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Analysis (ai): The poem vividly captures a night of suffering and superstition in a rural village. The scorpion's sting brings villagers to the family's home, where they offer prayers and traditional remedies. The speaker, a young boy, witnesses the pain of his mother and the desperate attempts to save her.
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- Analysis of Night of The Scorpion
- About Nissim Ezekiel
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‘The Night of the Scorpion’ is the story of one night in which the mother of the speaker is stung by a poisonous scorpion. She suffers for twenty hours while peasants, holy men, and her husband attempt to heal her. They try curses, blessings, prayers, herbs, and all forms of ancient medicine that are not practiced in most of the modern world. Their...
Stanzas One and Two
This poem begins at the beginning, with the speaker telling the story of how his mother was stung by a scorpion. Ezekiel does not use unnecessary phrasing or extra words, he gets right to the point. He describes how the scorpion had been driven inside by “steady rain” and had decided to hide beneath a “sack of rice.” This first stanza is only four lines, a choice Ezekiel makes to urge the story forward. A quick succession of stanzasallows for the poem to flow faster. The second stanza proceed...
Stanza Three
Throughout this piece, Ezekiel makes a number of language choices that continue to reference the movements and parts of different insects.These descriptors are very prevalent in the third stanza. He describes the actions of the peasants as being like swarms of flies, they “buzzed” God’s name in the hope of paralyzing the “Evil One.” The image that Ezekiel creates here is clear, the reader can easily visualize a swarm of people coming down on the speaker’s mother, all with good intentions, but...
Stanza Four
The fourth stanza contains seven lines and describes the hunt that the peasants embark on in an effort to find the scorpion. They search with both candles and lanterns, which throw shadows on the wall in the shape of a scorpion. This image of the scorpion still being in the room (only in the form of shadow) helps set the scene for the next lines as the peasants struggle to help the mother. The shadow is representative of their primitive fears, that something Evil is lurking just where they ca...
Nassim Ezekialwas born in Bombay in 1924 as part of Bombay’s Jewish community. He attended Wilson College in Mumbai and received a BA in Literature. After graduating he taught English literature and continued his studies at Birkbeck College, London where he studied Philosophy. He was married and published his first collection of poetry in 1952, The...
A poem about a mother bitten by a scorpion and the superstitions of the peasants who try to help her. The poem contrasts the modern and the primitive, the rational and the irrational, and explores the common humanity of all people.
- Female
- October 9, 1995
- Poetry Analyst And Editor
The poem Night of the Scorpion by Nissim Ezekiel is about an incident that the poet has not forgotten in his life. It was a night when a scorpion bit his mother and all the superstitious villagers did irrational things rather than helping her.
Learn about the themes, structure, and literary devices of Nissim Ezekiel's poem \"Night of the Scorpion\". The poem depicts the irony of a rural Indian mother's sting by a scorpion and the superstitious and modern responses of the villagers and her husband.
- 2 min
" Night of the Scorpion ," included in the AQA Anthology, is a poem [1] written by the Indian Jewish poet, Nissim Ezekiel . Summary. It starts in a house at night where it is raining and a scorpion, in order to take some shelter, comes to the house. This poem is about how the scorpion stung the poet's mother and the mother's love for her children.
A poem about a mother bitten by a scorpion and the superstitious and futile attempts to save her. The poem explores the themes of evil, love, and culture in rural India.
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Nov 1, 2023 · "Night of the Scorpion" is a poem that focuses on a single episode in the life of an Indian family. A scorpion has been forced by persistent rain to seek refuge inside under a sack of rice. It ends up stinging the mother of the family, which makes people flock to her side, wanting to help with the subsequent pain.
