Summary of Nissim Ezekiel’s The Night of the Scorpion

About the poet: Nissim Ezekiel (1924-2004) was a Jewish poet of Indian origin. He was a multi talented personality. Apart from being the foundational literary figure in Post Colonial Indian Poetry, he was an actor, playwright, editor and art critic. Some of his mentionable works are A Time to Change, Sixty Poems, The Unfinished Man and others .The Night of the Scorpion was included in The Exact Name published in 1965.  In an unequivocal way, the poem depicts the visions of a harsh reality of an Indian’s life. With an unobtrusive personal tone, the poet simultaneously criticises and comes to terms with the contemporary scene.
On the Poem: The poem begins with the poet-persona’s recollection of the harrowing experience of witnessing his mother bellowing in pain due to a scorpion’s sting in a murky, rainy night. On that fateful night, as he recalls, his mother was stung by a scorpion which crawled in to hide itself under the sack of rice. The intermittent rain outside for ten hours compelled the creature to sneak inside the house to find a safe refuge .Out of its instinctive impulse, the scorpion injected its poison to the mother with the ‘flash of its diabolic tail’ and escaped. The villagers rushed the poet-persona’s house instantly to offer their help. They tried to help the mother in every possible way known to them but failed to alleviate her agony. They uttered the name of God, a hundred times to paralyse the ‘evil one’ or the poison of the scorpion’s sting. They ransacked the house in search of the scorpion with candles and lanterns but failed. They clicked their tongue as a gesture of despair, because they believed with every movement of the scorpion, the venom into the mother’s body runs swiftly through the veins. They started praying to God in order to make the scorpion stay still. After exposing all the superstitious notions, the poet turns towards criticising the religious consolations that people are used to offer in such situation. Someone opined that with the excruciating agony and burning sensation of the venom that the mother is experiencing, all the sins of her previous life will be erased. The ambitions and desires of her heart will be burned and thus her soul will be purified .Subsequently, when all consolation and prayers failed to console them, and the mother’s condition aggravated, they suggested that the present suffering will reduce the pains of her next life .Keeping the mother in the centre, they sat around her. In the monotonous rain and pitchy dark climate, people thronged inside the mud house with their candles and lanterns inviting more insects. It was believed to be the sign of their compassion towards their neighbour. The mother groaned in unbearable agony. The poet-persona’s father was sceptic and rationalist. He tried everything possible to alleviate the pain of his wife. He tried curses, blessings, powder, mixture, herb, hybrid and even paraffin on her bitten toe to mitigate the pain but it was of no use. The poet-persona witnessed the entire ritual helplessly. Eventually, after the ordeal of twenty hours, the mother recovered from the venomous sting. She expressed her gratitude to God, not because she survived, but god was benevolent enough for sparing her children from this unpleasant experience.

 The poem evinces the helplessness of men in a given circumstance where little external help is available. Religious consolation can provide some resource to remain optimistic, but it is unable to solve the problem. The evil and ‘diabolic’ poison of the scorpion and the struggle of the loving mother are emblematic of the eternal conflict between the good and the evil. Eventually the indestructible affection and love of the mother for her children prevails.

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