The Financial Expert by R. K. Narayan | Characters, Summary, Analysis

Hello and welcome to the Discourse. The Financial Expert is a novel by R. K. Narayan that was published in the year 1952. It is set in the fictional town of Malgudi and tells the story of British-ruled India in the 1930s. It is a tale of ambitions, desires, greed, corruption, and karma.

Characters of The Financial Expert:

Margayya is the protagonist of the novel. He is an ordinary middle-class man struggling to make a significant life. He is the younger brother of the family and his elder brother is an established money lender with better financial status. Margayya is very keenly interested in finance and he has a niche in investment and banking. He works independently as a financial advisor helping customers with loan applications and other financial procedures; he charges a small fee for this assistance. In his town, Malgudi, he has a stand under a tree outside the main bank, Central Co-operative Land Mortgage Bank. Margayya is married and the father of a son named Balu who is a spoilt child. Being the only child, his parents try to fulfill all his wishes while he gets trapped in bad habits and bad company. Arul Dass is the peon of Central Co-operative Land Mortgage Bank. Dr. Pal is a conman who pretends to be a sociologist and psychologist. Madan Lal is a printer and publisher who came from North India and settled in Malgudi. Brinda is the daughter of a rich tea plantation owner. Margayya manages to arrange the marriage of Brinda with Balu to ensure his better future.

Summary of The Financial Expert:

The Financial Expert is divided into four chapters. The story revolves around Margayya, a young man who begins his career as a money-lender doing his business under the Banyan tree, in front of the Central Co-operative Land Mortgage Bank in Malgudi. He works as an unauthorized middleman between the bank and the borrowers. He helps the shareholders of the bank to borrow money at a small interest and lends it to the needy at a higher interest. In the process, he makes money for himself. Margayya is too much interested in money and interest. Money is not just coins and currency for him rather, he believes that money is the greatest wonder of creation which contains the mystery of birth and multiplication within itself.

The secretary of the bank realized that Margayya is making money out of nowhere by manipulating the rate of interest and thus, he catches Margayya with the help of Arul Dass, the peon with many blank loan application forms that he was not authorized to keep. The secretary and peon humiliate Margayya. Margayya believes that his persecution is motivated by a lack of means and lower social status, and vows to become a wealthy man; a financial equal of the bank’s secretary.

Later on, when he reaches home, his elder brother who is financially better than him also humiliates him for his corrupt practices of trying to make use of a loophole in the banking sector. This further angers Margayya. He and his brother live in the same ancestral house partitioned by a wall between the two families. Margayya lives with his wife and only son Balu on one side while his brother lives on the other side.

Being a single child, Balu is a spoilt brat who is very adamant. Because of the bank secretary’s opposition, his business gets temporarily halted for a while. He keeps a record of all the money that he has lent to various borrowers and all the entries of his transactions with his clients. One day, Balu demands some candy and when he fails to get any, he gets angry and throws the register containing all the business entries of Margayya into a gutter outside the house running with dirty water, and it disappears down the drain. This is a big loss to Margayya as without proper written records, many of his borrowers cheat him and weasel out of what they owed him. It becomes difficult for him to return to his cheap practice of dodging the loophole of the Cooperative bank.

Margayya feels that despite his hard work and acumen, he isn’t getting the rewards as if his fate is stopping him from attaining success.

He then meets an astrologer and shows his horoscope to him. The astrologer says that Margayya is going through the bad run of Saturn and suggests him a puja to Lakshmi, the Goddess of wealth. The astrologer also instructs him to offer honey to the priest of a temple dedicated to Saturn (Shani), God of Justice). Margayya visits the Shani temple and offers honey to the priest of the temple. Then he dedicates himself to the worship of Goddess Lakshmi which has to be done for forty days, with ash from a red lotus and ghee made of milk from a grey cow. His wife assists him appropriately. The red lotus is a rare thing that Margayya could attain only from a pond in the other town. Margayya visits and takes a lotus from the pond every day. During his visits to the pond, he meets Dr. Pal who is working as a journalist but also claims to be a sociologist and psychologist. One day, Dr. Pal shows a manuscript of a book titled “Bed-Life; Or Science of Marital Happiness.” Dr. Pal says that the book contains the essence of his research and experience as a psychologist and he is seeking a publisher for publishing that book. Margayya takes the manuscript with a promise that he will arrange for a good publisher. After reading the book, Margayya feels that though the topic of the book is off the mark, it can be a successful book. He meets Dr. Pal and says that he is willing to buy the manuscript from Dr. Pal for Rs25 to which Dr. Pal agrees. Margayya expects to sell at least 100,000 copies year after year at 1 rupee each, thus making a profit of Rs 100, 000 minus Rs 25, the price at which he bought the manuscript.

On the fortieth day of his puja, Margayya meets a publisher Madan Lal and persuades him to publish the book. Madan Lal reads the manuscript and says that the book can be successful but publishing it may trap them in the legal issues of obscenity. Thus, he suggests that the title of the book should be changed to “Domestic Harmony.” Madan Lal says that he is willing to publish the book if Margayya agrees to a 50% share in profits to which Margayya agrees. The book is at once popular and sells like hotcakes and Margayya hits a fortune. Everything improves for Margayya and his brother also starts talking to him cordially. However, with the success on the business front, Margayya starts living a better life with all the luxuries stacked at his home for his wife and son. He takes the help of his elder brother to get Balu admitted to the best school in Malgudi. Everyone starts respecting Margayya. As Margayya’s profits from the book increase, he gets enough money saved to restart his business of money-lending. He fails to control his lust and gets involved in the dodgy schemes of finance and money lending again. While he makes good profits in the financial sector too, he starts losing at his home base. His only son gets trapped in bad habits and bad company. His teachers complain that Balu is doing very bad in his studies. Margayya decides to donate a large amount of donation to the school and becomes a member of the school board and hires the school teacher as a private tutor for Balu. Yet Balu doesn’t improve, rather he starts cheating during the exams to get better grades, and nobody opposes him as he is the son of a member of the school board.

Margayya’s only dream is to send Balu to college and then to further studies in Europe or America. While he is making good money through Dr. Pal’s book, he doesn’t wish to continue burdening himself with the ignominy of being the publisher of a pornographic book. Thus, he makes a deal with Madan Lal and sells his share in the book for a good amount of money. He then uses that money to start his own private bank.

While Margayya gets busy in his new bank, Balu flunks in his high school graduation examination conducted by the state board that Margayya couldn’t manipulate. Margayya feels frustrated and tells Balu to reappear for the exam and study hard. But Balu is no more interested in education. He forcibly enters the office of his school and tears off the School leaving certificate register and takes it away to throw it in the same gutter where he threw Margayya’s account book. Then Balu runs away from the home. Margayya tries to search for his son but fails. One day, he gets a letter from Madras, informing him about the accidental demise of Balu. His elder brother comes to him to help him in this difficult time but Margayya denies taking his help and decides to visit Madras and take the dead body of his son alone. On the train to Madras, he meets a man who happens to be a police inspector in plain clothes and shares his ordeal with him. The police inspector asks him to show the letter to him. After seeing the letter, the police inspector says that it is fake and his son must be alive. After reaching Madras, the police inspector investigates the case and finds that Balu is living with a rich but crazy man who has employed him. Margayya takes his son back to Malgudi, alive. After reaching home, he and his wife spoil Balu even more than before.

Margayya realizes that Balu has no future in education so he decides to marry him off to a beautiful girl named Brinda who is the daughter of a rich tea plantation owner. However, when Margayya takes the horoscope of Balu the astrologer whose help he took in past, to match it with Brinda, the pundit declares that their horoscope doesn’t match. Margayya gets angry over the pundit and decides to meet another astrologer. Dr. Pal takes him to another astrologer who demands a high fee of Rs 75 to do a puja that will help match the horoscopes of his son with Brinda. Margayya agrees and the astrologer manipulates the horoscope of Balu to make it appear matching with that of Brinda.

Margayya succeeds in arranging the marriage of Balu with Brinda and then he takes a huge amount of loan from his clients to buy a new house for Balu and Brinda in the Lawley Extension. While he is making good business, he observes that Balu is tilting toward Dr. Pal too much and decides to draw Dr. Pal away from his son. To do so he hires Dr. Pal to attract deposits from black marketeers who have become rich in the wartime economy, by promising high-interest rates. He starts taking loans from such people at a handsome interest and then re-lending the money to the needy at an even higher interest. However, soon he realizes that he is not getting enough borrowers ready to take loans at such a high-interest rate. Yet, he calculates that If he got Rs. 20,000 deposit each day and paid Rs. 15,000 in interest, he had still Rs. 5,000 a day left in his hands as his own. However, it is not his money that he starts spending, he is just running a Ponzi scheme and spending other people's money. Soon he buys a new car and other amenities. He remains in the good books of the police in administration by giving donations to the War Fund.

Meanwhile, Balu is doing nothing but wasting all the money he gets from Margayya and Brinda’s family on alcohol and prostitution. One day, Balu visits Margayya’s office and claims that Margayya made all his fortune from his ancestral property. Now when Balu is an adult and married, he demands his share in ancestral property. Balu gets baffled by this demand but persuades Balu to go away and promises him to think about it soon. Soon he finds out that Dr. Pal is instigating Balu and he has trapped Balu in luxurious bad habits of alcoholism and prostitutes for which Balu needs more money. He goes to Balu’s house at Lawley Extension that night and finds that Brinda and her infant child are alone. When he asks about Balu, Brinda starts crying and informs him about Balu’s daily routine at night. She says that he hardly visits home and spends nights with other women. Margayya is saddened by knowing all this. As he comes out of the house, he notices a car stopping at the gate from which Balu emerges out. Margayya observes that Dr. Pal is also sitting in the car along with two prostitutes. He gets enraged and takes Dr. Pal out of the car and starts beating him. He scolds the girls and makes them run away.

The next morning, Dr. Pal goes to the police and lodges a complaint of assault against Margayya. He also starts whispering bad words against Margayya and his Ponzi bank. This creates mistrust in Margayya’s client base and they start to demand their deposits back. The Ponzi scheme quickly collapses. Margayya has to declare bankruptcy. The house shared by him and his brother cannot be attached, but all other assets are seized, and Balu and his family are thrown out of their house, and back to the small half-house where Margayya lives. Then Margayya shows Balu all his ancestral property, the half-house where they live, and the tin box in which he kept his ink, pen, and paper to take every day to his place under the banyan tree in front of the cooperative bank. He offers Balu all his ancestral property and tells him to go to the banyan tree and start working. But Balu is afraid of doing so as he worries about what people would say about it. So Margayya decides to go back to his old work himself and restart his struggle. Narayan ends the novel after this whole circle that began from the banyan tree and ended in its shed.

So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of Indian English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!

Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady by Alexander Pope | Summary, Analysis

Hello and welcome to the Discourse. Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady is a poem by Alexander Pope in Heroic couplets that was first published in 1717. Unlike his other famous works like Rape of The Lock and Dunicad, Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady is not a satire. Rather it is an emotional poem sympathetic to a diseased lady who committed suicide. Suicide was considered a heinous crime directly against the religious scriptures of both Roman Catholic and Protestant sects. When Alexander Pope wrote this elegy commemorating her ending life, he faced criticism as death by suicide was not considered something to be lauded.

In this poem, Alexander Pope describes death by choice as a brave, or noble act. He describes a young woman who took her own life because her uncle barred her liaison with the man of her choice.

The lady is not named anywhere in the poem and there is no substantial evidence that Alexander Pope wrote this poem inspired by some real incident. It could have been the case of the completely manufactured story of such a lady by Alexander Pope that he invented to support his own ideas about suicide, or in support of his ideas for the right of a woman to choose her spouse.

Aphra Behn (The Forc’d Marriage), George Farquhar (The Beau Stratagem), William Wycherly (The Country Wife), John Vanbrugh (The Provoked Wife), and William Congreve (The Way of The World) had already raised this issue by their plays.

Structure of Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady:

The other title for the same poem is “Versus to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady.”

The poem is written in Heroic couplets with 82 lines composed in 7 Stanzas of varying length. The poem lacks any strict rhyming pattern but end-rhyming (shade-glade, heart-part, sky-die, aspire-desire....) keeps the poem melodious. Pope has used alliteration, allusion, allegory, anaphora, and imagery has been used.

Summary of Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady:

Stanza 1

Lines 1-10

The narrator identifies the spirit of her dead beloved as a silhouette, “a beck’ning ghost” silver-lined by moonlight. She invites the narrator to examine the wound, that killed her. The narrator observes that the ghost has a deep bleeding wound going right through her bosom to her heart. The sword that wounded her is still there and it gleams lightly as her blood shines on it.

The poet wonders why the spirit of her beloved is lurking around, he worries about her even though she is dead and asks if she has been alienated by Heaven for committing suicide: “Is it, in heav’n, a crime to love too well?” He enquires if the angels consider it a crime for someone who loves a person more than anything, their own life and when they fail due to the harsh and heartless society’s opposition, they act "a Lover's or a Roman's part." Christian scriptures claim suicide is a crime against God. However, the Romans didn’t consider it a crime or immoral in certain conditions. Rather the pagan considered it a brave way to ascertain one’s liberty, honor, and prestige. During medieval India when the villages and forts of native people were attacked by Muslim or Christian exploiters, the unmarried girls, wives, and daughters of fighting Hindu soldiers used to prepare themselves to commit “Jauhar” or “Sati” in case of the defeat and death of their husbands in the battleground. They did so because, for them, their honor and chastity were more important than their life. They believed that it is better to jump in the fire and end one’s life than to allow the robbers to sully their bodies and life and become their slaves. The Christians and Muslim invaders who often attacked Hindu villages and colonies with the main purpose of robbing Hindu women often found themselves fooled as they got nothing but burnt bodies of dead women whom they desired to enslave. But for Christians, suicide is a crime. Thus, the poet mentions the act of committing suicide as "a Lover's or a Roman's part." The narrator acknowledges that in the mortal world, the lady’s family and society as a whole mistreated her and considered her a sinner and didn’t even attend her funeral. So he asks if she is suffering the same alienation in her afterlife?

Stanza 2

Lines 11-22

The narrator admires the dead lady so much that he questions Christian morality and wonders If heaven does not approve of one human's loving another beyond bearing, and the death by one's own hand that might result, then why would heavenly "Pow'rs!" allow, or even cause "Her soul aspire / Above the vulgar flight of low desire?" Pope blames the Almighty for the folly of love that ends in death. He says that if it is a sin for someone to love another person so much to die for them, then why does God inspire them to love someone to such a great height? He uses biblical allegory and mentions that God made man in his own image. But then the Angels produce ‘Ambition’ for love in their heart. The narrator says that love "first sprung" as the "glorious fault of Angels and Gods." The narrator then complains about human frailty and says that most souls only "peep out once an age," the rest of the time remaining "sullen pris'ners in the body's cage." Pope uses excellent imagery to suggest a loving heart either as a prisoner or liberated by passion.

Stanza 3

Lines 23-28

In these lines, the narrator says that when the lady died, he believed that being a better soul, a better human being, she has left the heartless society of living people to join the purer souls in the sky where she will be acknowledged and respected for her good, love, and virtues. Her ambition destined her for the heavens, and her departure from this earth has deprived her family below of all “virtue (to redeem her race).”

Stanza 4

Lines 29-46

In these lines, the narrator suggests that the lady who committed suicide was an orphan being controlled by her guardian, her uncle. The narrator compounds the guardian’s failings in Christian charity toward his female ward by heaping curses for the early death of the uncle’s entire family to an overwrought, even surrealistic degree (“And frequent hearses shall beseige your gates/While the long fun’rals blacken all the way”). So many should die that neighbors behold a veritable parade of hearses, to compensate for the death of the innocent maiden who could not be buried in the hallowed ground because of her manner of death.

Stanza 5

Lines 47-68

The narrator returns to the sad situation of the lady who didn’t even get a proper, traditional funeral and last rites and maybe that is why she is suffering even in her afterlife. The narrator says that she understands her pain. “By foreign hands thy dying eyes were clos'd, By foreign hands thy decent limbs compos'd, By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn'd, By strangers honour'd, and by strangers mourn'd!” Pope used anaphora to explain the dire situation of the lady in lines 51-54. The narrator mentions that strangers buried her in an unhallowed grave, without Christian burial rights because of her suicide. But nature restored beauty and sacredness to her unmarked grave site, where angels “o’ershade/ The ground, now sacred by thy reliques made.”

Stanza 6

Lines 69-74

In these lines, the narrator says that despite all the wrongs she faced, the lady must now attain the peace and comfort that she deserves. Once she had wealth, beauty, titles, and fame but now she resides under a grave without a stone. The narrator says that she is now mere dust, “as all the proud shall be.”

Stanza 7

Lines 75-82

In the last stanza, the narrator offers a lesson of mortality to himself: someday he too will die and the last thought of the lady will be torn from him as he passes away. There will be no more to mourn her and remember her. He mourns that after his death he will no longer be able to mourn his beloved: “Life’s idle business at one gasp be o’er,/ The Muse forgot, and thou beloved no more.”

So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!

Anecdote of the Jar by Wallace Stevens | Structure, Themes, Summary, Analysis

Hello and welcome to the Discourse. Wallace Stevens was an American poet who took birth on October 2, 1879, in Reading, Pennsylvania. He was a law scholar from New York Law School. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his poetic collection titled Collected Poems in 1955.

His first poetic collection was titled Harmonium which was published in 1923. Harmonium contains 85 poems and one of them is Anecdote of the Jar which was first published in 1919.

Wallace Stevens was known as a symbolist philosophical poet and Anecdote of the Jar is a good example of that. It is an imagist symbolic poem in which Stevens explores if human creativity can surpass nature in some way. Stevens concludes that art can be much more beautiful than nature itself in many ways but it cannot be as creative as nature.

Structure of Anecdote of the Jar :

Anecdote of the Jar is a 12 lines long short poem composed in three stanzas written in iambic tetrameter with no specific rhyming scheme. Occasional end rhyming makes the poem interesting (hill/hill, air/everywhere/bare). The poem uses Alliteration, Assonance, Caesura, Consonance, and Enjambment. Metaphor, Personification, Symbolism, and Hyperbole. It can also be termed as an allusion to John to Keats' "Ode to a Grecian Urn."

Summary of Anedote of the Jar:

The poem is set in Tennessee. Just like many of his other poems, Anecdote of the Jar is very easy to understand but it can be interpreted in a myriad of ways and that makes it difficult and ambiguous. The poet describes the after story of one of his acts in past.

First Stanza

I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill.

It made the slovenly wilderness

Surround that hill.

The narrator says that he placed an ordinary jar on the top of a hill in Tennessee. The jar was round and it was manageable enough that the narrator alone could lift and take it to the top of the hill and place it. It is a man-made jar, an artificial thing, a thing of art. The jar is beautiful and makes the surrounding nature appear lacking or inferior. The perfection of the jar makes the hill look more untidy in contrast to the jar. Here, the narrator himself is observing all this. The poet uses personification, metaphors, and symbolism to suggest that the jar made it necessary for the surroundings to change for to better as the hill appears surrounded by “Slovenly Wildnerness” because of the presence of the jar. The jar represents artificial beauty, industrialization, and modernity. While the hill represents natural wilderness which appears untidy, unmanaged, and dirty. A jar is not a human, it cannot bring any change or do anything, and a jar cannot persuade, and thus the poet personifies it in the third line.

Second Stanza

The wilderness rose up to it,

And sprawled around, no longer wild.

The jar was round upon the ground

And tall and of a port in air.

The poet uses personification of nature and suggests that nature gets influenced by the beauty of the jar and gets animated. Nature surrenders and accepts that the jar is much better and thus, strives to change and get better, like the jar. The jar appears to be a tall leader of all natural things surrounding it as it changes the wilderness of nature to a tidiness, managed landscape. And gradually, the jar got control of all the surroundings, reducing the wilderness.

Third Stanza

It took dominion everywhere.

The jar was gray and bare.

It did not give of bird or bush,

Like nothing else in Tennessee.

The poet then symbolizes the change brought upon by the jar in the third stanza. The jar continues to dominate the surrounding and gradually takes control of everything natural and it becomes unnatural. The wilderness gets away as the artificial beauty takes hold of it. Everything is now tidy, managed, and ordered. The jar becomes the universal leader and then the poet notices that the jar was gray and bare, it was barren. It couldn’t give birth to a bird or bush. Now when the jar has dominion over the whole surrounding, everything in Tennessee is as barren, gray, and bare, as the jar was.

Themes of Anecdote of the Jar:

The main theme of the poem is within the imagery and symbolism. Stevens offers strong images of the order of the artificial world in form of dominating jar. The hills and surroundings are the images of the subservient nature, tamed by human intellect and cleverness. The wilderness represents adaptability of the nature that tries to attain the same order and tidiness as that of the jar. These images and symbols can be interpreted in several ways from different philosophical perspectives.

The proper place for a jar could be a kitchen with other utensils. But somehow, the jar is left behind in the wilderness, alone. Nature consequently adapts to the alienated jar, not letting it alone.

The jar represents art, which is a human endeavor. The poet suggests that despite all its beauty, there is a limit to human art, innovativeness, and artificial creativity which can never match the ability of nature. Human art and imagination are beautiful but ultimately do not have the power to the creation of nature and reality represented by the wilderness. The poet is demonstrating the acceptance of the limits of imagination in reality.

Another interpretation could be the harmful effect of modernism and industrialization on the earth, atmosphere, and overall environment. The poet suggests that being artificial, aided with human cleverness, the artificial is dominant enough to subjugate nature but in the end, it leads to barrenness, synonymous with death. However, unlike the environmentalists, who often act holier than thou, the poet doesn’t engage in criticizing humankind, rather, he uses ‘I’ at the beginning and accepts the blame for the imagined barrenness.

Another interpretation could be the limits of any revolutionary idea. The United States rose as a brilliant idea of human liberty and progress that inspired the whole of the world. But gradually, the US started losing its shine while the world continued to grow and become better.

There can be politico-philosophical interpretations too. Some feminist critics suggest that the jar represents the patriarchial male ego dominating mother nature, a female environment, and that causes mayhem and destruction. The same jar can be said to represent industrial imperialism, destroying the environment and manipulating the wilderness. As one can see, such a short and succinct poem by Wallace Stevens can perfectly be interpreted in so many ways aligning with different philosophical connotations.

So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of American English literature. Please stay connected to the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!

Mr. Sampath—The Printer of Malgudi by R. K. Narayan | Characters, Summary, Analysis

Hello and welcome to the Discourse. Mr. Sampath was the first novel by R. K. Narayan that he published in independent India in 1949. It was soon adapted into a Hindi film in the year 1952 with the same title. The novel is set in 1938 under the British Raj, and like many other novels of Narayan, it is also set in the fictional town of Malgudi. It is a comic novel of manners with shades of realism that talks about the hopes of common men, their struggles, desires, and eccentricities. The story is about a businessman who adapts to the collapse of his weekly newspaper by shifting to screenplays, only to have the glamour of it all go to his head.

The subtitle of the novel is The Printer of Malgudi. The novel doesn’t revolve around the protagonist as the other characters also attain somewhat equal weightage within the story.

Characters of Mr. Sampath:

Srinivas is the protagonist of the novel who belongs to a middle-class family living in Talapur. He is an idealistic person with a certain ethical code. He is already married with a teenage son named Ramu. Srinivas decides to begin a political journal titled The Banner in a nearby town Malgudi. Sampth is a conman of Malgudi. He is a very lively and optimistic person with very high ambitions but he lacks ethical stability. He enjoys his life as it comes and believes that living is not a punishment. He is also married but doesn’t care much about his family. Ravi is a young man living in Malgudi who works at a bank but doesn’t like his work. he is an artist. Shanti is a young beautiful movie actress working in the film industry. Mr. Somu, Mr. Sohan Lal, and De Mello are investors from whom Sampath swindles money to begin his film industry venture “Sunrise Pictures.” The landlord Sanyasi who owns the hovel where Srinivas lives in Malgudi is also a noticeable character. He is a miser widower who has turned his big house into several shady hovels or huts that he rents to people seeking shelter at an exorbitant rate.

Summary of Mr. Sampath— The Printer of Malgudi

Srinivas is a middle-aged man belonging to a middle-class family. His father is a reputed lawyer in Talapur while his brother is also a successful lawyer. However, Srinivas has no interest in the legal profession as he feels it involves too many pretensions and lies. He is married and is a father of a teen boy named Ramu. His brother encourages him to find some other occupation if he is not interested in law and thus, Srinivas decides to leave his ancestral home at Talapur and go to the nearby bigger town of Malgudi to begin his weekly news journal that he wishes to name The Banner. He leaves his family in Talapur so that he may invest all of his time in his new venture.

At Malgudi, he manages to set up an office where he could write and edit his newspaper but struggles to find a reliable printer. Meanwhile, he starts living at a small hovel owned by Sanyasi who is a miserly widowed old man. Sanyasi is a very eccentric person who has converted his big house into several small hovels that he offers for rent. He lives in a small hovel in the same building. He is a miser and doesn’t wish to spend a single penny for the upkeep of the hovels that are no better than huts or shanties. The whole building has a single tap-water connection that he uses most of the time. This is a big problem for the tenants who request him to get a tap water connection in each hovel. Sanyasi doesn’t heed them because extra water connection will require extra investment.

Srinivas is an idealist who wishes to follow his heart. Yet, he finds himself trapped in the web of familial responsibilities and regrets the fact that “Man has no significance except as a wage-earner, as an economic unit, as a receptacle of responsibilities.” To fulfill these responsibilities, he must find a printer that may help him establish his weekly news journal.

One day while taking lunch at Bombay Anand Bhavan restaurant, he meets a person named Mr. Sampath who claims that he has a printing machine and workers. Mr. Sampath is a lively person full of optimism and confidence. Srinivas gets impressed by him as he feels that Mr. Sampath can easily bring everyone in his favor. Mr. Sampath is also a married man who believes that life is not a punishment and enjoys every moment of it. Srinivas soon becomes his friend and begins writing for his newsletter. Mr. Sampath manages to print 500 copies of The Banner within a night and Srinivas’s new venture gets a beginning. Srinivas offers him some amount to continue the printing work and they become partners.

Ravi is a neighbor of Shrinivas who works at a bank but is more interested in painting. He often remains puzzled and aloof. One day, he confesses to Shrinivas that he is puzzled because of a beautiful girl that he saw once in a temple. Ravi is deeply in love with that girl though he knows nothing about her. He draws a beautiful sketch of that girl and shows it to Shrinivas. Shrinivas realizes that Ravi is a great artist who is forced to waste his time in a bank. Unfortunately, Ravi if fired from the bank on the same day. Shrinivas promises to find a suitable job for him.

Meanwhile, after the publication of three editions, the publication of the fourth edition of The Banner gets delayed. Shrinivas gets pensive and asks Mr. Sampath about the reason. Mr. Sampath informs us that printing got delayed because of a strike by the workers. Shrinivas finds something fishy and decides to check the printing chamber and finds out that there is no worker and Mr. Sampath himself used to do the whole work alone. But now Mr. Sampath is not feeling the same zeal and interest in that job. Anyhow, Mr. Sampath promises to begin working again.

Shrinivas further gets into trouble when he sees his wife and son Ramy at his office. His wife complains that he never answered her letters and announces that she and Ramu will live with him in Malgudi. Shrinivas is worried that his wife is habitual of living in a big house with all sorts of amenities, how will she adjust in the small shanti he is currently living in. Anyhow, he manages to get another nearby hovel for rent in the same building. However, his elder brother asks him about the performance of The Banner to which he fails to answer because Mr. Sampath hasn’t begun the printing yet. Somehow he convinces his brother that The Banner will be in circulation pretty soon.

When he meets Mr. Sampath for enquiring, he finds that Mr. Sampath has totally dropped the idea of continuing the journal and rather has established a film production company by the name “Sunrise Pictures.” Mr. Sampath informs him that he has already got a few investors for his new venture which include Mr. Somu, Mr. Sohan Lal, and De Mello.

Mr. Sampath convinces Srinivas that film production is a better and more lucrative business and engages him as the scriptwriter for their first production which is based on the Hindu legend involving the incineration of Lord Kama by lord Shiva. Shrinivas agrees and prepares the script but asks Mr. Sampath to give a job to Ravi as the art designer for the project. Mr. Sampath agrees and decides to play the role of Lord Shiva himself while he engages Shanti, a successful and beautiful actress for the role of Goddess Parvati. When Shrinivas sees Shanti in the make-up of Goddess Parvati, he finds that she appears exactly like the sketch drawn by Ravi.

Soon Shrinivas finds that Mr. Sampath is swindling the money of the investors while he is also having an affair with the lead actress despite being already married. When Shrinivas questions Mr. Sampath about it, he says that he finds nothing wrong in having two wives and he can manage both his wives well. However, Mr. Sampath says that Shrinivas should ensure that Ravi remains away from Shanti because Mr. Sampath feels that Ravi obsessively stares at Shanti and he may snatch her from Mr. Sampath. Shrinivas realizes that Ravi considers Shanti the same girl whom he saw in the temple. He tries to reason with Ravi but fails to convince him otherwise.

Meanwhile, Sanyasi is interested in convincing Ravi to marry his niece who is still a teenage girl. He approaches Shrinivas and tells him that his niece is his only responsibility and that if Ravi marries her, he will be able to die peacefully. Shrinivas again tries to convince Ravi but fails to make any progress.

One day during a shooting when Shanti and Mr. Sampath were acting on the stage, Ravi fails to control his emotions and confronts Shanti and tries to convince her to break up her affair with Mr. Sampath, who is an aged married person and elope with him. Shanti gets frightened by Ravi’s straightforwardness and shouts at him. Ravi insists she runs away with him and as Mr. Sampath tries to intervene, he throws him down the stage and injures Shanti too. This creates pandamonium while the stage goes dark because of an electric blackout.

After that incident, Mr. Sampath bundles up his film production and runs away with Shanti while stealing all the money from the investors he arranged. Ravi loses his mental balance and falls ill while Shrinivas finds himself responsible for him. Shrinivas decides to return to his first venture of printing a news journal and asks for some monetary help from his elder brother. Soon he finds another printer who is not as artistic as Mr. Sampath but he is much more professional and reliable. Shrinivas works hard with the new printer and The Banner gains good and regular circulation in the market. Meanwhile. Mr. Sampath elopes with Shanti and they enjoy a short honeymoon during which he spends all the money that he swindled. Shanti tries to manage with him for a few days but then leaves him and goes back to Bombay to revamp her career. Mr. Sampath too decides to return to Malgudi. When he reaches Malgudi, he comes to know that The Banner is working successfully. He visits Shrinivas’s home and tries to convince him to let him work for The Banner again but Shrinivas rejects him and says that he does not want to have any occupational dealings with Mr. Sampath ever again though they will remain good friends.

Meanwhile, Sanyasi, the landlord dies in an accident at the playground. His relatives start fighting over the ownership of the hovels and shanties. Somehow, they come to an agreement and then they decide to renovate all the hovels to make them better for living and arrange a private tap water connection for each of the hovels. Ravi’s condition also starts improving. The novel ends on a happy note as Shrinivas succeeds in establishing his weekly journal and the tenants of the hovels get proper water connection.

So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of Indian English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!

The Rape of The Lock Canto 5 by Alexander Pope | Structure, Summary, Analysis

Hello and welcome to the Discourse. Canto 5 of The Rape of The Lock begins as Belinda ends her highly emotional lament for the loss of her lock. Everyone present at the Hampton court could feel her loss and pain. Despite the Baron’s attack on her reputation, she wins everybody’s sympathy. Thus, Clarissa rises to offer a moralizing retort suggesting that Belinda and society shouldn’t care much for external beauty that is sure to diminish with time. Instead, one should value good behavior, good humor, virtues, and merit more. Clarissa tries to calm Belinda and Thalestris down by offering a moral lecture that appears more like a hypocritical speech considering she aided the Baron in mutilating Belinda’s lock which was neither good humor nor an act of merit or virtue. She fails to calm Belinda and Thalesris who demand the Baron must return the Lock. The Baron being adamant refuses and declares his intention to encase the hair in a ring and wear it forever. This enrages Belinda and Thalestrist and they declare a battle against the Baron and his folks. Pope describes a party scuffle in an epic war manner. The Baron’s side is obviously more powerful and aided by god’s favor. Yet, Belinda manages to subdue the Baron and demands the lock back. But the Baron fails to do so because, during the haphazardous battle, the Lock goes missing for good. The Baron, Thalestris, Belinda, and others try to locate it everywhere possible but fail to find it.

Summary of The Rape of The Lock Canto 5:

Lines 1-34

As Belinda finishes her tearful emotional lament at the loss of her lock, everyone present at the party feels for her except the Baron. He insists that the lock is now the cherished trophy that he will entrap in a ring with diamonds and wear it until he breathes. This further enrages Belinda and Thalestris. ‘Fate and Jove’ prevents the Baron from listening to reason. Pope offers an allusion suggesting that gods interfere with humans to bring upon such crisis and compares the Baron with Aeneas, the Trojan Hero from Book IV of Virgil’s Aeneid. Jove is the Roman god Jupiter who forces Aeneas to leave Carthage despite his lover Dido doing everything possible to stop him and be with him. Dido’s sister Anna too tries to stop Aeneas but he doesn’t stop. Ultimately, Dido commits suicide. While the case of Aeneas, Dido, and Anna involved very high stakes, it is a mock element. Pope’s situation of a war over the lock appears to be ridiculous. Dido was tricked to fall in love with Aeneas by Cupid, and here Umbriel is doing the stuff. One can observe the pervasive supernatural influence over mortals in the poem right from the beginning. Belinda is compared to Dido while Thalestris appears to be Anna.

Clarrisa, whose name literally means ‘clarity’ observes the situation. She aided the Baron in mutilating the lock and humiliating Belinda to make her lose her honor. Now when she listens to the reproaches of Thalestris and observes that everyone is sympathetic towards Belinda, she plays the moral card. She notes that men often call women angels and worship them as such without assessing their moral character. She observes that beauty is ephemeral: “Curled or uncurled, since locks will turn to gray; / Since Painted, or not painted all shall fade.” Clarissa argues that “frail beauty must decay” and thus, women should stress more on other qualities like virtues, merit, and good sense in particular. She says that if vain activities, such as dancing all night and dressing oneself all day, warded off smallpox or stopped one from aging, it would make sense to ignore duty and never to learn anything, and it would actively be moral to take pleasure in beautifying oneself. She addresses Belinda and says that when her tantrums (“airs, and flights, and screams, and scolding”) will fail to restore her beauty so she must value ‘good humor’ more because that will make her win again. Pope uses Anaphora again (lines 11, 12, 13, & 14 begin with ‘Why’ during Clarissa’s speech.)

Lines 35-70

Nobody offers any thoughts to Clarissa’s reasonable speech as they could sense the hypocrisy behind all that. Belinda ignores her while Thalestris calls her ‘prude’ who is jealous as Belinda is sexually superior. Belinda calls for “To arms, to arms!” and declares a courtly war against the Baron and his folks. The narrator is observing all this as he calls Thalestris a Virago, a woman who fights like a man. All friends of Belinda start attacking the Baron and his friends. The narrator describes the battle in a mock-epic manner and compares the courtly fight of Belinda and Thalestris against the Baron and Clarissa with a battle between “Pallas, Mars; Latona, Hermes” and Jove and Neptune. Pallas is Athena or Minerva, the Greek goddess of wisdom, war, strategy, and defense. Mars is the god of war, Latona is the mother of Apollo and Diana, while Hermes is mercury, the god of thieves and tricksters, and the guide to the underworld. Jove is Jupiter, the king of all gods, lord of the sky while Neptune is Poseidon, the god of sea and earthquakes, tsunamis.

It’s an all-round riot at the Hampton court where Belinda’s gang and the Baron’s flock jump at each other with fans, canes, and snuffboxes, or simply wound each other with mean glances and sarcasm. Umbriel observes all this gleefully as he sees the success of Queen of the Spleen.

The fiercest warrior is Thalestris who “scatters death from both her eyes.” Sir Dapperwit and Sir Fopling perish as she throws her frowning glances over them. Dapper and Fop indicate male vanity. Pope makes it all satirically hilarious because, despite their supposed intellectual and moral authority over women, the men in this poem appear especially foolish. Other names used for males are “Beau” and “Witling.”

Pope uses ‘frown’ as a metaphor for a deathly blow and thus equates the struggle at Hampton court with that of godly wars of classic literature. While it appears juxtaposition, the idea is that the Holmer’s classical gods and their interference with human matters were equally silly and ridiculous as what is going on on the campus of Hampton court.

And then, Pope introduces eroticism within the boundaries of the battlefield and strengthens his sexual allegory. The battlefield is filled with erotic sounds of “Fans clap, silks rustle, and tough whalebones crack; Heroes’ and heroines’ shouts confusedly rise/ bass and treble voices strike the skies.” The petticoats made of whalebones were torn down. Pope uses ‘death’ and “perish” as a metaphor for orgasm. Sir Plume jumps on Clarissa and brings her down, winning over her but soon, another girl named Chloe from the Baron’s gang frowns at Sir Plume and he “dies.” As Chloe smiles to cherish her win, Sir Plume revives again and admires her beauty, while still atop Clarissa.

Lines 71-102

Jove, who openly favored the Baron, observes that Belinda’s gang is gaining an upper hand and thus, decides to intervene. Soon ‘Men’s wits’ start overpowering ‘Lady’s hair.’ As the whalebones of petticoats have already been cracked, one can guess what hair is being overpowered. But Belinda is in no mood to accept defeat. As she observes the “Wits mount up, the Hairs subside,” she decides it’s no time for her to ‘die’ and jumps on the Baron with excessive lightning in her eyes. She easily overpowers the Baron and “sits” over him. However, the Baron is unafraid because he “sought no more than on his foe to die.” His goal right from the start has been sexual gratification for which he ‘raped’ the lock. Pope’s parody smoothly reverses the role and presents females as aggressors. Thalestris fights as a Virago and easily overcomes many men while Belinda abandons all pretexts of lady-like grace. She pinches the Baron’s nose and throws some snuff powder on him before releasing his nose. As he breathes the snuff power in, he is forced to sneeze loudly. He promised that he won’t return the lock until he breathes, so Belinda makes sure that his breath is broken for a while.

After that, she takes her bodkin out but this is no ordinary hairpin. Once the metal was in the form of three seal rings of Belinda’s great-great-grandfather. After his death, it was melted and turned into a buckle for his widow who passed it to her grandmother as a child in the form of a whistle, and then was turned into a bodkin for her mother, and then finally passed down to Belinda herself. It is another mock-epic element as Pope creates the history of an ordinary hairpin and imbues it with the same significance as Agamemnon’s scepter or Achilles’ shield in The Iliad.

Belinda then threatens the Baron with the Bodkin who succumbs and accepts defeat. He says that one day Belinda will also be brought down like him (sexual allegory again) but wishes to be allowed to live. He says that he doesn’t fear death (metaphor) but doesn’t wish to be separated from Belinda as she is sitting on him in unison. He wishes to remain alive in this position while being burnt and tortured by the flames of Cupid.

Lines 103-150

Mounted over the Baron, Belinda feels no emotions, no remorse, the only thing on her mind is her lock and she demands and shouts “Restore the Lock!” Her fierceness and intensity are no less than Othello searching for the handkerchief of his wife Desdemona to ascertain her infidelity before killing her. Pope brings another allusion to Shakespeare’s famous tragedy of Othello, the Moor, and presents a juxtaposition between an incredibly tense and dramatic situation and a silly situation. Pope equates Belinda's lock of hair with the handkerchief which causes Othello's jealousy and his eventual murder of Desdemona. Satire cuts both ways, so Pope is mocking Othello’s lack of trust too.

Now when the Baron has been forced to break his breath and sneeze by Belinda, he is not bound by any promise and thus, he accepts defeat and decides to return the lock to Belinda. But then he realizes that during the haphazard struggle, he has lost the lock. Everybody stops fighting and starts searching for the lock which is nowhere to be found. The narrator then suggests that the lock was perhaps too “blest” for any mortal to possess. Some of her friends soothe Belinda by saying that the lock has been passed to the “lunar sphere” where things lost on earth can supposedly be found. The narrator informs that the moon’s realm is the place where everything is lost, from “broken vows” to “lovers’ hearts” to “Cages for gnats” to “the courtier’s promises” to “sick man’s prayers” to “dried butterflies” can be found.

However, the narrator doesn’t agree with these people as he claims that only his Muse, the goddess of art and poetry is witness to the fact that Belinda’s lost lock rose to the heights of the sky just like Romulus’ ascent to the heavens was seen only by Proculus. "Trust the Muse—she saw it upward rise" and the "quick Poetic Eyes" of the narrator were able to see it too. Pope makes another allusion to the greatness of Belinda’s lock and equates it to Romulus, the founder of Rome, whom Proculus the second saw in his vision, ascending to heaven after his death. The narrator doesn’t stop at that and claims that the lock attained greater heights aided by the Sylphs who saw it rise like a shooting star and shine more brightly than Berenice’s locks. This is the ultimate allusion that Pope makes in honor of Arabella Fermor, the historical inspiration for Belinda. The allusion is to the Ancient Egyptian mythical queen Berenice who sacrificed her marvelous long hair to save her husband's life. The gods honored her sacrifice and placed the locks into the sky as a constellation that we now know as the constellation Coma Berenices.

The narrator then affirms his statement and says that now the beau monde (or the fashionable high society people) who spend their time at prosperous and fashionable places of London like the Mall and the Rosamunda’s Lake at St. James’s Park can see the shining lock in the sky. The narrator further weighs in and says that “Partridge” will be able to spot Belinda’s lock through “Galileo’s eyes”. John Partridge was an English astrologer infamous for hoax prediction and quackery. Pope satirizes him here while “Galileo’s eyes” are an allusion to the Galilean telescope.

The narrator then addresses Belinda directly and tells her not to be sad as now her lock will outlive her and will remain young, lovely, and shining beautiful forever. Her lock will inspire the Muse to write Belinda’s name among the stars like Berenice’s was written. Pope ends the poem here with all praises to beautiful Belinda, despite all her follies.

While Clarrisa’s speech mentioned that beauty is ephemeral, “Curled or uncurled, since locks will turn to gray; / Since Painted, or not painted all shall fade,” the narrator and the poet himself offer a counterpoint. The narrator agrees that beauty is transient but suggests that beauty is yet valuable and it may achieve a degree of immorality with the aid of the Muse, the goddess of art and poetry. Because a poet may raise things above the trivial world and into the world of eternal literary fame the Pope does with the lock of Belinda. Thus, Pope ends The Rape of The Lock in the manner of a Horatian satire that gently and humorously points out the evils of high-class society but keeps a sympathetic attitude towards the characters despite their follies.

So this is it for today. We will continue to Discuss the History of English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!