The God of

Small Things

1. dissolute-having loose morals or poor restraint.

2.  vacuously-lacking intelligence.

3.  viable-possible or real.

4.  sari-the garment or clothing traditionally worn by Hindu women.

 5.  illegitimate-born of parents who are not married to each other.

6.  estivation-to spend the hot dry season in inactivity or dormancy.

 7.  fiefdom-a domain ruled by a feudal lord.

8.  cauterized-to burn, sometimes for healing purposes.

 9.  temerity-careless boldness.

10.  edema-swelling due to fluid build up

 11.  raucous-loud or disorderly.

12.  persnickety-snobbish or fussy

 13.  coup d'etat-revolution or rebellion

14.  repartee-witty and quick conversation.

15.  reconstituted-to return to the liquid state by adding water.

Ayemenem or Aymanam is now part of Kottayam in Kerala state in southwest India.

India’s climate is dominated by monsoons. Monsoons are strong, often violent winds that change directions with the season. Monsoon winds blow from cold to warm regions because cold air takes up more space than warm air. Monsoons blow from the land toward the sea in winter, and from the sea toward land in the summer.

India’s winters are hot and dry. The monsoon winds blow from the northeast and carry little moisture. The temperature is high because the Himalayas form a barrier that prevents cold air from passing onto the subcontinent. Additionally, most of India lies between the Tropic of Cancer and the equator, so the sun’s rays shine directly on the land. The temperature can reach as high as 110^oF during the Indian winter.

The summer monsoons roar onto the subcontinent from the southwest. The winds carry moisture from the Indian Ocean and bring heavy rains from June to September. The torrential rainstorms often cause violent landslides. Entire villages have been swept away during monsoon rains. Despite the potential for destruction, the summer monsoons are welcomed in India. Farmers depend on the rains to irrigate their land. Additionally, a great deal of India’s electricity is generated by water power provided by the monsoon rains.

Pakistan is much drier than India. The summer monsoon winds in India bring moisture from the Indian Ocean; Pakistan is north of the ocean and receives much less rain. The Thar Desert is on the border between India and Pakistan. It covers more than 77,000 square miles, about the size of Nebraska.

I heard a fly buzz when I died;
      The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
      Between the heaves of storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
      And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
      Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away
      What portion of me I
Could make assignable,-and then
      There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
      Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
      I could not see to see.

Answer these questions in complete sentences on your own paper.

1. Who is narrating the poem?

2. What does the fly symbolize?

3. What mood is created in the first stanza?  What words help evoke this feeling?

4.  Describe the mourners in the poem?

5.  What is the "last onset"?

"I Heard a Fly Buzz"

The death in this poem is painless, yet the vision of death it presents is horrifying, even gruesome. The appearance of an ordinary, insignificant fly at the climax of a life at first merely startles and disconcerts us. But by the end of the poem, the fly has acquired dreadful meaning. Clearly, the central image is the fly. It makes a literal appearance in three of the four stanzas and is what the speaker experiences in dying.

The room is silent except for the fly. The poem describes a lull between "heaves," suggesting that upheaval preceded this moment and that more upheaval will follow. It is a moment of expectation, of waiting. There is "stillness in the air," and the watchers of her dying are silent. And still the only sound is the fly's buzzing. The speaker's tone is calm, even flat; her narrative is concise and factual.

The people witnessing the death have exhausted their grief (their eyes are "wrung dry" of tears). Her breathing indicates that "that last onset" or death is about to happen. "Last onset" is an oxymoron; "onset" means a beginning, and "last" means an end. For Christians, death is the beginning of eternal life. Death brings revelation, when God or the nature of eternity becomes known. This is why "the king / Be witnessed in his power." The king may be God, Christ, or death; think about which reading you prefer and why.

She is ready to die; she has cut her attachments to this world (given away "my keepsakes") and anticipates death and its revelation. Are the witnesses also waiting for a revelation through her death? Ironically the fly, not the hoped-for king of might and glory, appears. The crux of this poem lies in the way you interpret this discrepancy. Since the king is expected and the fly appears, are they to be associated? If the fly indicates the meaning of death, what is that meaning?

Does the fly suggest any realities of death--smell, decay? Flies do, after all, feed on carrion (dead flesh). Does this association suggest anything about the dying woman's vision of death? or the observers' vision? Is she-- are they--seeing the future as physical decay only? Does the fly's fulfilling their expectations indicate that death has no spiritual significance, that there is no eternity or immortality for us? There are other interpretations of the fly. The fly may stand for Beelzebub, who is also known as lord of the flies. Sometimes Beelzebub is used as another name for Satan; sometimes it refers to any devil; in Milton's Paradise Lost, Beelzebub is Satan's chief lieutenant in hell. If the King whom the observers and/or the speaker is waiting for turns out to be the devil, is there still irony? How is the meaning of the poem affected by this reading? For example, does the poem become more cheerful? What would Dickinson be saying about eternity? Can the poem support more than one of these interpretations of the fly?

What is the effect of the fly being the only sign of life ("buzz") at the end of the poem? To extend this question, is it significant that the only sign of vitality and aliveness in the entire poem is the fly?

For literal-minded readers, a dead narrator speaking about her death presents a problem, perhaps an unsurmountable problem. How can a dead woman be speaking? Less literal readers may face appalling possibilities. If the dead woman can still speak, does this mean that dying is perpetual and continuous? Or is immortality a state of consciousness in an eternal present?

"I heard a fly buzz when I died" is one of Emily Dickinson's finest opening lines. It effectively juxtaposes the trivial and the momentous; the movement from one to the other is so swift and so understated and the meaning so significant that the effect is like a blow to an emotional solar plexus (solar plexus: pit of the stomach). Some readers find it misleading because the first clause ("I heard a fly buzz") does not prepare for the second clause ("when I died"). Is the dying woman or are the witnesses misled about death? does the line parallel their experience and so the meaning of the poem?

from http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/fly.html

from Dictionary.com

Brahmin:

 Also, Brahmin. a member of the highest, or priestly, class among the Hindus.Also, the impersonal supreme being, the primal source and ultimate goal of all beings, with which Atman, when enlightened, knows itself to be identical.

P--Politeness

O--Obedience

L--Loyalty

I--Intelligence

C--Courtesy

E--Efficiency

Philosophical system, developed by the 19th-century German social theorists Marx and Engels, also known as dialectical materialism, under which matter gives rise to mind (materialism) and all is subject to change (from dialectic; see Hegel). As applied to history, it supposes that the succession of feudalism, capitalism, socialism, and finally the classless society is inevitable. The stubborn resistance of any existing system to change necessitates its complete overthrow in the class struggle – in the case of capitalism, by the proletariat – rather than gradual modification.

Social and political institutions progressively change their nature as economic developments transform material conditions.

The orthodox belief is that each successive form is ‘higher’ than the last; perfect socialism is seen as the ultimate rational system, and it is alleged that the state would then wither away. Marxism has proved one of the most powerful and debated theories in modern history, inspiring both dedicated exponents (Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao) and bitter opponents. It is the basis of communism.

from Encyclopedia Britannica

The Communist Party of India was founded in the 1920s to create an alternative mass movement to the existing Congress anti-imperialist movement. The communist movement grew out of economic causes and was rooted against the propertied classes whether British or Indian. The "revolt" was not against the colonial government and the ruling Congress Party as much as it was against the capitalist system. As far as communist parties world-wide were concerned the Communist Party of India, the CPI, was too conservative and ineffective.

Split of the CPI and Formation of the CPI(M)

Due to its rather passive manner, in 1964 the CPI split, thereby forming a second faction known as the CPI(M)-the Communist Party of India (Marxists). The CPI(M) called for a large scale revolt of workers. These people, mostly members of the lower castes and agricultural workers, were negatively affected by the elites trying to gain national power through capitalism by increasing India's industrial strength. The other group hurt by capitalism were the landlords and peasants with the breakdown of feudal society.

Problems of Nationalism

After gaining independence from Britain in 1947, the concept of the nation was hotly debated. In general, there were two camps of thought. One group wanted progress and democracy while the other group held cultural and religious issues most important. The main problem India had to overcome in their quest to define Indian nationalist thought focused on the need to analyze and come to terms with the presence and domination of a foreign power in addition to the need to formulate a positive view of India while remembering its roots. This proved to be very difficult and was ultimately one of the factors leading to the failure of the communist movement.

Problems and Failure of the Communist Movement

The main problem for the communist movement was that no one encouraged the joining of the peasant castes, the landowners, and the middle class proletariat into one large revolutionary group. No real national spirit existed amongst them. The main concern of the communist movement was of a socio-economic nature for each individual group of people--not for the good of the working man in general. Many supporters of the movement knew nothing about Marx and Engels; they were simply using the communist movement to show their economic frustration. This failure to unite and create a new national identity is what led to the failure of the communist movement. The Sixth Congress of the Communist International said in its thesis on the Revolutionary Movement in Colonies or Semi-Colonies that "[t]he single biggest weakness...is the deplorable state of the political level of the proletariat, its class consciousness, its organization, and its unity with the other toiling masses and particularly the peasantry."

How Violence Attributed to Failure of Movement It is important to analyze the violent struggle of the communist movement from its very beginnings in addition to the caste aspects discussed above which took place during the 1960s. The colonial state was prepared to crush any violent opposition to its power. Most importantly, the perspective of a violent overthrow of colonial rule presupposed a society confronted with undisguised brutality and oppression. Ever since limited constitutionalism was introduced within the colonial framework, social tensions were closely watched and kept under control to some extent--whether by aggravating the opposition by patronizing one section, as was the case concerning Muslim communalists, or by manipulating legislation as in the case of class conflict amongst workers and capitalists, or tenants and landowners (Joshi and Josh, 20). Hence, there were plenty of causes for mass movement against the government. The main priority of the communist mass movements should have been unity and getting the issues into the mainstream instead of simply resorting to violence. Gandhi's method, for example, was to slowly pick apart at the government's "liberality" and tackle the issues one at a time. This proved to be effective because the colonial state found it more frustrating to battle a forceful yet peaceful movement. Hence, this movement managed to damage the government more effectively than the violent and disorganized methods of the CPI.

David Frossard describes in great detail what makes Kerala so amazing from her history, to politics, to societal living. Much of the following information was obtained from his site referenced in bibliography section. He calls Kerala, a thriving capitalist trade center as well as one of the poorest areas of India, a "bold social experiment" because it is the first ever democratically elected Marxist government. Kerala occupies only 1.2% of India's land area, yet it has 3.4% of India's population. Like any socialist system, Kerala spends what little resources it has on services such as health care, food, and basic education--equal for both men and women. Kerala is one of only a few anti-caste systems in India. Perhaps it is because there is a mixture of the Islamic and Christian religions. Both religions would tempt a lower caste Hindu to convert in order to avoid the stigma associated with the lower castes. This lack of strict caste structure could also result from the influence of the Communist Party of India which sought to abolish the caste system. The CPI was unsuccessful in uniting the castes in most of India, hence the failure of the movement, but it is a possibility in this situation. As mentioned above, Kerala is involved in active trade in a capitalist system. This is precisely what the communist movement was against when it can into being in India. However, Kerala is also the home of the first democratically elected Marxist government modeled on Chinese and Soviet influences rather than the "social justice" ideas of Gandhi. This system is what allows for the health care system, reliable food supply, and educational system mentioned above thereby maintaining a comfortable standard of living in Kerala amidst much squalor and turmoil which exists throughout India.