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The Grapes of Wrath

The world is now going through a severe crisis caused by the corona virus disease. Different people and nations deal with the crisis in their own ways. The way you deal with a crisis reflects your character. America went through a severe national crisis in 1930s. There was the Dust Bowl tragedy which damaged the ecology and agriculture of the great prairies. Then there was the severe economic depression. John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath , is set in the background of the dust bowl tragedy and the great depression. The Joad family is one of the many that moves out from Oklahoma to California in search of livelihood following the dust bowl tragedy that rendered their lands useless for cultivation. Highway 66 is overcrowded with migrants moving to a place where there will be 20,000 people waiting to secure the 800 available jobs in one Californian orchard alone. There are thousands more like them looking for livelihoods. Many of these migrants die on the way. Many

Freedom at Midnight

All Indians should read this book for various reasons. First of all, it is a vivid and well-written account of India’s liberation from the British, the dramas and the agonies that accompanied the liberation, and a close look at some of our freedom fighters and other leaders of the time. Secondly, it shows how history can be made interesting to read unlike the tedious stuff we are usually made to study in schools. Thirdly, it is a look at India of that time through the eyes of two persons from the West: an American and a Frenchman. Fourthly, the present generation whose views on historical figures like Gandhi and Nehru are being distorted through wilful propaganda need to be aware of the truths beneath the propaganda. Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins wrote the book after an exhaustive research that lasted four years and gathered 800 kilograms of documents. Their research began with none less than Lord Mountbatten himself whom they met at his residence in London in 1970. M

England, My England

The distinction between two countries, say like India and Pakistan, is not the distinction between good and bad. It is the distinction between pink lotus flowers and white jasmine flowers: just a difference. “The difference between the wild boar and the wild bear,” as Egbert would say. Egbert is the protagonist of D H Lawrence’s short story (a rather long one, in fact), England, My England . Egbert is a man of raw passion. He has a primeval spirit which loves the countryside with its “tufts of flowers, purple and white columbines, and great Oriental red poppies…” and patches of savage areas too like the “marshy, snake-infested places.” He is delighted to marry Winifred who is not only “young and beautiful and strong with life, like a flame in sunshine” but also has a timbered cottage in Hampshire gifted by her father, Godfrey Marshall.   Egbert makes passionate love with Winifred who “seemed to come out of the old England, ruddy, strong, with a certain crude, passionate qu

A Doll’s House

Conventions can be painfully oppressive if you are a superior mind. Conventions are good for the mediocre minds that hate independent thinking and love to follow the herd. Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House , shows the eminence of a woman’s mind and how that mind is held captive by a conventional social system. Nora is a very conventional wife at the beginning of the play. Her husband, Torvald Helmer, loves her very much. It appears so, at least. He calls her “my little lark”, “my little squirrel”, and so on. He works and earns for the family. Nora is a housewife. A few years ago, Torvald was ill and needed treatment in Italy. But they did not have the money. So Nora borrows the money, a large amount, from Krogstad and tells a lie to her husband that the money was given by her father. Torvald would not have allowed her to borrow the amount, particularly from Krogstad. Italy saves Torvald’s life and Nora pays off the debt by saving whatever she could from the money given to he

The Castle

We are all thrust into this life without our consent. No one asked us whether we wanted to be here on this planet at all. Once we found ourselves here, we assumed a few roles and started discovering our place on the planet. Some mysterious force out there could snatch the very roots from our souls at any time. Franz Kafka’s novel, The Castle , is one of the best allegories about this inevitable precariousness of human life. K is the protagonist who has nothing of his own except that initial. He has been assigned the job of Land Surveyor by the Castle in a nameless place. The Castle is a mysterious set of buildings to which no one from the village that exists in its shadow has access. The villagers believe they have a Count living in the Castle, but no one has ever seen him or heard from him or has had any reason to assert that the Count is real. But he is as real for them as is God for most people. K is informed by the Castle through a messenger that a surveyor is not r

The Browning Version

The Browning Version: Rising above delusions Taplow and Andrew in the movie The Browning Version is arguably the best play written by Terrence Rattigan. It forces us to take a deep look at how we delude ourselves with certain comforting falsehoods. Life is a protracted pain with enough intervals of joys and delights. We add more joys in the form of illusions and delusions in order to alleviate the pain. Andrew Crocker-Harris is a middle-aged teacher in a residential school. His wife, Millie, who is not at all happy with the rigid school-masterly ways of her husband seeks her pleasures from other male teachers of the school. Frank is one such young teacher. The play takes place on Andrew’s last day at school. He has to leave the job because of a medical problem. He was never liked by his students, colleagues or the administration and hence no one is going to miss him. A student named Taplow comes to Andrew’s residence that evening as he has been punished with extra w

Arms and the Man

Arms and the Man: Rising above sentiments War is a savage human enterprise much as it has been glorified in human history. George Bernard Shaw’s play, Arms and the Man , compels us to question our notions about war and nationalist patriotism that often leads to wars. The hero of the play, Captain Bluntschli, appears as a villain in the beginning. He is running away from a lost war. He escapes from the chasing enemy by climbing up a water pipe into the bedroom of a young woman, Raina. He threatens the defenceless woman with his gun, forces her to hide him behind the curtains, and soon reveals that he carried chocolates rather than cartridges in his cartridge box because he didn’t want to starve to death on the battlefield. He is apparently quite the antithesis of an ideal soldier. Yet he becomes the hero of the play because of his professionalism. Patriotism is just a sentiment which doesn’t really serve any useful purpose . Shaw mocked the patriot as a narcissist who t