The Myth-Rama-Sita-Ravana in Kanthapura

 

The Myth of Rama-Sita and Ravna in Kanthapura

 Ans. The novel Kanthapura really revolves around the myth of Rama-Sita and Ravana. The Ramayana was narrated by the great Sage Valmiki long ago. In the same way, there is a narrator, Achakka, in Kanthapura also, though not a great Sage, but the grandmother of the village Kanthapura.

She compares Gandhiji with lord Rama and India with Sita. Achakka, the narrator says that as Sita was overpowered by the chief of Evil, Ravana, so was the mother India overpowered by the British. The people of India had been made slaves by the British.

The miserable condition of the labourers working at the Skeffington Coffee Estate is the living example in miniature size. One can guess easily how the people of India were being treated under the foreign rule in India at that time. Lord Rama collected the ‘Vanara-sena’ (the army of the monkeys) and attacked Ravana, the king of Lanka (now SriLanka), defeated and killed him. Thus Sita was liberated by Rama from Ravana’s slavery.

Here in this novel, we have the same parallels of the events. The novelist, Raja Rao, projects Mahatma Gandhi to lead the people of India to fight against the  British rule in India. In Ramayana, it was Rama, who fought a decisive fight against Ravana. In Kanthapura, the novelist showed Gandhiji a mighty (powerful) hero to defeat the Evil forces to achieve freedom for mother India. He used his powerful weapons of ‘ahimsa, satyagraha and non-violence’.

The war between Rama and Ravana had resulted in the deaths of many people. Women were made widows, mothers lost their sons and sisters lost their brothers. Numerous people were injured. In the same way, the freedom struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi resulted in the deaths of many people in Kanthapura and in the rest of the country as well. The people of Kanthapura were arrested, tortured, and lathi-charged by the police.

 

Moorthy as a follower of Gandhiji leads the struggle for freedom in Kanthapura. First, he had to struggle hard to unite the people of Kanthapura. He had to go from one door to the other to spread Gandhiji’s ideas among the people of Kanthapura. Rama had with him his mighty warriors like Lakshmana, Sugriva, and  Hanuman. In the same way, though at a very small scale, Moorthy also had his faithful friends with him. He formed the Congress Panchayat Committee with Pariah Ranganna, Range Gowda, and Seenu. Seenu did his selfless service to him as Veer Hanuman did to Lord Rama.

The people of Kanthapura fought against the British forces as Vanaras fought with the Ravana’s forces in Sri Lanka. Mahatma Gandhi’s trip to England has also been equalized to the one taken by Lord Rama to Sri Lanka to liberate Sita from Ravana’s control.

Gandhiji also went to England to attend the second Round Table Conference. Achakka said that Mahatma would go to the ‘Redman's country’ to get swaraj for the people of India. She gives more detail in the novel, that has parallels to the incidents that occurred in the Ramayana.

Thus, we may conclude that Kanathapura revolves around the myths of Rama-Sita and Ravana.

 

Literary Devices- Oxymoron-Figures of Speech-Poetic Devices

 

6. Oxymoron

In oxymoron, two apparently contradictory statements are yoked together to achieve the dramatic effect and some flavour in speech.

 Difference between Paradox and Oxymoron

In Oxymoron two words giving two opposite meanings/ideas are placed together to achieve flavour in speech or to produce a dramatic effect on it.

 

In Paradox mainly two statements contradictory to each other are placed together. Deep meaning is hidden somewhere in the paradox used by the poet or the writer.

 

There may be certain purposes in using paradoxical statements.

 

These may be used in day-to-day life to criticise an idea, to provoke new thought, to add a witty idea for creating fun and humour.

 Example:

Freedom is slavery. (Paradox)

Cruel kindness (Oxymoron)

More examples of Oxymoron:

 Great Depression                        Clearly confused

Pretty ugly                                    Living dead

Walking dead                               Virtual reality

Original copy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Literary Devices-Epigram-Figures of Speech-Poetic Devices

 5.Epigram: It is a pithy (condensed/full of meaning) remark made in a very clever and amusing way. It may be a short poem usually having a satirical tone.

  Read the following lines from William Blake’s ‘Auguries of Innocence’:

  “To see a world in a grain of sand,/And a heaven in a wildflower,

 Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,/And eternity in an hour.”

Some more brief epigrams, which are used as quotations:

 

“Candy /Is dandy,/But liquor/ Is  quicker” (Ogden Nash)

 “It comes once a year/But fades with fear.” (Harry Potter)

 “I can resist everything but temptation.” (Oscar Wild)

"It is better to light the candle than curse the darkness.” (Eleanor Roosevelt)

   “Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.” (Fran Lebowitz)

History of Epigrams

The Greeks had the tradition of using epigrams in fond memory of their loved ones. They did not use satire and humour in the epigram, so they were used like an elegy. The difference between these two is noticeable these days.

 Sometimes epigram might give the impression like that of a paradox.

For example: “I can resist everything but temptation.”

But, here it is a clever and amusing way of expressing an idea. At the first impression, it may look contradictory and absurd, but at the deeper level, it reveals a great meaning.

Literary Devices-Elegy-Figures of Speech-Poetic Devices

4. Elegy:

 An elegy is a poem of having serious thought, especially, written in memory or lamentation (weeping/expression of grief) at the death of someone very close to the person. It is written in elegiac meter.

In the elegiac couplet, each couplet consists of a hexameter verse followed by a pentameter verse.   It has its origin in classical Greek and Latin literature, in which it addressed various subjects including love, sorrow, and politics characterized by their metric forms.

It is derived from the Greek word ‘elegus’, which means to lament.

Elegy is composed to honour the life of a single individual of high importance to the poet, society, or the nation.

 The elegies were written in ancient time in Greece in elegiac couplets, alternative hexameter with pentameter lines.  

But in English literature, particularly since the sixteenth century, an elegy has come to acquire the status of a poem of lamentation on the death of someone. The poet chooses the meter according to his requirement.

Pastoral Elegy: In this form of elegy, the subject is represented following the traditional convention. There is an idealised shepherd in idealised pastoral background. It follows a formal pattern.

It begins expressing grief and the Muse is also invoked to help the poet express his grief appropriately.  

In Greek mythology, there are nine muses who are called the goddesses of various arts such as music, dance, poetry, etc.

The poet describes the funeral procession, mourning through various objects of nature, and some lines on the unkind death, and finally, the poem ends with the acceptance of the inevitable. 

 John Milton’s “Lycidas” (1638) is a superb example of pastoral elegy, which was written on the death of King Edward, his college friend. A few more examples of pastoral elegies are:  

 1. Adonais (1821) written by P. B. Shelley (Percy Bysshe Shelley) on the death of John Keats

2. Thyrsis (1867) written by Mathew Arnold on the death of the poet Arthur Hugh Clough

3. An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751) by Thomas Gray. It is a tribute paid by the poet to the generation of the humble and unknown villagers buried in the cemetery (graveyard) of the village churchyard.

In literature dirge, threnody, monody, and lament are variations of almost the same theme. They are generally shorter versions of the elegy".

 To conclude, it may be said that the genre of elegy has not remained static, rather it went through the process of evolution.  It has broadened its range.

Literary Devices-Irony-Figure of Speech-Poetic Devices

 

3.  Irony:

  When the speaker intends something and in reality, it happens just opposite to it, that is called irony. This may be found in the use of words giving just opposite effect or meaning to what the speaker has thought or wished. We find the use of dramatic irony in plenty in Shakespeare’s plays and In Greek tragedy also.

There are three types of irony: Verbal, Situational and Dramatic

   In verbal irony, the speaker intentionally uses the words which he does not really mean to say. He may exaggerate (overstate/inflate) or overestimate the character of a thing or person.   

 

If you say, “You are a great scholar” to someone and, in your opinion, you intend to make fun of the person only to please yourself or you may intend to please others while the person for whom you have uttered the words is rather flattered and pleased at the words, it is an example of verbal irony.

 

Here, we may note the difference between sarcasm and verbal irony. In sarcasm, mostly, the person directly hits the listener to cause pain or insult to the listener by using harsh words.

                                    

Irony becomes dramatic when the audience knows what is going to happen and the characters do not know.  For example, in Act 1, Scene 4, King Duncan says that he trusts Macbeth.

But the audience knows what Macbeth intends and what he is going to do to the King in near future. So this is the best example of dramatic irony.

 

Ironies may occur in stories also. For example, in the story ‘The Tiger King’, a living tiger could not kill the king, but a wooden tiger happened to be the cause of his tiger. In such a case, it will be a situational irony.

 

In simple words, we may say that the use of irony to highlight the difference between the appearance and the reality of things.  In situational irony, the actual result of a situation is totally different from what was expected.

 

Literary Devices-Assonance-Figures of Speech-Poetic Devices

 

2. Assonance:

 Assonance is produced when some words beginning with or having the same vowel sounds are placed next to each other or almost in proximity (nearby). 

The purpose of the poet or the writer by using assonance is to produce rhythm and music in the lines written. 

In assonance, the vowel sounds produced by letters matter, but not the letters. There is a slight difference between assonance and consonance. 

It is that the consonance is produced by the repetition of the consonant sounds while assonance is produced by the repetition of the vowel sounds.

Examples:

“Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” (From the poem "Do Not Go Gentle into the Good Night" by Dylan Thomas

 

See the long ‘o’ sound in the lines below:

 

“Poetry is old, ancient, goes back far. It is among the oldest of living things. So old it is that no man knows how and why the first poem came.”

 

"I lie down by the side of my bride" [The sound if /i/ in the words ‘lie’, ‘side’ and ‘bride’ are the examples of Assonance.

 

In the following line, the long /a:/ sound produces the effect of assonance:

 

"Hear the lark and harden to the barking of the dark fox gone to ground"

 

Literary Devices-Onomatopoeia-Poetic Devices-Figures of Speech

 

1.Onomotapoeia: 

It is a figure of speech very much used in literary works to create an illusion of the actual sound of the things being described.

 For example, the word ‘thunder’ creates the illusion of the sound produced by the clouds. Similarly, we have the words used for the illusion of the sound/voice/noise created by the words like ‘roar’ for by the lions, ‘howling’ by the wolves, etc., buzzing by the bees, ‘boom’ by an explosion of some fireworks, etc., thud by the falling of a thing, grumbling by human beings, ‘tick-tick’ for the clock, ‘gong’ for the hitting on a big-bell, ‘ding-dong’ for some musical instrument, etc.

We have a long list of the words used under the name of this literary device. But a few of them are mew, moan, groan, mumble, mutter, whisper, whooping, knell, hush, churning, throbbing, screech, chatter, etc.

Examples:

 (i)‘He saw nothing and heard nothing but he could feel his heart pounding and then he heard the clack on stone and the leaping, dropping clicks of a small rock falling.’

(Taken from Ernest Hemingway’s ‘For whom the Bell Tolls’

 

(ii) They click upon themselves

As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. (From Robert Frost’s Birches)