Night of The Scorpion by Nissim Ezekiel : Poem Short Theme

 Night of The Scorpion

THEME

Night of The Scorpion

‘Night of The Scorpion’ is a beautiful poem by Nissim Ezekiel. Nissim was an Indian poet, actor, playwright, and are a critic. He was awarded the 

Sahitya Akademi 

Award for his poetry

Letter day psalms 

 His famous poems include

• The hill
• The patriot
• The Professor and many more. 

                    The poem “Night of the Scorpion" has a typical Indian background. It reveals the superstitious beliefs of common Indian villagers. The incident described in the poem is a common experience in Indian villages. It describes the reaction of village people when the poet’s mother was stung by a scorpion. The members of an Indian village society are uneducated, ignorant, and superstitious peasants, but still, they think that they have an answer to every question.

                           One rainy night, the poet’s mother was stung by a scorpion. The scorpion had settled under a sack of rice. It stung the poet’s mother and disappeared farmers from nearby places and tried to cure the woman by their superstitious methods. They repeated the name of God one hundred times to decrease the effect of the poison. The peasants started looking for the scorpion. They wanted to kill. They said that with every movement of the scorpion, the poison in the mother’s blood would also move. They also said that the sting of the scorpion would wash away the sins of her previous birth and reduce her suffering in the next birth. They sat in a circle, with the mother in the center where she cried with pain. 

                         The poet’s father was a rationalist. He tried every powder, mixture, herb, and hybrid to relieve his mother’s pain. He put a little kerosene oil on the bitten toe and burned it. The pain ended after about twenty hours. The poet’s mother was like an Indian mother. In her motherly manners, she thanked God that the scorpion had stung her and not her children. 

 In short, the poet wants to create an awareness in the minds of the readers of the ignorance and superstitions that still have their grip on the minds of the masses of India.

Night of the Scorpion

Gagandeep Kaur Chahal