Summary of Heart of Darkness

 Joseph Conrad has introduced here the deep and dark forest of Congo. In this setting, people are also dark. There is not the slightest touch of civilization. The full primitiveness is there. Even the white people who have gone there to civilize that area have also become primitive in this dark setting as if the white people have lost their civilized value when they are placed in the dark and with the dark. This very dark setting can again be categorized into two steps as the geography is concerned. One is the outer station and the other is the inner station. Both the place are dark, but the inner is darker than the outer one darker in two. According to the depth of the jungle and also according to the evil acts.

The Much darker action is there in the inner station than that of the outer the darker the setting, the viler the theme in the outer station. Marlow needs rivets to the ship but didn't get a single. He is told by the station in charge that there is no rivet in the station, where there are too many. Moreover, the conspiring conversation that Marlow hears in the dark night symbolically represents the evil of the time and of the place. Everything is like a muddle there. And, in the inner station, there is much more corruption and greed for wealth and power.

It is the inner station wherever individual like Kurtz being announced as associate nursing ivory supply agent rejects to provide the expensive ivories and starts his own ivory business. Not only that, but he also starts to practice his evil power over the natives. He becomes so powerful over the natives that he is almost a god to them. And, I the most striking thing is his main motto for going to the Dark Continent was to civilize the area, but in spite of doing so, he himself has turned into a primitiveness person. No doubt, it is a unique style to produce such a theme of primitiveness with evil power, greed, and corruption in such a dark area. If the total area is the body of darkness, the inner station is the “Heart ” the centre of all the evils that “Darkness ” associate.

In Heart of Darkness, the jungle or the forest has been presented as a matter of the profound dark setting. The jungle and all that it signifies in this novella is a symbol of evil, I the major thematic issues. The jungle has been described as “lurking death ”profound darkness and evil. The vegetation imagery means much more than female menace, it means the truth the darkness, the evil, the death, which lies with us, which we must recognize in order to be truly alive.

The jungle, here, is like a cage that society has made for Kurtz. Cannibalism and sexual perversion exist in the jungle, and behind every bush, death is lurking. This deep jungle setting also indicates the mystery of human life, which remains as the unfolded riddle to us. We understand that Kurtz is staying in the inner station, in the dark centre, only because of the fact that he is greedy for wealth and power.

But one general issue also pinches our mind. Example being originated and brought up in a materially civilized society. Kurtz, in his early life, was supposed to get the material comfort, which now, he is deprived of. the weather for which he stays in the dark African forest cannot give him any sort of material comfort and security. Then, whey is he staying here in the deep jungle with the uncivilized native Africans? Is it mainly because of the power that he can practice here? Or, is there something else behind the surface facts?

He is so greedy that even after his death, his mouth remains open-open for hunger open to greed. Why does a man become so? all these are unanswered questions. And, these are the mysteries of life in the HEART OF DARKNESS. We, the readers, are simply amazed to get a such a devilish thematic effect in such a mysterious setting In fact, in Heart of Darkness, darkness its heart give an idea, which associates and relates the themes with the symbolic aspects of the difference of the story.

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Women Figures in " The Waste Land "by T.S.Eliot

T.S Eliot is one of the most important poets of modern English poetry. His masterpiece The Waste Land, published in 1922 is one of the most important poems of modernist poetry. Through The Waste Land, Eliot has depicted the reality of the society. The poem has been structurally divided into five parts namely “The Burial of the Dead”, “A Game of Chess”, “The Fire Sermon”, “Death by Water” and “What the Thunder Said”. Apart from the fourth part, “Death by Water”, Eliot has used the women as the dominant image throughout the poem.

The poem is introduced through a quotation alluded from the Satyrican of Petronius written in a Latin language. The introduction tells a story of Appollo who is mythological figure that gave a woman an immortal life .She didn’t ask for youth, so she wasn’t given eternal youth. She lived and became very old, weak and fearful creature. When the old woman was asked about her wish, she said (I wish to die) Eliot opens his poem by this story to show that the modern man is living a death –in-life like this woman.

The second woman is Madam Sosostris; she is a fortune teller and an image that he borrows from the classical works. In the past people believe in superstitions details and they used to visit this woman to prophesy but for good reasons since they thought it would help them know how to get water from the Nile River to irrigate their land. In modern life she is speaking about death by water and not as a source of life.

Belladonna, which means "beautiful lady", refers in this case to the Virgin Mary.  In other words, Eliot associates the image of a beautiful woman with the spiritual beauty of Christ's Mother. There was a painting of virgin Marry drown by Leonardo da Vinci a very famous Italian painter and she is a symbol of purity and sublime qualities of the woman of the past that are not in the women of the present.

The game of Chess is an allusion to a significant work of art, drama written by Thomas Middleton who is a dramatist of the early 17th century. The game of Chess is known with another significant title which is Women Beware Women as Eliot states has a scene where a mother in law is distracted by a game of chess while her daughter-in-law is being raped in the other room.

Two figures of women Dido and Cleopatra are suggested here as a juxtaposition to the modern situation reminding people of the kind of women who were in love and who would kill themselves for the sake of their lovers

Philomel is another women figure in the classical work of Ovid. The reason he chose her because in the mythological story is raped by a powerful barbarous king Tereus and he was her sister's husband, then Procne transferred her into a nightingale. The myth says that the voice of the nightingale was always heard by the people; so they learned a lesson that this should not happen and this evil wrong thing that happened to her should not happen and they learn a lesson from the experience she went through.

Eliot is drawing a picture of all women, of their suffering, how they feel although they have luxury and all the background you have seen before but they feel lonely.  and isolated and the loneliness they feel is disturbing, the woman he described wants the company she is afraid from being alone, she needs someone. Bad is repeated to emphasize that she really feels bad about the situation. It suggests that even the word thinking a meaningless word and this is a link with the earlier suggestion that modern man can’t say anything because he knows nothing but a broken image; they are saying nothing because they know nothing.

Ophelia, a character alluded from Shakespeare's Hamlet. He makes a comparison between Ophelia who gone mad from the shock when she knew that her lover has killed her father, with the modern woman who doesn’t react under any conditions. Ophelia represents a sensitive woman who stands in a great contrast with the rich woman and Lil who are insensitive and cold in their relations with their husbands.

In conclusion, Eliot draws all these kinds of women figures from the past in comparison to situations that is happening in the present time. That the modern men need to wake up and beware of his surroundings.

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Short notes of the Characters of A midsummer Night's Dream

Characterization of A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Puck

Also known as Robin Goodfellow, Puck is Oberon’s jester, a mischievous fairy who delights in playing pranks on mortals. Though A Midsummer Night’s Dream divides its action between several groups of characters, Puck is the closest thing the play has to a protagonist. His enchanting, mischievous spirit pervades the atmosphere, and his antics are responsible for many of the complications that propel the other main plots: he mistakes the young Athenians, applying the love potion to Lysander instead of Demetrius, thereby causing chaos within the group of young lovers; he also transforms Bottom’s head into that of an ass

Oberon

The king of the fairies, Oberon is initially at odds with his wife, Titania, because she refuses to relinquish control of a young Indian prince whom he wants for a knight. Oberon’s desire for revenge on Titania leads him to send Puck to obtain the love-potion flower that creates so much of the play’s confusion and farce.

Titania

The beautiful queen of the fairies, Titania resists the attempts of her husband, Oberon, to make a knight of the young Indian prince that she has been given. Titania’s brief, potion-induced love for Nick Bottom, whose head Puck has transformed into that of an ass, yields the play’s foremost example of the contrast motif.

Lysander

A young man of Athens, in love with Hermia. Lysander’s relationship with Hermia invokes the theme of love’s difficulty: he cannot marry her openly because Egeus, her father, wishes her to wed Demetrius; when Lysander and Hermia run away into the forest, Lysander becomes the victim of misapplied magic and wakes up in love with Helena.

Demetrius

A young man of Athens, initially in love with Hermia and ultimately in love with Helena. Demetrius’s obstinate pursuit of Hermia throws love out of balance among the quartet of Athenian youths and precludes a symmetrical two-couple arrangement.

Hermia

Egeus’s daughter, a young woman of Athens. Hermia is in love with Lysander and is a childhood friend of Helena. As a result of the fairies’ mischief with Oberon’s love potion, both Lysander and Demetrius suddenly fall in love with Helena. Self-conscious about her short stature, Hermia suspects that Helena has wooed the men with her height. By morning, however, Puck has sorted matters out with the love potion, and Lysander’s love for Hermia is restored.

Helena

A young woman of Athens, in love with Demetrius. Demetrius and Helena were once betrothed, but when Demetrius met Helena’s friend Hermia, he fell in love with her and abandoned Helena. Lacking confidence in her looks, Helena thinks that Demetrius and Lysander are mocking her when the fairies’ mischief causes them to fall in love with her.

Egeus

Hermia’s father, who brings a complaint against his daughter to Theseus: Egeus has given Demetrius permission to marry Hermia, but Hermia, in love with Lysander, refuses to marry Demetrius. Egeus’s severe insistence that Hermia either respect his wishes or be held accountable to Athenian law places him squarely outside the whimsical dream realm of the forest.

Theseus

The heroic duke of Athens, engaged to Hippolyta. Theseus represents power and order throughout the play. He appears only at the beginning and end of the story, removed from the dreamlike events of the forest . 

Hippolyta

The legendary queen of the Amazons, engaged to Theseus. Like Theseus, she symbolizes order.

Nick Bottom

The overconfident weaver chosen to play Pyramus in the craftsmen’s play for Theseus’s marriage celebration. Bottom is full of advice and self-confidence but frequently makes silly mistakes and misuses language. His simultaneous nonchalance about the beautiful Titania’s sudden love for him and unawareness of the fact that Puck has transformed his head into that of an ass mark the pinnacle of his foolish arrogance.

Peter Quince

A carpenter and the nominal leader of the craftsmen’s attempt to put on a play for Theseus’s marriage celebration. Quince is often shoved aside by the abundantly confident Bottom. During the craftsmen’s play, Quince plays the Prologue.

Francis Flute

The bellows-mender chosen to play Thisbe in the craftsmen’s play for Theseus’s marriage celebration. Forced to play a young girl in love, the bearded craftsman determines to speak his lines in a high, squeaky voice.

Robin Starveling

The tailor chosen to play Thisbe’s mother in the craftsmen’s play for Theseus’s marriage celebration. He ends up playing the part of Moonshine.

Tom Snout

The tinker chosen to play Pyramus’s father in the craftsmen’s play for Theseus’s marriage celebration. He ends up playing the part of Wall, dividing the two lovers.

Snug

The joiner chosen to play the lion in the craftsmen’s play for Theseus’s marriage celebration. Snug worries that his roaring will frighten the ladies in the audience.

Philostrate

Theseus’s Master of the Revels, responsible for organizing the entertainment for the duke’s marriage celebration.

Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Mote, and Mustardseed

The fairies ordered by Titania to attend to Bottom after she falls in love with him. 

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Themes of A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

Love

The dominant theme in A Midsummer Night's Dream is love, a subject to which Shakespeare returns constantly in his comedies. Shakespeare explores how people tend to fall in love with those who appear beautiful to them. People we think we love at one time in our lives can later seem not only unattractive but even repellent. For a time, this attraction to beauty might appear to be love at its most intense, but one of the ideas of the play is that real love is much more than mere physical attraction.

At one level, the story of the four young Athenians asserts that although "The course of true love never did run smooth," true love triumphs in the end, bringing happiness and harmony. At another level, however, the audience is forced to consider what an apparently irrational and whimsical thing love is, at least when experienced between youngsters.

Marriage

A Midsummer Night's Dream asserts marriage as the true fulfillment of romantic love. All the damaged relationships have been sorted out at the end of Act IV, and Act V serves to celebrate the whole idea of marriage in a spirit of festive happiness.

The triple wedding at the end of Act IV marks the formal resolution of the romantic problems that have beset the two young couples from the beginning, when Egeus attempted to force his daughter to marry the man he had chosen to be her husband.

The mature and stable love of Theseus and Hippolyta is contrasted with the relationship of Oberon and Titania, whose squabbling has such a negative impact on the world around them. Only when the marriage of the fairy King and Queen is put right can there be peace in their kingdom and the world beyond it.

Appearance and Reality

Another of the play's main themes is one to which Shakespeare returns to again and again in his work: the difference between appearance and reality. The idea that things are not necessarily what they seem to be is at the heart of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and in the very title itself.

A dream is not real, even though it seems so at the time we experience it. Shakespeare consciously creates the plays' dreamlike quality in a number of ways. Characters frequently fall asleep and wake having dreamed ("Methought a serpent ate my heart away"); having had magic worked upon them so that they are in a dreamlike state; or thinking that they have dreamed ("I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was"). Much of the play takes place at night, and there are references to moonlight, which changes the appearance of what it illuminates.

The difference between appearances and reality is also explored through the play-within-a-play, to particularly comic effect. The "rude mechanicals" completely fail to understand the magic of the theatre, which depends upon the audience being allowed to believe (for a time, at least) that what is being acted out in front of them is real.

When Snug the Joiner tells the stage audience that he is not really a lion and that they must not be afraid of him, we (and they) laugh at this stupidity, but we also laugh at ourselves — for we know that he is not just a joiner pretending to be a lion, but an actor pretending to be a joiner pretending to be a lion. Shakespeare seems to be saying, "We all know that this play isn't real, but you're still sitting there and believing it." That is a kind of magic too.

Order and Disorder

A Midsummer Night's Dream also deals with the theme of order and disorder. The order of Egeus' family is threatened because his daughter wishes to marry against his will; the social order to the state demands that a father's will should be enforced. When the city dwellers find themselves in the wood, away from their ordered and hierarchical society, order breaks down and relationships are fragmented. But this is comedy, and relationships are more happily rebuilt in the free atmosphere of the wood before the characters return to society.

Natural order — the order of Nature — is also broken and restored in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The row between the Fairy King and Queen results in the order of the seasons being disrupted:

The spring, the summer,

The chiding autumn, angry winter change

Their wonted liveries, and the mazèd world

By their increase knows not which is which.

Only after Oberon and Titania's reconciliation can all this be put right. Without the restoration of natural order, the happiness of the play's ending could not be complete

Magic

The fairies’ magic, which brings about many of the most bizarre and hilarious situations in the play, is another element central to the fantastic atmosphere of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shakespeare uses magic both to embody the almost supernatural power of love (symbolized by the love potion) and to create a surreal world. Although the misuse of magic causes chaos, as when Puck mistakenly applies the love potion to Lysander’s eyelids, magic ultimately resolves the play’s tensions by restoring love to balance among the quartet of Athenian youths. Additionally, the ease with which Puck uses magic to his own ends, as when he reshapes Bottom’s head into that of an ass and recreates the voices of Lysander and Demetrius, stands in contrast to the laboriousness and gracelessness of the craftsmen’s attempt to stage their play.

Dreams

As the title suggests, dreams are an important theme in A Midsummer Night’s Dream; they are linked to the bizarre, magical mishaps in the forest. Hippolyta’s first words in the play evidence the prevalence of dreams (“Four days will quickly steep themselves in night, / Four nights will quickly dream away the time”), and various characters mention dreams throughout (I.i.7–8). The theme of dreaming recurs predominantly when characters attempt to explain bizarre events in which these characters are involved: “I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what / dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about t’expound this dream,” Bottom says, unable to fathom the magical happenings that have affected him as anything but the result of slumber.

Shakespeare is also interested in the actual workings of dreams, in how events occur without explanation, time loses its normal sense of flow, and the impossible occurs as a matter of course; he seeks to recreate this environment in the play through the intervention of the fairies in the magical forest. At the end of the play, Puck extends the idea of dreams to the audience members themselves, saying that, if they have been offended by the play, they should remember it as nothing more than a dream. This sense of illusion and gauzy fragility is crucial to the atmosphere of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as it helps render the play a fantastical experience rather than a heavy drama.

Jealousy

The theme of jealousy operates in both the human and fairy realms in Midsummer Night’s Dream. Jealousy plays out most obviously among the quartet of Athenian lovers, who find themselves in an increasingly tangled knot of misaligned desire. Helena begins the play feeling jealous of Hermia, who has managed to snag not one but two suitors. Helena loves Demetrius, who in turn feels jealous of his rival for Hermia’s affections, Lysander. When misplaced fairy mischief leads Lysander into an amorous pursuit of Helena, the event drives Hermia into her own jealous rage. Jealousy also extends into the fairy realm, where it has caused a rift between the fairy king and queen. As we learn in Act II, King Oberon and Queen Titania both have eyes for their counterparts in the human realm, Theseus and Hippolyta. Titania accuses Oberon of stealing away with “the bouncing Amazon” (II.i.). Oberon accuses Titania of hypocrisy, since she also loves another: “How canst thou thus for shame, Titania, / Glance at my credit with Hippolyta, / Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?” (II.i.). This jealous rift incites Oberon to command Puck to fetch the magic flower that eventually causes so much chaos and confusion for the Athenian lovers

Mischief

In Midsummer, mischief is primarily associated with the forest and the fairies who reside there. Accordingly, the fairies of traditional British folklore are master mischief makers. The trickster fairy Puck (also known as Robin Goodfellow) is the play’s chief creator of mischief. Puck’s reputation as a troublemaker precedes him, as suggested in the first scene of Act II, where an unnamed fairy recognizes Puck and rhapsodizes about all the tricks Puck has played on unsuspecting humans. Although in the play Puck only retrieves and uses the magical flower at Oberon’s request, his mistakes in implementing Oberon’s plan have the most chaotic effects. Puck also makes mischief of his own accord, as when he transforms Bottom’s head into that of ass. Puck is also the only character who explicitly talks about his love of mischief. When in Act III he declares that “those things do best please me / That befall prepost’rously” (III.ii.), he effectively announces a personal philosophy of mischief and an appreciation for turning things on their head.

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