Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity: W B Yeats: poems 

This blog is reaponse of Thinking Activity given by Professor Dr. Dilip Barad sir here I discuss about the questions of W B Yeats poems. 

William Butler Yeats

     

Born in Dublin, Ireland, on June 13, 1865, William Butler Yeats was the son of a well-known Irish painter, John Butler Yeats. He spent his childhood in County Sligo, where his parents were raised, and in London.He returned to Dublin at the age of fifteen to continue his education and study painting, but quickly discovered he preferred poetry. Born into the Anglo-Irish landowning class, Yeats became involved with the Celtic Revival, a movement against the cultural influences of English rule in Ireland during the Victorian period, which sought to promote the spirit of Ireland's native heritage. Though Yeats never learned Irish Gaelic himself, his writing at the turn of the century drew extensively from sources in Irish mythology and folklore. Also a potent influence on his poetry was the Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne, whom he met in 1889, a woman equally famous for her passionate nationalist politics and her beauty.

Yeats was deeply involved in politics in Ireland, and in the twenties, despite Irish independence from England, his verse reflected a pessimism about the political situation in his country and the rest of Europe, paralleling the increasing conservativism of his American counterparts in London, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.Appointed a senator of the Irish Free State in 1922, he is remembered as an important cultural leader, as a major playwright (he was one of the founders of the famous Abbey Theatre in Dublin), and as one of the very greatest poets—in any language—of the century. W. B. Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1923 and died in 1939 at the age of seventy-three.

1, Pendemic Reading of 'The Second Coming'

Ans, 

The second coming poem

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 

About The Poem

The Second Coming" is one of W.B. Yeats's most famous poems. Written in 1919 soon after the end of World War I, it describes a deeply mysterious and powerful alternative to the Christian idea of the Second Coming—Jesus's prophesied return to the Earth as a savior announcing the Kingdom of Heaven. The poem's first stanza describes a world of chaos, confusion, and pain. The second, longer stanza imagines the speaker receiving a vision of the future, but this vision replaces Jesus's heroic return with what seems to be the arrival of a grotesque beast. With its distinct imagery and vivid description of society's collapse, "The Second Coming" is also one of Yeats's most quoted poems. 

The second coming as pendemic Poem:

The poem is also connected to the 1918–1919 flu pandemic: In the weeks preceding Yeats's writing of the poem, his pregnant wife Georgie Hyde-Lees caught the virus and was very close to death. William Butler Yeats wrote "The Second Coming" a hundred years ago, when the world seemed on the verge.The losses of the First World War were still overwhelming when millions more began to die in the waves of a flu pandemic, which infected Yeats's wife, Georgie Hyde-Lees, while she was pregnant. She and their child would survive.

This is a poem that has borrowed its title from W. B Yeats’ poem ‘The Second Coming’, explaining the serious consequences of COVID-19 pandemic on human life.In this poem poet talk about the flu virus and this is might be related with our present because in now days we suffering from corona virus and for few days we find new Virus. So thing is that that time and this time is same. In flu Yeats lost his wife. And we also lost our lot's of people in this pandemic situation. There is no particular virus in poem but because of virus he lost his wife.

So we might be considered this poem as pandemic poem. 

2, Critical analysis of any other poem written by W.B.Yeats. 

Ans, 

The Lake Isle Of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core 

Analysis of the poem

Ist Stanza - Speaker describes physical location, on Innisfree, where he will live alone in a self-made cabin.

2nd Stanza - All the qualities of this new life are stated. Speaker needs peace. The pace of life will be slower, Nature will take over.

3rd Stanza - Reiterates need to fulfil the wish. Even as he stands in the traffic, amongst the crowds, he longs for that idyllic island on the lough.

The Lake Isle Of Innisfree is perhaps the best known of all Yeats' poems. It has been a popular choice of anthologists since it was first published in 1890 and has made Innisfree, a tiny island in lough Gill in County Sligo, Ireland, now a place of pilgrimage.

This green and watery landscape is where the young Yeats spent time as a child and the idyllic imagery remained strong in his memory. He wrote the poem when he was in his early 20s, stuck in the metropolis of London, homesick, struggling to get his name known and his poems out in suitable form.

When Innisfree was finished, Yeats finally declared that it was 'my first lyric with any thing in its rhythm of my own music.'

It had taken him a long time to complete the poem. Originally it had a different rhythm and many more syllables in long rambling lines but, with perserverance and skill, he cut and polished the lines to reach a final successful outcome.

As he matured however, he became disenchanted with his earlier work, including Innisfree, and said to his publisher in 1920 that 'the popular poems I wrote before I knew better' ought to be included in an anthology about to be published, to maximise sales. Yeats thought that his celtic period, so called, was not modern or cutting edge enough.

Yet he still did important readings in the 1930s of this poem and others written at around the same time. His highly formal aging voice can be heard on the BBC as he reads out the lines with 'great emphasis on the rhythm'. Seamus Heaney thought the readings were great, saying that Yeats' speaking voice was like an 'elevated chant.'

Some poets, and many people, will always yearn for quiet, out of the way places, where noise, pollution and crowds do not exist. The Lake Isle of Innisfree, with its Irish folk resonance and liturgical undercurrents, taps into the soul's desire for peace, harmony and natural surroundings. 

The Lake Isle of Innisfree is a three stanza poem, each quatrain made up of three long lines and one short. The rhyme scheme is abab and all end rhymes are full. This brings a sense of closure and order. 

Thank you

Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity: Indian Poetics

This blog is reaponse of Thinking Activity given by Professor Dr. Dilip Barad sir here I discuss about what is Indian Poetics explained by Professor Vinod Joshi sir.

Indian Poetics

There is one major difference between Indian Poetics and Western theory of criticism and that is...

"Western Criticism deals with the influence of the work of art and it's Ultimate Aim. While Indian Criticism deals with the process of work of art. In the world Criticism Indian Criticism is Unique." 

Bharata is the first among all critics who pioneered in Indian aesthetics. Some of the noteworthy critics of Sanskrit Literature.

The Six Schools and the pioneers:

• Rasa - Bharat
• Alamkara - Bhamaha
• Riti - Vamana
• Dhvani - Anandvardhan
• Vakrokti - Kuntaka
• Auchitya - Kemendra 

રસ સંપ્રદાય ( Rasa  Theory) 

 

What is RASA? 

“A blending of various Bhavas arise certain emotion, accomplice by thrill and a sense of joy is Rasa.” In the sixth chapter of Natyashashtra he explains NATYARASA and RASA as the soul of poetry.  

"विभावानूभावव्यभिचारी संयोगात रस निष्पति।।"

 

Rasa is created only because of Vibhav , Anubhav and Vyabhicharibhava. VIBHAV is just like pilar of it and because of it Bhvak feels Rasa.Bharatmuni describes 33 Sancharibhava in Natyasastra.

Vibhav : Emotion arise because of Vibhav

Anubhav : Reaction of Bhavak

Sancharibhav : Come and go

Sthayibhav : like…. Love, Mirth, Sorrow

ભાષ્યકારો: 

આ ભાષ્યકારોના મતે ભાવ ક્યાં ઉત્પન્ન થાય છે? 

૧,ભટ્ટ લોલ્લટ(ઉત્પત્તિવાદ)

ભટ્ટ લોલ્લટનુ માનવું છે કે નાટકમાં રસ હોતો નથી પણ તેને ઉત્પન્ન કરવો પડે છે.અને તે નટ અને નટીમા ઉત્પન્ન કરવાનો હોય છે. 

૨,શ્રીશંકુ (અનુમિતિવાદ)

ચાર પ્રકરની પ્રતીતિઓ દ્વારા આપણે રસનું અનુમાન કરવું પડે અથવા તો રસ અનૂમાનિત થાય છે. ૧, સમ્યક પ્રતિતી, ૨, મિથ્યા પ્રતીતિ,૩, સંશય પ્રતીતિ, અને ૪, સાદ્રશ્ય પ્રતીતિ.

૩, ભટ્ટ નાયક (સાધારણીકરણીયવાદ)

જે ભાવ નટ અને નટી અનુભવે તે ભાવ નો અનુભવ જ્યારે પેશ્રકો ને થાય ત્યારે રસનો અનુભવ થાય છે.

૪, અભિનવ ગુપ્ત (અભિવ્યક્તિવાદ)

प्रकाशनंदज्ञानम प्रितितीમા તેમણે કહ્યું કે, જે કાવ્ય રચના સંપૂર્ણ પણે ભાવનો આનંદ કરાવે તેનુ નામ રસ.

ધ્વનિ સંપ્રદાય (Dhvani Theory)

Anandvardhan's theory of Dhvani has changed Indian Poetics in its essanse. The word Dhvani means 'sound' or 'tone'. In language sound carries a meaning. A word in its basic grammatical sense is a combination of letters. The Sanskrit grammarians argue that the letters are not the ultimate cause of meaning. Thus they discovered a distinct entity called sphota(sign). They argue that meaning is indeed signified by the sound which becomes the meaning of the word.

ધ્વનિમાં ભાષા હોય છે અને રસમાં ભાષા હોતી નથી ભાવ હોય છે.

આનંદવર્ધનને 'ધ્વન્યાલોક' નામનો ગ્રંથ લખ્યો છે જેમાં તેમણે ધ્વનિ ને કાવ્યનો આત્મા કહયો છે.

                The Central idea of the heory of Dhvani is that words in their capacity of conveying sense. He talk about threefold sense which are અભિધા(denotation), લક્ષણા (indication), વ્યંજના (suggestion).

અભિધા

Take direct meaning

એક બિલાડી જાડી - અભિધા

લક્ષણા

If we don't get direct meaning then need to take nearby meaning

તેણે પહેરી સાડી - લક્ષણા

વ્યંજના

We can get direct meaning but need to take another meaning

તળાવમાં તો મગર - વ્યંજના

વક્રોક્તિ( Vakrokti Theory)

वेदण्ध्यभंगीभणीती इति वक्रोक्ति "

(વિશિષ્ટ્ટ રીતે કહેવાતુ હોય તેે વક્રોક્તિ)

શબ્દ અને અર્થમાં વક્રોક્તિ હોય એટલે સાહિત્ય સુંદર અને ઉત્તમ બને. વક્રોક્તિ માં શબ્દ પર સ્થિર થવાનુ ,અર્થ પર સ્થિર થવાનુ ભાવ પર નહીં. સૌંદર્ય અનુભવાય ત્યારે સાહિત્ય સાર્થક થાય છે.

કુન્તકે વક્રોક્તિના છ પ્રકાર પાડયા છે:

• વર્ણ વિન્યાસ વક્રતા: એકનો એક શબ્દ વારંવાર આવે તે‌.
• પદ પૂર્વધ વક્રતા: પદની પહેલાં આવતું પદ.
• પદ પરાર્ધ વક્રતા: પદ પછી આવતું પદ.
• વાક્ય વક્રતા:‌‌ એક વાક્ય જે ન્યાય રૂપ બની શકે .
• પ્રકરણ વક્રતા: કોઈ એક પ્રકરણ પર લખાતું સાહિત્ય.
•  પ્રબંધ વક્રતા: આખાય પ્રબંધ નો લક્ષ સૂચવે 

અલંકારસંપ્રદાય(Vakrokti Theory)

Bhamaha is the first who introduced alamkara poetics. Human being used to wear Ornaments to look beautiful in the same manner, poet use Figures of Speech to make their work attractive. Ornaments is necessary but not compulsory. In literature Alamkara is very important.

ભામહે અલંકારશાસ્ત્ર ગ્રંથ આપ્યો તેમાં અલંકાર વિશે વિસ્તૃત વર્ણનો આપ્યા છે. અલંકાર અને ભાષા બંને applied હોય છે.અલંકાર કુદરતી કે જન્મજાત નથી હોતો. દમયંતી નું મુખ ચંદ્ર જેવું છે. એ અલંકાર થી ભરેલ વાક્ય છે. અલંકાર હંમેશા શબરો સાથે ઓતપ્રોત હોવો જોઈએ, અડોઅડ નહિ. કાવ્યમાં અલંકાર હોય પણ ક્યારેક ના હોય તો પણ ચાલે. સરલ અલંકાર, નિરલંકાર જેવા પ્રકારો ભામહે આપ્યા છે.

રીતિ સંપ્રદાય( Riti Theory)

           'रीतिरात्मा काव्यस्य; विशिष्टापदरचना रीति: |'

Riti stands for the different styles of writing each of which portrays a different emotion. Riti is a theory of language of literature. Riti is described for the first time in Bharata's Natyashastra itself under the rubric of vrtti, it is Vamana who developed it into a theory. Vamana believes that Riti is a soul of poetry-- " ritiratma kavyasya".

 રીતીના પ્રકાર

૧, પ્રદેશ પ્રમાણે

૨, ભાષા પ્રમાણે (વેદૅભી, ગૌડી, પાંચાલી)

૩, સ્વભાવ પ્રમાણે

ઔચિત્ય સંપ્રદાય (Aucitya Theory)

Kshemendra’s discussions of the principle of Aucitya is from the point of view of both the writer and the reader and is articulated in its given cultural and philosophical context. Kshemendra made aucitya spine elements of literarinmess. He defines aucitya as the property of an expression being an exact and appropriate analogue of the expressed.

ઔચિત્ય એ સાહિત્યનું સૌથી પધાન લ‌ક્ષણ છે.

Example:

તને દોડીને ભેટવાનું મન ઓ શ્યામ....

  પણ તું અલગો  તો થા.....

Sir also discussed that We can see this aucitya with the connection of The Old man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway and Myth of Sysiphus by Albert Camus.

 In brief we can say that Indian Poetics is a never-ending topic. It’s like an ocean. It gives a very immense idea about Sanskrit literature.

Thank you

Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity:Transcendentalism

This blog is reaponse of Thinking Activity given by Professor Veidehi ma'am. Here I discuss about the topic Transcendentalism.

Transcendentalism:

Transcendentalism is an American literary, philosophical, religious, and political movement of the early nineteenth century, centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson. Other important transcendentalists were Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Lydia Maria Child, Amos Bronson Alcott, Frederic Henry Hedge, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, and Theodore Parker. Stimulated by English and German Romanticism, the Biblical criticism of Herder and Schleiermacher, and the skepticism of Hume, the transcendentalists operated with the sense that a new era was at hand. They were critics of their contemporary society for its unthinking conformity, and urged that each person find, in Emerson’s words, “an original relation to the universe." Emerson and Thoreau sought this relation in solitude amidst nature, and in their writing. By the 1840s they, along with other transcendentalists, were engaged in the social experiments of Brook Farm, Fruitlands, and Walden; and, by the 1850s in an increasingly urgent critique of American slavery.

Transcendentalism has its origins in New England of the early 1800s and the birth of Unitarianism. It was born from a debate between “New Light” theologians, who believed that religion should focus on an emotional experience, and “Old Light” opponents, who valued reason in their religious approach.Emerson’s essay “Nature,” published in 1836, presented Transcendentalist philosophy as it had formed in the club meetings. 

1, Transcendentalists talks about individual's relation with nature. What is nature for you? Share your views. 

Ans, Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. It ranges in scale from the subatomic to the cosmic.

The term "nature" may refer to living plants and animals, geological processes, weather, and physics, such as matter and energy. The term is often refers to the "natural environment" or wilderness—wild animals, rocks, forest, beaches, and in general areas that have not been substantially altered by humans, or which persist despite human intervention. For, example, manufactured objects and human interaction are generally not considered part of nature, unless qualified as, for example, "human nature" or "the whole of nature".

According to me, nature is everything. Nature means a happyness, enjoyment, sadness and best feeling of the world. Nature give us this whole life and we all are enjoying this life Nature and humen connecting to the heart and both are related to each other. I spend lots of time with nature and that time is best of my life. So my opinion fo nature is, 'nature means happyness'. And 'nature is everything for me'.

Last  I say that, "Nature is like therapy, treatment, medicine everything. You can recharge your self without any changes trew the nature."

"When any medicine can not work that time one medicine work, it's called Nature".  

2, Transcendentalism is an American Philosophy that influenced American Literature at length. Can you find any Indian/Regional literature or Philosophy came up with such similar thought?

 

Ans, Transcendentalism emphasizes subjective intuition over objective empiricism. Adherents believe that individuals are capable of generating completely original insights with little attention and deference to past masters. It arose as a reaction, to protest against the general state of intellectualism and spirituality at the time.The doctrine of the Unitarian church as taught at Harvard Divinity School was closely related.

🔅Spirituality

Yea, Indian literature also use Transendentalism thoughts.The meaning of spirituality has developed and expanded over time, and various meanings can be found alongside each other.Traditionally, spirituality referred to a religious process of re-formation which "aims to recover the original shape of man",oriented at "the image of God"as exemplified by the founders and sacred texts of the religions of the world. The term was used within early Christianity to refer to a life oriented toward the Holy Spiritand broadened during the Late Middle Ages to include mental aspects of life.

In modern times, the term both spread to other religious traditions and broadened to refer to a wider range of experience, including a range of esoteric traditions and religious traditions. Modern usages tend to refer to a subjective experience of a sacred dimensionand the "deepest values and meanings by which people live" often in a context separate from organized religious institutions. This may involve belief in a supernatural realm beyond the ordinarily observable world,personal growth, a quest for an ultimate or sacred meaning, religious experience, or an encounter with one's own "inner dimension".

🔅Judaism

Spirituality in Judaism may involve practices of Jewish ethics, Jewish prayer, Jewish meditation, Shabbat and holiday observance, Torah study, dietary laws, teshuvah, and other practices.It may involve practices ordained by halakhah or other practices.

🔅Christianity

Progressive Christianity is a contemporary movement which seeks to remove the supernatural claims of the faith and replace them with a post-critical understanding of biblical spirituality based on historical and scientific research. It focuses on the lived experience of spirituality over historical dogmatic claims, and accepts that the faith is both true and a human construction, and that spiritual experiences are psychologically and neurally real and useful.

🔅Hinduism

Traditionally, Hinduism identifies three mārga (ways)of spiritual practice,namely Jñāna(ज्ञान), the way of knowledge; Bhakti, the way of devotion; and Karma yoga, the way of selfless action. In the 19th century Vivekananda, in his neo-Vedanta synthesis of Hinduism, added Rāja yoga, the way of contemplation and meditation, as a fourth way, calling all of them "yoga".In the practice of Hinduism, suggest modern era scholars such as Vivekananda, the choice between the paths is up to the individual and a person's proclivities. Other scholars, suggest that these Hindu spiritual practices are not mutually exclusive, but overlapping. These four paths of spirituality are also known in Hinduism outside India, such as in Balinese Hinduism, where it is called Catur Marga (literally: four paths). This all the Indian philosophy are similar to the American transendentalism philosophy.

Thank you

Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity: Long Day's Journey Into the Night  

    

This Blog is response of thinking Activity given by Professor Yesha Ma'am. Here I discuss about the questions of the play. 

About the author:

It was because Long Day’s Journey into Night was so transparently autobiographical that Eugene O’Neill forbade the play’s production and publication during his lifetime. The main characters are thinly veiled portraits of his father, James, his mother, Ella, his brother, Jamie, and himself.

James Gladstone O’Neill was born on October 6, 1888, in a Broadway hotel, son to the popular actor, James O’Neill, and Ella Quinlan. He was raised in the world of theater, and, as a result, in his boyhood and teen years he traveled all over America.In 1912, the year in which Long Day’s Journey into Night is set, O’Neill broke off his three-year marriage to Kathleen Jenkins. In that same year, ill with tuberculosis and haunted by his “rebellious dissipations,” he reached a personal low point and even attempted suicide.

While in a sanatorium recovering from tuberculosis, O’Neill studied the master dramatists of the world and set out to become a playwright. Dissatisfied with his early efforts in the form, he enrolled at Harvard to study the craft, becoming the most celebrated member of George Pierce Baker’s famous “47 Workshop.” His first plays were published in 1914, and his first staged play, Bound East for Cardiff, was produced in 1916. It was followed by Thirst, produced by the Provincetown Players in the summer of 1917. It was that group that gave O’Neill his artistic arena and, with its move to New York, quickly established his reputation as the chief innovator in theater.

In his last active years, O’Neill finished plays that now rank among his very best, including The Iceman Cometh (1946) and A Moon for the Misbegotten (1947). Other later plays include A Touch of the Poet (1957) and Hughie (1959), which, like Long Day’s Journey into Night, were first produced posthumously. By the time he died in 1953, O’Neill had written over thirty significant dramatic works and solidified his reputation as America’s premier dramatist.

1, Long Day's Journey Into the Night- old sorrow, written in tears and blood'. 

Ans, Written in tears and blood

THERE is a relentless logic in the fact that Eugene O'Neill, America's greatest tragic playwright, ended his career with the writing of a starkly autobiographical play. “Long Day's Journey Into Night” is the story of the four O'Neills—called the Tyrones in the play—at a moment of anguished crisis in the summer of 1912. The play's names and events are, so thinly disguised that there is no disputing the literal nature of its revelations. 

Like James and Mary Tyrone of “Long Day's Journey,” James and Ella O'Neill fought an endless, losing battle to adjust to each other's totally dissimilar natures. Ella came from an emigrant Irish family that had attained middleclass respectability by the time she was growing up. James's own emigrant family never made it up from poverty, and James struggled desperately to attain success—though not respectability—as a leading actor of his day. Actors were not, in the 1870's, quite socially acceptable. But they could achieve a kind of raffish glamour, and the sheltered, delicately bred Ella became infatuated with the handsome young matinee idol.

The glamour soon rubbed off, under the stress of years of touring back and forth across the country, which provided James with his chief income. By the time Ella realized that she was miserable in her life as an actor's wife, she also realized that she and James were bound to each other by a helpless love that was stronger than any disaffection for their mode of living. Shortly after the birth of her younger son she became a morphine addict. The O'Neills’ unsettled life and Ella's drugged acceptance of it had a predictable effect on their sons,. James Jr. (Jamie) and. Eugene.

At the time in which “Long Day's Journey Into Night” is set, James and Ella had settled fatalistically for the cycle of love‐hate, guilt and forgiveness, depicted in the play. Their son Jamie, at 33, had become a cynical, alcoholic has‐been, his chief preoccupation to goad his long‐suffering father, whom he blamed for his mother's illness. And Eugene (called Edmund in the play) was, indeed, at 23, on the verge of a severe breakdown in health, brought about by the derelict life he had led since dropping out of college at 18.

While “Long Day's Journey” is the final, naked revelation of O'Neill's “truth” about his family, it is by no means O'Neill's only significantly autobiographical play.

But it was not until the publication of the play in 1956, three years after O'Neill's death, and the recognition of its autobiographical content, that it became possible to discern how very autobiographical many of his earlier plays had been. It then was apparent that such plays as “All God's Chillun Got Wings,” “Deiire Under the Elms,” “The Great God Brown,” “Mourning Becomes Electra,” “A Touch of the Poet” and “A Moon for the Misbegotten” (written just after “Long Day's Journey,” but published in O'Neill's lifetime) had been symbolically disguised portraits of the members of O'Neill's family, locked in various stages of conflict with each other and God. A number of other O'Neill plays, notably “Beyond the Horizon,” “Anna Christie,” “The Iceman Cometh” and O'Neill's only comedy, “Ah, Wilderness!” contain subtler autobiographical references. But it is the plays dealing with the husbandwife, parent‐child relationships that suggest O'Neill had been testing, and steeling himself for, the ultimate soul‐baring of “Long Day's Journey.”

“All God's Chillun Got Wings,” written in 1923, is the first play in which O'Neill portrayed his parents in conflict. In this undeservedly neglected work, O'Neill, not bothering to disguise his parents' given names, called his two protagonists Jim Harris and Ella Downey. He did not deem it necessary to disguise the names because Jim was black and the play, extremely daring for its time, seemed, on the surface, to be a study of miscegenation. He correctly assumed that it would be impossible for anyone to identify the Jim and Ella of the play with his father and mother.

But with “Long Day's Journey” as key, it becomes obvious that Jim and Ella Harris symbolically represent James and Ella O'Neill, just as James and Mary Tyrone represent them literally.

The father is neither an actor, as he is accurately portrayed in “Long Day's Journey,” nor the symbolic black man of “All God's Chillun Got Wings,” but a domineering, hard‐bitten, frugal Yankee farmer named Ephraim Cabot, who has clawed a living from a rockbound New England farm, crushing his fragile wife in the process, and inspiring in his sensitive younger son an Oedipal complex to warm the cockles of any Freudian heart.

“I have always loved Ephraim so much!,” O'Neill once wrote to a close friend. “He's so autobiographical!”

O'Neill, speaking through the character of Lavinia Mannon (Electra), ends the play with a line that is part despair, part masochistic gloating: “I'm the last Mannon.” O'Neill used precisely that phrase after the death, in rapid succession, of his parents and brother. He wrote to a friend, “I'm the last O'Neill.”

In his dedication to his third wife, Carlotta Monterey, of “Long Day's Journey” in 1941, O'Neill wrote: “I give you this play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood . . . You will understand I mean it as a tribute to your love . . .that enabled me to face my dead at last and write this play—write it with deep pity and understanding and forgiveness for all the four haunted Tyrones.”

With “A Moon for the Misbegotten,” the last play O'Neill was able to cornplete, he achieved a blending of literal autobiography and poetic fantasy that lifts it, in some ways, above even the powerful “Long Day's Journey Into Night.” It has been given several very good productions both here and abroad, but it has yet to be universally acknowledged as the soaring masterpiece it is.

The play describes the last, bitter days in the life of Jamie O'Neill, here called, as in “Long Day's Journey,” Jamie Tyrone. At the time of its writing Eugene O'Neill was seriously ill with the nervous disorder that shortly would end his career, and both because of his illness and the play's painful content, he suffered even more over its writing than he had over “Long Day's Journey.”

Most tormenting of all—perhaps even more so than facing, again, as he did in “Long Day's Journey,” his mother's drug addiction — was reliving his mother's death. (Continued on Next Page) Ella O'Neill did not, in the end, succumb to her morphine habit, as is implied by Mary Tyrone's final Scene‐hi “Long Day's Journey.It was almost as though O'Neill feared that the Tyrones of “Long Day's Journey” might have, been construed still to have some life in them. And so he polished off Jamie and created one more blazing epitaph for his family.

It was in 1923 that he became “the last O'Neill.” It was in 1943, the year “A Moon for the Misb gotten” was written, that Hiness ended O'Neill's career. He lived on another 10 years, much of that time a helpless invalid, dying in November, 1953, of pneumonia.

To O'Neill, the whole thing might have appeared to be just one more monstrous irony: He was a man who could say, and mean it: “Life is a tragedy. Hurrah!” 

2, Theme of Addiction - Long Day's Journey into night.

Ans,  The plot of Long Day’s Journey into Night focuses on a dysfunctional family trying to come to grips with its ambivalent emotions in the face of serious familial problems, including drug addiction moral degradation, deep-rooted fear and guilt, and life-threatening illness.

This autobiographical play depicts one long, summer day in the life of the fictional Tyrone family, a dysfunctional household based on O’Neill’s immediate family during his early years. James Tyrone is a vain actor and penny pincher, as was O’Neill’s father James. Mary Tyrone struggles with a morphine addiction, as did his mother Ellen. The fictional son Jamie Tyrone is an alcoholic, as was O’Neill’s brother Jamie. And the Tyrones’ younger son Edmund is deathly ill with tuberculosis.It’s a story of love, hate, betrayal, addiction, blame, and the fragility of family bonds—particularly between fathers and sons.It’s an August morning at the summer home of James and Mary Tyrone. James (also called Tyrone) is an aging actor, and even though he has done well financially, he’s a miser. Mary has recently returned from a sanatorium for her addiction to morphine.Breakfast has just ended, and a day of discord is just beginning. It’s obvious that Mary has started taking morphine again. It’s also clear that Edmund has tuberculosis, but the men try to shield Mary from the truth, making her think that Edmund has a bad cold. Jamie accuses Tyrone of sending Edmund to a cheap and terrible doctor and suggests that Edmund would be in better health if Tyrone weren’t so cheap. As the day goes on, a thick fog surrounds the house. Secrets are revealed and old emotional wounds are reopened.

It seems that Tyrone caused Mary’s morphine addiction when he refused to pay for a good doctor to treat Mary’s pain after Edmund’s birth. Mary refuses to believe that she’s an addict, even as she continues to take morphine just to get through the day. The three men drink heavily as the hours pass…to the point where Tyrone and Jamie are barely functioning as night settles in. The literal fog outside the house and the metaphorical fog of addiction have overtaken the family.The play tells the story of one family over the course of one day. O’Neill shows us the passage of time in a particularly heartbreaking way: through the family’s addictions. As the day progresses, Mary becomes more and more affected by the morphine that she takes. Here we see that theme of addiction as ruined entire Tyrone femily. 

3, Long Day's Journey into night - Sense of failure '

 

Ans,Concerning Long Day´s Journey into Night, one recognizes that each guilty character which appears in the play has to face the fact of having a moral responsibility rather than a criminal one. None of the family members can or will be imprisoned for the mistakes he or she has done, but each of them has to explain himself or herself in front of the accusations of the other members of the family.The play focuses on the Tyrone family, whose once-close family has deteriorated over the years, for a number of reasons: Mary's drug addiction, Tyrone Jamie, and Edmund's alcoholism, Tyrone's stinginess, the boys' lax attitude toward work and money, and a variety of other factors. As the play is set, the parents are aging, and while they always hoped that their sons would achieve great things, that hope is beginning to be replaced by a resigned despair.

The play is largely autobiographical; it resembles O'Neill's life in many aspects. O'Neill himself appears in the play in the character of Edmund, the younger son who, like O'Neill, suffers from consumption. Indeed, some of the parallels between this play and O'Neill's life are striking. Like Tyrone, O'Neill's father was an Irish Catholic, an alcoholic, and a Broadway actor. Like Mary, O'Neill's mother was a morphine addict, and she became so around the time O'Neill was born. Like Jamie, O'Neill's older brother did not take life seriously, choosing to live a life of whores, alcohol, and the fast-paced reckless life of Broadway. Finally, O'Neill had an older brother named Edmund who died in infancy; in this play, Edmund has an older brother named Eugene who died in infancy.

The play also creates a world in which communication has broken down. One of the great conflicts in the play is the characters' uncanny inability to communicate despite their constant fighting.The play is all the more tragic because it leaves little hope for the future; indeed, the future for the Tyrones can only be seen as one long cycle of a repeated past bound in by alcohol and morphine. This novel this all the scenes are represent of sense of failure.

Thank you 😊

Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity: An Artist of the floating world 

This blog is reaponse of Thinking Activity given by Professor Dr dilip Barad sir here I discuss about the questions of this novel.

About the novel: 

     

An Artist of the Floating World (1986)is a novel by British author Kazuo Ishiguro. It is set in post-World War II Japan and is narrated by Masuji Ono, an ageing painter, who looks back on his life and how he has lived it. He notices how his once great reputation has faltered since the war and how attitudes towards him and his paintings have changed. The chief conflict deals with Ono's need to accept responsibility for his past actions, rendered politically suspect in the context of post-War Japan. The novel ends with the narrator expressing good will for the young white-collar workers on the streets at lunchbreak. The novel also deals with the role of people in a rapidly changing political environment and with the assumption and denial of guilt.

About the writer

  

Kazuo Ishiguro is best known for The Remains of the Day, his Booker prizewinner; The Unconsoled, a very long novel of hallucinatory strangeness; and Never Let Me Go, a contemporary favourite, widely taught in schools. But the pitch-perfect novel that both expresses his Japanese inheritance and captures the haunting beauty and delicacy of Ishiguro’s English prose is his second work of fiction, An Artist of the Floating World.

This, as its title suggests, is a tour de force of unreliable narration, set in post-second world war Japan, during the American occupation. Masuji Ono, a respected artist in the 1930s and during the war, but now retired, is garrulously recalling the past, from a highly subjective point of view.

1, 'Lantern' appears 34 times in the novel. Even on the cover page, the image of lanterns is displayed. What is the significance of Lantern in the novel?

    

Ans, Lanterns in the novel are associated with Ono’s teacher Mori-san, who includes a lantern in each of his paintings and dedicates himself to trying to capture the look of lantern light. For Mori-san, the flickering, easily extinguished quality of lantern light symbolizes the transience of beauty and the importance of giving careful attention to small moments and details in the physical world. Lanterns, then, symbolize an outlook on life which prizes small details and everyday moments above the ideological concerns of nationalists or commercial concerns of businesspeople. It is an old-fashioned, aesthetically focused, and more traditional way of viewing the world.

2, Write in brief a review of the film based on the novel. 

Ans, Set in post-World War II Japan, “An Artist of the Floating World” is Japanese pubcaster NHK’s adaptation of the Kazuo Ishiguro novel of the same title. It stars Ken Watanabe in the lead role of Masuji Ono, a renowned artist looking back on, and coming to terms with, his life against the backdrop of a country being rebuilt after the war.

Ahead of traveling to Cannes for the international launch of the one-off drama at Mipcom, Watanabe told Variety that he did not initially think the book could come to the small screen. “When I first read the novel, I wasn’t convinced it was even possible,” he said. “But the screenwriter, Yuki Fujimoto, created a script that’s extremely simple and very profound.” 

The drama tackles some deep existential questions as Ono ponders the impact his actions have had on others and his role in the war; his memories shift in focus and detail. The subject matter gave Watanabe, (“The Last Samurai,” “Inception”) pause for thought about his own life. “I’ve been reminded that life for everyone is profoundly mysterious,” he said. “The absence of perfect answers makes human culture richer. This is all reflected in the drama, so I’m sure that different viewers will come away with different impressions.

What was challenging was bringing Nobel Prize-winning writer Ishiguro’s work to TV in a meaningful way. The author, who lived in Japan until he was 5 years old and moved to England, wrote the book in English; it was then translated into old-fashioned Japanese. “I wasn’t sure how to deliver that style of language to viewers in a way that was meaningful,” Watanabe said. “Fujimoto turned it into a script in a very clear way. Still, the sentences are very difficult to understand. They include lots of exaggeration and modifiers.” 

3, Debate on the use of Art / Artist (five Perspectives: 1) Art for the sake of art

aesthetic delight, 2) Art for erning Money - Buisness Purpose, 3) Art for nationalism/ imperialism - Art for the propaganda of Government Power, 4) Art for the poor Marxism and 5) No Need of art and artist (Masuji's father's approach)

Ans, The role of art has differing conceptualisations in the novel, in turn having implications for the artist. Artistic vision that seeks to create purely for aesthetics sake, focusing on visual beauty without illuminating any deeper meaning, is represented in Moriyama’s partiality for capturing the fleeting and temporary ‘floating world’, but which consequently leads the artist into the guilty pleasures of a decadent lifestyle. Ono’s ambition caused him first to leave the commercial and auto-exoticizing “art for export” firm of Takeda for the art-for-art’s-sake milieu of Moriyama, which focuses on the ephemerally sensual “floating world” of the traditional Japanese pleasure district.Ishiguro here implies an analysis that directly opposes Benjamin’s: in this novel, the turn toward the politicization of art leads toward fascism. Or, to put it another way, the aestheticization of politics and the politicization of art amount equally to totalitarianism, and Ono would have been better off remaining in his studio, indifferent to the affairs of his country. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art. 

Ishiguro warns the reader, then, that the politicized artist will not only commit evil deeds—such as Ono’s informing on Kuroda—but will also be as ineffectual as he would have been had he remained apolitical. The totalitarian artist is therefore denied by the novel even the glamor of infamy; Ono’s actions are both vile and bathetic, which, Ishiguro suggests, are all that the politicized artist’s actions could ever. This all are important thing in the novel.

5, What is the relevance of this novel in our times? 

Ans, The Floating World (ukiyo) was an expression of the new economy and social ambitions of the common townspeople of the Edo period (1615-1868). It was, specifically, a world of play and entertainment in Japan's three main cities (Edo [now called Tokyo], Osaka, and Kyoto). It could also be argued that this "world" was also a state of mind or an ethos, a characteristic spirit of the chônin ("persons of the town"). Although the activities and occupations varied, the participants focused particularly upon the pleasure quarters and entertainment districts. These areas of play were ritualized milieu offering escape from the constraints that the samurai estate forced upon the growing and increasingly more economically powerful merchant class. 

this novel represent our time also because we can easily connect masuji character with all the father who has humiliated by her children and specially for daughter. And also connected that time artist and present time artist also. so this all things are represented our life trew the novel. 

Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity: 1984

This Blog is response of Thinking Activity given by Professor Dr. Dilip Barad sir. Here I discuss about some questions of 1984. 

Nineteen Eighty - Four

   

Seventy years ago, Eric Blair, writing under a pseudonym George Orwell, published “1984,” now generally considered a classic of dystopian fiction.

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

Sixty years after the publication of Orwell's masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four, that crystal first line sounds as natural and compelling as ever. But when you see the original manuscript, you find something else: not so much the ringing clarity, more the obsessive rewriting, in different inks, that betrays the extraordinary turmoil behind its composition.

The novel tells the story of Winston Smith, a hapless middle-aged bureaucrat who lives in Oceania, where he is governed by constant surveillance. Even though there are no laws, there is a police force, the “Thought Police,” and the constant reminders, on posters, that “Big Brother Is Watching You.”

Smith works at the Ministry of Truth, and his job is to rewrite the reports in newspapers of the past to conform with the present reality. Smith lives in a constant state of uncertainty; he is not sure the year is in fact 1984.

Although the official account is that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia, Smith is quite sure he remembers that just a few years ago they had been at war with Eastasia, who has now been proclaimed their constant and loyal ally. The society portrayed in “1984” is one in which social control is exercised through disinformation and surveillance.

About the author: 

       

“My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience.” 

                              George Orwell, Why I Write

Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, biting social criticism, total opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism. Orwell produced literary criticism and poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. He is known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).In 2008, The Times ranked George Orwell second among "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".Four years later in his essay ‘Why I write’, he explained that ‘what I have most wanted to do is to make political writing into an art’.Its second half, critical of Socialist intellectuals who supported Stalin, was enormously controversial, as was his account of the Spanish Civil War, Homage to Catalonia (1938), which criticises leftist infighting in the context of a broader struggle against Fascism.

His novel Animal Farm (1945) also expresses his hatred of totalitarianism, satirising the developments of the Russian revolution in the style of a fable based on the eponymous farm. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) deals with similar subject matter by describing a dystopian future overseen by the all-powerful Big Brother. Both books have been translated all around the world, and were read differently by conflicting parties during the Cold War. Having adopted a son, Orwell died of tuberculosis in 1950.

1, What is dystopian fiction? Is '1984' a dystopian fiction? 

Ans, Dystopian fiction offers a vision of the future. Dystopias are societies in cataclysmic decline, with characters who battle environmental ruin, technological control, and government oppression. Dystopian novels can challenge readers to think differently about current social and political climates, and in some instances can even inspire action.

What Is Dystopian Fiction?

      

Dystopian literature is a form of speculative fiction that began as a response to utopian literature. A dystopia is an imagined community or society that is dehumanizing and frightening. A dystopia is an antonym of a utopia, which is a perfect society.

Dystopian novels that have a didactic message often explore themes like anarchism, oppression, and mass poverty. Margaret Atwood, one of literature’s most celebrated authors of dystopian fiction, thinks about it like this: “If you’re interested in writing speculative fiction, one way to generate a plot is to take an idea from current society and move it a little further down the road. Even if humans are short-term thinkers, fiction can anticipate and extrapolate into multiple versions of the future.”

Dystopian fiction can be a way to educate and warn humanity about the dangers of current social and political structures. Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale takes place in a futuristic United States, known as Gilead. It cautions against oppressive patriarchy.

Characteristics of Dystopian Fiction:

The central themes of dystopian novels generally fall under these topics:

• Government control
• Environmental destruction
• Technological control
• Survival
• Loss of individualism

In George Orwell’s 1984, the world is under complete government control. The fictional dictator Big Brother enforces omnipresent surveillance over the people living in the three inter-continental superstates remaining after a world war.

1984 as a Dystopian Fiction:

1984 tells the story of Winston Smith, a man living in the totalitarian superstate named Oceania. Winston is an employee at the Ministry of Truth, and he is responsible for rewriting historical records so that they match with the current ideas and narrative of the ruling government, the Party, and their leader, Big Brother. Winston has become fed up with the way things are in Oceania. He is tired of being constantly observed and feels like there must be a better way to live. He begins an illegal affair with a woman named Julia, and they rent an apartment in hopes to escape the watchful eyes of the government. In this time, Winston tries to develop a plan to overthrow the government by better understanding it. Unfortunately, Winston trusts the wrong people and is caught, resulting in his torture and ultimate resubmission to the government.

As mentioned previously, Oceania is a totalitarian superstate, and is the prime example of a dystopian society. Oceania is made up of several modern-day countries, including all of the countries in the Americas, southern Africa, Australasia, and the British Isles. Winston Smith lives in London, though England is now called Airstrip One. The citizens of Oceania are under a strong, oppressive regime. There is widespread surveillance, strict rules and regulations, and constant war with the other two superstates, Eastasia and Eurasia. The Party's political philosophy is known as Ingsoc, or English Socialism, but the ideas change regularly to give the Party more control. The citizens are also taught a language named Newspeak, which is a simplified version of English used to control how the citizens think and express themselves. There is no privacy, independence, or self-identity in Oceania. There is only misery, fear, and control.

2,What according to you is the central theme of this novel?

Ans, Themes of the novel

⭐The Dangers Of Totalitarianism

1984 is a political novel written with the purpose of warning readers in the West of the dangers of totalitarian government. Having witnessed firsthand the horrific lengths to which totalitarian governments in Spain and Russia would go in order to sustain and increase their power, Orwell designed 1984 to sound the alarm in Western nations still unsure about how to approach the rise of communism. In 1949, the Cold War had not yet escalated, many American intellectuals supported communism, and the state of diplomacy between democratic and communist nations was highly ambiguous. In the American press, the Soviet Union was often portrayed as a great moral experiment. Orwell, however, was deeply disturbed by the widespread cruelties and oppressions he observed in communist countries, and seems to have been particularly concerned by the role of technology in enabling oppressive governments to monitor and control their citizens.

In 1984, Orwell portrays the perfect totalitarian society, the most extreme realization imaginable of a modern-day government with absolute power. The title of the novel was meant to indicate to its readers in 1949 that the story represented a real possibility for the near future: if totalitarianism were not opposed, the title suggested, some variation of the world described in the novel could become a reality in only thirty-five years.

⭐Psychological Manipulation:

The Party barrages its subjects with psychological stimuli designed to overwhelm the mind’s capacity for independent thought. The giant telescreen in every citizen’s room blasts a constant stream of propaganda designed to make the failures and shortcomings of the Party appear to be triumphant successes. The telescreens also monitor behavior—everywhere they go, citizens are continuously reminded, especially by means of the omnipresent signs reading “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU,” that the authorities are scrutinizing them. The Party undermines family structure by inducting children into an organization called the Junior Spies, which brainwashes and encourages them to spy on their parents and report any instance of disloyalty to the Party. The Party also forces individuals to suppress their sexual desires, treating sex as merely a procreative duty whose end is the creation of new Party members. The Party then channels people’s pent-up frustration and emotion into intense, ferocious displays of hatred against the Party’s political enemies. Many of these enemies have been invented by the Party expressly for this purpose.

⭐Physical Control: 

In addition to manipulating their minds, the Party also controls the bodies of its subjects. The Party constantly watches for any sign of disloyalty, to the point that, as Winston observes, even a tiny facial twitch could lead to an arrest. A person’s own nervous system becomes his greatest enemy. The Party forces its members to undergo mass morning exercises called the Physical Jerks, and then to work long, grueling days at government agencies, keeping people in a general state of exhaustion. Anyone who does manage to defy the Party is punished and “reeducated” through systematic and brutal torture. After being subjected to weeks of this intense treatment, Winston himself comes to the conclusion that nothing is more powerful than physical pain—no emotional loyalty or moral conviction can overcome it. By conditioning the minds of their victims with physical torture, the Party is able to control reality, convincing its subjects that 2 + 2 = 5.

⭐Language As Mind Control

One of Orwell’s most important messages in 1984 is that language is of central importance to human thought because it structures and limits the ideas that individuals are capable of formulating and expressing. If control of language were centralized in a political agency, Orwell proposes, such an agency could possibly alter the very structure of language to make it impossible to even conceive of disobedient or rebellious thoughts, because there would be no words with which to think them. This idea manifests itself in the language of Newspeak, which the Party has introduced to replace English. The Party is constantly refining and perfecting Newspeak, with the ultimate goal that no one will be capable of conceptualizing anything that might question the Party’s absolute power.

⭐Loyalty

In 1984, the Party seeks to ensure that the only kind of loyalty possible is loyalty to the Party. The reader sees examples of virtually every kind of loyalty, from the most fundamental to the most trivial, being destroyed by the Party. Neighbors and coworkers inform on one another, and Mr. Parson’s own child reports him to the Thought Police. Winston’s half-remembered marriage to his wife fell apart with no sense of loyalty. Even the relationship between customer and merchant is perverted as Winston learns that the man who has sold him the very tools of his resistance and independence was a member of the Thought Police. Winston’s relationship with Julia is the ultimate loyalty that is tested by the events of the book. In Book Two: Chapter VII, Winston tells Julia, “if they could make me stop loving you—that would be the real betrayal.” In the end, the Party does make Winston stop loving Julia and love Big Brother instead, the only form of loyalty allowed.

3, What do you understand by the term 'Orwellian'?

Ans, To describe something as "Orwellian" is to say that it brings to mind the fictional totalitarian society of Oceania described in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

In Orwell's novel, all citizens of Oceania are monitored by cameras, are fed fabricated news stories by the government, are forced to worship a mythical government leader called Big Brother, are indoctrinated to believe nonsense statements (the mantra "WAR IS PEACE, SLAVERY IS FREEDOM, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH"), and are subject to torture and execution if they question the order of things. 

Orwell’s career as a writer was long and productive – at one time or another he produced novels, journalism, memoirs, political philosophy, literary criticism and cultural commentary. But the term “Orwellian” most often relates to his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, completed a couple of years before his death. The novel presents a vision of a Britain taken over by a totalitarian regime in which the state exerts absolute power over its citizens. 

Nineteen Eighty-Four presents a number of concepts and ideas that have worked their way into the contemporary imagination – and that, in so doing, have shifted somewhat from their original meanings. Big Brother, the all-seeing, all-knowing emblem of totalitarian control, and Room 101, the regime’s torture chamber, for example, are concepts that have developed a life of their own beyond Orwell’s original ideas.

Other concepts, such as the telescreen, doublethink, thoughtcrime, the Two-Minute Hate, memory holes and Newspeak are all introduced in Orwell’s novel to represent the ways in which technology can be marshalled by the state to control its citizens. It is this aspect of absolute state control that is most often conjured up when hearing the term Orwellian.

4, Write in brief about 'Newspeak' - and refer to Orwell & Pinter's essays.

Ans, Definition of newspeak:

 "propagandistic language marked by euphemism, circumlocution, and the inversion of customary meanings".

Newspeak Comes From 1984

   

The term newspeak was coined by George Orwell in his 1949 anti-utopian novel 1984. In Orwell's fictional totalitarian state, Newspeak was a language favored by the minions of Big Brother and, in Orwell's words, "designed to diminish the range of thought." Newspeak was characterized by the elimination or alteration of certain words, the substitution of one word for another, the interchangeability of parts of speech, and the creation of words for political purposes. The word has caught on in general use to refer to confusing or deceptive bureaucratic jargon.

Newspeak is all about the simplification of language, paring it back to its bare bones in order to reduce it to pure function. So, for example, the Ministry of Truth and the Ministry of Love become Minitrue and Miniluv in Newspeak. One can’t help thinking of all the complexities of Britain leaving the European Union that are shoehorned into the term Brexit. 

Orwell was sure that the decline of a language had political and economic causes. Although he had no solid proof, he presumed that the languages of countries under dictatorships, such as the Soviet Union or Germany, had deteriorated under their respective regimes. "When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer," Orwell writes in his essay, "Politics and the English Language." "If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought," he continues. Here is the very concept behind the invention of Newspeak.

It’s easy to hear “Newspeak,” the “official language of Oceania,” as “news speak.” This is perfectly reasonable, but it gives us the impression that it relates strictly to its appearance in mass media. Orwell obviously intended the ambiguity—it is the language of official propaganda after all—but the portmanteau actually comes from the words “new speak”—and it has been created to supersede “Oldspeak,” Orwell writes, “or Standard English, as we should call it.” 

In other words, Newspeak isn’t just a set of buzzwords, but the deliberate replacement of one set of words in the language for another. The transition is still in progress in the fictional 1984, but is expected to be completed “by about the year 2050.” Students of history and linguistics will recognize that this is a ludicrously accelerated pace for the complete replacement of one vocabulary and syntax by another. (We might call Orwell’s English Socialists “accelerationsts.”) Newspeak appears not through history or social change but through the will of the Party.

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible.

It’s entirely plausible that “alternative facts,” or “altfacts,” would fit right into the “Ninth and Tenth Editions of the Newspeak Dictionary,” though it might easily fall out of favor and “be suppressed later.” 

Orwell then goes on to discuss the difficulty of translating the work of the past into Newspeak. He uses as an example the Declaration of Independence: “All mans are equal was a possible Newspeak sentence,” but only in that “it expressed a palpable untruth—i.e. that all men are of equal size, weight, or strength.” As for the rest of Thomas Jefferson’s rousing preamble, “it would have been quite impossible to render this into Newspeak,” writes Orwell. “The nearest one could come to doing so would be to swallow the whole passage up in the single word crimethink.” 

Thank you

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