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Unit 12: Poetry : Nissim Ezekiel’s Night of the Scorpion

has ushered in this symbolic juxta position and then as the poem advanced, built upon it the whole Notes
structure of his fascinating architecture in the lines. Ten hours of steady rain had driven him to crawl
beneath a sack of rice parting with his poison - flash of diabolic tail in the dark room he risked the
rain again. The incessant rain stands for the hope and regeneration where with is juxtaposed the
destructive hurdles to fruitfy that hope. But the constructive, life giving rain continuoues and the
evil, having fulfilled its parts, departs. Then afterwards other hurdels more preying than the first,
come in. More candles, more lanterns, more neighbours more insects, and the endless rain My mother
twisted through and through groaning on a mat. The symbols of light and darkness, candles lanterns,
neighbours and insects and rain again are notworthy. But the force of light gains a width handover
the evil force and life is restored once again in its joyous stride and this life long struggle between
forces of darkness and light reaches a crescendo when - after twenty hours It lost its sting. Here, In
the above lines, lies the beuaty of the poem, when the ascending steps of darkness, being chased by
the force of following light are ripped down; when at last on the peak the chaser wins and the chased
slips down.
The man who has not understood what motherhood is. might be taken in by such expression of
motherly love. But I convincingly feel that any woman would have exclaimed the same thing as the
mother in this poem did. In my view, it would have been truly Indian had the mother in her tortures
remembered her children and though helplessly, had she desired to protect them lest the scorpion
might catch them unawres. Anyway, the beauty of the poem remains- unmarred by such revision.
The poem is a thing of beauty par excellence.
The poem “Night of the Scorpion” can be classified as poetry of situation - an art in which Browning
and Robert Frost excelled. It presents a critical situation in which a mother is bitten by a scorpion. It
involves a typical Indian Situation in which an entire village community identifies itself with a sad
domestic happening. It pictures the traditional Indian society steeped in ignorance and superstition.
The poem is set against the backdrop of Indian rural setting. The rural habit of Storing rice in gunny
bags is referred to in the phrase, “ a sack of rice”. The rural practice of building huts with mud walks
is captured in the phrase “mud backed walks”. The absence of rural electrification in Indian villages
before independence is hinted at in a string of images, “dark room” and “ Candles and linters”.
“Darkness” has the extended meaning of Indian villages being steeped in ignorance.
The situation of a scorpion-stung mother is encountered in different ways of prayer, incantation and
science. Not one stays at home when the peasants hear of a mother bitten by a scoipion. They rush
buzzing the name of God times without number. With candles and lanterns, they search for him. He
is not found. They sit on the floor with the mother in the centre and try to comfort her with words of
philosophy. Their prayer brings out their genuine concern for the suffering mother. The father, through
a skeptic and a rationalist, does not differ in the least from the ignorant peasants. He tries both
medicine and “mantra” drugs and chants as seen in the phrase “trying every were and blessing”. A
holy man is brought to tame the poison with an incantation.
It is the belief of the village community that buzzing “ the name of God a hundred times” will bring
about relief to the mother stung by the scorpion. The action of the rural folk brings out their firm faith
in God and in the efficiency of prayer. It is the belief of the rural community that the faster the
scorpion moves, the faster the poison in the mother’s blood will move. In equating the movement of
the scorpion and that of the poison in the blood stream, the peasant betray their superstition.
The peasants sit around the mother groaning in pain and they try to console her offering remedial
advice of a strong ritualistic and faith - healing kind. Some peasants say that as she has suffered now,
in the rent birth she will experience less troubles. She will now be in a balanced state whereby her
body is ridden of device and her spirit of ambition. The incantatory utterances made by the peasants
smack of their belief in the Hindu law of “Karina”, in the Hindu doctrine of rebirth and in the 13
Hindu concept of the world as one of illusion and the physical suffering bringing about spiritual
rejuvenation.

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