Night of the Scorpion

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Night Of The Scorpion - A Poem by Nissim Ezekiel- India. Nissim Ezekiel's plays and poems appeared in the Illustrated Weekly Of India. Although many of his poems are obscure, Night Of The Scorpion is simple, clear and direct. In this poem he presents a typical rural situation in an Indian village when his mother was stung at night by a scorpion. The poem has three distinct parts- the heavy rains and the appearance of the scorpion, the gathering of the peasants and their superstitions, and the picture of his rationalist father and typical Indian mother. The poet appears as the narrator of the incident in the poem. It was the heavy Indian monsoon with ten hour-long steady rains. His mother was stung by a scorpion at night which after doing this service escaped among rice sacks and could not be found. Now comes what is typical of an Indian village. Even though it was night and incessant rain, a large number of neighbouring peasants with lanterns and candles gathered in the house, instantly, hearing the cries from the house. This was the habit and custom of this world till before a few years. In a mishap or calamity, people got instant help, as was intended by God in peopling this world with people. This virtue is now saying farewell to this world. We can hold it back or send it away. Now the universal practice is, each will look after his things alone. The boy-poet could listen to the supersticious peasants thinking the scorpion to be an evil spirit, and so singing and chanting rapidly the names of their Gods a hundred times, so that out of its sonar effect the evil spirit would find itself unable to move and paralyzed. When considering the tale of the famous sonar trumpet which shook the walls and fell the fort, this belief cannot be said to be supersticious. They did this with the purpose of stilling the scorpion, as it's every movement would cause a
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