marner was good and honest.  He did not lose those qualities in spite of his bitter experiences.  That’s why he helped Sally Oates.  That is also why he refused to help the others.  He did not want to be a charlatan who cheated them by giving false medication.   But people did not care to understand.

That is why Robert Zend said, “There are too many people, and too few human beings.”  Diogenes, the Greek philosopher (412-323 BCE), would have walked the streets in broad daylight with a lit lamp looking for human beings even in our times.


Comments

  1. Hmmm , thought provoking ..but it's true there are too many people ,few human beings "

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wasn't it always so, Alka? I don't think the human nature has changed a bit in this regard.

      Delete
  2. People call it sometimes "Fate"...!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes. I have become ardent fan of Fate in the last couple of years. Witches haunt my dreams and tug at the innards of my body roaring like monstrous bulldozers.

      Delete
  3. a thought provoking read indeed... this post can make people to think whether they are "human beings" or not...

    this post is a gem sir...

    ReplyDelete
  4. As usual great post!
    Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  5. A true eye opener. A lot of people but very few human beings, would like to say here that the you sure are a human being, the way the post is written it makes you stop and think and evaluate yourself. Sitting now figuring out, where do I feature????

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's a slow and painstaking process, Athena, this development from "people" to "human being". There are occasions when my humanity is challenged painfully and I'm faced with the temptation to succumb...

      Delete
    2. You are facing the temptation and haven't succumbed yet, with me its an every day battle and I am sure I must be faltering here and there.

      Delete
  6. I have read the novel too. And believe me I often read it again and again as Silas never fails to touch my heart. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm also reading it again and again now, Anu, since I have to teach it to class 12.

      Delete
  7. So true! People should try to become human being rather than aiming to achieve other material things!

    ReplyDelete
  8. I fully agree with you.....so many people so less human beings!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Don't you think there's something seriously wrong with our social systems if the situation is so worrying, so pathetic?

      Delete
  9. True. We need to accept the fact that there are too many people but very few human beings. We do have the habit of alienating those people who do good things to the society! We need to change and the change should start from within ourselves.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The genuinely good people are often seen as threats by the majority. One reason is that the majority feel they cannot achieve the standard set by the 'good'. Another reason may be that being good has no 'fun'. What I have observed is that most people have ulterior motives which the 'good' people don't usually support...

      Delete
  10. I truly am a believer of whatever happens is for good! I myself have faced this that when i try and not get something i am dejected but later i realise it was for my betterment! Faith gets stronger only with experience!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That 'Whatever happens is for good' is a good psychological boost especially in times of trouble. It sustains us, motivates us to go on, and gives us hope. But I don't think it's a universal natural law. Ask the thousands of Palestinians killed in Israeli bombings, for example. Or going back a little, ask the millions of Jews thrown into concentration camps by the Nazis...

      Delete
  11. I haven't read the novel, but the way you put it, I think I'll read it.
    But well, what does happen, is for the good right? Or so I believe.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have taken this from the first two chapters of the novel. There's a lot more to the novel than this. Wish you good reading.

      I'd also like to believe that whatever happens is for good. But experience always does not corroborate that belief.

      Delete
  12. I appreciate and endorse the viewpoint expressed herein. Human nature has not altered in any manner even after passage of centuries.

    Jitendra Mathur

    ReplyDelete
  13. Thank you sir..It did help!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Second Crucifixion

  ‘The Second Crucifixion’ is the title of the last chapter of Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s magnum opus Freedom at Midnight . The sub-heading is: ‘New Delhi, 30 January 1948’. Seventy-three years ago, on that day, a great soul was shot dead by a man who was driven by the darkness of hatred. Gandhi has just completed his usual prayer session. He had recited a prayer from the Gita:                         For certain is death for the born                         and certain is birth for the dead;                         Therefore over the inevitable                         Thou shalt not grieve . At that time Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare were moving to Retiring Room Number 6 at the Old Delhi railway station. They walked like thieves not wishing to be noticed by anyone. The early morning’s winter fog of Delhi gave them the required wrap. They found Nathuram Godse already awake in the retiring room. The three of them sat together and finalised the plot against Gand

The Final Farewell

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv

Vultures and Religion

When vultures become extinct, why should a religion face a threat? “When the vultures died off, they stopped eating the bodies of Zoroastrians…” I was amused as I went on reading the book The Final Farewell by Minakshi Dewan. The book is about how the dead are dealt with by people of different religious persuasions. Dead people are quite useless, unless you love euphemism. Or, as they say, dead people tell no tales. In the end, we are all just stories made by people like the religious woman who wrote the epitaph for her atheist husband: “Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.” Zoroastrianism is a religion which converts death into a sordid tale by throwing the corpses of its believers to vultures. Death makes one impure, according to that religion. Well, I always thought, and still do, that life makes one impure. I have the support of Lord Buddha on that. Life is dukkha , said the Enlightened. That is, suffering, dissatisfaction and unease. Death is liberation

Cats and Love

No less a psychologist than Freud said that the “time spent with cats is never wasted.” I find time to spend with cats precisely for that reason. They are not easy to love, particularly if they are the country variety which are not quite tameable, and mine are those. What makes my love affair with my cats special is precisely their unwillingness to befriend me. They’d rather be in their own company. “In ancient time, cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this,” Terry Pratchett says. My cats haven’t, I’m sure. Pratchett knew what he was speaking about because he loved cats which appear frequently in his works. Pratchett’s cats love independence, very unlike dogs. Dogs come when you call them; cats take a message and get back to you as and when they please. I don’t have dogs. But my brother’s dogs visit us – Maggie and me – every evening. We give them something to eat and they love that. They spend time with us after eating. My cats just go away without even a look af