Hitaxi Dave

1) Feminist Reading Of Harmoine's Character in 'Harry Potter'. Hermione is the perfect example when examining the feminist principles in the novels. Throughout the series she has many strengths and weaknesses, but she is mostly criticized about her weaknesses as a character. She is attacked at school a lot for being too bossy, whiny, or studious, but these all ignore the fact that she has many strengths as well. However, Harry Potter is different in the sense that you can find a ton of important women in the series, as well as men, and there is no difference in the genders. Hermione fights battles differently than do the boys in the novels, she uses her reason and logic in order to solve problems and mysteries, and her strength can be seen from this.    In the fourth novel,  Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,   Hermione shows her true feminist beliefs when she starts “The Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare...

Telephone Conversation- Wole Soyinka. Summary. Telephone conversation by Wole Soyinka, the poet talks about two people on the phone and the story goes on to narrate how the African man is looking for a house and the land lady has proposed a considerable price for the same. The poem strikes a positive note as the man gets to know that his privacy won’t be hampered as the landlady doesn’t stay on the premises. The African man is happy to know that and just before he makes up his mind to consider the offer, he drops in to mention that he is black. On the other end of the line, there was nothing but silence which the African man takes it to be an impolite gesture of refusal. However, the silence is soon broken as the landlady starts to speak again asking him to explain exactly how dark he is. First, the man think that he might have misheard the question but when the landlady repeats, he understands that this is something very important for her to know before she allows him to ren...

Refugee, Mother and Child- Chinua Achebe Introduction Chinua Achebe has written several novels and many poems. Indeed, he is considered to be one of the finest literally artists to have come out of Africa. He is a believer that all literature "should have a message, should have a purpose." The Background for the Poem: In 1967 civil war broke out in Nigeria when the Catholic dominated province of Biafra attempted independence from the Moslem dominated central state. During those fateful years, Achebe worked as an ambassador for the Biafran government. The war went badly for the Biafrans who suffered immensely, and starvation was rife. The poet's firsthand experience of the hardship and struggle inspired him to write "Refugee Mother and Child". Reference to Madonna and Child : Its Significance: The Madonna is Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, and the Child is her son, Jesus. A statue of the Madonna holding the Infant Jesus is common in the ...

The Mystic Drum - Gabriel Okara. About Poet. Gabriel Okara is a Nigerian poet and novelist   Okara’s   Poetry  is based on a series of contrasts in which symbols are neatly balanced against each other. The need to  reconcile   the extremes of experience (life and death are common themes) preoccupies his verse, and a typical poem has a circular movement from everyday reality to a moment of joy and back to reality again. Summary. The drum in African poetry, generally stands for the spiritual pulse of traditional African life. The poet asserts that first, as the drum beat inside him, fishes danced in the rivers and men and women danced on the land to the rhythm of the drum. But standing behind the tree, there stood an outsider who smiled with an air of indifference at the richness of their culture. However, the drum still continued to beat rippling the air with quickened tempo compelling the dead to dance and sing with their shadows. The ancestral gl...

Once Upon A Time- Gabriel Okara. Summary. The poem “Once Upon A Time” written by Gabriel Okara illustrates the changes a father has seen in him throughout his life which have been influenced by the way society has changed  In the first stanza, at the start of the poem Okara writes “they used to laugh with their hearts and  eyes; but now they only laugh with their teeth while their ice-block cold eyes search behind my shadow.” This phrase illustrates the change in the way people act showing that their laughs used to be genuine and heartfelt however now their attitudes have changed. The description of “laugh with their teeth” illustrates someone showing false interest. The dark imagery “ice-block cold eyes” which follows shows that there is no emotion or feeling in the action. In the next stanza Okara describes how “they used to shake hands with their hearts” implying that the actions were genuine and were also symbolic of good intentions however “Now they shake hand...

The Waste Land-T.S.Eliot. Summary. 1.The Burial of the Dead It's not the cheeriest of starts, and it gets even drearier from there. The poem's speaker talks about how spring is an awful time of year, stirring up memories of bygone days and unfulfilled desires. Then the poem shifts into specific childhood memories of a woman named Marie. This is followed by a description of tangled, dead trees and land that isn't great for growing stuff. Suddenly, you're in a room with a "clairvoyant" or spiritual medium named Madame Sosostris, who reads you your fortune. 2. A Game of Chess You are transported to the glittery room of a lavish woman, and you notice that hanging from the wall is an image of "the change of  Philomel" a woman from Greek myth who was raped by King Tereus and then changed into a nightingale. Some anxious person says that their nerves are bad, and asks you to stay the night. This is followed by a couple of fragments vaguel...

Ode On A Gracian Urn- John Keats. Summary A man is whispering sweet nothings to a Grecian urn, an ancient Greek pot that is covered in illustrations. He thinks the pot is married to a guy name "Quietness," but they haven’t had sex yet, so the marriage isn’t official. He also thinks that the urn is the adopted child of "Silence" and "Slow Time." Then the speaker gives us the urn’s profession: it’s a "historian," and it does a much better job of telling stories than the speaker possibly could. The speaker looks closer at the urn and tries to figure out what’s going on in the pictures that are painted on it. Illustrated on the urn is some kind of story that might involve gods, men, or both. It looks like a bunch of guys are chasing beautiful women through the forest. People are playing pipes and beating on drums. Everyone looks happy. The scene is chaotic and the speaker doesn’t know quite what’s happening.  Not only is th...

Ode To Nightingale-  John Keats. Summary. The poem begins as the speaker starts to feel disoriented from listening to the song of the nightingale, as if he had just drunken something really, really strong. He feels bittersweet happiness at the thought of the nightingale's carefree life. The speaker wishes he had a special wine distilled directly from the earth. He wants to drink such a wine and fade into the forest with the nightingale. He wants to escape the worries and concerns of life, age, and time. He uses poetry to join the nightingale's nighttime world, deep in the dark forest where hardly any moonlight can reach. He can't see any of the flowers or plants around him, but he can smell them. He thinks it wouldn't be so bad to die at night in the forest, with no one around except the nightingale singing. But the nightingale can't die. The nightingale must be immortal, because so many different kinds of generations of people have heard its song thr...

Ode To  Psyche- John Keats. Summary.   Keats ‘s   speaker opens the poem with an address to the goddess Psyche, urging her to hear his words, and asking that she forgive him for singing to her her own secrets. He says that while wandering through the forest that very day, he stumbled upon “two fair creatures” lying side by side in the grass, beneath a “whisp’ring roof” of leaves, surrounded by flowers. They embraced one another with both their arms and wings, and though their lips did not touch, they were close to one another and ready “past kisses to outnumber.” The speaker says he knew the winged boy, but asks who the girl was. He answers his own question: She was Psyche. In the second stanza, the speaker addresses Psyche again, describing her as the youngest and most beautiful of all the Olympian gods and goddesses. He believes this, he says, despite the fact that, unlike other divinities, Psyche has none of the trappings of worship: She has no temple...

   Ode to autumn- John Keats About Poet. Keats was creative poet and his most of the poem in real life experience we found that. He creates not his identity in the poem, but we see that imagination of nature as beautiful in Keats poem. In his poem we know that life emotions, feelings, fantasy, melody, sadness, love and death as theme. His most of poem in life reality and connected to nature as center. his poem in animal, birds, nature there life thought out given to images of nature.  Summary.  ‘To Autumn’ was composed at Winchester in September 1819 and published in the volume of 1820. “How beautiful the season is now; how fine is the air…I never like stubble the short bits of dried plant stems left in a field after it has been cut fields so much as now…this struck me so much in my Sunday’s walk that I composed upon it. we see that autumn as center in the poem. here we see to imagination and autumn as felling of love ...

Design- Robert Frost.  Summary. The poem begins with a simple setup the first three lines introduce us to the main characters. We have a big white spider on a white flower, poised to eat a white moth. The speaker sees this bizarre little albino meeting as some weird witches' brew, as all three are brought together for some awful reason. That observation leads the speaker to a series of questions: Why is this flower white, when it is usually blue? What brought the spider to that particular flower? What made the moth decide to flutter by right then? Frost concludes that if it were "design" that brought these three together, it must be some pretty dark design. In other words, it's not a comforting thought to think that God went out of his way just to make sure this moth got eaten. But that's the crucial "if" of the last line: if design does govern these small things. The reader is left with just as many questions as Frost. This sh...

The Gift Outright  -Robert Frost. Summary. From one perspective, this poem may seem to be nothing more than a triumphantly patriotic work; Frost himself once compared it to “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The colonists in America initially struggled to become one with the land because of their ties to England. As years passed, however, they were able to build a commitment to the land and establish their identities as Americans because of their efforts to build a land that was not based on the traditions of Europe. In this way, the poem can be read as Frost’s personal celebration of manifest destiny.                    The broad enthusiasm for America that characterizes the poem takes an unexpected turn in the grave thirteenth line: “(The deed of gift was many deeds of war.)” Suddenly, the poem is not only about a commitment to the land, but also a discussion of the Revolutionary Wa...

The Flea- John Donne. About Poet. Donne has enjoyed a rather cyclical popularity with critics and the reading public, going through phases of celebration and ignorance.   He is, for most readers, a difficult poet than Other metaphysical poets,   Summary. The speaker uses the occasion of a flea hopping from himself to a young lady as an excuse to argue that the two of them should make love. Since in the flea their blood is mixed together, he says that they have already been made as one in the body of the flea. Besides, the flea pricked her and got what it wanted without having to woo her. The flea’s bite and mingling of their bloods is not considered a sin, so why should their love-making? In the second stanza the speaker attempts to prevent the woman from killing the flea. He argues that since the flea contains the “life” of both herself and the speaker, she would be guilty both of suicide and a triple homicide in killing it. The woman in question is obviousl...

Fire and Ice – Robert Frost. Some say the world will end in fire,  Some say in ice.  From what I’ve tasted of desire  I hold with those who favor fire.  But if it had to perish twice,  I think I know enough of hate  To say that for destruction ice  Is also great  And  would  suffice. Summary  This short poem outlines the familiar question about the fate of  the world, wondering if it is more likely to be destroyed by fire or ice. People are on both sides of the debate, and Frost introduces the narrator to provide his personal take on the question of the end of the world. The narrator first concludes that the world must end in fire after considering his personal experience with desire and passion, the emotions of fire. Yet, after considering his experience with  “ ice, ”  or hatred, the narrator acknowledges that ice would be equally destructive . Interestingly, the two possibilit...

Paradise Lost   - John Milton Summary Satan returns to Eden eight days after being forced out by forced out by Gabriel. He has studied all the animals and has decided to approach Eve in the form of a serpent which he considers to be the "subtlest Beast of all the Field" The following morning, Adam and Eve prepare for their daily work tending the Garden. Because the Garden's growth seems to surpass their labors, Eve suggests that on this day they work apart. She thinks they can accomplish more working individually. Adam argues the point with Eve, saying that Raphael has warned them of dangers and that she is more vulnerable by herself. He and she continue this argument  she proposing that they work alone; he proposing that they work together  until Adam finally relents; however, he makes Eve promise to return to their bower soon, but Milton comments that she will never return to Adam in the way that she was that morning. Satan in the form of the serpe...

Remember Me- Christina Rossetti Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land; When you can no more hold me by the hand, Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay. Remember me when no more day by day You tell me of our future that you plann’d: Only remember me; you understand It will be late to counsel then or pray. Yet if you should forget me for a while And afterwards remember, do not grieve: For if the darkness and corruption leave A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, Better by far you should forget and smile Than that you should remember and be sad . About Poet. Christina Rossetti was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional  and  Children's Poems  She is famous for writing " Goblin Market” and "Remember", and the words of the Christmas carol " In the bleak midwinter " Summary. At the beginning of the poem Rossetti is talking to her loved one in a demand...

Minority- Imtiaz Dharker I was born a foreigner. I carried on from there to become a foreigner everywhere I went, even in the place planted with my relatives, six-foot tubers sprouting roots, their fingers and faces pushing up new shoots of maize and sugar cane. All kinds of places and groups of people who have an admirable history would, almost certainly, distance themselves from me. I don’t fit, like a clumsily translated poem; like food cooked in milk of coconut where you expected   Ghee or cream, the unexpected aftertaste of cardamom or neem   . There’s always a point that where the language flips into an unfamiliar taste; where words tumble over a cunning tripwire on the tongue; were the frame slips, the reception of an image not quite tuned, ghost-outlined, that signals, in their midst, an alien. And so I scratch, scratch through the night, at this growing scab on black and white. E...