-Feminism-

Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve equal political, economic, cultural, personal, and social rights for women. This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment.

*LIGHTS OUT" by Manjula padmanabhan, played on Kolkata-based theatre group TreeHat

@Tuesday evening at Gyan Manch was a pleasant surprise. The full house attendance for Manjula Padmanabhan's Lights Out was overwhelming to say the least. And surely, that was an encouragement for the bunch of young theatre enthusiasts of the Kolkata-based theatre group TreeHat that staged the play.

Lights Out deals with a very common yet much misunderstood 'bystander effect". A middle class couple debates over an incident that is happening outside their building and conjures up various possible interpretations of what's being seen and heard. During the course of the conversation, few others join the couple. But none of them want to go out and help. They are either happy being voyeurs or too concerned about their safety.

Says director Shubhayan Sengupta, "Lights Out is our second production. We took a joint decision to stage Manjula's play that talks about social awareness. Though the actual events had taken place in the 80s, we don't see much of a change in the reaction of people to disturbing events happening right in front of them. Our play was intended as an eye-opener." The group had also invited the playwright to Tuesday's performance. "She was very supportive but unfortunately, couldn't make it because she was busy attending a literature conference on Tuesday," Sengupta adds.

Ask the director about the target audience and he insists on wanting to attract the city's movie-going audience. "Most English theatre productions in Kolkata are in the realm of the abstract. But we want to create a space for alternative entertainment. The crowd might not necessarily be well-versed in Samuel Beckett, Tennessee Williams and Anton Chekhov. Serious theatre, for them, might turn a bit boring." So, TreeHat's production explored a style of treating serious issues in an entertaining fashion. In many ways, this is a style that contemporary Indian cinema follows as well!

Another interesting concept in this production was the presence of a theatre mentor Aman Agarwal, who had been an assistant director himself when the same play was staged at the University of Pennsylvania. Speaking about his role, Agarwal says, "Unlike a co-director, a director mentor is the person who can't make decisions. He is assisting the director but not as a trainee but with as much or even more experience than the director. However, he will not take the final call."

A zeal to experiment and a desire to connect with the youth. Seems like English theatre in Kolkata has a lot more excitement in store without always being didactic and abstract.


Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Margaret Atwood's "Surfacing"- Plot Overview

The unnamed narrator returns to Quebec after years of absence to search for her missing father. She brings her boyfriend, Joe, and a married couple, Anna and David. On the way to a village near her father’s island, the narrator visits her father’s friend Paul. Paul can provide no new information on how to locate the narrator’s father. A guide named Evans takes the narrator and her companions to her father’s island, where the narrator searches for clues regarding her father’s disappearance. She becomes convinced that her father has gone mad and is still alive.

The narrator works in spurts on her freelance job illustrating a book of fairy tales, but her worries prevent her from accomplishing any real work. David proposes staying on the island for a week. The narrator agrees, though she secretly fears her crazed father’s reemergence. During their stay, David launches constant insults at Anna, couching them as jokes. Anna confesses to the narrator that David is a womanizer. She complains that David constantly demands that Anna wear makeup. The four go on a blueberry-picking expedition. They canoe to a nearby island, where Joe unexpectedly proposes to the narrator. The narrator refuses Joe, telling him how she left her last husband and child.

Back on the island, Paul arrives with an American named Malmstrom. Malmstrom claims to be from a Detroit wildlife agency. He offers to purchase the island, but the narrator refuses. She pulls Paul aside and tells him that her father is still alive. Paul seems skeptical. After the visitors leave, David offhandedly accuses Malmstrom of being a C.I.A. operative who is organizing an American invasion of Canada. The narrator looks through her father’s records and consequently believes that he is likely dead. She sees that he had been researching Indian wall paintings and that he had marked several sites on a map. She decides to visit a site.

The narrator convinces her friends to accompany her on a camping trip to see the wall paintings. On their way to the campsite, they see a decomposing blue heron that has been hanged from a tree. David insists on filming the dead heron for a movie he is making called Random Samples. The heron’s death haunts the narrator. She sees evidence of two campers entering the area beforehand, and she quickly assumes that they are Americans and to blame for the crime. Meanwhile, the four companions set up camp. Anna tells the narrator she has forgotten her makeup and David will punish her. The narrator goes fishing with David and Joe. They encounter the Americans, and the narrator notices an American flag on their boat. The narrator brings her companions to a site from her father’s map, but there are no wall paintings. Frustrated and confused, they return to camp. On the way, they again encounter the American campers. The narrator is surprised to discover that the campers are actually Canadian; what she had thought was an American flag is actually a sticker. However, the narrator claims the campers are still Americans because their slaughter of the heron is a distinctly American action.

The four return to the cabin. The narrator locates another site on her father’s map but realizes that the government has raised the water level in this part of the lake. She will have to dive to see the paintings. Outside, the narrator observes David tormenting Anna by insisting she take off her clothes for Random Samples. Anna eventually relents but then feels humiliated. The narrator asks David why he tortures Anna, and David claims he does so because Anna cheats on him. The narrator canoes to a site from her father’s map. She dives repeatedly in search of the paintings. On a particularly deep dive, she sees a disturbing object and screams and swims for the surface. Joe has followed her onto the lake and demands to know what she’s doing. She ignores Joe and realizes that what she saw was a dead child. She believes it to be her aborted baby. She changes her story from leaving her husband and child to having an affair with her art professor and being forced to abort their baby.

The narrator’s vision throws her into a psychosis. She believes that her father had found sacred Indian sites and resolves to thank the gods for granting her “the power.” Joe tries to speak to the narrator, but she remains impenetrable. He tries to rape her, but he leaves her alone once she warns him that she will get pregnant. Later, David tries to seduce the narrator, telling her that Joe and Anna are having sex. The narrator nevertheless resists David’s advances. A police boat comes to the island, and David tells the narrator that the police have found her father’s body. Deep in her madness, the narrator refuses to believe David. That night, she seduces Joe so she can get pregnant. She feels that a new child will replace her lost baby. Joe falsely believes that the narrator has forgiven him for cheating on her.

On their last day on the island, the narrator abandons her friends. She destroys David’s film and escapes in a canoe. The narrator’s companions search in vain for her, eventually leaving the island. Alone on the island, the narrator falls deeper into madness. She destroys the art from her job and nearly everything inside the cabin. She becomes an animal, running around naked, eating unwashed plants, and living in a burrow. She imagines raising her baby outdoors and never teaching it language. She also has visions of her parents. Eventually, hunger and exhaustion bring the narrator to sanity. She looks at herself in the mirror and sees just a natural woman. She resolves not to feel powerless anymore. Paul arrives at the island with Joe. The narrator realizes she loves Joe and resolves to reunite with him. She pauses in the cabin, looking out at Joe, waiting.


Source: sparknotes.com

Symbols in Margaret Atwood's "Surfacing"

The Barometer

Paul’s wooden barometer, which features a wooden man and woman inside, becomes an unfortunately accurate emblem of marriage for the narrator. The narrator’s shifting assessment of the barometer traces her shifting attitudes toward marriage. Initially, the narrator views the barometer couple as representative of a simplistic and even empty marriage, and she compares them to Paul and Madame. She mentions how Paul and Madame even look wooden. The narrator later compares the barometer couple to Anna and David in that the wooden couple, like Anna and David’s happiness, is not real. The narrator also thinks of the barometer in relation to her parents. She compares the image of the barometer with the image of her mother and father sawing a piece of birch. The image of the birch is evocative because the narrator associates birches with unspoiled nature. The implication is that the barometer represents an unattainable, unrealistic version of love, whereas her parents possess true love.

The Hanged Heron

The hanged heron at the portage represents the American destruction of nature. The narrator obsesses over the senselessness of its slaughter, especially that it was hanged and not buried. The heron’s death emphasizes that the narrator defines someone as American based on his or her actions. She condemns any act of senseless violence or waste as distinctly American. That the bird is killed with a bullet and hanged using a nylon rope emphasizes the subversion of nature to technology. Also, the narrator thinks of the hanged bird as a Christ-like sacrifice, which reflects Christian ideology. By using Christian ideas to describe nature, the narrator emphasizes her near-religious reverence for nature. The narrator also compares herself to the heron during her madness, when she worries that the search party will hang her by the feet. By associating the narrator with the hanged heron, Atwood associates the way Americans destroy nature with the way men control women.

Makeup

Anna’s makeup, which David demands she wear at all times, represents the large-scale subjugation of women. The narrator compares Anna to a doll when she sees her putting on makeup, because Anna becomes David’s sexual plaything. At the same time, makeup represents female deception. Anna uses makeup as a veneer of beauty, and the behaviour is representative of the way she acts virtuous (but sleeps with other men) and happy (but feels miserable). Makeup goes completely against the narrator’s ideal of a natural woman. The narrator calls herself a natural woman directly after her madness, when she looks in a mirror and sees herself naked and completely dishevelled. The narrator comments that Anna uses makeup to emulate a corrupt womanly ideal. 

The Ring

The narrator’s ring symbolizes marriage and its entrapping effects. The narrator describes wearing both her boyfriend’s and her fake husband’s rings around her neck. She compares her rings to a crucifix or a military decoration. The crucifix suggests that marriage is not only a sacrifice but a sacrifice toward a false ideal. The image of a military decoration implies that marriage forces women into becoming the spoils of war. Atwood uses the narrator’s ring to foreshadow Joe’s demand for marriage, as she mentions in Chapter 1 that Joe fiddles with the narrator’s ring.

Literature

Definition: What is literature? Why do we read it? Why is literature important?

Literature is a term used to describe written and sometimes spoken material. Derived from the Latin litteratura meaning "writing formed with letters," literature most commonly refers to works of the creative imagination, including poetry, drama, fiction, nonfiction, journalism, and in some instances, song.
 
Why do we read literature?
Simply put, literature represents the culture and tradition of a language or a people. It's difficult to precisely define, though many have tried, but it's clear that the accepted definition of literature is constantly changing and evolving.
For many, the word literature suggests a higher art form, merely putting words on a page doesn't necessarily mean creating literature. A canon is the accepted body of works for a given author. Some works of literature are considered canonical, that is culturally representative of a particlar genre.
But what we consider to be literature can vary from one generation to the next.  For instance, Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby Dick  was considered a failure by contemporary reviewiers. However, it's since been recognized as a master work, and is frequently cited as one of the best works of western literature for its thematic complexity and use of symbolism to tell the story of Captain Ahab and the white whale.  By reading Moby Dick in the present day, we can gain a fuller understanding of literary traditions in Melville's time.
In this way,  literature is more than just a historical or cultural artifact, but can serve as an introduction to a new world of experience.

Why is literature important? 
Ultimately, we may discover meaning in literature by looking at what the author writes or says, and how he or she says it. We may interpret and debate an author's message by examining the words he or she chooses in a given novel or work, or observing which character or voice serves as the connection to the reader. In academia, this decoding of the text is often carried out through the use of literary theory, using a mythological, sociological, psychological, historical, or other approach to better understand the context and depth of a work.
Works of literature, at their best, provide a kind of blueprint of human civilization. From the writings of ancient civilizations like Egypt, and China, to Greek philosophy and poetry;  from the epics of Homer to the plays of Shakespeare, from Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte to Maya Angelou, works of literature give insight and context to all the world's societies.
Whatever critical paradigm we use to discuss and analyze it, literature is important to us because it speaks to us, it is universal, and it affects us on a deeply personal level. Even when it is ugly, literature is beautiful.

WelCome to My Blog

Welcome to the new world of Literature. It is a modern/technical way of learning and sharing knowledge. I am a student, interested in learning literature and have a deep passion and craving for knowledge. But what is the value of my learning and knowledge if it does not help others...? This is the question which has led me to write this blog. In this regard I remember and follow the famous words of Margaret Fuller- "If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it." It is not only my view, but also a written record what I study on literature from different sources. My success of writing this blog depends on its ability to help you, to make you known and familiar with literature.

                My soul intention is to dedicate myself to the well-being of others.

                                                                                                               ---Prosenjit Sarkar.