Enoch Arden

                              Enoch Arden

                            Lord Tennyson 

Enoch Arden is very famous poem written by Lord Tennyson. The poem is story of a man who live on lonely island with the hope of going back to home and meet his wife and children. But when he came back everything was changed world didn't stop behind him and still its going on.

The hero of the poem, fisherman turned merchant sailor Enoch Arden, leaves his wife Annie and three children to go to sea with his old captain, who offers him work after he had lost his job due to an accident; in a manner that reflects the hero's masculine view of personal toil and hardship to support his family, Enoch Arden left his family to better serve them as a husband and father. However during his voyage, Enoch Arden is shipwrecked on a desert island with two companions; both eventually die, leaving Arden alone there. This part of the story is reminiscent of Robinson Crusoe. Enoch Arden remains lost and missing for more than ten years.

He finds upon his return from the sea that, after his long absence, his wife, who believed him dead, is married happily to another man, his childhood friend Philip (Annie has known both men since her childhood, thus the rivalry), and has a child by him. Enoch's life remains unfulfilled, with one of his children now dead, and his wife and remaining children now being cared for by his onetime rival.
Enoch never reveals to his wife and children that he is really alive, as he loves her too much to spoil her new happiness. Enoch dies of a broken heart.

The story could be considered a variation on and antithesis to the classical myth of Odysseus, who after an absence of 20 years at the Trojan War and at sea found a faithful wife who had been loyally waiting for him.

 The use of the name Enoch for a man who disappears from the lives of his loved ones is surely inspired by the biblical character Enoch. In fact also the entire chronological structure of the protagonist's life with its cycles related to the biblical symbolism of the "days of Creation" binds to the name of Enoch, as demonstrated by the analysis of an Italian thinker long interested in this work, and denotes the impressive ability of Tennyson to insert theological intentions into simple elegiac mode with an unprecedented complexity in English literature.

Betweenthe Mosque and the temple

                                Between The Mosque And The Temple
                                                   Boman Desai

Now a days when we live in fear of communal war this kind of stories have something to say people. There was such as mall problem but if the person will not sort out and gave such wild frame to these kind of issues.

Introduction

Boman Desai is a famous Indian writer.  He has written many novels and stories.  The story Between the Mosque and the Temple is about a problem between Hindus and Muslims about placing a dustbin.

Banu’s Morning

The story opens with Banu waking up in the morning.  Banu is the chairman of Sanitation Committee.  She finds Pemmy, the servant, cleaning the house.  Banu gets up and she dresses herself in plain clothes.  She wears a plain shoe.  She does not wear any jewel.  She offers a special prayer because she is going to attend to a problem between the Hindus and Muslims.

The parade

            Banu comes out of her house and meets two members of the committee.  She decides to walk with them than using the car.  She says that the spot is not far away.  She feels happy at the two members because they would support her.  On the way, Banu meets a few students.  The students call her as Banubai.  They ask where is going.  She remembers the salt march of Gandhi.  She calls the students to go along with her.  The students are a mixture of Muslims and Hindus.  On the way, the students asked others to join them in their walk.  When Banu reaches the spot there is a big crows behind her.

The solution

            There is a leader for Hindu and Muslim along with their followers.  The Hindu leader is surprised to see Banu, because she is a woman.  He does not know what to do.  Banu says that she would walk from the mosque to the temple and they should count her steps. The dustbin would be placed exactly at the centre place.  She walks and the Hindu leader counts the steps aloud.  The students join the count.  There are 232 steps between the mosque and  the temple.  Banu orders to place the dustbin at the 116^th step.  The Hindu leader feels happy.  The Muslim leader nods his head. 

Conclusion

            Banu thinks that the solution is simple but it worked out because of three reasons:

1. The crowd behind her.
2. She is not a Muslim or Hindu.
3. She is a woman.

The Gift of Magi

                          THE GIFT OF MAGI

                                 O.HENRY

 William Sydney Porter, known by his pen name O. Henry, was an American short story writer. His stories are known for their surprise endings.
 "The Gift of the Magi" is about a young couple who sacrifice everything they have of value to give each other the best Christmas present. And who invented the practice of giving Christmas presents in the first place? The magi, at least according to the Christian tradition. You might also have heard of the magi as the "three kings" (as in the famous Christmas carol, "We Three Kings of Orient Are") or the "three wise men." According to the Christian Bible, the magi were the trio of kings who traveled to Bethlehem from somewhere in the east (probably Persia) to deliver three presents to the baby Jesus.

According to the story, the magi were wise folks. The gifts the magi gave to Jesus must have been wise too (as the narrator of "The Gift of the Magi" suggests at the end of the story). These gifts must have been the smartest, best gifts anyone could have chosen. And according to the narrator, that makes the two characters in this story – Jim and Della – just like the magi: they gave each other the wisest gifts of all.

If you really want to enjoy the story than dont go through this summery and read by yourself. Click on the link and enjoyor if you dont have time than enjoy this.

https://www.auburn.edu/~vestmon/Gift_of_the_Magi.html

PLOT OVERVIEW OF THE STORY

The story opens with $1.87. That's all Della Dillingham Young has to buy a present for her beloved husband, Jim. And the next day is Christmas. Faced with such a situation, Della promptly bursts into tears on the couch, which gives the narrator the opportunity to tell us a bit more about the situation of Jim and Della. The short of it is they live in a shabby flat and they're poor. But they love each other.

Once Della's recovered herself, she goes to a mirror to let down her hair and examine it. Della's beautiful, brown, knee-length hair is one of the two great treasures of the poor couple. The other is Jim's gold watch. Her hair examined, Della puts it back up, sheds a tear, and bundles up to head out into the cold. She leaves the flat and walks to Madame Sofronie's hair goods shop, where she sells her hair for twenty bucks. Now she has $21.87 cents.

With her new funds, Della is able to find Jim the perfect present: an elegant platinum watch chain for his watch. It's $21, and she buys it. Excited by her gift, Della returns home and tries to make her now-short hair presentable (with a curling iron). She's not convinced Jim will approve, but she did what she had to do to get him a good present. When she finishes with her hair, she gets to work preparing coffee and dinner.

Jim arrives at 7pm to find Della waiting by the door and stares fixedly at her, not able to understand that Della's hair is gone. Della can't understand quite what his reaction means.

After a little while, Jim snaps out of it and gives Della her present, explaining that his reaction will make sense when she opens it. Della opens it and cries out in joy, only to burst into tears immediately afterward. Jim has given her the set of fancy combs she's wanted for ages, only now she has no hair for them. Jim nurses Della out of her sobs. Once she's recovered she gives Jim his present, holding out the watch chain. Jim smiles, falling back on the couch. He sold his watch to buy Della's combs, he explains. He recommends they put away their presents and have dinner. As they do so, the narrator brings the story to a close by pronouncing that Della and Jim are the wisest of everyone who gives gifts. They are the magi.

The Bet-Short story

                               The Bet 

 Anton Chekhov became the father of the modern short story because of a key secret weapon. He wasn't just a writer, but in fact was also a full-time practicing doctor, the smarty-pants. Why would being a doctor be the secret ingredient to his special writing sauce? Because Chekhov brought the same kind of detached, objective, non-judgmental flavor to his fiction that he used when trying to get the bottom of his patients' problems. 

By taking out all the authorial heavy-handedness that was all the rage with his fellow 19th-century realists Chekhov made the short story a totally distinct thing from the novel. Instead of being shown examples of what to do and what not to do, Chekhov's readers got totally unbiased, straight-up slices of life instead. No pointing out good guys and bad guys, no overbearing voice laying out the meaning of everything. Instead? Just smooth and laconic narration that would leave more questions than answers.

And so, in 1889, he wrote "The Bet," a story about a banker and a lawyer who make a totally loopy wager—whether one of them could stay in solitary confinement for fifteen years in exchange for two million rubles. We won't say any more but… there is a twist ending. It's a super short, crazy deep little number that's all about the simple things.

If you really want to enjoy the story than dont go through this summery and read by yourself. Its open ended story and made the readers think.  But if you dont have time than enjoy this.

PLOT OVERVIEW

Fifteen years ago, a banker threw a shindig in which he bet a young lawyer two million rubles that the lawyer couldn't stay in solitary confinement for five years. The lawyer raised the stakes to fifteen years, and holed up in a guesthouse on the banker's estate. He's had no contact with any humans during this time, but has been able to read all the books he could want.

 The lawyer's reading has ranged from novels to philosophy and languages to religious texts to a confusing mishmash. What can we say? The dude has had some time on his hands.

Now, the fifteen years is almost up and the banker is worried that if he has to pay the two million large, he'll be bankrupt. Solution? He opts to ice the lawyer. So he sneaks up on the lawyer, who's fast asleep. Just as he is about to kill the dude, the banker finds a note that explains that through his reading the lawyer has come to totally reject the material world. It turns out he's planning on throwing the bet on purpose by leaving five hours early. The banker kisses the lawyer's head, cries, and leaves. The next day, the guards report that the lawyer bailed early. The banker takes the letter and puts it into his safe.

Arms and the man

                           Arms and the man

                         ARMS AND THE MAN BY BERNARD SHAW

                                           ABOUT PLAY

One of Shaw's aims in this play is to debunk the romantic heroics of war; he wanted to present a realistic account of war and to remove all pretensions of nobility from war. It is not, however, an anti-war play; instead, it is a satire on those attitudes which would glorify war. To create this satire, Shaw chose as his title the opening lines of Virgil's Aeneid, the Roman epic which glorifies war and the heroic feats of man in war, and which begins, "Of arms and the man I sing. . . ."

When the play opens, we hear about the glorious exploits which were performed by Major Sergius Saranoff during his daring and magnificent cavalry raid, an event that turned the war against the Serbs toward victory for the Bulgarians. He thus becomes Raina Petkoff's ideal hero; yet the more that we learn about this raid, the more we realize that it was a futile, ridiculous gesture, one that bordered on an utter suicidal escapade.

In contrast, Captain Bluntschli's actions in Raina's bedroom strike us, at first, as being the actions of a coward. (Bluntschli is a Swiss, a professional soldier fighting for the Serbs.) He climbs up a water pipe and onto a balcony to escape capture, he threatens a defenseless woman with his gun, he allows her to hide him behind the curtains, and then he reveals that he carries chocolates rather than cartridges in his cartridge box because chocolates are more practical on the battlefield. Yet, as the play progresses, Bluntschli's unheroic actions become reasonable when we see that he survives, whereas had the war continued, Sergius' absurd heroic exploits would soon have left him dead.

Throughout the play, Shaw arranged his material so as to satirize the glories associated with war and to ultimately suggest that aristocratic pretensions have no place in today's wars, which are won by using business-like efficiency, such as the practical matters of which Bluntschli is a master. For example, Bluntschli is able to deal with the business of dispensing an army to another town with ease, while this was a feat that left the aristocrats (Majors Petkoff and Saranoff) completely baffled. This early play by Shaw, therefore, cuts through the noble ideals of war and the "higher love" that Raina and Sergius claim to share; Arms and the Man presents a world where the practical man who lives with no illusions and no poetic views about either love or war is shown to be the superior creature.

Wuthering Heights

                      Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights was Emily Brontë's only novel, and it is considered the fullest expression of her highly individual poetic vision. It contains many Romantic influences: Heathcliff is a very Byronic character, though he lacks the self pity that mars many Byronic characters, and he is deeply attached to the natural world. When the novel was written, the peak of the Romantic age had passed: Emily Brontë lived a very isolated life, and was in some sense behind the times. Wuthering Heights expresses criticisms of social conventions, particularly those surrounding issues of gender: notice that the author distributes "feminine" and "masculine" characteristics without regard to sex. Brontë had difficulties living in society while remaining true to the things she considered important: the ideal of women as delicate beings who avoid physical or mental activity and pursue fashions and flirtations was repugnant to her. Class issues are also important: we are bound to respect Ellen, who is educated but of low class, more than Lockwood.
Any reader of Wuthering Heights should recognize immediately that it is not the sort of novel that a gently-bred Victorian lady would be expected to write. Emily Brontë sent it to publishers under the masculine name of Ellis Bell, but even so it took many tries and many months before it was finally accepted. Its reviews were almost entirely negative: reviewers implied that the author of such a novel must be insane, obsessed with cruelty, barbaric. Emily's sister Charlotte's novel Jane Eyre was much more successful. Emily was always eager to maintain the secrecy under which the novel was published, understandably. She died soon after the publication, and Charlotte felt obliged ­- now that secrecy was no longer necessary -­ to write a preface for the novel defending her sister's character. The preface also made it clear that Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell were, in fact, different people: some readers had speculated that Wuthering Heights was an early work by the author of Jane Eyre. It appears that Charlotte herself was uncomfortable with the more disturbing aspects of her sister's masterpiece. She said that if Emily had lived, "her mind would of itself have grown like a strong tree; loftier, straighter, wider-spreading, and its matured fruits would have attained a mellower ripeness and sunnier bloom." Her apology for Emily's work should be read with the realization that Charlotte's character was quite different from Emily's: her interpretation of Wuthering Heights should not necessarily be taken at face value.
Wuthering Heights does not belong to any obvious prose genre, nor did it begin an important literary lineage. None of its imitations can approach its sincerity and poetic power. However, it has still been an important influence on English literature. With the passing of time, an immense amount of interest has grown up about the Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, and they have achieved the status of the centers of a literary cult.

“Let him dare to force you ... There’s law in the land, thank God! there is; though we be in an out-of-the-way place. I’d inform if he were my own son: and it’s felony without benefit of clergy!”

                                                                            Ellen Dean, Page 274

This is one of the only times that a character in Wuthering Heights refers to the people and customs of the world outside Wuthering Heights and the Grange. Besides passing references to Gimmerton, the nearest town, the characters seem to live in complete isolation, which helps to explain their passionate relationships and convoluted family trees. The fact that Ellen thinks of seeking help from the outside world indicates both the direness of the situation when Heathcliff imprisons her and Cathy at Wuthering Heights, as well as her common sense relative to the other characters. This contrasts sharply with Cathy's personality; despite her liveliness, the young girl cannot conceive of a life outside her own insular community, and her greatest ambition as a child was only to see the other side of the hill on the edge of the Grange.

Nagamandal

                               Nagamandala

 GIRISH KARNAD

He was born in Maharashtra on May 19, 1938. He got his bachelor's degree from the Karnatak University in 1958 and then proceeded on a fellowship to study at Oxford where he secured his M.A. degree in 1963.

Karnad is internationally known as a playwright, but is also a highly talented film-maker, a versatile actor, an able cultural administrator, a noted communicator and a person of wide accomplishments and interests. Based on his serious explorations of folklore, mythology and history, the subject of his plays reflect the problems and challenges of contemporary life, and endeavour to forge a link between the past and the present. The creative intellectual that he is, he obviously views the subjects of his plays from his own perspective, develops them in the crucible of his own imagination and personal experiences, and employs them as a medium to communicate his own-independent and original-feelings, thoughts and interpretations.

                                        Nagamandala

The play Naga-Mandala is written by GirishKarnad in 1987-88. The word Naga-Mandala means play with cobra. The play circles around the snake which changes its form into human being to meet its beloved. This is based on the two folk’s tales from Karnad’s mentor A.K Ramanujan. Here the term Naga-Mandala is consists of two words, ‘Naga’ and ‘Mandala’. According to history of culture it illustrates the joining together of male and female snakes. The title of the play Naga-Mandala (play with cobra) is extremely significant. It highlights one of the dramatic character around which the entire story develop. 

Karnad dedicates this book to his friend, mentor A.K Ramanujan. He wrote this book during the year he spent at the University of Chicago as visiting Professor and Fulbright scholar in residence. The play was first presented by Shri Shankar Nag in Kannada with his group, ‘Sanket’. Naga-Mandala was premiered in US by the Guthrie Theatre of Minneapolis as a part of its thirtieth anniversary celebrations. The Guthrie and the Haymarket Theatre, Leicester, UK have been among the theaters that commissioned Karnad to write for them. (Karnad, 1990)

                                     Plot Overview 

Rani is a young bride who is neglected by her indifferent and unfaithful husband, Appanna. Appanna spends most of his time with his concubine and comes home only for lunch. Rani is a typical wife who wants to win her husband’s affection by any means. In an attempt to do so, she decides to drug her husband with a love root, which she mixes in the milk. That milk is spilled on the nearby anthill and Naga, the cobra drinks it.

Naga, who can take the form of a human, is enchanted with her and begins to visit her every night in the guise of her husband. This changes Rani's life completely as she starts to experience the good things in life though she never knows that the person with her is not her husband but the Naga.

Soon she becomes pregnant and breaks the news to Appanna. He immediately accuses her of adultery and says that he has not impregnnated her. The issue is referred to the village Panchayat. Rani is then asked to prove her fidelity by putting her hand in the snake burrow and taking a vow that she has not committed adultery. (It is a popular belief that if any person lies holding the snake in their hand, they will be instantly killed by the snake God.)

Rani places her hand in the snake burrow and vows that she has never touched any male other than her husband and the Naga in the burrow. She is declared chaste by the village Panchayat. However, her husband is not ready to accept that she is pregnant with his child and decides to find out the truth by spying on the house at night. Appanna is shocked to see the Naga visiting Rani in his form, spending time with her and then leaving the house.

Appanna gets furious with the Naga and indulges in a fight with him. Both of them fight vigorously. Eventually, the Naga dies in the fight. After this incident, Appanna realizes his mistake and accepts Rani along with the child she is carrying.