Postcolonial study in bollywood

Postcolonial Theory and Bollywood Films

Postcolonial theory has hardly been a defining paradigm in the field of film studies. Postcolonial theory originally emerged from comparative literature departments and film from film and media studies departments, and despite the many intersections postcolonial theory has not been explicitly foregrounded. However, there are more similarities and natural points of intersections between the two areas than it would at first appear. For example, both postcolonial theory and film studies emerged at the end of the 1970s with the development of semiotic theory and poststructuralist thought. Both areas engage intensively with the field of representation, implying the ways in which a language, be it cinematic or otherwise, manages to convey reality as “mediated” and “discursive,” and therefore influenced by power relations. An example could be the notion of the gendered gaze by Laura Mulvey and her concept of looked-at-ness and how it also applies to the screening and representation of black and colonized bodies in films, which bell hooks later theorized as black looks, to which she proposed the response of an oppositional gaze. Despite their different genealogies, it is therefore not only very natural but also necessary to combine postcolonial theory and film in order to unearth how the visual field is inherently hegemonizing and hierarchical and therefore in need of critical appraisal and a deconstructive take, such as postcolonial theory. Postcolonial theory has critically contributed to revisiting the representation of the Other, addressing long-standing tropes and stereotypes about cultural difference and racial otherness. This implies new interventions on how visual representations are implicated in the policing of boundaries between East and West, between Europe and the Rest, the self and the other, undoing or rethinking the ways in which the visual field conveys operation of a mastery that needs to be undone and decoded.

Rang De Basanti :-

Rang De Basanti (Color me Saffron) tells us the story of Caucasian and Hindi speaking, British filmmaker, Sue, who comes to India to make a documentary on India’s revolutionary and legendary freedom fighters, Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekar Azad, Sukhdev, Rajguru and Ashfaqullah Khan who were instrumental in India’s struggle against the British. The five Indian youngsters she chooses to play the revolutionaries are Laxman Pandey (Atul Kulkarni), a Hindu fundamentalist with political aspirations; Daljit Singh called DJ (Aamir Khan), a Punjabi guy who is also an ex-student of the university and uninterested in the life outside the universities’ gates; Aslam (Kunal Kapoor), a rational Muslim ; Sukhi (Sharman Joshi) , a fun loving guy primarily interested in women; Karan (Siddharth) a rich kid who dreams of settling abroad and shares an estranged relationship with his father; and Sonia (Soha Ali Khan) , a youth activist who is engaged to a patriotic pilot Ajay (Mad havan). The group of friends is at first unable to relate the characters they portray on screen. The film-within-a-film format allows Mehra to compare yesteryear’s ideal ism (represented through the freedom fighters) with today’s skepticism (represented through the portrayal of the friends) and as Sue continues to make the documentary, the idealism of India’s revolutionary heroes’ seeps into the protagonists. Somewhere during the making of the movie, the friends find themselves moved by the passion of the characters they play. They gradually begin to realize that their own lives are not very different from the actors they portray on the screen and that the same state of affairs that once plagued the revolutionaries continues to torment the present generation. 

While, previously it was the British Empire who played the villain, today this role is being essayed by contemporary politicians. Soon the barrier of time between the two generations begins to dissolve as the characters become one in spirit. The death of their close friend, Ajay, who dies like a hero, having averted a greater tragedy by crashing his MiG plane (inspired from a real life incident in India) into an empty field instead of trying to save his own life pushes their tolerance over their brink, as instead of honoring his martyrdom, the Indian government labels him as a careless novice so as to deflect media attention away from the details of the purchase of faulty Russian MiGs. The friends are devastated by Ajay’s death and shocked by the corruption they encounter from the bureaucracy when they try to clear his name. This forces them to take action against the State. In the process of trying to cleanse the system, they take the law into their own hands and meet a tragic end. In the film, the docudrama shot by Sue of British India in the 1930s runs along with the main story and intersects it at decisive moments in the narration. The climax of the film sees the blurring of the past and the present, reiterating the idea that nationalism is not yet dead and that people need to wake up and be the change they talk about. 

As Hindi film critic Dr. Chakravorty describes it, RDB is more than another patriotic film: it is a moral, social and political allegory. “By blending history along with the nationalist struggle, idealism and humanitarianism along with contemporary politics, religious fundamentalism, and the lack of social responsibility, Mehra pro vides us with a mirror to look inwards and think about the way we live and the choices we make.”13 It was for this reason that audiences, especially youngsters, for whom daily life in India was on the lines depicted in RDB, found this film to be a slice of their own lives. RDB also ends with a strong message that it is not patriotic or right to be indifferent to what is going on in the country, and even more so in public life. Moreover, nor is it correct to sit on the fence and point fingers at all the things going wrong in a democracy like India. It stresses the idea that is very important for people to actively participate in the public sphere to bring about change in their country. “No country is perfect, it needs to be made perfect”14 and this is the message that Mehra’s film leaves the audience with. Interestingly enough, film critics even when discussing the movie in their reviews felt that RDB could lead to reflection, discussion and possibly even action among youngsters in India. It was for this reason that RDB enjoyed much publicity before and after its release. It also helped that this film had an interesting ensemble of novice and established actors starring in it and that the popular press declared the film to be one of the biggest releases of 2006. 

While there is always the danger of popular cinema like RDB being labeled es capist, mere entertainment, and fantasy-oriented, it is very essential to understand the role it plays in motivating audiences to act in certain ways. For despite all its inanities and irrelevancies this cinema is ideology-filled and its raw material is the society of today. RDB, by focusing on the concerns of youngsters, operating from their perspective and speaking their language, conveyed the mindset of urban and educated youngsters in post-independent India. It therefore serves as a fertile ground to study issues of changing culture, identities, media consumption and audience effects among others. It is in this context that I study the consumption of RDB and the implications of the same on young audiences. RDB, as this thesis showcases, is an example of a distinctive case in which the consumption of a super commodified cinematic product revitalized citizenship among the youth in India.

Lagaan :-

 Lagaan films with their appeal to the mass audience of uprooted peasants, factory workers, the unemployed, uneducated and poor can decolonise the imagination of the Indian masses. It points out that "Lagaan's" efforts at indigenisation and interrogation of prescribed discourses of modernity and history deserve credit for making possible the creation of public debates within a culture where the majority of the population is non-literate, and is unable to partake in elite discussions of culture and modernity.

 conclusion :-

 The white woman's association with capitalism and modernity in Rang de Basanti, Lagaan, and Indian advertisements, buttresses the dominance of the Indian male and affirms nationalist constructions of gender. Dark suggests that romance with the white woman offers a form of redemption for the various humiliations the Indian male suffered in the colonial dynamic and offers a fantasy of symbolic wholeness á la Frantz Fanon. Indeed, this introduction of the British woman in both Lagaan and Rang de Basanti harkens back to the imperialist romances popular in the 1980s, based on the novels of E.M. Forester and Paul Scott. Both David Lean's film Passage to India and the television series Jewel in the Crown highlight the British woman's consumption of Indian culture and the perils of such erotic consumption. In these films, the erotic gaze of the British woman is correlated directly to the punishment of the Westernized Indian man, who is jailed and beaten for his purported sexual aggression against her. The eroticism in these romances depends on the sadomasochistic degradation of the Indian male linked to the British woman's excessive, misplaced, and ultimately impossible desire. Renato Resaldo has perhaps the most blunt description of the "paradox"of "imperialist nostalgia" that plays out in these romances: "A person kills somebody, and then mourns the victim" . According to Resaldo, this nostalgia disguises any complicity of the mourner in this loss, in effect erasing the traumatic history. In relationship to imperialist nostalgia, Jennifer Wen-zel describes "anti-imperialist nostalgia" as a phenomenon in a formerly colonized nation, in which the pre-independence period becomes an idealized ur-moment of potential, not necessarily fulfilled in the present day nation-state. In both forms of nostalgia, the pre-independence period acts as a fetish or an object that compensates for the trauma of Britain's loss of empire and India's occupation under colonial rule. If for Anne McClintock, the fetish, as both commodity and psychoanalytic "perversion," work off the "failure of a single narrative of origins" whether cultural or sexual, Rang de Basanti offers a type of doubling of India's narrative of origins as a nation-state. In Rang de Basanti two types of fantasies imperial and anti-imperial — overlap. Although Sue is the supposed director of a documentary film, she also acts symbolically as the fantasy audience, both a witness to India's successful transformation into a global force and the Western subject who provides recognition for the historical trauma behind India's birth into modernity through sentimental affiliation with heroic individuals.

SR: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

 SR: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie :-

Chimamanda was born in Enugu, Nigeria on September 15, 1977. Her works centered primarily on the Biafran war in Nigeria in the late 1960’s.

From a young age, Chimamanda is already a voracious reader. She found the work of fellow Igbo Chinua Achebe, “Things Fall Apart,” as truly powerful and trans formative. She studied medicine in Nsukka for a time, however, she felt that it was not her calling so she left for the United States in 1997. In the US, she studied Political Science and Communication at the Eastern Connecticut State University. Traveling back and forth to Nigeria and the US, she also worked hard and earned a Creative Writing Master’s degree from the prestigious John Hopkins University. Later on, she also went and studied African history at Yale.

Chimamanda Adichie’s play entitled “For Love of Biafra” was printed in Nigeria in 1998 but she remarked that this particular play as appallingly“melodramatic.” In this play, she explored the repercussions of the 1960 Nigeria and Biafra war. Later on, she wrote stories picturing the conflicts in that same war. In 2006, she wrote her highly-successful novel “Half of a Sun,” still drawing inspiration from the said Biafran and Nigerian war.

Her first novel entitled “Purple Hibiscus” was written and published in 2003 when she was still a student at the Eastern Connecticut State University. The novel talks about the coming-of-age of a 15-year-old girl named Kambili. Although they are rich, her father was a religious fanatic which causes a lot of problems. This novel won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2005 for Best First Book written by an African category and also won the 2005’s Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book for all categories. Furthermore, the said novel was short-listed for the 2004 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Chimamanda Adichie received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2008. In 2009, she then released her collection of short stories called “The Thing Around Your Neck.” In 2013, she released “Americanah,” a novel which tells the story of a young Nigerian woman learning and blogging about ethnicity and race in the US.

x

Truly, the story of Chimamanda Adichie’s success is the perfect example of how one can turn discrimination against one’s color and cultural background into their very own platform for success.

1. Did the first talk help you in understanding of postcolonialism?

yes, the first talk help  me in understanding of postcolonialism.Americanah is written entirely in the third person point of view. The narrator is both reliable and omniscient. This does not change even when the book shifts focus from present to past and from Ifemelu to Obinze. The narrator reveals the actions and thoughts of the characters throughout the book. For example, when Obinze meets a woman and her son in a coffee shop in England, the narrator describes the actions of the three characters while also revealing that Obinze finds her attractive and the encounter leaves him thinking about love. This point of view allows the reader to get to know the characters involved and develop an interest in what happens to them.

The story is told in a mix of exposition and dialogue, with dialogue occurring through a wide variety of characters. The pace is moderate with enough action to keep the reader.

2. Are the arguments in the seconds talk convincing? 

yes, the arguments in the seconds talk convincing because The words she sampled were from a now-famous TED Talk by Chimamanda where she talks about feminism, and why it is important to teach it to girls. More recently, we have seen some heated debates about the relevance of feminism, thanks to the tumblr ‘Women Against Feminism’ and all the negative light they are casting on the movement.

More than anything, our point of view is that people are now having honest an open conversations on a global scale, and we have an anti-feminist site to that for that. Feminism is getting more publicity than ever, in this digital age where literally anything has the potential to go viral, like their tumblr page. What it has also allowed is for the positive (read: not radical or exclusionary) feminist voices to rise up and be stronger than ever, and show cynics that all the stereotypical things about the movement that seem to be perpetuated by society, are certainly not telling the full story. The negative and radicalism has hijacked what true feminism is about: equality, and women supporting women.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has just released a book version of her TED talk called ‘We should all be feminists’, which you can buy online, or you can watch the full video here. Given the current climate of feminism, it couldn’t have been more timely.

If there is anyone out there looking for a clear, concise, short and convincing reason why feminism is still relevant, this is the speech you need to hear or read. To start off, let’s be reminded of the dictionary definition: “the theory of the social, political and economic equality of the sexes.”

For those that think Chimamanda spent her life reading feminist books and probably can’t identify with her, you’d be wrong.

In an interview with Vogue about the release of her book, Chimamanda says her speech was received quite well from the men in her country.

“I was surprised that some of the young men that I’ve heard from, mostly Nigerians, who I thought of as so retrograde that they could not be saved, actually started to think about and talk about gender. We don’t really talk about gender, and I’m very much a believer in the power of discourse, in having conversations, of trying to reach out.”

3. What did you like about the third talk?

In the third video about truth in post-truth era, she beautifully said about the courage of speaking truth. Her thought is to be loyal with ourselves to tell the truth. Post truth is very dangerous weapon in this 21st century, especially political parties make use of this kind of weapon to provocate riots and also Media used for profit and to raise their TRP. So. She tries to say that do not driven as sheeple with the political language, try to understand the truth with authentication and always doubt in such a things.

4. Are these talks bringing any significant change in your way of looking at literature and life?

yes, these talks bringing significant change in my  way of looking at literature and life because after this talk in my mind I can see the world in larger picture instead looking from only one perspective . 

Shashi Tharoor

Shashi Tharoor :-

Shashi Tharoor is a member of the Indian Parliament and also a columnist, author, human rights activist, and a former UN envoy. He served in the UN for 29 years. He is passionate about politics and has been writing for newspapers, like Washington Post, The Times of India, New York Times, The Hindu and many more. He has also written fiction and non fictions, which have also been translated into many languages. He is known as a compelling speaker and has won many awards.

Shashi Tharoor was born in 1956 in London. He is originally from Kerala as his parents, father Chandran Tharoor and mother Lily were from Kerala. His early education was completed in Montfort school in Yercaud, Tamil Nadu and Campion School in Mumbai. His high school was completed in St. Xavier’s Collegiate School in Kolkata. He earned his honours degree in History from St. Stephen’s College in Delhi. A bright student, he won a scholarship to Tuffs University in Boston. He earned his master’s degree in the US and also a Ph.D at Tuffs University in Diplomacy from Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
Shashi Tharoor’s first wife was Tilottama Mukherjee and they have two sons, Ishaan and Kanishk. However, they divorced and Tharoor married a Canadian national named Vhirsta Giles. After splitting from Giles, Tharoor married Sunanda Pushkar, who has a son from a previous marriage. However, she died mysteriously in a hotel room in Delhi. He is known to love theatre and has played the role of Antony in Cleopatra. He acted in various plays even in school and college days. Tharoor founded the Quiz Club in St. Stephen’s College. He was elected as the President of the college union.
Shashi Tharoor in his whole political career has been surrounded by various controversies. His remarks have irked his party members many times and he has been caught in a fix due to his statements. He was also attacked due to his participation and being a shareholder in the Kochi-IPL team. He was accused of having made financial gains to Sunanda Pushkar, who was not his wife then. The matter became serious as the income tax department asked him to pay income tax on sweat equity even after giving it up. All this made Shashi Tharoor to resign from the post of the Minister of State of External Affairs.
The death of Sunanda Pushkar also built up controversies. Her death mystery has not been solved yet and investigations are being carried out.

An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India :-

While I was reading this book, I kept thinking that one of the things people on the left could reasonably do is just make up stuff about the extent of murderousness that colonisation has involved. The reason being that it is highly unlikely anyone on the left would have the imagination to think up the horrors that were actually inflicted upon the world by the imperial ambitions of Britain or Spain – or the costs to indigenous peoples in the US or Australia. This book documents horrors upon horrors. But infinitely worse is the clear view that is left of the British who were not merely rapacious is thievery from those they pretended to be lifting out of darkness, but who did nothing to alleviate suffering when lifting the smallest finger would have saved many lives from the most horrible of deaths.
Winston Churchill does not come out of this at all well. As someone born in Ireland, he has never particularly been a hero of mine anyway – but in India his name ought to be a curse.
I’m not going to list the catalogue of crimes against humanity visited upon India by British rule – this book provides ample examples and ought to be read for that alone – however, I want to focus mostly on something that I believe still holds relevance for us today everywhere on the planet – the inhumanity of free market economics when accepted as a moral philosophy.
Marx says somewhere that we should consider capitalism as simultaneously the best and the worse system that has ever existed. As the author here points out, those in charge of India from Britain were guided by ethical principles that had two great foundations – that the market is always right and a vision of Malthus where overpopulation inevitably leads to famine. This meant that when various imposed famines occurred in India those who might otherwise have been expected to do something to reduce the suffering experienced by the people saw any such action as misguided ‘charity’ that would, in fact, merely make matters worse. That the market had spoken and the death of those people (counted in millions) was ultimately the kindest thing. Rather than divert some of the food that was being transported out of these areas where people were starving, the food continued to be moved to Europe and the people dropped like flies.
The point isn’t that such actions were the cynical excesses of a hideous regime content to merely suck the wealth and life out of India – and, there is something to this as well, of course – but rather that free market economics, with its invisible hands and its dogmatic certainties, allows people to consider their actions (or inactions) as the height of morality while millions perish. This was done to Ireland with the same callous disregard as it was to India. That the monsters who committed the crimes remain heroes is difficult to understand other than from the perspective that we still live under the sway of an ideology that still believes the market will provide and any intervention in its free action will ultimately prove counter-productive – and thus are the greatest of human tragedies visited upon the poor while the wealthy can barely count their riches.

The Black Prince:-

'The Black Prince' successfully makes an aware of some determinant historical events of the past.
 The Black Prince is a 2017 international historical drama film directed by Kavi Raz and featuring the acting debut of Satinder Sartaj. It tells the story of Duldeep Singh, the last Maharajah of the Sikh Empire and the Punjab area, and his relationship with Queen Victoria.
In this movie , we can see the Postcolonialism through the main character of Duldeep Singh. In this movie we can see that the condition of Duldeep Singh that he find himself with the two different cultures of his India birth and British education.
After the death of his father Maharajah Ranjit Singh who was the previous ruler of the Sikh Empire. And after his death , Duldeep Singh placed on the throne at the very early of five age.  After the time passed Britishers who colonized Punjab and they take Duldeep with them and separated from his mother.In the movie prince Duleepsingh play roll as a protagonist. One thing I noticed that this movie also focus on how British government ruled on India. Movie reflected good side of British government though providing so many things for prince but Prince always prefers conman life. Mother of the princes also hate British government and people. She didn't like their manner of hospitality. Normally movie working surrounding nationalism,colonialism,reflect British's manner,clothe,food,Christianity...etc.
So, Duldeep consider himself as  a Britisher but it is not actually that. After the few years he meet his mother and his mother told him the story about Britishers that what they did with him in the prior. Then after the death of his mother , he came to know that who is he and which country he is actually belong. He want to go at India but Britishers who deny him to go there.
So in a way, he found himself in dilemma that what should he do?
So, in a Postcolonial perspective .... Duldeep Singh himself free to live with Britishers but he is colonized by his mind. That he didn't do anything according to his mind. He always colonized by that british people who always wants to kept him with under their rules.

Summarise Ngugi Wa Thiongo's views :-

Ngugi Wa Thiongo who was an African Writer & Professor of English Literature and language in Africa." Decolonizing the Mind" the book by Kenyan novelist and Postcolonial theorist Ngugi Wa Thiongo. It is the collection of essay about language & its constructive role in national culture, history and identity.In this book he talks about..." What language played the role in African Literature?"
Decolonising the Mind is a collection of essays about language and its constructive role in national culture, history, and identity. The book, which advocates for linguistic decolonization, is one of Ngũgĩ’s best-known and most-cited non-fiction publications, helping to cement him as a pre-eminent voice theorizing the “language debate” in post-colonial studies.

            Ngũgĩ describes the book as “a summary of some of the issues in which I have been passionately involved for the last twenty years of my practice in fiction, theater, criticism, and in teaching of literature…” Decolonizing the Mind is split into four essays: “The Language of African Literature,” “The Language of African Theater,” “The Language of African Fiction,” and “The Quest for Relevance.”
So, in the Postcolonialism , Resistance is very important , Resistance is the main buzz word in post colonial. So he said that the another form of to resist language is to own it or discard the language totally.

1984

 1) What is dystopian fiction? Is '1984' dystopian fiction?

Dystopian fiction offers a speculative glimpse of the future, one often experiencing a cataclysmic decline, with characters battling their way through environmental ruin, technological control, and government oppression. As a sub-genre of science fiction, the popular dystopian novel can challenge readers’ views about current social and political climates, offer warnings, and in some instances, inspire action. But how is dystopian fiction determined? First, let’s define the difference between the utopian and dystopian world.

When Sir Thomas More coined the term “utopia” in his 1516 book Utopia, he was inadvertently shaping centuries of genre. With the advent of Utopia, which was about an ideal society on a fictional island, the dystopia was born.

Margaret Atwood once said, “If you’re interested in writing speculative fiction, one way to generate a plot is to take an idea from current society and move it a little further down the road. Even if humans are short-term thinkers, fiction can anticipate and extrapolate into multiple versions of the future.”

The significance of dystopian fiction on literature can vary from educating and warning humanity about current social and political structures, to reflecting an author’s beliefs on the pitfalls of society (H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine), to critiquing behaviorism (Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange), and cautioning on oppressive regimes (Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Orwell’s 1984).

George Orwell’s 1984 is a defining example of dystopian fiction in that it envisions a future where society is in decline, totalitarianism has created vast inequities, and innate weaknesses of human nature keep the characters in a state of conflict and unhappiness. Unlike utopian novels, which hold hope for the perfectibility of man and the possibility of a just society, dystopian novels like 1984 imply that the human race will only get worse if man’s lust for power and capacity for cruelty go uncorrected.

In 1984, characters live in fear of wars, government surveillance, and political oppression of free speech. The London of the novel is dirty and crumbling, with food shortages, exploding bombs, and miserable citizens. The government is an all-powerful force of oppression and control, and crushes the characters’ identities and dreams. This dystopian vision of the future, written thirty-five years before the year the novel is set, suggests that man’s inherent nature is corrupt and repressive. Orwell wrote the book in the aftermath of World War II and the rise of fascism in Germany and the Soviet Union, and paints a pessimistic picture of society’s ability to avoid further global disasters.

Dystopian fiction usually works backward from the present to find an explanation for the fictional society’s decline, and thus to provide a commentary on the reader’s society or a warning of how the future could turn out. In 1984, as Winston works to acquire objects from the past, find spaces without telescreens or microphones in them, and recover memories of the time before the Party, Orwell provides the reader with glimpses of how Winston’s society came to be. We learn about a nuclear war, a revolution, mass famines, and a period of consolidation of power by the Party.

Dystopian novels explore the effects of oppression and totalitarianism on the individual psyche as well as how the individual functions in a repressive society. Winston’s trouble retrieving and trusting his memories illustrates the way the Party has corrupted his emotional life as well as his daily existence, asking the reader to question the nature of memory and individual consciousness. By suggesting that Winston is initially complacent because he can’t remember whether or not life was better and he was happier before the Revolution, the book examines the importance of memory in creating a sense of self.

2) your learning about the novel from online screening of the film - share screenshots, if you have taken. 

Winston Smith is a low-ranking member of the ruling Party in London, in the nation of Oceania. Everywhere Winston goes, even his own home, the Party watches him through telescreens; everywhere he looks he sees the face of the Party’s seemingly omniscient leader, a figure known only as Big Brother. The Party controls everything in Oceania, even the people’s history and language. Currently, the Party is forcing the implementation of an invented language called Newspeak, which attempts to prevent political rebellion by eliminating all words related to it. Even thinking rebellious thoughts is illegal. Such thoughtcrime is, in fact, the worst of all crimes.

As the novel opens, Winston feels frustrated by the oppression and rigid control of the Party, which prohibits free thought, sex, and any expression of individuality. Winston dislikes the party and has illegally purchased a diary in which to write his criminal thoughts. He has also become fixated on a powerful Party member named O’Brien, whom Winston believes is a secret member of the Brotherhood—the mysterious, legendary group that works to overthrow the Party.

Winston works in the Ministry of Truth, where he alters historical records to fit the needs of the Party. He notices a coworker, a beautiful dark-haired girl, staring at him, and worries that she is an informant who will turn him in for his thoughtcrime. He is troubled by the Party’s control of history: the Party claims that Oceania has always been allied with Eastasia in a war against Eurasia, but Winston seems to recall a time when this was not true. The Party also claims that Emmanuel Goldstein, the alleged leader of the Brotherhood, is the most dangerous man alive, but this does not seem plausible to Winston. Winston spends his evenings wandering through the poorest neighborhoods in London, where the proletarians, or proles, live squalid lives, relatively free of Party monitoring.

One day, Winston receives a note from the dark-haired girl that reads “I love you.” She tells him her name, Julia, and they begin a covert affair, always on the lookout for signs of Party monitoring. Eventually they rent a room above the secondhand store in the prole district where Winston bought the diary. This relationship lasts for some time. Winston is sure that they will be caught and punished sooner or later (the fatalistic Winston knows that he has been doomed since he wrote his first diary entry), while Julia is more pragmatic and optimistic. As Winston’s affair with Julia progresses, his hatred for the Party grows more and more intense. At last, he receives the message that he has been waiting for: O’Brien wants to see him.Winston and Julia travel to O’Brien’s luxurious apartment. As a member of the powerful Inner Party (Winston belongs to the Outer Party), O’Brien leads a life of luxury that Winston can only imagine. O’Brien confirms to Winston and Julia that, like them, he hates the Party, and says that he works against it as a member of the Brotherhood. He indoctrinates Winston and Julia into the Brotherhood, and gives Winston a copy of Emmanuel Goldstein’s book, the manifesto of the Brotherhood. Winston reads the book—an amalgam of several forms of class-based twentieth-century social theory—to Julia in the room above the store. Suddenly, soldiers barge in and seize them. Mr. Charrington, the proprietor of the store, is revealed as having been a member of the Thought Police all along.

Torn away from Julia and taken to a place called the Ministry of Love, Winston finds that O’Brien, too, is a Party spy who simply pretended to be a member of the Brotherhood in order to trap Winston into committing an open act of rebellion against the Party. O’Brien spends months torturing and brainwashing Winston, who struggles to resist. At last, O’Brien sends him to the dreaded Room 101, the final destination for anyone who opposes the Party. Here, O’Brien tells Winston that he will be forced to confront his worst fear. Throughout the novel, Winston has had recurring nightmares about rats; O’Brien now straps a cage full of rats onto Winston’s head and prepares to allow the rats to eat his face. Winston snaps, pleading with O’Brien to do it to Julia, not to him.

Giving up Julia is what O’Brien wanted from Winston all along. His spirit broken, Winston is released to the outside world. He meets Julia but no longer feels anything for her. He has accepted the Party entirely and has learned to love Big Brother.

3) What according to you in the central theme of this novel?

The Dangers Of Totalitarianism :-

1984 is a political novel written with the purpose of warning readers in the West of the dangers of totalitarian government. Having witnessed firsthand the horrific lengths to which totalitarian governments in Spain and Russia would go in order to sustain and increase their power, Orwell designed 1984 to sound the alarm in Western nations still unsure about how to approach the rise of communism. In 1949, the Cold War had not yet escalated, many American intellectuals supported communism, and the state of diplomacy between democratic and communist nations was highly ambiguous. In the American press, the Soviet Union was often portrayed as a great moral experiment. Orwell, however, was deeply disturbed by the widespread cruelties and oppressions he observed in communist countries, and seems to have been particularly concerned by the role of technology in enabling oppressive governments to monitor and control their citizens.

In 1984, Orwell portrays the perfect totalitarian society, the most extreme realization imaginable of a modern-day government with absolute power. The title of the novel was meant to indicate to its readers in 1949 that the story represented a real possibility for the near future: if totalitarianism were not opposed, the title suggested, some variation of the world described in the novel could become a reality in only thirty-five years. Orwell portrays a state in which government monitors and controls every aspect of human life to the extent that even having a disloyal thought is against the law. As the novel progresses, the timidly rebellious Winston Smith sets out to challenge the limits of the Party’s power, only to discover that its ability to control and enslave its subjects dwarfs even his most paranoid conceptions of its reach. As the reader comes to understand through Winston’s eyes, The Party uses a number of techniques to control its citizens, each of which is an important theme of its own in the novel.

4) What do you understand by the term 'Orwellian'?

Orwell’s career as a writer was long and productive – at one time or another he produced novels, journalism, memoirs, political philosophy, literary criticism and cultural commentary. But the term “Orwellian” most often relates to his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, completed a couple of years before his death. The novel presents a vision of a Britain taken over by a totalitarian regime in which the state exerts absolute power over its citizens.

Think what you will of Johnson and Gove, but they are hardly representative of the dark forces at work in Orwell’s dystopian novel. The minister describing the letter seems to be watering down the adjective to mean something like a secretive and undemocratic influence of one faction over another within the government. This is certainly not the situation in Orwell’s novel in which The Party appears, on the surface at least, to be absolutely in control – something that could hardly be said of the prime minister at the moment.

Nineteen Eighty-Four presents a number of concepts and ideas that have worked their way into the contemporary imagination – and that, in so doing, have shifted somewhat from their original meanings. Big Brother, the all-seeing, all-knowing emblem of totalitarian control, and Room 101, the regime’s torture chamber, for example, are concepts that have developed a life of their own beyond Orwell’s original ideas.

It may be an exaggeration to describe the activities of some of our current cabinet ministers as Orwellian – nevertheless, there is a sense in which it might be accurate. The anonymous minister who commented on the letter also seemed to suggest that it was the language that was being used that was in some way Orwellian.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, one of the projects the totalitarian state is undertaking is to create a new language: Newspeak. This involves the simplification and purification of the English language to the extent that it functions purely as a means of maintaining state power and control.

Perhaps one of the ironies of using writers’ names as adjectives is that they become saddled with the very things that they were warning us about. Dickensian, for example, has become synonymous with the worst aspects of a class-ridden Victorian society, while Kafkaesque refers to the dehumanising effects of the individual’s encounter with inflexible state bureaucracy.

Orwell’s name will forever be associated with totalitarianism and the manipulation of language in order to maintain state control. This is particularly ironic given that in an essay of 1946 – Politics and the English Language – he was keen to champion plain speaking in political discourse. His rules for writing contain pieces of advice that remain invaluable for all writers and public commentators. For example: “Never use a long word where a short one will do”, “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out”, and “Break any of these rules rather than say anything outright barbarous.”

An Artist of the Floating World

 Kazuo Ishiguro :-

Kazuo ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan on 8th November 1954. The house he lived in for the first five years of his life had been built in the traditional Japanese style, with tatami mats and sliding shoji screens. Early photographs show Ishiguro as a baby, sitting as formally as he was then able, in front of family samurai swords, banner and heirlooms. The house was three generational, with his paternal grandfather as head of family. His grandfather had spent many years away from Japan, in Shanghai, charged with establishing Toyota, then a textile machinery company, in China. Ishiguro’s father, Shizuo, had been born in Shanghai in 1920. His mother, Shizuko, like all members of her immediate family, was in Nagasaki when the atom bomb was dropped on the city in August 1945. Ishiguro attended kindergarten in Nagasaki and learned hiragana, the first and simplest of the three Japanese alphabets.

Ishiguro left Japan with his parents and elder sister in April 1960 to live in Britain, after Shizuo Ishiguro, a research oceanographer, was invited to work for the British government at the National Institute of Oceanography. The family settled in Guildford, Surrey, thirty miles south of London, expecting to stay in England for two years at most. The young Ishiguro attended the local school and became a choirboy at the neighbourhood church. From age 11, he attended Woking County Grammar School where he was educated until going to university. Although the Ishiguro family regularly considered returning to Japan, Shizuo Ishiguro’s research continued to be supported by the British government, and the family never returned. (The storm surge machine Shizuo Ishiguro invented is now a part of the permanent exhibition at the Science Museum in London.)  

Video recode of An Artist of the Floating World by Dilip Barad  sir:-

1. 'Lantern' appears 34 times in the novel. Even on the cover page, the image of lanterns is displayed. What is the significance of Lantern in the novel?

Lanterns in the novel are associated with Ono’s teacher Mori-san, who includes a lantern in each of his paintings and dedicates himself to trying to capture the look of lantern light. For Mori-san, the flickering, easily extinguished quality of lantern light symbolizes the transience of beauty and the importance of giving careful attention to small moments and details in the physical world. Lanterns, then, symbolize an outlook on life which prizes small details and everyday moments above the ideological concerns of nationalists or commercial concerns of businesspeople. It is an old-fashioned, aesthetically focused, and more traditional way of viewing the world.

The An Artist of the Floating World quotes below all refer to the symbol of Lanterns. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

2. Write about 'Masuji Ono as an Unreliable Narrator'.?

How many voices can an author create? How evolved can craft be that there comes the point when the creator ceases to exist, and all that is left is the immersed reader, intruding in another world? The answer is Kazuo Ishiguro, the man who, for me, has taken first-person narration and a compromised narrative to the point of no return. Choose a character, and he will get into its skin like an invisible cellular organism with no home of its own. He will do so in so fantastic a way that it leaves you questioning the truth, like speaking to someone you aren’t too sure about. After he or she departs, you think, “What are they hiding? Am I in the dark?” 

An Artist of the Floating World is a masterpiece that glides in out and of many dimensions. On the one hand, it is a story of generations separated by a massive ideological gulf. On the other, it is about an older man attempting to come to terms with his mistaken philosophies. It is also a historical fiction set in the Japan of limbos; Japan, which has suffered because of its misplaced imperialism, been shattered by bombings and is now critical of the past and every person representing it. At the heart of it is an unreliable narrator, Masuji Ono. Once an acclaimed painter, Ono is our guide through post-World War II Japan and its sociopolitical and emotional trauma; felt in extremities like the once-vibrant pleasure districts destroyed by bombings and kids who loved Popeye and Godzilla.

The book is a contemplative journey, spread across four time frames: October 1948, April 1949, November 1949 and June 1950. We are introduced to a retired artist of great acclaim, Masuji Ono. Ono lives with his youngest daughter Noriko, and his attempts to secure a good match for her is a central theme. In the past, Noriko’s engagement had been called off. While Ono likes to believe that his family was more powerful than the boy’s, Noriko’s often belligerent behaviour suggests the unsuccessful engagement has more to do with Ono’s past. His older daughter Setsuko asks Ono to meet his acquaintances and rectify his errors should Noriko’s prospects inquire about the family’s history. This simple task is the starting point of his recollections, opening twisted alleys of memory.

We seek to understand concepts like Ono’s rise as an artist, his relationship with his students and peers, the moral chasm that exists between him, his sons-in-law and his grandson, and the politicisation of art. I have reasons to say that we seek to understand Ono’s life – the untrustworthy memory and what he is telling us. Ono’s narration is not dependable, and there is not a second perspective to corroborate what he is saying. This is displayed continually; Ono never completes an anecdote in one go, one recollection invariably gives rise to another or how he thinks he knows someone only for us to find that the person has no memory of him. What Ono thinks of himself does not resonate with people in that world. For his disillusioned son-in-law, Ono is one of the many traitors who led the country awry with grand plans of Japanese Imperialism that caused only pain and loss. Ono himself lost his son to the Manchurian War and his wife to a freak raid. The reader might assume these topics to be of particular importance to him. Still, Ono avoids speaking about any issue that exposes his emotional vulnerability and delves too much into his past affairs. Mentions of these deaths come and go, as little remarks stuffed into the larger scheme.  

Why our narrator is unreliable is a debatable topic. At first go, it can be age. After all, Ono is well-retired with two daughters and grandchildren. However, the irregularity in information can be attributed much more to more unpleasant circumstances than memory failing. As the novel progresses, Ono is revealed to have been a man of controversial associations. During World War II, Japan was an Allied Power alongside Germany and Italy. A considerable section of the population was pro-War, viewing any opposition to the war effort with great scepticism. Ono, a pro-government imperialist, broke away from his master and drawings of the floating world (a phrase used to describe Japan’s pleasure districts) to begin painting subjects that depicted military might. At the beginning of the war, he becomes a part of a state committee clamping down on unpatriotic art. Ono reports Karudo, once his protégé. As a result, Karudo’s paintings are burnt, and the police harass him. Ono tells us that he tried to step in and convince the authority to go easy on Karudo. However, whether it is the truth or just another way to hide his betrayal and cruelty, we don’t know.

The ideological tussle between Ono and his family members is an essential thread in the novel. To some extent, Ono realises that he was vastly mistaken during the war and the younger generation, like daughters and his son-in-law’s look at him with a degree of suspicion and contempt. The latter want men like Ono to take accountability for steering Japan on the wrong path. They now live in a post-war society where America is the centre of culture and politics. This is not a phenomenon that has gone down well with Ono, who would rather have his grandson enjoy samurais than behave like a cowboy. Although he claims to be unaware of his importance in society, we understand that Ono likes to think of himself as someone who has been quite influential, a part of the crème of the art world. Towards the end, when Setsuko (his older daughter) consoles him that his pro-militancy paintings weren’t influential enough to have caused massive harm, it is a very hurtful thought for him.

Like Ishiguro’s celebrated The Remains of the Day, An Artist of the Floating World is a beautiful lesson in restraint. The former is the story of an English butler whose commitment to service caused such emotional limitation that he could not pursue the woman he loved. In the latter, we have an ageing man whose convictions are failing him as he grapples with guilt and ethical tussles. War is an important occurrence in both, and more than war, the sides one chooses. In The Remains of the Day, the protagonist reflects on how the reputed British manorial lord he served sided with Nazi Germany because he did not know better. In such scenarios, as both age and regret become strong, exuberant or verbose writing would not be relatable. Ishiguro’s writing is fluid, hard-hitting, but not raw. His style is refined, elegant prose at its best, entirely moulded according to the narrator’s realities.  

An Artist of the Floating World was a delightful, very enlightening experience about a unique world that conventional reading may not expose one to. Despite being a history student, I was surprised at the nuance of ideology and radicalisation in post-War Japan that the author highlighted so brilliantly. The writing flows; through former pleasure districts, reception rooms in Japanese homes, the villas of master painters and pubs where artists gathered with pupils. Each of these spaces stands for a different ideology and a different time in Ono’s life. Ishiguro’s most outstanding merit is shaping his style in a way that changes with age. A young Ono is much more aggressive, while Ono as a grandfather is loving and almost endearing. The tonality changes beautifully, and this requires immense, almost God-gifted skill.

Ishiguro gifts his readers a story that is almost the truth but has enough cracks for falsities to creep in.

3. Debate on the Uses of Art / Artist (Five perspectives: 1. Art for the sake of art - aesthetic delight, 2. Art for Earning Money / Business purpose, 3. Art for Nationalism / Imperialism - Art for the propaganda of Government Power, 4. Art for the Poor / Marxism, and 5. No need of art and artist (Masuji's father's approach)

Kazuo Ishiguro’s second novel, An Artist of the Floating World (1986), is narrated retrospectively, from the post-war vantage of 1948-50, by the painter, Masuji Ono. Ono’s ambition caused him first to leave the commercial and auto-exoticizing “art for export” firm of Takeda for the art-for-art’s-sake milieu of Moriyama, which focuses on the ephemerally sensual “floating world” of the traditional Japanese pleasure district. Moriyama, influenced by European Impressionism just as Impressionism was influenced by Japanese prints, represents a convergence of East and West in the nation-nullifying utopian space of the painting, a space whose evanescence is the guarantee of its authority. (Ishiguro’s Anglophone audience may be reminded that Oscar Wilde singled out Japan, in “The Decay of Lying,” as the paradigm of the artistic nation, a country to be congratulated for its glory as an aesthetic invention rather than for its everyday life.) But Masuji Ono’s ambition, stoked by the tempter Matsuda, leads him to become involved in far-right politics. The novel’s culminating revelation, albeit underplayed by Ono’s diffident narration, is that Ono acted as a police informant on “unpatriotic activities,” which led to the arrest and torture of his protégé, Kuroda.

When summarized in this way, the novel sounds misleadingly like the depiction of a straightforward decline: as if Ono’s artistic ambition leads him first to aloof and implicitly elitist aestheticism, and then from aestheticism to overtly elitist fascism, as Walter Benjamin might have predicted:

“Fiat ars – pereat mundus”, says Fascism, and, as Marinetti admits, expects war to supply the artistic gratification of a sense perception that has been changed by technology. This is evidently the consummation of “l’art pour l’art.” Mankind, which in Homer’s time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art.

But Ishiguro’s novel tells a very different story, one consonant not with a Marxist critique like Benjamin’s but instead with the aestheticist philosophy of Wilde and his fin-de-siècle cohort. In this story, the aesthete becomes a totalitarian precisely because he abandons his apolitical outlook.

Ishiguro suggests as much in the novel when he presents the triggering event of Ono’s turn from aestheticism to fascism as a walk with Matsuda through a slum. This walk fills Ono with Dickensian sympathy for the suffering people and leads him to paint his first political propaganda picture, in he portrays the squalid children of the slum as nationalist fighters against international parasites. In other words, a feeling readers associate with the political left—a desire for social justice and the alleviation of poverty—sets Ono on his road to moral ruin. The novel insists on this point when the nationalist spokesman Matsuda recruits Ono by denouncing aestheticism and dropping the name of Marx:

‘There’s a certain kind of artist these days,’ he went on, ‘whose greatest talent lies in hiding away from the real world. Unfortunately, such artists appear to be in dominance at the present, and you, Ono, have come under the sway of one of them. Don’t look so angry, it’s true. Your knowledge of the world is like a child’s. I doubt, for instance, if you could even tell me who Karl Marx was.’

Ishiguro here implies an analysis that directly opposes Benjamin’s: in this novel, the turn toward the politicization of art leads toward fascism. Or, to put it another way, the aestheticization of politics and the politicization of art amount equally to totalitarianism, and Ono would have been better off remaining in his studio, indifferent to the affairs of his country.

But Ishiguro intensifies his novel’s ironies when he hints strongly that Ono has overrated the importance of his own complicity in the depredations of the World War II era. The suspense of the novel, as it unfolds, involves the question of whether or not Ono’s wartime activities will derail his youngest daughter’s marriage prospects. The reader, however, gradually comes to understand, beneath Ono’s own awareness, that his daughter’s suitor’s family is barely aware of his past and regards him only as a harmless conservative relic.

Ishiguro warns the reader, then, that the politicized artist will not only commit evil deeds—such as Ono’s informing on Kuroda—but will also be as ineffectual as he would have been had he remained apolitical. The totalitarian artist is therefore denied by the novel even the glamor of infamy; Ono’s actions are both vile and bathetic, which, Ishiguro suggests, are all that the politicized artist’s actions could ever be.

4. What is the relevance of this novel is our times?

As he relates this story of moving from artistic movement to artistic movement, Ono repeatedly claims to be proud for having struck out on his own, following his convictions, even if they proved wrong in the end. He says that this is a quality an artist can be proud of, even if his work does not stand the test of time. But, in fact, the story of Ono’s career shows that he opportunistically sought relevance and recognition by following other’s ideas, and cannot point to any unique contributions of his own. When describing his time painting at the Takeda firm to his proteges, Ono says that what he took from his experience at the firm is the need to “rise above the sway of things.” But Ono left the Takeda firm to go to another place where he was expected to closely adhere to another person’s ideas, and when he ultimately left Mori’s, it was to create art that would adhere to Matsuda’s ideas. Based on his descriptions of his wartime work, Ono seems to have created derivative, unexceptional propaganda posters. It is work that does not seem likely to have sprung from his own original ideas, but rather from copying and adapting other people’s ideas at the moment those ideas were rising to the cultural fore. When Ono sees other artists deciding to strike out on their own, he is far from supportive of their pursuit of originality. Sasaki, Mori’s favorite student early on in Ono’s time living at the villa, develops his own style and is treated as a traitor by the other students living at the villa. Ono records no effort on his own part to defend Sasaki. At the same time, while Ono leaves the villa with the support of Matsuda and his Okada-Shingen society, it seems that Sasaki leaves with no such support or guidance, truly as a result of his convictions. In dealing with his own student Kuroda, Ono is so offended by his student’s innovations that he gives his name to the Committee of Unpatriotic Activities, leading all of Kuroda’s work to be burned and Kuroda himself to be jailed and beaten.

In the end, other characters’ statements suggest that Ono’s presentation of himself is skewed; his belief that the courage of his convictions led him to paint original, ground-breaking works that have since been discredited seems nothing more than self-aggrandizement. In his final conversation with Matsuda, Matsuda says that they “turned out to be ordinary men with no special gifts of insight” and that their “contribution turned out to be marginal.” Ono rejects taking Matsuda’s words at face value, saying that there was something in the Matsuda’s manner that suggested he believed otherwise. In Ono’s last conversation with his daughter Setsuko, she reassures her father that he does not need to feel guilty for encouraging the militarism of the war years because it was not really culturally significant.

The novel’s presentation of a vain and self-deluding artist whose contributions lose their importance with the passage of time gives the title its meaning. Ono feels encouraged by a lifetime of acclaim for his work to believe that his contributions were important and will be remembered. But, in fact, he was only one of the many artists of his time who painted derivative works in styles invented by others. Although Ono leaves Mori-san’s villa and ceases to paint the geishas of the “floating world” of pleasure districts, the ultimate unimportance of his career makes him an “artist of the floating world” in a different sense. Ono finds a transitory success by shaping his work to fit the demands of specific times and places, and by copying others who have gained acclaim. But this world is neither timeless nor permanent; it is transitory, “floating.” The novel shows how the world in which Ono was an important artist is already floating away, superseded by new currents, ideas, events, and artists.

The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby

 

1) How did the film capture the Jazz Age - the Roaring Twenties of the America in 1920s?

In 1920’s America – known as the Jazz Age, the Golden Twenties or the Roaring Twenties – everybody seemed to have money. The nightmare that was the Wall Street  Crash of October 1929, was inconceivable right up until it happened. The 1920’s saw a break with the traditional set-up in America. The Great War had destroyed old perceived social conventions and new ones developed.

The Roaring Twenties proved to be something of a paradox. At the same time women enjoyed more freedoms and danced in the Jazz Age, there were those who pushed for Prohibition-era restrictions.

The Roaring Twenties definitely has a reputation. Based on the name alone, the Jazz Age seems like a pretty fun time to be alive. However, it was a decade fraught with conflict between old and new schools of thought. Post-war ideals about immigration, religion, piety, and sexuality were all on contested.

As is usually the case, one facet of society desired a different way of life than the rest. In the case of the 1920s, the older majority pined for the post-war "return to normalcy" that Warren G. Harding promised. In contrast, young people shunned the rigid Victorian lifestyle in favor of independence, open-mindedness, and decadence.

The 1920s were overall a freeing time for women as they earned the right to vote on August 18, 1920 and continued their involvement in the workforce. However, women also began testing the waters of a new form of freedom — their own bodies. With higher hemlines, women found themselves able to ride bicycles, in stark contrast to the heavy Victorian dress which was limiting to their activities.

2) How did the film help in understanding the characters of the novel?

The film begins with a voiceover of Nick Carraway telling a doctor that his father always told him to see the good in others. It is here that we first hear the titular characters' name: Gatsby. Gatsby is apparently the only person in whom Nick has ever seen true good.

Nick then tells the viewer about his past. As the camera pans past the bustling crowds of New York City in the 1920s, Nick tells us that while he originally wanted to be a writer, at the time of his meeting Gatsby, he worked on Wall Street as a bond broker. Nick moves into a cottage on Long Island, next door to a giant mansion that belongs to Gatsby. He visits his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, who is married to the brutish and very wealthy former athlete, Tom Buchanan. Nick has dinner with Daisy, Tom, and their friend Jordan Baker, a professional golfer. Their dinner is interrupted when Tom gets a phone call from a woman with whom he is having an affair. When Nick goes home that night, he sees a figure in the gloom he believes is Gatsby, staring at a green light on the Buchanan's dock across the harbor.

Tom invites Nick to go to the Yale Club with him, but they end up picking up Tom's mistress, Myrtle Wilson, in a dingy neighborhood called the Valley of Ashes, and then going to an apartment that Tom keeps for Myrtle in Manhattan. There, they have a party. Nick has alcohol for the second time in his life, and enjoys the party, later waking up on his own porch, unsure of how he got back. He receives an invitation to go to one of Gatsby's parties, which are notoriously lavish affairs that attract a "who's who" of New York society.

Nick goes to the party, where he runs into Jordan Baker, and they speculate about Gatsby's true identity. After they meet Gatsby, he asks to have a private conversation with Jordan. Later, Gatsby invites Nick to go to lunch with him in New York. The following day, as Gatsby and Nick drive towards the city, Gatsby tells Nick about his past, but Nick doesn't quite believe he's telling the truth. They go to a speakeasy bar, where alcohol is served, and Gatsby introduces Nick to his business associate, Meyer Wolfsheim, who appears to be involved with some shady business deals. Later, Nick meets Jordan for a drink, and she tells him that Gatsby and Daisy know each other and were once in love. She then tells him that Gatsby wants Nick to invite him and Daisy over for tea, so that they can be reunited.

Nick invites Gatsby and Daisy over for tea the following day, and they meet. It is awkward at first, but they manage to get more and more comfortable with each other, and eventually become romantically entangled once again. At Gatsby's mansion, Daisy remembers her love for Gatsby, but laments the impossibility of their love. Nick then narrates that Gatsby was born to a poor farming family, but later encountered a wealthy man named Dan Cody, whom he rescued from a storm. Cody becomes a mentor to Gatsby, but after Cody died, Gatsby was cheated out of money that Cody left him by Cody's family.

Gatsby throws another party, which Daisy, Tom, and Nick attend. Daisy tells Gatsby that she wishes they could run away together, and Gatsby insists that she tell Tom she never loved him. Tom grows more suspicious of Gatsby's business dealings.

The following day, Nick, Daisy, Tom, Gatsby, and Jordan have lunch at the Buchanan estate. When Tom sees the spark between Daisy and Gatsby, he becomes infuriated and suggests they all go to the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. Tom takes Gatsby's yellow car, driving Jordan and Nick, and Daisy and Gatsby drive Tom's car. When they stop for gas in the Valley of Ashes, Myrtle sees Tom driving the yellow car. Later, at the Plaza, Tom asks Gatsby prying questions about his past, claiming that he never went to Oxford, and humiliating him in front of Daisy. Gatsby tells Daisy to tell Tom that she has never loved him, but Daisy is uncomfortable and unwilling to do so. Tom provokes Gatsby when he suggests that Gatsby will never fit in with the wealthy. Gatsby becomes violently angry, nearly punching Tom, which horrifies Daisy.

Gatsby and Daisy drive home in Gatsby's yellow car. As they drive through the Valley of Ashes, Myrtle and George are having an argument. Myrtle runs out into the street and tries to stop the car, thinking it is Tom driving. The car hits her and kills her instantly. While Daisy and Gatsby stop for a moment, they quickly move on. Tom, Nick, and Jordan come upon the scene. Horrified to learn that Myrtle is dead, Tom tells George that it was Gatsby who killed Myrtle, and encourages him to take revenge.

Back at the Buchanan estate, outside in the garden, Gatsby reveals to Nick that Daisy was the one at the wheel when Myrtle was killed. When Nick spies on Daisy and Tom inside the house, he hears them planning to make some phone calls to the police and go away for awhile. Nick does not reveal Daisy and Tom's plans, as Gatsby says he will wait for Daisy to call him the following morning to make arrangements to run away together. After staying up all night and listening to Gatsby tell him his life story, Nick leaves Gatsby.

We see Nick at work, visibly distracted. Meanwhile, we see Daisy looking at her phone as she considers calling Gatsby. Gatsby goes for a swim in his pool to kill time while he waits for Daisy's call. The phone rings, Gatsby hears it, and excitedly begins to get out of the pool. However, he does not see George Wilson behind him, who shoots him in the back. He falls into his pool, dead, just as George turns the gun on himself. We then see it was Nick, not Daisy, who was calling. Daisy has chosen Tom.

Gatsby is blamed for the affair with Myrtle and her murder, and not a single person who came to his parties comes to his funeral. Nick is disgusted, and leaves New York. We see him put the final touches on a manuscript, Gatsby, which he re-titles The Great Gatsby.

3) How did the film help in understanding the symbolic significance of 'The Valley of Ashes', 'The Eyes of Dr. T J Eckleberg' and 'The Green Light

The Valley of Ashes is a barren wasteland that lies between East and West Eggs and the city. It is grey and desolate, filled with the working class like George and Myrtle Wilson. In the novel, it serves a symbol of the poverty and working class that are so near to the rich and elite class. Fitzgerald places the Valley of Ashes so that any of the rich characters, Tom and Daisy or Gatsby, must travel through this desolation in order to get into the city; hence making this symbol even more poignant – poverty is very near and hard to ignore. The grey and ashy appearance of the Valley of Ashes serves as a direct contrast to the colorful glamour of the nearby Eggs. The eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleberg are present on a billboard in the Valley of Ashes. This billboard is old and faded, so much so that all that remains is the eyes from an advertisement. They symbolize a moral force looking down on the characters – a god-like force, if you will. This symbol is placed, of course, where the working class is, not the elite class. Perhaps Fitzgerald’s comment on the lack of morality among the upper class characters of Tom, Daisy, Jordan and Jay Gatsby.

The eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg can be seen as a symbol of an all-seeing God. This remarkable piece of advertising, displayed on a decaying billboard in the Valley of Ashes, stands as a constant reminder that, no matter what we do, God sees everything. The Almighty may not play a large part in The Great Gatsby, but he's there all the same, watching over the various characters as they engage in all manner of appalling behavior.

None of the characters in the story appear to pay more than lip service to the belief that God exists. For Gatsby, wealth and social acceptability are his personal deities, at whose altars he regularly worships.

As for the Buchanans, high social status is their god, which explains why Daisy, despite conducting an affair with Gatsby and telling him that she loves him, is not prepared to ditch Tom for Jay.

This appearance of the green light is just as vitally important as the first one, mostly because the way the light is presented now is totally different than when we first saw it. Instead of the "enchanted" magical object we first saw, now the light has had its "colossal significance," or its symbolic meaning, removed from it. This is because Gatsby is now actually standing there and touching Daisy herself, so he no longer needs to stretch his arms out towards the light or worry that it's shrouded in mist.

However, this separation of the green light from its symbolic meaning is somehow sad and troubling. Gatsby seemingly ignores Daisy putting her arm through his because he is "absorbed" in the thought that the green light is now just a regular thing. Nick's observation that Gatsby's "enchanted objects" are down one sounds like a lament—how many enchanted objects are there in anyone's life?

Now the light has totally ceased being an observable object. Nick is not in Long Island any more, Gatsby is dead, Daisy is gone for good, and the only way the green light exists is in Nick's memories and philosophical observations. This means that the light is now just a symbol and nothing else.

But it is not the same deeply personal symbol it was in the first chapter. Check out the way Nick transitions from describing the green light as something "Gatsby believed in" to using it as something that motivates "us." Gatsby is no longer the only one reaching for this symbol—we all, universally, "stretch out our arms" toward it, hoping to reach it tomorrow or the next day.

4) How did the film capture the theme of racism and sexism? 

Throughout human history, race has been an integral part in understanding how humans interact. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is no different. During the 1920s, race relations were much different compared to today.  In The Great Gatsby, the story is presumably dominated by the Caucasian race. Also, Tom seems to represent some the racial ideology of the time period. It is very possible that Jay Gatsby was in fact African-American in The Great Gatsby. We can see this by his mannerisms and the way he interacts with other characters.

Throughout The Great Gatsby, there are few people of the non-white race mentioned.  This is seen when Nick says, “As we crossed Blackwell's Island a limousine passed us, driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl.” (Fitzgerald 69). Also, Nick says “A pale, well-dressed Negro stepped near.” (Fitzgerald 139) during the aftermath of Myrtle’s death. These are the only times that someone’s race is explicitly described as non-white. Throughout the book, Fitzgerald does not specify the race of all of the characters. Most of the people portrayed in The Great Gatsby are upper class.

There are many differences to be found between F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, written in 1925, and the movie directed by Baz Luhrmann in 2013. These differences are examples of how times have really changed. In 1925, instances of racism and sexism were not uncommon. However, racism and sexism are not really tolerated or accepted in today’s time. To suit the modern audience, instances of racism and sexism were omitted in the production of the movie. Many other differences can be found between the movie and the book.

He makes several racist and sexist remarks. It is easy to dislike his character. On pages 12-13, Tom says, “Have you read ‘The Rise of the Colored Empires’ by this man Goddard?”...”The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be---will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.” “Its up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.” Although Tom is an easy character to hate, it is not apparent that he is the sole villain to the story. He is not necessarily what destroys Gatsby in the end. In the book, it is Tom’s goal to have Wilson lash out at Gatsby. He does not out right tell Wilson that Gatsby is to blame for Myrtle’s death. He instead just tells Wilson the car that kills his wife is yellow. In movies there always has to be a villain. The producers decided to make Tom the villain. Tom practically tells Wilson that Gatsby is to blame for the death of his wife, Myrtle.

5) Watch the video on Nick Carraway and discuss him as a narrator.

Nick's capacity as the narrator is interesting because, as noted above, he is not the focus of the book. Though the story is told from his perspective, it is Jay Gatsby and his attempts to re-win the heart of Daisy Buchanan, that are the true focus of the book. This grants him a bit of the third person perspective which we discussed above. Nick is emotionally uninvolved in the love triangle that evolves between Gatsby, Daisy, and her husband Tom. This allows him to view the situation clearly and judge events dispassionately.

This is aided by any real lack of interesting or transformational storyline on Nick's part. Nick tells us he is struggling through the bond business while half-heartedly pursuing the golf star, Jordan Baker. Neither are of particular interest to the reader because they are not important to Nick either. He freely admits this when he breaks up with Jordan over the phone near the end of the book. This allows the story of Tom, Daisy, Gatsby, and the social circles they move in to take center stage. Nick attended university with Tom and is Daisy's cousin. This helps us trust the moral judgments he makes of the characters involved and further lends credibility to Nick's positive response to Gatsby's manners and actions.

Northrop Frye: Archetype Literature and Myth or religion

1. What is Archetypal Criticism? 

Archetypal criticism is a type of literary criticism examining the presence of archetypal characters within a piece of literature. Such characters can be found in works of fiction, long or short, and in more poetic works. The archetypal character is a simple character template recognizable to all readers. Archetypal criticism is a part of social anthropology and psychoanalysis. The idea of character archetypes is based on the works of psychologist Carl Jung. An archetype is essentially a character prototype. Such prototypes find their ways into all modes of literature and story across generations, cultures and languages. While the idea of such basic characters was developed by Jung in the 20th century, the word itself has been in use in England since the 1540s.Jung was from Switzerland and was the first to reject the then pervasive idea of tabula rasa. Tabula rasa is an idea whereby all babies are born as blank slates. This goes back to the theological discussions of the 4th and 5th centuries about how God gives babies souls and they are born sinful. Jung argued that each baby is instead born with a built-in archetypal template. This template remains only potential until the child grows up.Northrop Frye was a Canadian thinker who built upon Jung’s ideas. He cared less about the how and why of natural-born archetypes and more about their functions and effects. He believed that archetypes and archetypal criticism form an important part of literature. The archetypes allow stories and literature to refresh and reform itself again and again. This means old stories can be told in a new way, but with the archetypes present to give it meaning to people.

2.What does the archetypal critic do?

Archetypal criticism argues that archetypes determine the form and function of literary works, that a text's meaning is shaped by cultural and psychological myths. Archetypes are the unknowable basic forms personified or concretized in recurring images, symbols, or patterns which may include motifs such as the quest or the heavenly ascent, recognizable character types such as the trickster or the hero, symbols such as the apple or snake, or images such as crucifixion all laden with meaning already when employed in a particular work.

Archetypal criticism gets its impetus from psychologist Carl Jung, who postulated that humankind has a "collective unconscious," a kind of universal psyche, which is manifested in dreams and myths and which harbors themes and images that we all inherit. Literature, therefore, imitates not the world but rather the "total dream of humankind." Jung called mythology "the textbook of the archetypes"

3. What is Frye trying prove by giving an analogy of ' Physics to Nature' and 'Criticism to Literature'?

Northrop Frye compares “Physics to Nature” and “Criticism to Literature”. Physics is a systematic study of nature, but a student of Physics will say that he/she is learning Physics not nature. Similarly, Criticism is a systematic study of literature. We cannot learn literature but criticism of literature can be learnt.

4.Share your views of Criticism as an organised body of knowledge. Mention relation of literature with history and philosophy

Criticism is the organized body of knowledge. That through we look at various approaches.  Literature have a vital reaction with History and Philosophy. Both of strong pillars of the literature. In between literature grown. Philosophy as important as history or vice versa. In history we find that past events, action and scene. In philosophy we look for  morality, ethics and wisdom. Let's see how literature made up, literature is all about ideas and events. Without event we not get any idea and  without idea no literature.

5.Briefly explain inductive method with illustration of Shakespeare's Hamlet's Grave Digger's scene.

Inductive method – Example to Rule

Northrop Frye gives example of Gravedigger’s scene from “Hamlet” to explain this method. To study this scene we need to go step by step backwards to study this method:

a.)       First, the question of existence can be seen. Every man dies at one point.

b.)       Second, image of corruption can be seen.

c.)       Third, we see Hamlet’s love for Ophelia.

Hamlet represents Archetypal hero who is ready to die for his love.

This method moves from “Particular to General”.

6.Briefly explain deductive method with reference to an analogy to Music, Painting, rhythm and pattern.Give examples of the outcome of deductive method?

In the Deductive method we see that the Process going on general to particular. If we take reference to an analogy to music  then we can say that move in time whether the painting presented  space in terms of arts. In both cases organizing principle recurrence. So the reputation  is gives us general ideas.

In music Rhythm is temporal and in painting pattern is spatial. In the reading of the book we feel  both elements together.

Music has rhythm and Painting have pattern. We might not understand music at once and we might understand painting at first look. Literature is a bridge between music and painting. Words in literature bring the rhythm of music and pictorial image all together. This method moves from “General to Particular”.

7.Refer to the Indian seasonal grid (in the blogpost). If you can, please read small Gujarati or Hindi or English poem from the archetypal approach and apply Indian seasonal grid in the interpretation.?

In school time we have studied seasonal poem in Gujarati,

કેસુડાની કળીએ બેસી ફાગણિયો લહેરાયો...

We studied in BA William Wordsworth's poem 'The Daffodils' and in this poetry Wordsworth gives a definition of poetry.

Also in MA, we studied 'Wordsworth and Coleridge - the study of poets' 

John Keat's poetry 'Ode to Autumn' and 'The Human Seasons'.

Literature and Religion: Northrop Frye - ritual, myth and the archetype of literature

The term Myth is beginning a brief study of the opinions and definitions of the theorists and intellectuals of the relevant disciplines like Anthropology, Sociology, Cultural Studies and Literary Criticism. The term myth has multiple dimensions in the philosophical, social, cultural and psychological premises.

Myths are usually considered as fairy tales or beautifully narrated escapes of imagination created by old people for their entertainment or consolation in the face of mysterious natural phenomena. Myths have a profound impact on human lives even as they are formed by, the way human beings live.

Northrop Fry in The Secular Scripture points out that myth is a drive towards a verbal outline of human experience. It is the external presence in the psyche.  Many things have been handed down to humanity in a Satanist form in human nature, manifesting itself in man’s dream that enables a person to glimpse the past.

Northrop Frye extract archetypes and essential mythic formula from the genres and individual plot patterns of literature. He tended to emphasize the circumstance of mythical patterns in literature. He assumed that myths are closer to the elemental archetype than the artful manipulations of sophisticated writers. The death or rebirth theme was often said to be the archetype of archetypes and was held to ground in the cycle of the seasons and the organic cycle of human life.

Frye makes the distinction of shifting the notion of the archetype from the psychological to the literary. Frye proposes that concealed symbolic narratives exist across all humankind and all history, and have the potential to influence our lives at an almost invisible level. Thus, he makes myth his most important concept, supporting a new poetics that is the principle of his mythological framework.

As Northop Frye puts, the typical forms of myth become the conventions and genres of literature. Frye presents the following example of a mythic scheme with which to understand art, based upon the cycle of fertility myth. Each season is associated with a literary genre: comedy with spring, romance with summer, tragedy with autumn, and satire with winter. Comedy is associated with spring because the genre of comedy is characterized by the birth of the hero, revival, and resurrection. In addition, spring symbolizes the defeat of winter and darkness. 

Romance and summer are connected because summer is the culmination of a life in the seasonal calendar, and the romance genre ends with some sort of triumph, usually marriage. Autumn is the dying stage of the calendar, which parallels the tragedy genre because it is known for the death of the protagonist. Satire is associated with winter because satire is a dark, disillusioned and mocking form and the defeat of the heroic figure. Frye formulated that the totality of literary works constitutes a ‘self-contained literary universe’ which has been created over the ages by the human imagination.