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Explore the works of Vikram Seth, a renowned Indian poet and novelist, who writes about travel, love, loss, and history. Read summaries and analyses of his best poems, such as The Tale of Melon City, The Frog and the Nightingale, and The Golden Gate.
The Tale of Melon City. Vikram Seth’s famous work, ‘The Tale of Melon City,’ is well-known for being a humorous and almost child-like poem in the uniquely ridiculous nature of its story.
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- Introduction and Background
- An Unusual Crime
- Assigning Guilt
- “Wisdom”
- Can’T Hang A Scaffold
- Guilt at Last
- A Melon City
The structure of ‘The Tale of Melon City‘, is well-designed to match the intended tone of the story. Each verse is set up as a couplet, with each line being eight syllables long and rhyming with the previous line. At face value, the rhythm of the story is easy enough to follow; there is a king who is described as being calm and just, who wants to b...
The story continues and sees the King attempting to impress and inspire his subjects by riding through the archway, adding the impressiveness of the monarchy to its already apparently inspiring construction. Impressiveness and edification aren’t quite what the King gets, however, as the center of the arch is not high enough that his crown, placed u...
Across the next ten verses, the reader gets a better sense of exactly how this just and placid ruler makes the decisions that govern his world. When he summons the chief builder to be hanged, the builder points out that it was actually the workmen who constructed the arch, while he was merely their overseer; if it’s anyone’s fault, he argues, it’s ...
The King here is described as being placid and just but is portrayed as being a fairly inefficient ruler. When he assigns blame wherever others suggest it should go, he has no real protection when the architect points the blame at him. After all, he decided the chief builder was to blame in the first place and agreed with each progression from ther...
Now that the King’s councilors (who apparently were not wise enough to intervene earlier) have questioned the necessity of hanging the arch, The Take of Melon City can embrace its first logical plot point: people who are following these events are getting really tired of them. The entire story up until this point has been a series of stalls and pos...
As likely seemed inevitable, the King is finally deposed. Possibly less inevitable-seeming is the way he was deposed. The King realizes that the crowd wants him to make good on his word and hang a culprit, so he orders the hanging of someone, anyone, immediately. Unfortunately for him, by the very virtue that started all of this — his height — he i...
If the hanging of the King is Seth’s attempt to criticize governmental problem management, then the following verses are likely a critiqueof solutions. The next person to enter the city may choose anyone they’d like to rule, now that the royal line has ended. This is described as a “practical” decision, but it should be fairly easy to see how it’s ...
Vikram Seth CBE, FRSL (born 20 June 1952) is an Indian novelist and poet. He has written several novels and poetry books. He has won several awards such as Padma Shri , Sahitya Akademi Award , Pravasi Bharatiya Samman , WH Smith Literary Award and Crossword Book Award .
Jun 20, 2020 · Vikram Seth is one if India's most renowned writers. His poetry is known for it's witty wordplay, it's rhythm and rhyme scheme. Here are some poems to enjoy:
In 2009 Seth contributed four poems to Oxfam which are used as introductions to each of the four collections of UK stories which form Oxfam's 'Ox-Tales' book project.
