Inter-textuality

 

Gunther Grass is the famous German Nobel Laureate and he is reputed for publishing his award winning Novel: The Tin Drum.

 

The story begins with the protagonist Oscar being confined to an asylum.  Then story goes to a previous narrative and describes a woman tending a field.  There are anecdotal remarks about Oscar’s grandmother.

 

The Tin Drum has a special allegorical symbolism. Does it describe a valiant protest by a dwarf against a Nazi rule?

 

In the Novel Tin Drum, Grass portrays a water front loaded with Quixotic Characters. A wood is seen floating through the canal.

He talks of a War time situation and his mother getting betrothed to German of Blue Blood.

 

The author talks of Oscar’s birth being an easy one.

 

Again the symbolism of the Drum emerges. Oscar’s parents said that when he is three, they will present him a tin drum.

There’s a narrative about Photography being placed in the house. Photography for Roland Barthes has two connotations: studium (image) and punctum (the interpretation). It is interesting to note how brilliantly Grass puts the pen, writing the narrative of photography.

Grass uses magic realism when he says the dwarf Oscar’s voice will shatter glass. Is this a reminder of the shocking tyranny and despotism of the Nazi rule? 

 

Grass launches a narrative where Nazi humiliates a non-Nazi and punching him, he lowers his self esteem by calling him a Pollack.

When Oscar was small, he was invited by the Nazis to their meetings and there he was pampered.

Grass’s narrative about Christianity is rather befuddled. He wanted the idol of Jesus to play on his drum. But ironically nothing of that sort happened.

 

The symbolism of the drum is contradictory. Is it symbolic, of an ordinary being trapped in the dungeons of Nazi Rule? Does Gunter Grass want to escape Nazi rule through symbolism? Is he showing an iota of compassion for the beleaguered Jews. 

 

 

Inter-textuality

 

Kamala Das hails from India and is famous for her collection of Short Stories, poetry and her famed Autobiography My Story.

 

The autobiography starts off with Kamala Das sand her family hybridizing into the customs of British Culture. It is interesting and ironic that she accepted European rulers with bonhomie.

 

She talks of herself and her brother being bullied by whites in school. Is she contradicting herself?

 

Again Kamala talks of Indian Patriotism. Her father asks her to shed of all ornaments and wear Khadi Saris.

 

Is she a confused soul? On the one hand she accepts British rule and on other hand she displays Indian patriotism.

 

Kamala has a wounded childhood. Her parent’s behavior is oxymoronic.  She describes her father as being crude and her mother has being refined and sophisticated.

It is political irony that she admires Hitler and Mussolini whose photos were being displayed in newspapers. They have turned out to be the worst tyrants of History.

 

Kamala Das talks of her childhood days of belonging to family of literary cognoscenti.  From her writings it is very clear she was highly Europeanized.

 

Kamala Das is fond her aunt and at her death she found many poems dedicated to Krishna. 

It’s an interesting fact that while she was in school, a girl named Devaki wrote a love letter for her. Actually the reality is that Kamala did not know of sexuality till marriage.

 

Kamala Das talks of her grand uncle who was an avid reader and a collector of books. She also mentions him of joining the Theosophical movement. Is her narrative a fashionable cosmetic? After deconstruction texts are canopy of being interpreted. Claims to intellectualism can be a sham.

 

Kamala Das recalls her experiences her life in boarding school. This was a time when she got infatuated. She always dreamt of being a princess. Her mind was clouded with thoughts of fetish narcissism. Very early in life she embraced the idea of bourgeoisie capitalism.

It’s interesting to note Kamala’s  transition to adolescence. When she menstruated she thought she was going to die. Her mother guffawed it and gave her sanitary napkins.

 

I admire Kamala Das for having no color of religious prejudice. Many of her father’s staff were Muslims. When the Hindu Muslim riots broke out, she was vociferously against these riots.

 

Kamala in a narrative recounts a young man who visited her, a charming intellectual who had a crush on her and who kissed her on the lips. It was an epiphany of coming to terms with one’s sexuality.

 

Kamala recalls when she was young, she was forced into marriage. Her husband was crude lecherous creature, quite to her disappointment, she being very romantic. Kamala talks of her first night where she was literally raped by her husband.

 

Her husband was a beastly character. There is one instance where he locked the first born in the kitchen as a punishment and he had to stay there for the whole night.

 

There is moment in her life when she almost insane. It is quite clear that she was wounded soul with the heart of poetry.

Kamala talks of many experiences which made her a writer. One is her husband’s beastliness of wanting to plunder her in bed.  This was a too harsh string for her.  Then came the sights and smells of Calcutta. She became thrilled to see Eunuchs dancing in the street. Numerous were sexual escapades.  All of her life she was looking for ideal love. She was in conflict with love and confused about the difference between Platonic and Erotic love. Yes Kamala Das was blatant in violating the shibboleths of Kerala culture.

 

There came an instance in Kamala’s life, after the publishing of her autobiography, My Story, she became estranged from her husband.

 

 

Inter-textuality

 

George Orwell the Nobel Laureate is famous for his novels like ‘Animal Farm’ and 1984. Most of the novels of Orwell are dissolving the sugar and spice of Communist Regimes. His writing has fertilized us with the imagination that a communist idol is a fish gone stale.

 

The protagonist of the Novel is Winston is a bored lethargic character. All his life, his inner consciousness, he exhibits frustration with the Communist regime. The country portrayed in the Novel is a hidden allegory portraying the dead USSR. All the ministries are under the control of the Communist party.

 

Orwell satirizes the entertainment industry. The industry propagandizes State Ideals.  It shows democratic ideals are decadent and defunct. The industry is a thorough brain washing of personal likes and shifts people’s attitudes and consumerism into propagandizm.  

 

The Novel 1984 describes a situation whereby anyone not loyal to the State gets punished to death. There’s no freedom to cast opinions.  Communism is a beast that Stalinizes and Armageddonizes freedom. 

 

The protagonist Winston is portrayed as slave who is trapped in the fangs of communism and yet wanting to break free. Government offices are bureaus of a monster wanting to desecrate life.

 

The slogans of the party: Freedom is Slavery: War is peace: Ignorance is Strength are oxymorons satireizing the autocracy of the Communist junta. All theses slogans point out a psychological narcissism, a mirror stage of Lacan, a gaze of a Private-is-a –Public –business and pigmyfies individual into a   morass of mental poverty. The people of the communist country are regimented automatons.

 

The Communist Party tyrannizes consumerism.  The shops are owned by the government and many a time they are unable to supply things needed by the public.

 

There’s no freedom to think and explore thoughts. Out of two citizens one is a spy and belongs to the secret police. It’s an irony that there’s no family relationship and in a family the wife or the husband can betray you. 

 

The protagonist Winston is nostalgic of Catherine from whom he was separated for 17 years. Winston is a creative intellectual trapped in the gulag of Communism and he expresses his freedom writing journals.

 

The novel describes the purges carried out by Stalin. Stalinization is the killing of innocents for the sake of ideology.

 

The Communist Party uses subversive tactics to demoralize and dethrone the earlier regimes and tries to promote Communism as a God. The wretch of ideology plays with information and seduces individuals into myopia of becoming.

 

 

 

Parable of the Planter

 

Today I was able to do some creative writing. I have read another Parable of Jesus and in it: a planter sows seeds: the enemy comes at night and sows thistles. The workers ask the master: should we eliminate the thistles now? Then the master replies that let them both grow together and during the harvest time: the master will separate the rotten from the hunky dory. It is evident that the Master (Jesus) is talking about his second coming. And when the master comes, the succulent will be separated from the thorns. I admire the tapestry of marvel, a literary device with which Jesus addressed the crowds.

 

 

 

Parable of the Seed

 

I was reading the Gospel of Mathew and I read the Parable of the Seed. The parable of the seed is an idiomatic and metaphoric. I asked God to equip me with its interpretations. I would like to humbly put down some thoughts. Jesus said. There was a planter

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 20.04.2019
ISBN: 978-3-7487-0204-7

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