Short story collection: Arranged Marriage by Chitra Banerjee

CLOTHES From Arranged Marriage by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

THE WATER OF THE WOMEN’S LAKE LAPS AGAINST MY BREASTS, COOL, CALMING. I CAN FEEL it beginning to wash the hot nervousness away from my body. The little waves tickle my armpits, make my sari float up around me, wet and yellow, like a sunflower after rain. I close my eyes and smell the sweet brown odor of the ritha pulp my friends Deepali and Radha are working into my hair so it will glisten with little lights this evening. They scrub with more vigor than usual and wash it out more carefully, because today is a special day. It is the day of my bride-viewing. “Ei, Sumita! Mita! Are you deaf?” Radha says. “This is the third time I’ve asked you the same question.” “Look at her, already dreaming about her husband, and she hasn’t even seen him yet!” Deepali jokes. Then she adds, the envy in her voice only half hidden, “Who cares about friends from alittle Indian village when you’re about to go live in America?” I want to deny it, to say that I will always love them and all the things we did together through my growing-up years—visiting the charak fair where we always ate too many sweets, raiding the neighbor’s guava tree summer afternoons while the grown-ups slept, telling fairy tales while we braided each other’s hair in elaborate patterns we’d invented. And she married the handsome prince who took her to his kingdom beyond the seven seas. But already the activities of our girlhood seem to be far in my past, the colors leached out of them, like old sepia photographs. His name is Somesh Sen, the man who is coming to our house with his parents today and who will be my husband “if I’m lucky enough to be chosen,” as my aunt says. He is corning all the way from California. Father showed it to me yesterday, on the metal globe that sits on his desk, a chunky pink wedge on the side of a multicolored slab marked Untd. Sts. of America. I touched it and felt the excitement leap all the way up my arm like an electric shock. Then it died away, leaving only a beaten-metal coldness against my fingertips. For the first time it occurred to me that if things worked out the way everyone was hoping, I’d be going halfway around the world to live with a man I hadn’t even met. Would I ever see my parents again? Don’t send me so far away, I wanted to cry, but of course I didn’t. It would be ungrateful. Father had worked so hard to find this match for me. Besides, wasn’t it every woman’s destiny, as Mother was always telling me, to leave the known for the unknown? She had done it, and her mother before her. A married woman belongs to her husband, her inlaws. Hot seeds of tears pricked my eyelids at the unfairness of it. “Mita Moni, little jewel,” Father said, calling me by my childhood name. He put out his hand as though he wanted to touch my face, then let it fall to his side. “He’s a good man. Comes from a fine family. He will be kind to you.” He was silent for a while. Finally he said, “Come, let me show you the special sari I bought in Calcutta for you to wear at the bride-viewing.” “Are you nervous?” Radha asks as she wraps my hair in a soft cotton towel. Her parents are also trying to arrange a marriage for her. So far three families have come to see her, but no one has chosen her because her skin-color is considered too dark. “Isn’t it terrible, not knowing what’s going to happen?” I nod because I don’t want to disagree, don’t want to make her feel bad by saying that sometimes it’s worse when you know what’s coming, like I do. I knew it as soon as Father unlocked his mahogany almirah and took out the sari. It was the most expensive sari I had ever seen, and surely the most beautiful. Its body was a pale pink, like the dawn sky over the women’s lake. The color of transition. Embroidered all over it were tiny stars made out of real gold zari thread. “Here, hold it,” said Father. The sari was unexpectedly heavy in my hands, silk-slippery, a sari to walk carefully in. A sari that could change one’s life. I stood there holding it, wanting to weep. I knew that when I wore it, it would hang in perfect pleats to my feet and shimmer in the light of the evening lamps. It would dazzle Somesh and his parents and they would choose me to be his bride. When the plane takes off, I try to stay calm, to take deep, slow breaths like Father does when he practices yoga. But my hands clench themselves on to the folds of my sari and when I force them open, after the fasten seat belt and no smoking signs have blinked off, I see they have left damp blotches on the delicate crushed fabric. We had some arguments about this sari. I wanted a blue one for the journey, because blue is the color of possibility, the color of the sky through which I would be traveling. But Mother said there must be red in it because red is the color of luck for married women. Finally, Father found one to satisfy us both: midnight-blue with a thin red border the same color as the marriage mark I’m wearing on my forehead. It is hard for me to think of myself as a married woman. I whisper my new name to myself, Mrs. Sumita Sen, but the syllables rustle uneasily in my mouth like a stiff satin that’s never been worn. Somesh had to leave for America just a week after the wedding. He had to get back to the store, he explained to me. He had promised his partner. The store. It seems more real to me than Somesh—perhaps because I know more about it. It was what we had mostly talked about the night after the wedding, the first night we were together alone. It stayed open twenty-four hours, yes, all night, every night, not like the Indian stores which closed at dinnertime and sometimes in the hottest part of the afternoon. That’s why his partner needed him back. The store was called 7-Eleven. I thought it a strange name, exotic, risky. All the stores I knew were piously named after gods and goddesses—Ganesh Sweet House, Lakshmi Vastralaya for Fine Saris—to bring the owners luck. The store sold all kinds of amazing things—apple juice in cardboard cartons that never leaked; American bread that came in cellophane packages, already cut up; canisters of potato chips, each large grainy flake curved exactly like the next. The large refrigerator with seethrough glass doors held beer and wine, which Somesh said were the most popular items. “That’s where the money comes from, especially in the neighborhood where our store is,” said Somesh, smiling at the shocked look on my face. (The only places I knew of that sold alcohol were the village toddy shops, “dark, stinking dens of vice,” Father called them.) “A lot of Americans drink, you know. It’s a part of their culture, not considered immoral, like it is here. And really, there’s nothing wrong with it.” He touched my lips lightly with his finger. “When you come to California, I’ll get you some sweet white wine and you’ll see how good it makes you feel…” Now his fingers were stroking my cheeks, my throat, moving downward. I closed my eyes and tried not to jerk away because after all it was my wifely duty. “It helps if you can think about something else,” my friend Madhavi had said when she warned me about what most husbands demanded on the very first night. Two years married, she already had one child and was pregnant with a second one. I tried to think of the women’s lake, the dark cloudy green of the shapla leaves that float on the water, but his lips were hot against my skin, his fingers fumbling with buttons, pulling at the cotton night-sari I wore. I couldn’t breathe. “Bite hard on your tongue,” Madhavi had advised. “The pain will keep your mind off what’s going on down there.” But when I bit down, it hurt so much that I cried out. I couldn’t help it although I was ashamed. Somesh lifted his head. I don’t know what he saw on my face, but he stopped right away. “Shhh,” he said, although I had made myself silent already. “It’s OK, we’ll wait until you feel like it.” I tried to apologize but he smiled it away and started telling me some more about the store. And that’s how it was the rest of the week until he left. We would lie side by side on the big white bridal pillow I had embroidered with a pair of doves for married harmony, and Somesh would describe how the store’s front windows were decorated with a flashing neon Dewar’s sign and a lighted Budweiser waterfall this big. I would watch his hands moving excitedly through the dim air of the bedroom and think that Father had been right, he was a good man, my husband, a kind, patient man. And so handsome, too, I would add, stealing a quick look at the strong curve of his jaw, feeling luckier than I had any right to be. The night before he left, Somesh confessed that the store wasn’t making much money yet. “I’m not worried, I’m sure it soon will,” he added, his fingers pleating the edge of my sari. “But I just don’t want to give you the wrong impression, don’t want you to be disappointed.” In the half dark I could see he had turned toward me. His face, with two vertical lines between the brows, looked young, apprehensive, in need of protection. I’d never seen that on a man’s face before. Something rose in me like a wave. “It’s all right,” I said, as though to a child, and pulled his head down to my breast. His hair smelled faintly of the American cigarettes he smoked. “I won’t be disappointed. I’ll help you. And a sudden happiness filled me. That night I dreamed I was at the store. Soft American music floated in the background as I moved between shelves stocked high with brightly colored cans and elegant-necked bottles, turning their labels carefully to the front, polishing them until they shone. Now, sitting inside this metal shell that is hurtling through emptiness, I try to remember other things about my husband: how gentle his hands had been, and his lips, surprisingly soft, like a woman’s. How I’ve longed for them through those drawn-out nights while I waited for my visa to arrive. He will be standing at the customs gate, and when I reach him, he will lower his face to mine. We will kiss in front of everyone, not caring, like Americans, then pull back, look each other in the eye, and smile. But suddenly, as I am thinking this, I realize I cannot recall Somesh’s face. I try and try until my head hurts, but I can only visualize the black air swirling outside the plane, too thin for breathing. My own breath grows ragged with panic as I think of it and my mouth fills with sour fluid the way it does just before I throw up. I grope for something to hold on to, something beautiful and talismanic from my old life. And then I remember. Somewhere down under me, low in the belly of the plane, inside my new brown case which is stacked in the dark with a hundred others, are my saris. Thick Kanjeepuram silks in solid purples and golden yellows, the thin hand-woven cottons of the Bengal countryside, green as a young banana plant, gray as the women’s lake on a monsoon morning. Already I can feel my shoulders loosening up, my breath steadying. My wedding Benarasi, flame-orange, with a wide palloo of gold-embroidered dancing peacocks. Fold upon fold of Dhakais so fine they can be pulled through a ring. Into each fold my mother has tucked a small sachet of sandalwood powder to protect the saris from the unknown insects of America. Little silk sachets, made from her old saris—I can smell their calm fragrance as I watch the American air hostess wheeling the dinner cart toward my seat. It is the smell of my mother’s hands. I know then that everything will be all right. And when the air hostess bends her curly golden head to ask me what I would like to eat, I understand every word in spite of her strange accent and answer her without stumbling even once over the unfamiliar English phrases. Late at night I stand in front of our bedroom mirror trying on the clothes Somesh has bought for me and smuggled in past his parents. I model each one for him, walking back and forth, clasping my hands behind my head, lips pouted, left hip thrust out just like the models on TV, while he whispers applause. I’m breathless with suppressed laughter (Father and Mother Sen must not hear us) and my cheeks are hot with the delicious excitement of conspiracy. We’ve stuffed a towel at the bottom of the door so no light will shine through. I’m wearing a pair of jeans now, marveling at the curves of my hips and thighs, which have always been hidden under the flowing lines of my saris. I love the color, the same pale blue as the nayantara flowers that grow in my parents’ garden. The solid comforting weight. The jeans come with a closefitting T-shirt which outlines my breasts. I scold Somesh to hide my embarrassed pleasure. He shouldn’t have been so extravagant. We can’t afford it. He just smiles. The T-shirt is sunrise-orange—the color, I decide, of joy, of my new American life. Across its middle, in large black letters, is written Great America. I was sure the letters referred to the country, but Somesh told me it is the name of an amusement park, a place where people go to have fun. I think it a wonderful concept, novel. Above the letters is the picture of a train. Only it’s not a train, Somesh tells me, it’s a roller coaster. He tries to explain how it moves, the insane speed, the dizzy ground falling away, then gives up. “I’ll take you there, Mita sweetheart,” he says, “as soon as we move into our own place.” That’s our dream (mine more than his, I suspect)—moving out of this two-room apartment where it seems to me if we all breathed in at once, there would be no air left. Where I must cover my head with the edge of my Japan nylon sari (my expensive Indian ones are to be saved for special occasions—trips to the temple, Bengali New Year) and serve tea to the old women that come to visit Mother Sen, where like a good Indian wife I must never address my husband by his name. Where even in our bed we kiss guiltily, uneasily, listening for the giveaway creak of springs. Sometimes I laugh to myself, thinking how ironic it is that after all my fears about America, my life has turned out to be no different from Deepali’s or Radha’s. But at other times I feel caught in a world where everything is frozen in place, like a scene inside a glass paperweight. It is a world so small that if I were to stretch out my arms, I would touch its cold unyielding edges. I stand inside this glass world, watching helplessly as America rushes by, wanting to scream. Then I’m ashamed. Mita, I tell myself, you’re growing westernized. Back home you’d never have felt this way. We must be patient. I know that. Tactful, loving children. That is the Indian way. “I’m their life,” Somesh tells me as we lie beside each other, lazy from lovemaking. He’s not boasting, merely stating a fact. “They’ve always been there when I needed them. I could never abandon them at some old people’s home.” For a moment I feel rage. You’re constantly thinking of them, I want to scream. But what about me? Then I remember my own parents, Mother’s hands cool on my sweat-drenched body through nights of fever, Father teaching me to read, his finger moving along the crisp black angles of the alphabet, transforming them magically into things I knew, water, dog, mango tree. I beat back my unreasonable desire and nod agreement. Somesh has bought me a cream blouse with a long brown skirt. They match beautifully, like the inside and outside of an almond. “For when you begin working,” he says. But first he wants me to start college. Get a degree, perhaps in teaching. I picture myself in front of a classroom of girls with blond pigtails and blue uniforms, like a scene out of an En-glish movie I saw long ago in Calcutta. They raise their hands respectfully when I ask a question. “Do you really think I can?” I ask. “Of course,” he replies. I am gratified he has such confidence in me. But I have another plan, a secret that I will divulge to him once we move. What I really want is to work in the store. I want to stand behind the counter in the cream-and-brown skirt set (color of earth, color of seeds) and ring up purchases. The register drawer will glide open. Confident, I will count out green dollars and silver quarters. Gleaming copper pennies. I will dust the jars of gilt-wrapped chocolates on the counter. Will straighten, on the far wall, posters of smiling young men raising their beer mugs to toast scantily clad redheads with huge spiky eyelashes. (I have never visited the store-my in-laws don’t consider it proper for a wife-but of course I know exactly what it looks like.) I will charm the customers with my smile, so that they will return again and again just to hear me telling them to have a nice day. Meanwhile, I will the store to make money for us. Quickly. Because when we move, we’ll be paying for two households. But so far it hasn’t worked. They’re running at a loss, Somesh tells me. They had to let the hired help go. This means most nights Somesh has to take the graveyard shift (that horrible word, like a cold hand up my spine) because his partner refuses to. “The bastard!” Somesh spat out once. “Just because he put in more money he thinks he can order me around. I’ll show him!” I was frightened by the vicious twist of his mouth. Somehow I’d never imagined that he could be angry. Often Somesh leaves as soon as he has dinner and doesn’t get back till after I’ve made morning tea for Father and Mother Sen. I lie mostly awake those nights, picturing masked intruders crouching in the shadowed back of the store, like I’ve seen on the police shows that Father Sen sometimes watches. But Somesh insists there’s nothing to worry about, they have bars on the windows and a burglar alarm. “And remember,” he says, “the extra cash will help us move out that much quicker.” I’m wearing a nightie now, my very first one. It’s black and lacy, with a bit of a shine to it, and it glides over my hips to stop outrageously at mid-thigh. My mouth is an O of surprise in the mirror, my legs long and pale and sleek from the hair remover I asked Somesh to buy me last week. The legs of a movie star. Somesh laughs at the look on my face, then says, “You’re beautiful.” His voice starts a flutter low in my belly. “Do you really think so,” I ask, mostly because I want to hear him say it again. No one has called me beautiful before. My father would have thought it inappropriate, my mother that it would make me vain. Somesh draws me close. “Very beautiful,” he whispers. “The most beautiful woman in the whole world.” His eyes are not joking as they usually are. I want to turn off the light, but “Please,” he says, “I want to keep seeing your face.” His fingers are taking the pins from my hair, undoing my braids. The escaped strands fall on his face like dark rain. We have already decided where we will hide my new American clothes—the jeans and T-shirt camouflaged on a hanger among Somesh’s pants, the skirt set and nightie at the bottom of my suitcase, a sandalwood sachet tucked between them, waiting. I stand in the middle of our empty bedroom, my hair still wet from the purification bath, my back to the stripped bed I can’t bear to look at. I hold in my hands the plain white sari I’m supposed to wear. I must hurry. Any minute now there’ll be a knock at the door. They are afraid to leave me alone too long, afraid I might do something to myself. The sari, a thick voile that will bunch around the waist when worn, is borrowed. White. Widow’s color, color of endings. I try to tuck it into the top of the petticoat, but my fingers are numb, disobedient. It spills through them and there are waves and waves of white around my feet. I kick out in sudden rage, but the sari is too soft, it gives too easily. I grab up an edge, clamp down with my teeth and pull, feeling a fierce, bitter satisfaction when I hear it rip. There’s a cut, still stinging, on the side of my right arm, halfway to the elbow. It is from the bangle-breaking ceremony. Old Mrs. Ghosh performed the ritual, since she’s a widow, too. She took my hands in hers and brought them down hard on the bedpost, so that the glass bangles I was wearing shattered and multicolored shards flew out in every direction. Some landed on the body that was on the bed, covered with a sheet. I can’t call it Somesh. He was gone already. She took an edge of the sheet and rubbed the red marriage mark off my forehead. She was crying. All the women in the room were crying except me. I watched them as though from the far end of a tunnel. Their flared nostrils, their red-veined eyes, the runnels of tears, salt-corrosive, down their cheeks. It happened last night. He was at the store. “It isn’t too bad,” he would tell me on the days when he was in a good mood. “Not too many customers. I can put up my feet and watch MTV all night. I can sing along with Michael Jackson as loud as I want.” He had a good voice, Somesh. Sometimes he would sing softly at night, lying in bed, holding me. Hindi songs of love, Mee Sapnon K Rani, queen of my dreams. (He would not sing American songs at home out of respect for his parents, who thought they were decadent.) I would feel his warm breath on my hair as I fell asleep. Someone came into the store last night. He took all the money, even the little rolls of pennies I had helped Somesh make up. Before he left he emptied the bullets from his gun into my husband’s chest. “Only thing is,” Somesh would say about the night shifts, “I really miss you. I sit there and think of you asleep in bed. Do you know that when you sleep you make your hands into fists, like a baby? When we move out, will you come along some nights to keep me company?” My in-laws are good people, kind. They made sure the body was covered before they let me into the room. When someone asked if my hair should be cut off, as they sometimes do with widows back home, they said no. They said I could stay at the apartment with Mrs. Ghosh if I didn’t want to go to the crematorium. They asked Dr. Das to give me something to calm me down when I couldn’t stop shivering. They didn’t say, even once, as people would surely have in the village, that it was my bad luck that brought death to their son so soon after his marriage. They will probably go back to India now. There’s nothing here for them anymore. They will want me to go with them. You’re like our daughter, they will say. Your home is with us, for as long as you want. For the rest of your life. The rest of my life. I can’t think about that yet. It makes me dizzy. Fragments are flying about my head, multicolored and piercing sharp like bits of bangle glass. I want you to go to college. Choose a career. I stand in front of a classroom of smiling children who love me in my cream-and-brown American dress. A faceless parade straggles across my eyelids: all those customers at the store that I will never meet. The lace nightie, fragrant with sandalwood, waiting in its blackness inside my suitcase. The savings book where we have $3605.33. Four thousand and we can move out, maybe next month. The name of the panty hose I’d asked him to buy me for my birthday: sheer golden-beige. His lips, unexpectedly soft, woman-smooth. Elegant-necked wine bottles swept off shelves, shattering on the floor. I know Somesh would not have tried to stop the gunman. I can picture his silhouette against the lighted Dewar’s sign, hands raised. He is trying to find the right expression to put on his face, calm, reassuring, reasonable. OK, take the money. No, I won’t call the police. His hands tremble just a little. His eyes darken with disbelief as his fingers touch his chest and come away wet. I yanked away the cover. I had to see. Great America, a place where people go to have fun. My breath roller-coasting through my body, my unlived life gathering itself into a scream. I’d expected blood, a lot of blood, the deep red-black of it crusting his chest. But they must have cleaned him up at the hospital. He was dressed in his silk wedding kurta. Against its warm ivory his face appeared remote, stem. The musky aroma of his aftershave lotion that someone must have sprinkled on the body. It didn’t quite hide that other smell, thin, sour, metallic. The smell of death. The floor shifted under me, tilting like a wave. I’m lying on the floor now, on the spilled white sari. I feel sleepy. Or perhaps it is some other feeling I don’t have a word for. The sari is seductive-soft, drawing me into its folds. Sometimes, bathing at the lake, I would move away from my friends, their endless chatter. I’d swim toward the middle of the water with a lazy backstroke, gazing at the sky, its enormous blueness drawing me up until I felt weightless and dizzy. Once in a while there would be a plane, a small silver needle drawn through the clouds, in and out, until it disappeared. Sometimes the thought came to me, as I floated in the middle of the lake with the sun beating down on my closed eyelids, that it would be so easy to let go, to drop into the dim brown world of mud, of water weeds fine as hair. Once I almost did it. I curled my body inward, tight as a fist, and felt it start to sink. The sun grew pale and shapeless; the water, suddenly cold, licked at the insides of my ears in welcome. But in the end I couldn’t. They are knocking on the door now, calling my name. I push myself off the floor, my body almost too heavy to lift up, as when one climbs out after a long swim. I’m surprised at how vividly it comes to me, this memory I haven’t called up in years: the desperate flailing of arms and legs as I fought my way upward; the press of the water on me, heavy as terror; the wild animal trapped inside my chest, clawing at my lungs. The day returning to me as searing air, the way I drew it in, in, in, as though I would never have enough of it. That’s when I know I cannot go back. I don’t know yet how I’ll manage, here in this new, dangerous land. I only know I must. Because all over India, at this very moment, widows in white saris are bowing their veiled heads, serving tea to in-laws. Doves with cut-off wings. I am standing in front of the mirror now, gathering up the sari. I tuck in the ripped end so it lies next to my skin, my secret. I make myself think of the store, although it hurts. Inside the refrigerated unit, blue milk cartons neatly lined up by Somesh’s hands. The exotic smell of Hills Brothers coffee brewed black and strong, the glisten of sugar-glazed donuts nestled in tissue. The neon Budweiser emblem winking on and off like a risky invitation. I straighten my shoulders and stand taller, take a deep breath. Air fills me—the same air that traveled through Somesh’s lungs a little while ago. The thought is like an unexpected, intimate gift. I tilt my chin, readying myself for the arguments of the coming weeks, the remonstrations. In the mirror a woman holds my gaze, her eyes apprehensive yet steady. She wears a blouse and skirt the color of almonds.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

First I thankful to both sir and mam because they gave a chance to see a movie, such movies are helpful to understand the novel...Movie Frankenstein by Kenneth Branagh is very much relavent to the novel, as a director he made many changes in the movie but it is also helpful to understand the novel. In my view director coverd many main things in the movie & such changes in the movie is very powerful than novel also.

                          While viewing the task: First Gothic is Latin Term, means 'Atmosphere of mystery & terror'. In the novel & movie both elements are played a vital role. 1.End of the movie is very effective monster also burn with Victor that time we feel catharsis. 2. Yes we feel effect of horror in the movie. 3.character of monster is galible we feel sympathy for monster more than Victor. 4.conversation between Victor & monster is helpful to keep viewer's intrest. 5.No I think any scene is not ommit, no need to replace scene. 6.yes directer used proper symbols in the movie.

                    Post-viewing task: 1. there is many difference between movie & novel; in movie farmer family leave monster and that time monster burned there hut and speak: " I want to take revenge " while in the novel situation is different. In movie Victor 'restoring Elizabeth's life' in novel Victor does'n do it, he create lady-monster and destroyed it. When Elizabeth see her ugly look she burn herself and burn first floar of huge palace. 2.yes movie help us to understand structure of novel. 3.I think in movie Elizabeth's look of monster is very effective than lady monster's look in the novel. 4.Victor's rejection of monster is only reason of monster's revenge, if Victor accept him may be he is not cruel..Victor's love Elizabeth is beautifully portray here. We also compare him with Hamlet. 5. I think directer is very much faithful to novel but at some extent his imagery and style of making movie is powerful Hamlet is good example. As a directer he is free to do what he think, because directer's viewpoint is also useful to understand the novel.... 

To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

here is my answers;
1)May be Woolf wanted to say about the complexity of human relationship, the everyday battles that people are at in their relationship with near and dear ones, the struggle of a female artist against the values of middle/upper class society etc. With the help of any work writer always reflects reality of society Woolf also tried to reflect her pain and suffering with the help of To The Lighthouse, because at the age of six she was abused by her half brother it reflects complexity of human relationship because characters of the novel are based on her own parents and siblings. Another main thing that her work belongs to Bloomsbury group means for upper class society Woolf wrote novel while First World War time that time people believe that female artist can’t wrote it reflects mentality of society may be Woolf against this idea.
                        Narrative technique of the novel is Stream of Consciousness, in this we are shown narrator moves one consciousness to another. In the first section “The Window” in that first narrator talk about child means James and then narrator’s perspective moves to Mrs. Ramsay, it s feature of this technique. Yes it is obviously help to what she experienced in the society.
2)Yes novel is both the tribute and critique for Mrs. Ramsay or narrator. Article by Andre Viola Fluidity vs. Muscularity Lily’s dilemma in Woolf’s To The Lighthouse; in that we defined symbols. Lily Briscoe is painter and she begins a portrait of Mrs. Ramsay at the beginning of the novel but has trouble to finishing it and at the end she successfully done it and that time she said that
“I have had my vision” there are two activities going on; one side Lily’s painting is over and on the other side James and his father and sister reached to the lighthouse means sentence spoken by Lily have two meaning one is reaching to the lighthouse and another is Lily’s painting. And painting itself is reflection of Mrs. Ramsay’s character. The process of painting shows Lily’s dilemma; because like Mrs. Ramsay Lily is plagued by fear.
3)The novel devided into three chapters and each chapter is symbol of something. The title of the novel itself is symbolic. Here Mrs. Ramsay is the central focus of the beginning of the novel and at the middle it moves Mrs. Ramsay to Lily at the end. So we can say that major action goes to female character. “The Window” is female phallic symbol & “The Lighthouse” is male phallic symbol.  But we can say that lighthouse stands for Mrs. Ramsay because major action and centre of the novel is Mrs. Ramsay James also loves his mother not his father another characters also attracts toward Mrs. Ramsay.  Lighthouse is a symbol for the spiritual strength and emotional guidance and Mrs. Ramsay’s character is like this. Second the narrator / author cannot fully disappear from the novel and thus the stoicism of Lily to paint and thus prove that she can paint is symbolically presented in stoicism of Lighthouse; yes narrator or author cannot fully disappear from the novel.
                             Here we are shown  Lily’s painting symbolizes women’s struggle in patriarchal society against man’s belief that “women can’s paint or write” we can say that one hand Lily’s prove that she can paint and on the other hand Woolf also prove that she can write. So Woolf herself presented in the novel and character of Lily is representation of her sister.
5)      The German term kunstlerroman means ‘artist’s novel’. Kunstle means artist and Roman is German word is a narrative about an artist’s growth to maturity. We can say that To The Lighthouse is also kunstlerroman novel because here Virginia Woolf also describe journey of characters especially James, Rose, Nancy, Cam etc; their journey childhood to maturity. The term is much related with James character because when the novel starts James was youngest than all beginning of the novel James was six year old and his request to go to the lighthouse was denied by his father after 10 years later James finally makes the journey with his father that time he has grown, young man who was mature enough so it is also one type of journey from childhood to maturity. Like James Cam and Rose also growing up into the novel.
7)      Movie is very much related to the novel but at some extent novel is more poignant than the movie because Woolf describe many dialogues are an effective way.
For example: Beginning of the novel is like these; “Yes, of course, if it’s fine tomorrow,” said Mrs. Ramsay. “But you’ll have to be up with the lark,” Narrator narrates story from mother’s perspective. Here I gave some lines to the original work;
Her tribute took that form if, as she vaguely supposed, a picture must be a tribute.  
Chpter:11- No, she thought, putting together some of the pictures he had cut out— a refrigerator, a mowing machine, a gentleman in evening dress— children never forget. For this reason, it was so important what one said, and what one did, and it was a relief when they went to bed. For now she need not think about anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of—to think; well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others. Although she continued to knit, and sat upright, it was thus that she felt herself; and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures. When life sank down for a moment, the range of experience seemed limitless.
                               Whole paragraph shows us to Lily’s thinking process and routine work of Mrs. Ramsay.  So many situations going on in between its also poisonous than movie.
At the end- “They will have landed,” and she felt that she had been right. They had not needed to speak. They had been thinking the same things and he had answered her without her asking him anything.
Quickly, as if she were recalled by something over there, she turned to her canvas. There it was—her picture. Yes, with all its greens and blues, its lines running up and across, its attempt at something. That all situations are affect reader while seeing movie that feelings may not be came out..
8)       My interpretation about the last line of the novel and film:
Last line of the novel was I have had my vision, we can compare this line with Woolf’s life that like Lily she also had her vision and tried to prove that female’s ability to write and paint another thing she also represent herself through Lily’s character.
And last line of the film was "Closed doors, open windows" - lies on the bed and with some sort of satisfaction utters: "Dearest Briscoe, you are a fool".  May be it can be Woolf told to herself that you are a fool, another meaning this line also symbol of relation of family.
These are my interpretation about the question I tried to answer as per my understanding. Thank you…

The Sense of an Ending

Here are my views about the following questions.
Tony Webster: first person narrator of the novel who narrate the whole story from his point of view. And at the beginning of the novel he said that; “I remember, in no particular order” the line itself says that narrator is unreliable. As the novel is about memories and youthful days so whatever narrator told us is his views and his thoughts so how far can we rely on the narrator even he himself isn’t clear in so many things so we can say that he is unreliable narrator.
          It can also be difficult to reconcile Veronica’s behavior throughout the second half of the book. But I found her the character who suddenly made the most sense upon finishing. Veronica, who seems to Tony to be a manipulator, turns out to be if not victimized, then certainly betrayed by nearly everyone else.        Adrian’s suicide is shocking for Tony as well as us also because Tony describe him as philosopher among them, even we can apply existentialism here because; “Adrian had read Camus and Nietzsche” and they both are existentialist, as we studied earlier that “it is a movement and philosophy which stresses the importance of human experience and says that everyone is responsible for the result of their own actions.” and may be that affect Adrian for commit suicide. But we never came to know the truth behind Adrian’s suicide and narrator never told us so we only interpret our own way.
Character of Veronica is very complicated from the beginning of the novel, her character is described form the point of view of Tony, whatever he told to us about Veronica is his way of looking towards Veronica may be she is different from that but we surely said that she is more confident than Tony. And at the end of the novel Veronica suddenly emerges as an invisible way at that time we came to know that what Veronica is. According to me Veronica is haughty and sacrificial. 
The novel is deeply philosophical, there is no ending but we can interpret it our own way. We can say that there is end of sense, end also refereed old age (Tony) and end of so many things.  

Hamlet by Shakespeare

First of all I would like to tell that screening is more effective than reading. It is easy to understand but language is extent to hard. Now I gave answer of the question.
                  The movie is quite faithful to the original play. There are many similarity between play and movie. Director makes many changes into movie. He make situation for the demand of the script.
                   My perception about play, character, or situations: Yes so many things are changed into movie. For example: Scene of water, in this scene Ophelia have one key in her mouth that reference did not give in original play. Mirror scene is also not into original play. Movie is director’s own imagination.
                   Another question is about ‘Aesthetic delight’ in that answer I will say that yes I feel ‘aesthetic delight’ while watching the movie, when Claudius’s death, sometimes Hamlet’s madness & his soliloquy. In one scene I don’t remember exactly but Hamlet use the word “My uncle- father and my aunt- mother.” It is very enjoyable movement. That time I also feel aesthetic delight.  The movie opens with one soldier on guard at night in a scene full of anxiety.
                Next is ‘Catharsis’ --Yes I feel catharsis while watching the movie, when Ophelia died as a drowned, her madness, and at the end of the movie Gertrude, Claudius, Laertes and Hamlet all characters are dying. The end is very tragic. In grave digging scene Hamlet unaware about Ophelia’s death, he see Gertrude, Claudius and Laertes came with coffin Ophelia’s body into in that time Hamlet shown and cried a lot. This all are very tragic moment of the movie.  
                   Next answer is: Yes screening of movie help us to better understanding of the play because director Kenneth Branagh’ movie Hamlet is majorly similar with original play. There are some minor changes into the movie.
                 In a movie Ghost scene is very horrifying for me. I think fearfully that “what will happen now?” when I see the movie I am very excited to every second. I will cherish lifetime whole movie.
                  And at the end I will said that “ If I am a director I will change into movie  one character of Ophelia means there is an no reference after her death. In my opinion if I am director I will put some more reference about her so every viewer believe that “Ophelia is still alive in Hamlet’s memory.”
             But overall Kenneth Branagh’s movie is very helpful to understand the original play…   

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Buckett

Here is my interpretation about questions;
What is Existentialism?  Existentialism movement arouses in 19th century Europe; it became especially prominent in the mid 20th century. Existentialists are concerns with the problem of living life as a human being, they rejects systems which purpose to have definitive answers to the question of meaning and purpose in life. Kierkegaard is generally considered to have been the first existentialist philosopher, though he did not use the term existentialism. We can say that it is central theme of Waiting for Godot.
What is the theme of The Myth of Sisyphus? Once during Indian Poetics’ lecture at that time Vinod sir also told us about Myth of Sisyphus.
Camus mainly focus on man’s futile search for meaning and unity, Camus sees Sisyphus as the absurd hero who lives life to the fullest, hates death and daily doing same meaningless task. And that meaninglessness of Sisyphus’ working is itself meaningful and that is the theme. One more thing Camus answering here that; does the realization of the absurd require suicide?   Do you agree that Existentialism is Humanism?
 Humanism: is the secular cultural and intellectual movement of the Renaissance that spread throughout Europe as a result of the rediscovery of the arts and philosophy of the ancient Greeks and Romans.
 
Existentialism: is Philosophical movement centered on individual existence: a philosophical movement begun in the 19th century that denies that the universe has any intrinsic meaning or purpose. (Encarta dictionary)
Both are different it is name of lecture “Is existentialism a humanism” by Jean Paul Sartre in 1945, because in both there is philosophy of ancient Greek.
What is Übermensch? It is the term Übermensch, often translated as Superman or Overman, was not invented by Nietzsche.
What is Theater of Absurd? ‘The Theatre of the Absurd' has become a catch-phrase, much used and much abused. Idea was given by Martin Esslin; it is theory of life’s meaninglessness Danish philosopher Kierkegaard wrote extensively on the absurdity of the world. It is related to existentialism and nihilism. Pinter, Becket and many writers wrote on the absurdism.
Tree is important in both act writer intentionally put; it gave very symbolic meaning, in the second act leaves are sprouting means leaves as a “hope” for Vladimir and Estragon for them hope for Godot will come.
Both acts end when night fall and moon rise; the situation is same in both act but it also have symbolic meaning that night represent death; another meaning is that like moon their waiting never end.
Play opens with ‘Nothing to be done.’ But here nothingness is means that something to be done so nothing itself is action. It recalls the line of T.S.Eliot’s ‘nothing’ means ‘something’. Repetition of the word nothing to be done.
Yes I am agree that “The play (Waiting for Godot), we agreed, was a positive play, not negative, not pessimistic. As I saw it, with my blood and skin and eyes, the philosophy is: 'No matter what— atom bombs, hydrogen bombs, anything—life goes on. You can kill yourself, but you can't kill life."
 It shows reality of life that if you can kill yourself life is goes on you can’t kill it.
Hat and Boot are very symbolical because they related with character;
Hat-Vladimir-it shows his mind-higher
Boot-Estragon- it shows his body-lower
Do you think that the obedience of Lucky is extremely irritating and nauseatic? Even when the master Pozzo is blind, he obediently hands the whip in his hand. Do you think that such a capacity of slavishness is unbelievable?
Yes Lucky’s obedience is extremely irritating; we can’t understand that how he is so obedient, what is the meaning behind that for Lucky we can say that his behaviour is unbearable, Lucky and Pozzo’s characters shows us relationship between master and slave but it is extreme level of slavery what Lucky represent.
There is no particular idea for Godot; we can take it as God or desire or death because Vladimir and Estragon waiting for God or may be death, one must be free to interpret. Sound of Godot is also similar way of God.
Subject is not Godot but Waiting both the character throughout the play waiting for something may be death, God, success but nobody comes their waiting  represent the title of the play, so their waiting is endless.
Do you think that plays like this can better be ‘read’ than ‘viewed’ as it requires a lot of thinking on the part of readers, while viewing, the torrent of dialogues does not give ample time and space to ‘think’? Or is it that the audio-visuals help in better understanding of the play?
Yes play can better be read than viewed because when we read many ideas or questions arise in mind while viewing that type of possibility is less, only reading is the best way to understand the things.
 I like this sequence more: Vladimir – Estragon killing time in questions and conversations while waiting, Pozzo – Lucky episode in both acts.
 
      Did you feel the effect of existential crisis or meaninglessness of human existence in the irrational and indifference Universe during screening of the movie?
Yes here we are shown existential crisis we can say that Vladimir and Estragon’s waiting is endless and meaningless at the same way human existence in the universe because existentialist believe in that idea, and it shows something symbolically truth about life.
How do you read this idea of suicide in Existentialism?
Idea of suicide in one video there is questions like why don’t we commit suicide? And answer is our instinct of life is much greater than our reason for death. This line gave us idea one more line prove this point that “An elegant suicide is an ultimate work of art” it’s an art of eluding so here Vladimir and Estragon talks about commit suicide but they do not so means they avoid it.  

The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter

Here I am sharing my viewpoints about the play.
 Pre viewing task: Comedy of menace: The phrase “comedy of menace” as a standalone description inspires both positive and negative feelings. Comedy is used during a dangerous situation to cause audiences to draw judgments about a particular character or communication. The words used are the focus of often powerful stories that create conflicting emotions from its audience. The title “Comedy of Menace” immediately brings contradictions to mind, because comedy is generally something that makes people laugh, and the word "menace" implies something threatening. Quite literally, then, this phrase involves laughing at an ominous situation.
This phrase is part of the title of a British play called The Lunatic View: a Comedy of Menace, by David Campton. Irving Wardle, a critic in the 1950s, emphasized the phrase when writing a review of the plays of Harold Pinter. Wardle used "comedy of menace" in a review of several of Pinter's works, although at the time he had seen only one, The Birthday Party.
Some plays are able to successfully mingle drama with comedy. One specific example from The Birthday Party is a character joking around about being in a menacing situation.
Phrase “comedy of menace” often applied to his early plays like; “The Room”, “The Birthday Party” and “A Slight Ache”. Menacing situation is shown in all above plays.
A particular atmosphere: It also created by Pinter’s ability to drop suddenly from a high comic level into deep seriousness. By this technique the audience is made aware that the comedy is only at surface layer. The sudden outbreaks of violence (verbal/physical?) in the play confirm this and leave the audience unsure of what will come next.
While we are talking about atmosphere there is some kind of fear in the play but that – fear for what? – by whom? But this type of question is remaining unanswered. Just as Stanley or Meg is the main vehicle for comedy in the play; so one more question arises that is he the main vehicle for the presentation of fear? Or is any other character frightened?
Answer of this question is yes because tone of the play is tragic or fearful but fear of what? It isn’t clear. All the characters are suffering from some unknown fear. May be possible that characters are laugh to forget their fear; they live in a past or avoid seeing in mirror because of fear.
The room or house represents security from the outside world but sadly it is impossible to sustain. So we can say that atmosphere is freighting.
Painteresque: Swedish Academy defines characteristic of painteresque where people are at the mercy of each other and pretence crumbles. With a minimum plot, dramas emerge from the power struggle and hide and seek of interlocution…...
‘The Birthday Party’ as a Political Play with reference to Harold Pinter’s Noble Speech: ‘Art, Truth & Politics: in that Pinter clarify that; “There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false it can be both true or false” and je further says that I always start a play by calling the characters A, B, and C...It’s strange moment the moment of creating characters who up to that moment have had no existence.
 And now he talks about art and politics: he says that political language as used by politicians which is not in truth but in power -the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, these each other are blind to each other…
In his speech he very beautifully and logically argues about his play with real situation, truth in drama is forever elusive. He further talks about U.S. and says that ‘I spoke earlier about tapestry of lies and describes Nicaragua as a ‘totalitarian dungeon’
While viewing task:
 Pinter’s Birthday Party film and the play in article: in that Harriet and Irving Deer says quality of Pinter’s style in both play and film. They says that he is an accomplished writer in both drama and film, Pinter is faithful to the texture of the play, movie starts with early in the morning, shots of car driving camera is moving first car and then point of view of driver. Both film and play seems to be trivia. Sense of emptiness and menace comes primarily in the film, so it is Pinter’s purpose in both to magnify trivia he used meaningful techniques in film.
Magnified ripping sound as McCann tears his newspaper or party in which we see the room looks like cage it is more clearly visible while game blind-man’s bluff. It is Pinter’s technique he shifts from an emphasis on people in the play to an emphasis on things in the film. He beautifully writes as well as shut.
How many times the ‘knocking at the door’ happens in the play? So many times knocking the door happens and yes it is creating menacing effect while viewing the movie.
Silence and Pauses are very important and Pinter successfully does it in movie during the conversation between Meg and Stanley or conversation between McCann, Goldberg and Stanley this time he uses pauses and silence.
Newspaper: play and movie both open with scene of Petey reading newspaper and Meg working in the kitchen Meg asking him that what is in the news. Here asking someone and telling someone is itself shows power-position.
Mirror: is also one of the symbol in Pinter’s plays, mirror image is always a kind of unrealistic or lie image which shows what we are.
Breakfast: Meg giving Petey corn flex it shows she makes fuss over everything the paper, the fried bread, or her housekeeping anything.  The whole breakfast scene is reminiscent of the king of domestic trivia.
Toy drum: in the act one ends that time Meg gave toy drum to the Stanley, it remains to the end. It is well-intentioned but stupid present.
Window-hatch: from that Stanley shows who is coming because he frighten from some unknown fear and from window we can’t see full sight means we only shown half thing or unclear thing. At the end of the movie Petey also shoes in the window.
One more symbol I want to include that is;
Door: it is very important symbol because first it gives threatening sound and also symbol of some fearful feeling, knocking the door create menacing image.
Each scene has symbolic meaning. Interrogation scene- in that McCann, Goldberg is force to sit down to Stanley in that repetition of the dialogue or situation like Stanley is sitting down and they both standing up shows power-position.
Birthday party scene- in that Stanley constantly saying it isn’t my birthday. In that all are playing game blind-man’s bluff it shows different point of views of each character. Room is look like prison in that Stanley searching something.
Resistance scene: in that Stanley who is now clean shaved, once again Goldberg and McCann subject him to an unendurable verbal barrage, but it is superfluous Stanley will to resist has vanished and he can only make meaningless sound.
Post viewing task:
At some extant movie is giving the effect of menace but reading and seeing both are very much different reading is  always more effective than reading while reading interrogation scene McCann and Goldberg are force to Stanley for sit down and they asking Stanley some unclear thing that we don’t know context this are menacing situation while viewing this effect we can’t feel.
With which of the following observations you agree:  I am agree with this; “It's impossible to imagine a better film of Pinter's play than this sensitive, disturbing version directed by William Friedkin”
If you were director or screenplay writer, what sort of difference would you make it the making of movie? – movie is very much faithful to the original play in my opinion everything is okay no need to change or add in the movie and direction or screen play writing it isn’t my cup of tea, but I want to change Petey’s character very less character he play I want to give more space to his character.
All actors’ plays beautifully and faithfully played their role but Stanley’s acting much affect me.
 Thank you.