Lit.Guruji

                         Tragedy   Tragedy deals with the darker side of life. Its aim is to inspire awe and pity. A tragic ends with death or unhappy ending. Greek tragedy deals with the fate characters of high birth or King or Princes. Eg.King Lear, Othello. The falling of a king or the ruin of a great family was more impressive for spectators.  In ancient Greece the tragic hero wore high - heeled boots called buskin to make him tall and majestic. The fall of a king or ruin of a great family is more impressive for the spectators. In later period tragedies dealt with low life Eg. Hardy's novel D'ubervilles.  The atmosphere of tragedy is sombre and serious. Tragedy according to Aristotle "purges the emotions through pity and terror". Shakespeare's tragedy begins happily and ends unhappily. Tragedy aims at giving pleasure. It purifies mind, feelings. For Greek the purpose of tragedy was to evoke Catharsis.  Tragedy can be classified into two ways with r

CHANGING THEIR SKIES Stories from Africa The Rubbish Dump STEVE CHIMOMBO A storyfrom Malawi, retold by Jennifer Bassett Rubbish is a problem in the rich world. There is too much of it, and people don't know what to do with it. In places like Africa there is less rubbish, because people have less to throw away. An airport rubbish dump is a strange place, a meeting point for rubbish that has travelled a long way. It is aiso a meeting point for Joey and Mazambezi.. . Joey sat on the ground, playing with a small toy car. The car was made out of bits and pieces - lots of old wire, pieces of cardboard, sticks, and the tops of baby-food cans for wheels. Joey was working hard, his hands busily pulling and pushing pieces of wire which were not in the right places. After a mment, he put the car down with a pleased little grunt, and began to sing: The white man is wise He made the aeroplane It's nothing else But determination. His high voice filled the air for a few minutes. T

THE MADMAN By Chinua Achebe (First Published in the The Insider (Nwankwo-Ifejika), Enugu, 1971 He was drawn to markets and straight roads. Not any tiny neighbourhood market where a handful of garrulous women might gather at sunset to gossip and buy Ogili for the evening's soup, but a huge, engulfing bazaar beckoning people familiar and strange from far and near. And not any dusty, old footpath beginning in this village, and ending in that stream, but broad, black, mysterious highways without beginning or end. After much wandering he had discovered two such markets linked together by such a highway; and so ended his wandering. One market was Afo, the other Eke. The two days between them suited him very well: before setting out for Eke he had ample time to wind up his business properly at Afo. He passed the night there putting right again his hut after a day of defilement by two fat-bottomed market women who said it was their market-stall. At first he had put up a

ON BEING TIDY  Text   A ny careful observer of my habits would know that I am on the eve of an adventure—a holiday, or a bankruptcy, or a fire, or a voluntary liquidation (whatever that may be), or an elopement, or a duel, or a conspiracy, or—in short, of something out of the normal, something romantic or dangerous, pleasurable or painful, interrupting the calm current of my affairs. Being the end of July, he would probably say: That fellow is on the brink of the holiday fever. He has all the symptoms of the epidemic. Observe his negligent, abstracted manner. Notice his slackness about business—how he just comes and looks in and goes out as though he were a visitor paying a call, or a person who had been left a fortune and didn't care twopence what happened. Observe his clothes, how they are burgeoning into unaccustomed gaiety, even levity. Is not his hat set on at just a shade of a sporting angle? Does not his stick twirl with a hint of irresponsible emotions? Is t

       Sir Roger De Coverley's Sunday Sir Roger De Coverley's Sunday is an essay from The Spectator written by Joseph Addison. This essay explores Sir Roger's participation and strict discipline maintained by him on Sundays to keep the church morally good and religious. Sir Roger is a fictional  character created by Addison. He is a good church man and has beautified his church with   several quotations from the holy Bible . He gave the church goers a hassock and a common prayer book. He employed an itinerant.  Sir Roger was the master of the church. He maintained strict discipline and good decorum in the church. He did not allow anyone to sleep during the sermon. He waked the dozing people.  Sir Roger had an eccentric nature. During the prayer  Sir Roger also joined the crowd to sing Psalms. But Roger did not sing along with the crowd.  He said ‘Amen’ three or four times. When the crowd was kneeling for prayer Sir Roger stood up to count the number of people p

                   Bookshop Memories                                               -George Orwell Bookshop Memories is written by George Orwell in the year 1936. In this essay he shares his experience working as an assistant in a second-hand bookshop.  Orwell begins the essay by breaking down the fantasy of second-hand bookstore as a "paradise where charming old gentlemen browse eternally."  He reveals the truth concealed behind a second-hand bookshop.  Orwell describes the nature of bookshop customers - first edition snobs, oriental students, vague minded women and "the kind of people who would be a nuisance anywhere but have special opportunities in a bookshop". Orwell talks about two types of "pest" who "haunt" such bookshops.  I) Decayed Person - Attempt to sell worthless books . II) Paranoiacs - Orders large number of books but has no intention to purchase it.  The shop had various sidelines including second - hand typewriters,

Satire Satire is unpolished verse. The main aim of satire is to ridicule folly or vice. It provokes laughter and keeps the reader in good humour. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travel and Pope’s Rape of the Lock are satires. According to Dryden the true end of satire is the “amendment of vices by correction”. Some of the famous satires in English poetry are Dryden’s – Mac Flecknoe Butler’s – Hudibras Pope’s – Dunciad In Mac Flecknoe, Dryden attacks Shadwell, a former friend turned enemy. Essentials of a Good Satire Satire is an attack on social evil or folly or a person or a group of persons. It is intended to mock at or ridicule not to abuse. It hates sin and not the sinner. Pope’s satires are “waspish, venomous, malignant”. Satire should be forceful and outspoken. Subjects of the satire Each ages had its vices and follies to ridicule. The satire mirrors out the contemporary follies and foibles. For eg. During 14 th century Chaucer and Langland attacked corru