LitAide

As Margayya was disappointed with the priest and all his methods of deep prayer, he is now in a dire need of an worthy employment for himself. His earlier banking business produces no results, his old customers were reluctant to come near him because they fear he may demand their dues from them. So it was inevitable that his old business is gone forever. Now he is idle and spends much of his time at home. His wife scolds him to do something to cover domestic expenses. After spending much of his fortune on the silly deed on the advice of the priest, he is now left with 25 rupees with rejection from Goddess Lakshmi. It was indignant for him to stay at home all day with numerous visitors coming and going. They ask his wife about her husband not going out to work. Her wife also seems to irritate by his stay and she scolds him for not doing anything. His neighbours took note of his stay and took it for his inability to pay his creditors. After a month, he is left with 10 rupees and has ...

The novel "The Financial Expert" gives the readers a realistic and detailed picture of the father-son relationship. Margayya and his son Balu share a fraught relationship throughout the novel. From his childhood, Balu was nurtured as a pampered child solely because he was their only child who was begotten to them after a long period of time. Balu was a menace to his parents but his parents adore him. In the beginning, Margayya bowed to all of Balu's demand and envisage a bright future waiting ahead of him. He wanted him to study in the US and marry a judge's daughter. But as Balu grew, Margayya was caught up in his work and couldn't spend his time with him. Balu couldn't excel in his school nor he had any liking towards studies or exams. But Margayya was keen to get him passed through high school despite Balu's reluctance to not studying. That's where their relationship got much strained, Balu has transformed into an adolescent and due to his father...

The poem presents a vivid yet eye-opening description of an elementary classroom in poverty-stricken slums. He gives us an clear imagery of the children living away not just from the luxury of life but also the basic amenities. Through the poem, Spender makes a satire on the system where these children have no bright future The faces of the children sitting in the classroom reflect a bleak picture of their degraded health and undernourishment. As the poet says that these children's faces have a squeezed faces unlike a healthy child's puffy and round face, their hair seems to him "rootless weeds" and their skin is pale due to. sickness. In the classroom, a tall girl seated with her head down, a skinny boy with "rat's eyes" due to undernourishment, another one suffering from a hereditary disease of his father's recites a lesson from his desk. In the classroom marked by the gloomy conditions of these kids, among them is an unusually sweet and young ch...

The poem "Aunt Jennifer's Tiger" was written by Adrienne Rich, an American poet. The poem subtly reflects the burden of a woman due to the responsibilities and duties of married life on her. A woman has to handle the family and adapts herself to her husband and everything there. The poem begins with the narrator describing the "chivalric" and bright yellow-coloured tiger walking like a royal king upon its green world i.e. forest. These tigers are not afraid of human beings who sit beneath the trees. They just roam there in their care-free and elegant gait. The Tigers the poet is talking about are not real tigers, they are the creative work of Aunt Jennifer who used her sewing and pattern designing skill to create them on screen i.e a cloth. Aunt Jennifer's fingers faint while pursuing her hobby. Now she has a hard time even pulling the needle. Perhaps, it's due to her mental and physical fatigue of carrying out the marriage and its demands. The wor...

The poem "A Roadside Stand" is written by Robert Frost, a prolific American writer. The poem raises the issue of disparity between rich and rural poor people who lead a deplorable life in search of money. Frost is personally anguished by their state and wonders if he gets a chance to change their fate, he would do it but later he changes his mind. In a rural area, a little old house stands at the edge of a high traffic road. Attached to that house, a shed has been built to form a temporary shop to sell modest stuffs. Frost doesn't find it respectable to say that the shop is meant to get just "a dole of bread", he intends to say that it is a little step to earn some money from rich people. The hut-owner wants to earn a little bit of money which supports the city life. The road is busy with fast-moving vehicles passing without stopping or looking at the little shop. If any of them stops there, it is only to look at the signboard which tells the direction of th...

Kamala Das's poem "The Sunshine Cat" has both personal and universal elements reflected in it. Personal elements Like most of Kamala Das poetry, the poem sunshine cat is also a personal poem. the poem presents the downfall of the poetess who faced betrayal from both her alleged better-half and the lovers who used her to satisfy their carnal hunger. They refused to love her saying that it's not in their nature to love. After continuous failure in getting love, she was confined to a room by her husband whom she calls her a ruthless watcher. In the end, she ended up in the state of mental breakdown. Universal elements In addition to the poem being a personal poem, the poem reflects some universal happenings: The poem gives the real picture of the society where women have to live at the mercy of male members We also get a glimpse of mentality of some men who are keen to use a woman, usually an easy prey to quench their demonic thirst. The poem depicts the u...

The poem "A Thing Of Beauty" is written by John Keats, a famous Romantic poet. Keats died at a young age who wanted to see himself become a great poet and he achieved it. The poem is an excerpt from the Keats' "Endymion: A Poetic Romance". It deals with the poet cherishing the beautiful objects which give pleasure to the on-lookers. Certainly, he hails these natural creations of God which relieve us from all distresses. Keats hails the things whose beauty mesmerize the on-lookers and its impact will last long for a long time because we can imagine the pleasure of something beautiful long after in our mind. So it will be alive in our memories. A shade of a tree gives coolness and rest to one who comes under its hood. The cherished beauty will ensure peace of mind in a person and he/she will have a sound sleep full of joyous dreams. With it, his health will also improve due to peaceful mind away from distresses. One will breathe fresh air in the lap of flora....

The poem "A Hot Noon In Malabar" written by Kamala Das is nostalgic in nature. Like most of her poems, the poem is personal. The poem narrates the ordeal of the poetess who misses her days at her grandmother's home in Malabar where she spent the best of her days. She describes the bustle of Malabar during noontime, the beggars roam there and ask for alms in their "whining voices". The fortune-teller who has his parrots in a cage and his old fortune-cards with him. The "brown Kurava girls" examine the palm of people and enlighten them about their self and future events ahead of them. Besides it, their group sing their cultural songs. There are some bangle-sellers who sell red, green and blue bangles on the dusty roadside. Their heels are cracked due to continuous travelling. When they pass-by narrator's house and climb her porch, their cracked heels make unusual noise which seems strange to the narrator. During these noons, strangers walking th...

The poem "Keeping Quiet" is written by Pablo Neruda, a Nobel laureate author. In this poem, he conveys the message of mindful introspection and asks his readers to avoid to maintain stillness and avoid hasty life. The poem begins with the poet calling for counting will twelve after which stillness is attained for some time. During this time of introspection, he urges his readers to stop speaking in any worldly language and stop our mental and physical movements for that moment. Everyone would cherish the moment because there would be no hastiness and no one would run in a hurry. This soothing activity would unite all of us because then we would have the time to understand ourselves and others. The word "engine" symbolises the way of the modern fast moving world. To support his claim, Neruda gives instances of fishermen and salt-gatherer. In the moment of silence, fishermen would not harm any living sea creature like a whale. The salt-gatherer would deliberatel...

The character of 'Okonkwo" plays the role of protagonist in the novel "Things Fall Apart" written by Chinua Achebe. A powerful character who flaunts his prowess in wrestling from his childhood. Despite being a son of a lazy and idle father, Unuoka, he has no hesitation to toil under the harsh sun. He has no respect for his father because he led a wasteful life and died a painful death, probably didn't find a place of burial. All his life, Okonkwo keeps a thought of humiliation due to his unworthy father who didn't earn even a single title. His hatred against his father's life moulded him to become a hard, arrogant person from his childhood. When he became a respectful person later in his life, he also targets weak or low people who have no titles. One main characteristic of Okonkwo is his rashness and short-tempered nature. He never talked softly. For minute reasons, he beats his wife and sons but later he regrets internally but he never apologize...

My Mother At Sixty-Six The poem "My Mother At Sixty-Six" is written by Kamala Das, one of the foremost Modern Indian English writer who was famous for her frank depiction of women sexuality. Most of her poems are personal. The poem describes the narrator's concern towards her mother who has grown old which can also be seen from her physical features. It also depicts the complexity of the narrator digesting the fact of her mother getting too old and understandably, she doesn't convey her fear to her. The poem begins with the narrator driving from her parents home to Cochin (present-day Kochi). Her mother accompanies her. While travelling, she notices that her mother was drowsy, her face looks like of a "corpse" lacking vigour. The narrator sadly realises that her mother has aged older as her facial features show unambiguously. But then she chooses to ignore the painful thought, perhaps to spare her own mind. She tries to look out at youthful beings suc...

Literature as a graduate course has been a very popular course since centuries. In an advanced world like ours, it hasn't lost its charm and it's among one of the most sought-after courses in any university. So here we tell you five crucial things about the field which every literature aspirant who wants to study it in a university should know: 1. You got to read popular novels  One misconception of students regarding the subject is that in university, students got to enjoy popular novels like Harry Potter and Lord Of The Rings in other words literature students don't have to study, rather they enjoy their life with pleasure reading. Other than this, they read Shakespeare. This fallacy regarding Literature costs some of the people who later come to know that Apart from Shakespeare, there are a lot of great writers who wrote influential texts. And the thing about Harry Potter novels is also wrong as very few universities prescribe this type of writing. Students analyse t...

In the poem "My Grandmother's House", Kamala Das reminisces about her grandmother's house when she was alive. And after death, the house loses its charm and now it seems dead. She describes the house as not a cheerful place where "snakes moved among books" but her grandmother brought love into her gloomy life. She was reluctant to read at her young age but on seeing snakes among books in the house, she dreads. Now long after the demise of her grandmother, she often thinks of visiting the place. But when she looks at it now, it doesn't look like before, perhaps her grandmother was the root of the house after whom the whole plant couldn't survive. The atmosphere around the house is not the same as when her grandmother was alive, the air seems "frozen" to the narrator. She personifies the windows as "blind", for the interior are not visible from the outside of the window. She found the very darkness of that house holy and intends...

The poem written by Kamala Das, depicts the intimate moments of the narrator shared with her husband. It is a personal poem of the poetess which also shows the vacuum of emotional warmth between them, although the husband seems to be unaware of absence of love. Like her another poem The Sunshine Cat , there is a lack of chemistry between her husband and her. She doesn't feel the love between them and only acts as a formality to engage in sex to gratify her husband. Her husband's only contention is with his sexual desire to be fulfilled and he has no other thought of knowing what she really yearns. He may be deluded by the narrator acting as enjoying sex, she is aware of his only contention with sex and she doesn't deny him. She doesn't associate with her husband and calls him "man with Nimble finger-tips". She has no expectations from him other than fulfilling her sexual needs but she wants something else which she knows that he can never grant her, emotiona...

The poem "The Sunshine Cat" penned by Kamala Das, one of the prominent modern Indian poetess. She wrote in both English and Malayalam language. Her works have been translated into numerous languages such as French, Spanish, Russian, German and Japanese. She is also known for her open depiction of female sexuality through her works particularly her autobiography, My Story. "the husband who neither loved nor Used her, but was a ruthless watcher," In the poem, the readers are introduced to the grief and agony of the narrator. She develops distrust against the people  whom she turned to for help, but all they did was to use her in the context of "being kind to her". Her husband who was indifferent to her feelings, she admits he didn't abuse her but he totally ignored her need for emotional support. He was merely a "watcher" and seems to work out the thing called marriage by continuing the status quo. "I do not love, I cannot love, it is not...