Critical appreciation of Nissim Ezekiel's Night of the Scorpion?

Answer 1

I remember the night my motherwas stung by a scorpion.

Ten hours of steady rain had driven him to crawl beneath a sack of rice.

Parting with his poison - flashof diabolic tail in the dark room -he risked the rain again.

The peasants came like swarms of fliesand buzzed the name of God a hundred times to paralyse the Evil One.

With candles and with lanternsthrowing giant scorpion shadowson the mud-baked wallsthey searched for him: he was not found.

They clicked their tongues.With every movement that the scorpion madehis poison moved in Mother's blood, they said.

May he sit still, they said.May the sins of your previous birthbe burned away tonight, they said.

May your suffering decreasethe misfortunes of your next birth, they said.

May the sum of all evilbalanced in this unreal world against the sum of goodbecome diminished by your pain.

May the poison purify your flesh of desire, and your spirit of ambition,they said, and they sat aroundon the floor with my mother in the centre,the peace of understanding on each face.

More candles, more lanterns, more neighbours,more insects, and the endless rain.My mother twisted through and through,groaning on a mat.

My father, sceptic, rationalist,trying every curse and blessing,powder, mixture, herb and hybrid.

He even poured a little paraffinupon the bitten toe and put a match to it.

I watched the flame feeding on my mother.I watched the holy man perform his ritesto tame the poison with an incantation.

After twenty hoursit lost its sting.

My mother only saidThank God the scorpion picked on meAnd spared my children.

Answer 2

Night Of The Scorpion - A Poem by Nissim Ezekiel- India.

Nissim Ezekiel's plays and poems appeared in the Illustrated Weekly Of India. Although many of his poems are obscure, Night Of The Scorpion is simple, clear and direct. In this poem he presents a typical rural situation in an Indian village when his mother was stung at night by a scorpion. The poem has three distinct parts- the heavy rains and the appearance of the scorpion, the gathering of the peasants and their superstitions, and the picture of his rationalist father and typical Indian mother.

The poet appears as the narrator of the incident in the poem. It was the heavy Indian monsoon with ten hour-long steady rains. His mother was stung by a scorpion at night which after doing this service escaped among rice sacks and could not be found. Now comes what is typical of an Indian village. Even though it was night and incessant rain, a large number of neighbouring peasants with lanterns and candles gathered in the house, instantly, hearing the cries from the house. This was the habit and custom of this world till before a few years. In a mishap or calamity, people got instant help, as was intended by God in peopling this world with people. This virtue is now saying farewell to this world. We can hold it back or send it away. Now the universal practice is, each will look after his things alone. The boy-poet could listen to the supersticious peasants thinking the scorpion to be an evil spirit, and so singing and chanting rapidly the names of their Gods a hundred times, so that out of its sonar effect the evil spirit would find itself unable to move and paralyzed. When considering the tale of the famous sonar Trumpet which shook the walls and fell the fort, this belief cannot be said to be supersticious. They did this with the purpose of stilling the scorpion, as it's every movement would cause a corresponding movement of poison in the blood of the mother. So they prayed that the scorpion shall not be made to move in it's hiding place. The peasants however found solace in the fact that the sins of her previous life would be burned away in the severe pain and agony of that night.

The incantations and mantras did not help and the bitten lady continued to writhe in agony lying on a mat on the floor. The boy's father was a rationalist person who believed in the modern methods of treatment. He was scientific enough to pour a little paraffin wax upon the bitten toe and put a match to it on the expectation that the paraffin would melt evolving heat in which the chemical properties of the poison would be lost. The contrast between the peasants and his father is clear. Not all in India are supersticious and blind. But nothing succeeded in abating the agony. After twenty hours the agony abated by itself, as is usual with the effect of scorpion poison on human body. The relieved mother, for the first time, found words to thank God for sparing her children and making the scorpion sting her, instead of her children. The universal feeling of a Mother's care!

Answer 3

It is the poem in which poet has written about his mother 's sufferings and how she get relief from his pain