 Hello everyone, I am Deeksha Jhaian and I secured the 22nd Rankin Civil Services Examination 2018 with English Literature as my optional. In this video, I will be discussing Paper 2 of the optional as it came in the CSE 2018. The paper pattern in question number in Paper 2 is similar to Paper A in the sense that question number 1 and question number 5 are compulsory. Apart from that, you have to do 3 more questions in which one has to be from each section and one you can do according to your choice. So, it is usually either you do 2 from Section A or 2 from Section B and 1 from either of the sections. Now, we will talk about the first question which is a compulsory question and in the first question in Paper 2, we have quotations from the poetry that is there in the syllabus and you have to analyze these lines and comment on them within a space of 10 marks which is basically 2 sides of sheets. So, question number 1A, in the nightmare of the dark all the dogs of Europe bark and the living nations wait each sequestered in its head. So, here it is although it is not necessary to mention which poem these lines have been taken from but it is still good because then it shows that you know exactly where these lines are coming from. In this case is these lines have been taken from September 1, 1939 by W.H. Odin. So, since you have to critically comment now if you were to do these lines it would basically these lines this poem has been written at the sort of beginning of World War II. So, it is a criticism of European society and the degeneration that it has faced and for example, the lines and the living nations wait each sequestered in its head. It is talking about how nations are only looking at their personal interest and their personal hatreds. They are you know plotting against each other and they are not looking at the common good of humanity. You can even connect these lines with other lines from the same poem or other ideas of Odin because this critical view of modern life and of the period between World War I and World War II is very central to Odin's poetry. So, if you can show interconnectedness between different poems or different lines of the same poem it will also fetch you more marks and you can also comment on you know the nightmare of the dark as a symbol of the darkness of European society and of darkness of the times in which nations are moving towards war. So, you can explore these symbols you can comment on the general theme of the poem and you can talk about the general poetry of that author and how his own philosophy is reflected in these lines. So, B is within alien people clutching their gods I should be glad of another death. So, these lines have been taken from the journey of the Magi by T.S. Eliot. The background of this poem is that T.S. Eliot himself he converted to Christianity to Catholicism and his journey of religious conversion was a very personal and powerful aspect of his life and this poem also talks about the journey of these three Magi who travel somewhere from the Orient from different from a place with a different religion than Christianity. So, here clutching their goddess actually refers to other pagan religions for example and when they reach the place of the birth of Jesus and when they are initiated into Christianity their lives transform it is like an epiphanic movement for them. So, these two lines are basically exploring the magnanimity of the moment of spiritual activation or spiritual enlightenment of these people and also of T.S. Eliot in that sense. And here you can also look at I should be glad of another death. So, it is basically looking at you know that before these people were initiated into Christianity or they witnessed the birth of Jesus which relates to the older myth about these three saints who travel from far and they went to they were they came just in time for the birth of Jesus. So, it is like when they are initiated into Christianity it is like a rebirth for them. So, this poem is very religious and very spiritual and you can explore these aspects of this poem. Question number one C the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity. These lines have been taken from the second coming by W.B. Yates. Now, the second coming is a poem in which obviously there is a criticism of modern society and the way it has become destructive and it has you know lost its rootedness in culture, religion etc. But apart from that it is also an apocalyptic poem because basically what Yates is saying is that the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity. It is a common to modern life that the people who are speaking the loudest are the ones who are who have hatred within them or who are who don't have the right intentions who are not working towards a better society and while the ones who are actually who who are right in their convictions they are keeping silent and the silence according to him is also a violation of integrity. It is not right for the people who are who are on the right path to remain silent and to just watch the world unfold in the way it is unfolding. You can also link this to the apocalyptic imagery that is there in later in the poem about the second coming where a monster like creature is writing is rising from the deserts of Bethlehem. So it is sort of how apocalypse is imagined in Christian imagery but also it is a sort of it up turns it and the second coming which was supposed to be the second coming of crisis turned into the second coming of a monster. And so this age is like basically an age of degeneration and that is the central theme of these lines. So number D is, yet they leave us holding wretched stalks of disappointment for though nothing box each big approach leaning with brass work print each rope distinct. So these lines have been taken from Philip Larkin's next please. The poem basically talks about how human beings are always waiting for happiness in terms of promises in terms of dreams that they have and actually they don't realize that everything is transitory in life and anything there is a famous quote that no sooner is it than it comes to past than it turns to past. So basically what these lines are saying is that we keep waiting for our promises what the poem calls the amada of promises we keep waiting for our dreams and for our successes but when they come they don't give us the same satisfaction. So here wretched stalks is basically the wretched stalks of disappointment because the happiness we thought that we will get we are actually disappointed with what actually happens in life. So it's sort of Philip Larkin's poetry is also about in a sense that a lack of meaning in life a lack of the central you know faith in the meaning of life of humanity but at the same time there is a lot of acceptance that even though life is like this if we recognize that life is transitory that life is that life may not have an overarching grand agenda it is a much better and a senior way to live life. So you can explore that philosophy that Larkin has in these lines. The next poem is obituri by A.K. Ramanujan and it reads and he left us a changed mother and more than one annual ritual. So this is obituri is basically an obituri on his father's death so he's talking about his father's death. The interesting thing about these lines is these lines say that and he left us a changed mother and more than one ritual in a year. So it seems to say as if the narrator has not been affected by his father's death the only effect in his life is that the mother has been really affected and that he has to perform that ritual on the death anniversary of a person but if you have read the poem then later in the poems there are very powerful lines where the narrator is looking at newspapers everywhere just looking for that obituri of his father. So what these lines show is that even though the narrator is putting up a facade of being very cold and you know sort of like heartless and not very connected with his father there is that you know deep root of connection that is there and you can explore that sort of that dual meaning that these lines have in that respect. Okay now let us move to question number two. This is obviously not a compulsory question. A reads, Odin's The Shield of Achilles is a critique of contemporary culture, elitidate. This is it is one of my favorite poems and so The Shield of Achilles is a poem where the myth of the creation of shield of Achilles by Hephaestus who was a Greek god is equated with the degeneration of modern society because The Shield was supposed to be very beautiful it was supposed to have gardens and pastures and people dancing and on the other hand when Thetis looks at The Shield there are images of modernity which is basically barbed wires, war, people being hands, young children partaking in acts of violence. So what the poem does is that it puts these two images against each other that where there should have been pastors and fields there there are scenes of war, there are also scenes of regimentality. This poem is basically a critique of contemporary culture because then it always it juxtaposes the contemporary degeneration with something and ideal which was supposed to be there in the past. So here you can use a lot of examples for example there are lines about men standing in a row and nobody knows what they are doing but they are just you know moving mechanically so it's about mechanization of life. A person is being hanged but the people are just you know lazily sitting there so it is talking about how modern man has become immune to violence they don't feel anything if anybody else is getting hurt. Even there are lines about children where it is said that if that girls raped and one person killed another was usual for young children to hear it was not a time where promises were one could weep if another wept. So these are the values of modern life that are being criticized by Odin in this poem by juxtaposing them with the past so you can discuss that in this answer. B says comment on the ending of look back in anger does it look like being where we started or is there indeed a hopeful no. So here of course everybody each one of you can have your own interpretation as to whether the novel has started has ended right where it started and nothing has changed or something has changed. My perspective on it is that the central character Jimmy Porter has not changed to a great extent he was shouting he was you know sort of venting his anger he was being violent in his ways whether it was with his wife or with you know the other girl who comes in and that remains he is not really changed as an as a character except that he seems to be little tired of his rant in the end because everybody has left him and then his wife comes back but what I believe has changed in the course of it is the the character of his wife undergoes a change and there is a change in the relationship a relationship which seemed not to have so much heart where you know both the people have become immune like Jimmy used to keep shouting and Alison would not respond she would just you know keep mechanically doing what she was doing so there seems to be a greater level of understanding. So you can talk about how the relationship progresses that despite the world being the world being without opportunities for Jimmy despite the anger being there there is a way that the two find to live in each other's company there is a greater understanding between the two characters and in a way you know they are somehow more compatible than they are in the beginning. At the same time I would you know like my understanding is also that Jimmy Porter in on the whole does not change only thing is that and that is something that is valorized about this play also. So in the answer what you can do is that you can look at how the play starts out and what how is Jimmy's character how are you know the other characters in the end another change is that you know the other characters leave the scene and only Jimmy and his wife are left on the stage so that is also you know sort of a change from the beginning to the end. So you can look at these small small aspects and the major aspects in terms of character transformations in the text. Two C says the love song of J Alfred Proofrock epitomizes the frustrations and inertia of the modern era justify the statement. So this poem this is what the poem actually is doing throughout. So you will have a lack of points or lack of evidence in this you have to talk about how it epitomizes the frustrations and inertia of modern man. So in frustrations firstly you can talk about the personality of Proofrock that he is so self-conscious that he is not able to do anything that he's full of inertia throughout the poem he keeps saying that I will ask the question and the question is to be asked and the matter of the question but ultimately he does not ask the question and he just says would it have been worth it after all. So it is basically that extreme self-consciousness and inertia of modern man it is seen in other things also there is extreme fragmentation Proofrock says that you know that I could have been claws cuddling on the floors of silences. So it is that absolute alienation and frustration with life that man is reduced to something as fragmented as just cuddling claws on the floors of silences. The frustration is also there in social critique like he keeps mentioning that and the women come and go speaking of Michael Angelo. So it is a frustration with the modern life as well the regimental quality of modern life and he says that I'll measure my life with coffee spoons. So you can use all these evidences and you can like you know present beautiful answer on Proofrock because it is about the central theme of the poem. Question number three A says, explicate the significance of symbols used by Yeats with reference to the poems Eastern 1916 the second coming and Byzantium. So Yeats poetry Yeats's poetry is famous for its heavy symbolism and the symbols help us in understanding Yeats's philosophy his stand on things and they sort of also beautify his poetry. So it is like you introduce talking about symbolism in Yeats's poetry and then you can come towards discussing specific examples from these poems. For example in Eastern 1916 if I were to discuss certain examples so for example there is a line too long a struggle can turn make a stone of the heart. So the symbol of heart turned into stone and the stone is a recurring symbol in the entire poem. What does it signify? On the one hand it talks about you know the hardening of hearts because of the nationalist struggle which is not actually leading to freedom. Hardening of hearts because so much blood has been lost and so many leaders have been lost and people have been struggling again for their independence. But the stone is also symbol of rigidity that when too long a sacrifice if there is if people keep sacrificing for too long then they become immune to violence and Yeats was not a supporter of violent movement for the independence of Ireland. So it is talking about the positive and the somber aspects of the nationalist struggle as well as the rigidity of the nationalist struggle of which Yeats was not very he was not okay with. The second coming again we have discussed this earlier in the short notes. Second coming the symbol of the Antichrist which comes in the end of the poem. He is symbolic of the degeneration of the present times of the critique of the world wars and the degeneration of modern life which has lost its root and culture and which has become very regimental. So again symbolism is there in Byzantium. Byzantium becomes a symbol of the lost world and lost glory which Yeats wants to go to but at the same time he realizes that it you can't just simply go to the past and that cannot be without pain. So the symbol of that dolphin torn and gong tormented sea that's a recurring symbol in Byzantium. So you can discuss all of those symbols and more if you have space in the answer. Bees says Larkin combines wistful sadness amusement respect for the common place and a deep compassion discussed with reference to some of his poems. So the idea would be to take examples from almost all the poems which are there in the course and you have to justify each aspect. So if you're talking about sadness you can talk about that poem in which there is the prostitute is raped and it is sort of trying to recreate that experience of extreme agony. Even Mr. Blini's small room evokes so much sadness or the lives of the parents who are you know very they are so lifeless in afternoons where you know their life has become so regimented. There are aspects of amusement as well whether it is in Mr. Blini where the narrator is sitting and he is trying to sort of understand that what kind of life Mr. Blini must have had his radio and his relationship with his landlady. Amusement in terms of the way children come to play amusement in terms of this you know this understanding of life in terms of how you know the ship of life comes and goes of promises the armada of promises and all that and respect for the common place and deep compassion I think this is mostly like you know most starkly evident in Mr. Blini because at the end of the poem after judging Mr. Blini's existence as you know of somebody who has been reduced to just one room there is a deep understanding of Mr. Blini's relationships real relationships that he had that he could go on a holiday with his sister that he had a relationship with his landlady and the narrator who is even more alienated than Mr. Blini living in the same room he can't even claim to have that so there is a deep compassion for human existence in whatever flawed form it is there so while the understanding is there that life can be meaningless but there is also compassion for it and respect for humanity okay and question number three see the central weakness of modernism is that in its pursuit of more complex sense of reality it fails in coherence do you agree justify your answer with some illustrations from the 20th century poetry and drama so modernism which is also a background topic for this paper has many characteristics and it is there is a lot of alienation from earlier ideas of religion from time coherence in plot even the narrator who used to be such a trustworthy figure in earlier novels like Victorian novels becomes like a shifty person for example Marlowe and Lodgem so there are a lot of belief systems which are getting questioned in modernism so you can give a definition of modernism and what modern literature how was modern literature different from earlier literature and why it is talking about a fragmented reality so what the statement is that in trying to capture this fragmented reality does modern literature lose its coherence and we have to give examples from poetry and drama so you can give example for example if you look at TS Eliot's poetry so it is extremely fragmented because of if you look at proof rock he it is like a dramatic monologue then he will suddenly shift from one place to another the emotions keep changing social commentary keeps changing so there is a sense of lack of coherence if you look at waiting for Godot it doesn't seem to have a plot it seems like the first act in the second act are almost similar and you know people keep doing nonsensical things and Godot never comes they keep waiting for Godot but my understanding is not in agreement with this that in you know trying to portray this complex reality it loses coherence the beauty of modern literature is that it is not trying to be coherent in the traditional sense earlier if they wrote novel they would show a clear you know development of the character but life is not like that many times you know a character will develop and it will go back it will go towards happiness and come back to sadness it will decide and then it again it will become undecided modern literature was trying to capture the ethos of the time which was a very complex time there were two world wars ideas of religion faith humanity time Darwinism everything was changing so in its fragmented form modern literature somehow captures the ethos of that time so there is I don't think there is a need for coherence in such a literature so that is my stand you are of course please ponder over the question and come to your own conclusions because that is what the literature paper demands of you okay so coming to question number 4a Beckett called waiting for Godot or tragic comedy do you agree with this classification if not how would you classify the play so personally I agree with this classification yes it is tragic comedy so we have to sort of justify why it is a tragic comedy it's very simple you can start with a general introduction about waiting for Godot it's plot and how it is a tragic comedy first you can then look at the aspects of tragedy so aspects of tragedy are what that man's existence has been reduced to just waiting for death that there is no grand idea there is disillusionment with any kind of belief system which would earlier give faith to people there are two people estragon and Vladimir who keep waiting for Godot who never comes tragedy is also there in Pozzo and Lucky you know who have degenerated Lucky has lost all sense of all sense of coherence and Pozzo slowly loses his sense of arrogance sense of time so that is the tragedy of modern man and at the same time what is Beckett trying to say Beckett is trying to say yes there is no grand design in this world that may be man's existence is actually you know not towards a greater ideal it is just there the idea is that yes we are all waiting for Godot but what we do while waiting becomes important and the comic element is there comedy comes in how Vladimir and Estragon pass their time so Vladimir and Estragon what they do is that they play games they talk to each other they argue with each other the way you know Lucky speeches so incoherent at the same time so meaningful comedy comes with the so Beckett was really impressed with silent films and the likes of Charlie Chaplin so the comedy is there in the actions of Vladimir and Estragon and so this is why you know I do believe that this is a tragic comedy and you can add more points to this as you develop your own understanding of the text moving on to question number 4b it is the synthesis of Ramanujan's perception of the external world with the world of his inner imaginative response which lends an extraordinary meaning to his poems discussed with reference to poems prescribed for study um so basically Ramanujan's poetry is very uh it's ironical it is very tight it is a little bit dry also it is not very expressive but we have to look at how Ramanujan's inner perception of his reality and the images that he uses in his poems how he reflects his own inner being in his poems and in the perception of the external world so you can use evidences from the poems for example a river which talks about Vagari and Madurai and how you know literature has degenerated and how Ramanujan himself is trying to revive it so you can look at the look at the inner imaginative response to the literary culture by Ramanujan when he talks about you know the two cows and the pregnant mother and two babies and how he wants to revive literature by talking about the things that are important and not the things which have been traditionally spoken about so in a repetitive manner people keep writing about the same things also like when he writes about his mother you can talk about how his emotional attachment and that you know with his mother is reflected in the images of how his mother you know would come through the rain and the diamonds of her earrings or even you know the kind of attachment that the young baby has with the mother so all these things are like his inner response but they are creating the outer world of the poem there are other poems also like the action of a swing of a girl who is looking back at her own childhood from a more mature consciousness thinking about her own sexuality and it is Ramanujan's response to it also his imagination of you know the flowering of a girl's sexuality or the way one becomes nostalgic for one's childhood and the images that he uses of a red fig tree etc so you can sort of combine all these images and talk about Ramanujan's interpretation and his understanding of his external world through the prism of his own symbols and his inner being okay and now we'll move on to question number C do you find angry young man Jimmy Potter's attitude towards society credible is it fully worked out and resolved in the drama give reasons for your answer you can start with generally talking about this angry young man figure which Jimmy Potter and John Osborne brought into the English stage the angry young man is angry with everything what the government is doing the lack of employment opportunities the frustration of the youth who has been educated but does not have adequate and satisfying jobs to do about his anger is about the media which is trying to satisfy people with superficial news and not talking about the real things the anger is also about the lost power of countries like Britain because no longer does it enjoy the prosperity and the importance that it had in the international scene so the question is is this anger credible I would say yes the anger is credible and that is why this play resonated so much with the audience of the time because that anger was palpable in the society all these issues were issues that were going on in the society despite educational reforms employment was a problem there was a huge you know generation of youth which were extremely frustrated with their lives and religion was coming into question and all the aspects of society were coming into question so yes the anger is credible I would say is it fully worked out and resolved in the drama I wouldn't say that because the anger Jimmy's anger Jimmy Porter is not able to do anything about his anger he keeps shouting he keeps ranting out of his window but he never goes out into the society and does something he turns his angering on to his wife his friends he's very violent he's very emotional but that anger is important and a critic has said that what starts as a drama of social criticism ends up as a drama of social despair it is despair because this anger does not culminate into anything it just it is reduced to you know anger and a lot of misogyny so I would say that yes it does not you know there is no culmination to this anger so you can again also have your own opinion about the text but I think that this is my opinion let us now move to question number five which is again a compulsory question so there are short notes on the novels in this paper okay so question number five a says the repetition and evolution of the symbol of echo in a passage to India so the echo is the echo of the Malabar caves and how what does the first thing that you can talk about in this is what does the echo signify in the text so people can have different understandings there have been various interpretation about what the echo actually means my particular interpretation was that echo as the at on the one hand echo as a symbol of the inner misgivings and the inner fears that the colonial that the colonial people had the native countries because they were ruling over a people and they were not really interacting with them so there were certain misgivings and these misgivings were sort of you know repeated to them in the form of an echo so when Adela quested goes into the cave she is very you know enthusiastic that she wants to see the real India and all that but when she goes to the cave she is confronted with her own deepest fears about the native people and you know what she thinks are assumptions about the native people that you know whether that she feels that she has been molested or things like that the echo could also be the if you look at it from the psycho analytical point of view it could be the deep unconscious which is the in Freudian terms is called the aid which sort of you know which is very difficult to understand but that is what often drives many of our actions and our subconscious behavior so echo you can say that when we confront our unconscious that could be in the form of the echo of the Malabar caves so there are different you know interpretations you can look at it from the postcolonial perspective also and from the psycho analytical perspective also now the repetition and evolution of the echo repetition of the echo I think it sort of works as a structural device in which which keeps on emphasizing the theme of the novel of you know this continuous distance and discomfort between the two races or you know the Indians and the Anglo Indian people who are saying that and so repetition is also about the central theme of the novel the psycho analytical part of it and any other understanding of the repetition that you may have evolution of the echo I think is it starts as something incomprehensible it evolves into some sort of meaning when you know Adela quest it comes to her senses it also sort of you know it is also a symbol of the incomprehensibility that you know how the colonials cannot understand the natives in a complete fashion so sort of as the novel progresses it sort of shows that so long as there are unequal relationships or between the Indians and the colonial masters there will be no real understanding so I also see it as you know the evolution of the echo that the echo is accepted as something which is not understandable at this point of time so you may have different interpretations of the echo but you can include as many interpretations as you want in this particular answer question 5 b says the significance of dreams in a portrait of the artist as a young man so the portrait of the artist as a young man is like a moderns bildungsroman it is written in the stream of consciousness format it follows the journey of you know uh deadless right from when he is a baby till he attains a sort of consciousness as an writer as a individual a youth who wants to become a writer and an artist and dreams play a very big role in this in this evolution of the artist number one dreams are a means of exploration of his own sexuality he has dreams about women and he sort of tries to balance religion and sexuality religion and the material world and this struggle is also seen in his dreams dreams are also a source of creativity because the images that he has in his dreams can also be reflected in the literature that he writes and basically dreams serve as a window to the unconscious and the subconscious of deadless as he evolves as a character in the novel okay question number five c is the relationship between paul morrell and his father and sons and lovers this is a pretty straightforward question in the novel at least according to my understanding they do have a strained relationship in some ways paul morrell you know this laurence has said that sons and lovers was his colliery novel and the actual collier in the novel is paul morrell's father but there is some sort of understanding about the labor that his father gives and you know the kind of hard life that he has but the relationship of paul morrell who is an artist and who is more close to his mother is strained with his father reasons are many there is the violence that you know his father afflicts on his mother there are scenes of domestic violence scenes of arguments there is also distance because his father is working class while he is moving to the middle class his values are more middle class than working class so that aspect of the relationship is there and the relationship as that you know physically evolves in the beginning there is some sort of you know playfulness there in the relationship but as paul morrell grows he keeps moving away from his father and even after his mother dies his father sort of you know lives alone and morrell moves to the city you know he is going to explore new frontiers so like I would say that the relationship is more about growing up and moving apart and it signifies a difference when a young child who is born into a working class family grows up in middle class values and with an aspiration of moving away from his class that also reflects in the distance between the son and the father because both now belong to different classes question 5d is the theme of alienation and isolation in lord jim so here alienation and isolation should not just be seen of course the central character lord jim shows these qualities he is alienated with the world he keeps moving from one place to the other just because he has this idea of glory and this idea of how people should see him as you know as a person who has a lot of honor and he feels that he has lost that honor so he is alienated from the world or isolation also because he keeps isolating himself from people so they are there in lord jim as a character but this is a theme which is there throughout the novel this alienation can be seen in the judge who commits suicide a few days after the judgment passing judgment on lord jim it can be seen in the person who loses his consciousness and marlo goes to meet him to get an account of what really happened on board of the ship which gets read and alienation and isolation also when lord jim moves to the partisan and his isolation from the people there is also there so it is there in the narrator's narration who sees this theme as permeating throughout the modern society so i think you can look at it as alienation and isolation as a theme of the modern world which is also reflected in the novel in many aspects of the novel a question number 5e the significance of the different houses in a house for mr biswas so firstly the symbol of the house in mr biswas has is multi-dimensional it is a physical house because a person who moved to a new land as an indentured labor has no identity there they live in you know mud huts and there is no sense of you know that this is where i was born and this is where i have grown up because everything is flat mud is washed away and there is no sense of identity the house gives mr biswas that sense of identity that is why in his entire life he keeps aiming to have a house of his own and you know as from coming from an Indian society it is very relatable because in developing countries owning your own house is such a big deal it gives you that sense of identity and rootedness in life another thing about the house is that the different houses that mr biswas has they show different emotions and different phases of growth for example when he tries to build the house in the sugarcane area he's unable to complete it it sort of shows that mr biswas's character has not developed as much as it has to before he can actually own a house when he gives a toy house to his daughter savi and you know it is smashed by his wife so it sort of shows the conflict that is there in mr biswas who's dependent on his wife's family for everything even the final house that mr biswas gets is not perfect because he's still under heavy loan the walls are crooked there are certain you know problems with the house but even then at the end of it i think there is a sense of satisfaction that finally mr biswas has a sense of identity so these different houses show different aspects of his life and you know the novel ultimately talks about the sense of identity that a house can give a person and also the sense of void which can never be filled however many houses you build so both aspects are there in this answer now we move to question number six a examine the relationship between war and madness as represented in virginia volz mrs dalovey so both madness and war are the central themes of this novel in terms of war we have there are many representations there are people who have maimed they don't have hands or legs they're moving in you know the london's cape there is septimus who is a war veteran and who has returned from war and he has gone mad he's slowly slowly he's losing his senses there are people like mrs dalovey herself who thinks that you know she feels that she's going mad she feels that she's not affected by the war but the world around her has changed to a great extent how and the novel also talks about madness specifically through the character of septimus smith in terms of one madness in the sense that he's losing his touch with reality he imagines things where they are not there madness also in the sense that madness in a good way in a way that madness gives him that space that he can think more clearly than people who think that they are sane septimus when he's mad talks about peace communication saving trees love and he talks about these values and these values seem to be missing in a world which is obsessed with war the society which is sane like you know mr bratshaw or the all the elite people of the government who are in ways preparing for the second world war who are okay with the idea of war so virginia wolf is really asking the question that who is really mad is septimus who appears to be mad but is more you know sane philosophically then these people is he mad or are these people who think that war is okay that the loss of life and you know the lack of love in the society is alright or are these people mad so there is this constant conflict between what madness really constitutes you can also talk about virginia wolf herself the author because she had suffered a lot of mental illnesses and she ultimately committed suicide and you know she has a very beautiful letter that she wrote before she committed suicide to her husband so in a way you know it is coming from very a person who understands how she was also a person like who lost relatives and people in the war so she's a person like she understands the pain of war as well as what madness can feel like so both of these things are really interrelated in the text question number six b how far is it correct to claim that the theme of sands and lovers is the growth of individual beings in a working class environment so i've spoken about this earlier also dh laurence called sands and lovers is colliery novel because he had himself come from colliery background his father was a collier and his individual story was also of a person who moved from a working class background to create his own individual identity as an artist and as a novelist the novel also talks about this you know the growth of the individual the central character of the novel is pearl morel and he despite being from a working class background he receives an education his mother is a petty bourgeois so he has certain middle class values the focus of the novel is not about how the working class on the whole can improve it is not a working class novel into the extent that it is going to talk about you know developing the working class improving their working conditions talking about the health issues that the working class has it refers to those issues very obliquely but what it talks about is that despite circumstances despite the social scenario that surrounds us how can an individual move beyond the circumstances to carve out his own identity in the world what paul morel does is that despite being poor despite having all these constraints he carves his own identity as a painter and he also educates himself and finally he moves to the city the novel ends with the image of paul morel clutching his fist and walking very you know purposefully towards the city so that is a symbol of him finding his own identity of leaving his working class background behind so you can explore this answer on these lines using evidences from the text question number six c is is kanthapura more concerned with the reform in our dominant religion and culture than with political protest against the colonial domination explained from the perspective of colonialism and post colonialism so my understanding of this answer is this that the colonial perspective would see Indian freedom struggle as something which is not clear in its objective do we want religious reform or do we want national you know independence are we really focused in our purpose and it is you know they might also look at the struggle as being you know nonviolence as being a weakness but how I see it from a postcolonial perspective and how I try to understand this text is that it is a wrong you know it is a sort of a limited view of the national struggle and of the scenario which is there in kanthapura to look at it only from one you know from one lens that it is a text of religious reform or it is a text of national independence or the struggle for national independence actually the indian independence struggle always took these two things together we always took social reform religious reform and national independence to be you know going hand in hand because unless we improve our own old society we improve our own social structures we won't really able to be a strong and coherent society even if the people who are ruling over us leave then will we be a society worth you know saving so it was important that is why gandhi ji always focused that women empowerment religious reform you know he was against casteism also and that is how the text also goes it takes both religious reform and national struggle in the same way and it sees both as attaining the same objective so this is how i understood the text you can use textual evidences to substantiate this viewpoint let us now move to question number seven a a house for mr biswas is a building's roman with the difference discuss firstly what is a building's roman a building's roman traditionally was a story of the growth of a character from childhood to a stage where usually in a stage in youth from where the character would you know attain a certain sort of settlement would be settled would be married you know things like that traditionally that was a building's roman so how is house for mr biswas a building's roman with a difference difference is in that yes it starts with mr biswas as a child and it follows his journey as he grows but it does not stop at his youth it follows mr biswas's journey right till his death the other major difference is that while in a traditional building's roman the character would be settled and would get married at the end of the novel would have certain sense of would finish his education what the novel shows that after finishing his education after getting married there is a sense of unsettledness in mr biswas's life he keeps feeling that void throughout his life so in a way what the novel is doing is that it is stretching out the building's roman it is not stopping at the youth it is exploring not just the you know the good side of the youth but it is exploring the sinister sides as well and it is doing it throughout the life of the character another like you know the final point that this building's roman with a distance with a difference makes is that who can have a proper building's roman if it is the novel is actually about the story of a displaced people the indentured labor which went from india to other countries and there they settled in a new society they are trying to create a sense of identity which is lacking in themselves so in a way the novel is saying that they these people cannot have a traditional building's roman because they don't have a traditional sense of rooted identity their entire life is concerned with that sense of identity and that is why the building's roman it does not stop with the youth is the exploration of this psychosis of you know lack of identity of this non-rootedness throughout the life so i think that is what building's roman with a difference means in this context question number seven b says what are the ways in which steven prepares himself for life as an artist how is the process related to joist's view of the role of an artist in society it's pretty straightforward and related to the prop how does steven prepare himself for the life as an artist i think one way in which he does this is by exploring different extremes of life at one point of time when he goes to school he is like a very self-conscious child and then he goes into a very he starts exploring his sexuality with his dreams he goes to prostitutes also in between and then he becomes extremely religious so he goes to the other end and you know he tries to find meaning in faith but it is in this contrast and in the self-exploration that he realizes that that is not the life which will give him happiness it is that epiphany where he sees that girl in the water that he realizes that he wants to become an artist and that is so one part of it is by experiencing these two extremes he prepares himself as an artist and after that as a student steven continuously tries to evolve his own theory of art so there is a section where he talks about claritas and the three are other two as there are three aspects of art according to him so he's trying to understand what his art will be like towards the end steven deadless's idea of an artist and what art is is focused a lot on independence he says that i don't belong to a nation i don't belong to people i have no identity except that which i give myself and that is related to how joy is viewed the artist's responsibility the artist is an objective observer of society an artist who you know does not have any baggage of nationality or of you know belonging to a particular class or of belonging to any religion the artist is being a free bird so when steven deadless moves out you know moves out from college and out there exploring the world so he's experiencing that freedom and that is how he wants his art to be he wants his art to be free so you can talk about that growth of character in that development of an artist the title of the novel itself is ported of an artist as a young man so the novel explores how an artist grows right from when he's a baby right to you know when he realizes his ambition of becoming an artist question number seven c a man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea to what extent could stein's comment on lot lot jim be taken as a final assessment of the character of lot jim here falling into a dream in like my interpretation is dream here i think refers to all the belief systems that we have and lot jim in this particular instance he has a lot of belief systems of how ideally a man should behave the idea of glory that he has of you know being brave and this fear that he has of social ostracization and of disrespect in the society which is why he keeps roaming from one place to another it is in his death that you know when he finally goes and voluntarily gives up his life that he's very proud of himself because he feels that he has reached that ideal but when stein says that a man is born and falls into a dream like a man who drowns in the sea so basically what it is saying is that these ideas of glory of conduct of you know being the bigger man are all false notions because ultimately in the modern scenario life does not conform to these grand designs which were believed in victorian era in victorian era there was a lot of emphasis on morals and proper conduct and bravery but in modern era people realize that you know if it is only superficial it is not really bravery because if you can even look at it in the colonial context that these people everybody knows that basically the author is supposed to be one of the authors who critiques colonialism so what he's also saying is that if you are a colonial person you're going to the other country you're subjugating other people and you think that you're being brave then it is actually an illusion so in a way what you know what stein is also saying is that it is an illusion that colonizers have created for themselves that you know we are being brave by conquering all these places but in fact what we are doing is we are actually serving our own personal interest that is to earn money and to you know sort of become wealthy which is all colonialism was about so yes to lot jim it does apply to a certain extent because of his idea of valor and bravery but also in the larger extent to the colonial enterprise as a whole so let us now move to question number eight a generally the indian characters in a passage of india are less convincingly portrayed than the english characters do you agree give reasons for your answer i agree with this to some extent yes there are very endearing indian characters like azeez or actually mainly azeez but what happens is that this book it is a critique of the colonial enterprise and the way the anglo indians behave in india a behavior which will actually not be condoned if they were behaving like that in their own country but they are you know arrogant and they don't they behave with such hotness when they are in india because they feel that sense of superiority the criticism of that is very good in the novel even the character of azeez is very endearing the character of mr fielding is very well carved out because he has a certain understanding of what is right and wrong and he is really brave in supporting azeez against the other anglo indians in the novel but what i feel is that the indian characters in general have been you know painted with a very broad brush for example like even azeez despite you know being a doctor despite being very competent he's supposed to be a person who is very emotional who cannot get control over his emotions who can be manipulated by other people now this is also one of the stereotypes about indians that you know that indians are too emotional they are not rational enough to understand and they are very you know manipulative and all that even if you look at the character of godbole now godbole is supposed to be a brahmin but the way he's described you know he wears funny clothes he's always you know talking about the other world he's very vague in his answers and all that so it is sort of you know that is also a kind of stereotyping because we never really know about godbole's intentions his personal life you're just told that he's sort of like a mystical man so that doesn't really you know it does not show a well-defined character another would be that pankha wala because pankha wala is a representation of the lower caste and the you know the absolute destitute and the poor of the country and the pankha wala does not get a single line he's just mute he's you know moving the pankha his body is being objectified he's being viewed by the author and you know he's representing the subjugation and the poverty of the country but there is no voice that he is given so to that extent i feel that yes the indian characters are characters are less convincingly portrayed than the english characters question number eight b says raja rao was greatly influenced by what the irish politician daniel o'connell said nothing is politically right which is morally wrong and this was supported by gandhi how far is it correct to read kanthapura in the light of this statement in the previous answer that we discussed we talked about how the indian national struggle and the world of kanthapura the ganjan struggle of kanthapura is about social reform religious reform along with the political reform so here also what raja rao portrays in the novel is that if a society is morally wrong in terms of the caste system being morally wrong the gender disparity the way you know women are not educated child marriage and all these problems are there so long as these moral problems are there in our society it is pointless to fight for political independence so the political struggle has to be along with the moral struggle and to that extent raja rao's novel shows that so you can use various evidences from the text to support this argument question number eight c says mrs dial away has no conventional plot or action it conveys to us only some moments of psychological illumination discussed i agree that the lack of conventional plot because you can introduce it by saying that you know mrs dial away is a stream of consciousness novel so it does not have dialogues it moves from one person's thoughts to to the other person's thought and that is how the entire story is woven the plot is also not conventional to the extent that it does not form a linear narrative from past to present it keeps on going from you know past to present as the minds of people and the memories of people are triggered and yes it does convey moments of psychological illumination whether it is you know in those christlike illuminated talks of septimus when he says that we should not destroy it we should save trees we should there should be more communication and they should be universal love or whether you know there is illumination and mrs dial away herself you know when she sort of looks at herself and there is this acute sense of sadness because this whole image that she has created of herself as you know a social eye too is very good at organizing parties and within herself she is extremely sad so yes there are these moments of psychological illumination but i don't think that it is an incoherent plot it is just a different plot it is not a conventional plot but it is trying to come to terms with a very complex reality in its own very innovative way so i think that apart from giving moments of psychological illumination i think that these moments actually give meaning to the entire novel and sort of give a shape to the plot of the novel so that was my answer to this question and you can also look at this answers in other dimensions as you will analyze the text on your own and one more thing that i would like to add is that the paper too is much more vague and complex but it gives much more room for self-interpretation so you can take a lot of liberty in terms of psychoanalytical analysis exploring multiple dimensions of symbolism which is heavily used in paper too so you can have many interpretations of the same text thank you