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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