Thinking Activity:A Dance of the Forest

Hello Readers

I am Daya Vaghani, Student of the Department of English,MKBU.As a part of syllabus we are studying the paper on African Literature.This task is assigned by Yesha Ma’am as a part of thinking activity.In this blog I am going to write about the African play ‘A Dance of the Forests’ by Wole Soyinka .Let's begin with author’s introduction.

Wole Soyinka

Nigerian playwright and political activist Wole Soyinka received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. He was born in 1934 in Abeokuta, near Ibadan, into a Yoruba family and studied at University College in Ibadan, Nigeria, and the University of Leeds, England. Soyinka, who writes in English, is the author of five memoirs, including Aké: the Years of Childhood (1981) and You Must Set Forth at Dawn: A Memoir (2006), the novels The Interpreters (1965) and Season of Anomy (1973), and 19 plays shaped by a diverse range of influences, including avant-garde traditions, politics, and African myth.

Soyinka’s poetry similarly draws on Yoruba myths, his life as an exile and in prison, and politics. His collections of poetry include Idanre and Other Poems (1967), Poems from Prison (1969, republished as A Shuttle in the Crypt in 1972), Ogun Abibiman (1976), Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems (1988), and Selected Poems (2001).

An outspoken opponent of oppression and tyranny worldwide and a critic of the political situation in Nigeria, Soyinka has lived in exile on several occasions. During the Nigerian civil war in the 1960s, he was held as a prisoner in solitary confinement after being charged with conspiring with the Biafrans. In 1997, while in exile, he was tried for, convicted of, and sentenced to death for antimilitary activities, a sentence that was later lifted.

Soyinka has taught at a number of universities worldwide, among them Ife University, Cambridge University, Yale University, and Emory University.

A Dance of the Forests

A Dance of the Forests is one of the most recognized of Wole Soyinka's plays. The play "was presented at the Nigerian Independence celebrations in 1960, it ... denigrated the glorious African past and warned Nigerians and all Africans that their energies henceforth should be spent trying to avoid repeating the mistakes that have already been made." At the time of its release, it was an iconoclastic work that angered many of the elite in Soyinka's native Nigeria. Politicians were particularly incensed at his prescient portrayal of post-colonial Nigerian politics as aimless and corrupt. Despite the deluge of criticism, the play remains an influential work. In it, Soyinka espouses a unique vision for a new Africa, one that is able to forge a new identity free from the influence of European imperialism.

A Dance of the Forests is regarded as Soyinka's theatrical debut and has been considered the most complex and difficult to understand of his plays. In it, Soyinka unveils the rotten aspects of society and demonstrates that the past is no better than the present when it comes to the seamy side of life. He lays bare the fabric of the Nigerian society and warns people as they are on the brink of a new stage in their history: independence.(Wikipedia)

Major themes - A Dance of the Forests

The Past

The play does not follow an exactly linear structure, in spite of the fact that it all takes place in the course of a day. As we learn rather quickly, the narrative concerns the sins of the past, and each mortal character has multiple identities, representing both who they are in the present as well as who they once were in the past. The present is layered onto the past as if to suggest that nothing from our history is ever fully gone, that we descend from patterns and events that precede us and continue to affect us in the present. The plot of the play concerns the ways that human beings must overcome their pasts and learn from them.

Atonement

The play's central theme is atonement. The Dead Man and Dead Woman are brought back to life in order for the four mortals who mistreated them in the past to realise and atone for their wrongdoings. While the mortals are clueless for much of the play, they finally learn that the Dead Man and Dead Woman's visitation is to teach them a lesson, and by the end, they have experienced a form of conversion, realising that they had sinned before.

Corrupted power

Corrupted power is another major theme in the play, particularly as it represented in the characters of Mata Kharibu and Madame Tortoise. As we are taken back to the palace of the king, we see that Madame Tortoise exploits her beauty and her power over men in order to stir up discord. Mata Kharibu is also corrupted by his immense power, as demonstrated by the fact that he is demanding that his soldiers fight against their better judgment, and the fact that he mercilessly punishes free thinking. Wole Soyinka tells a story that reveals to the reader that all power is corruptible, and that just because people are given authority does not mean that they are good or ethical people.

Nature

The play takes place in a forest, and throughout, various elements of the natural world come to life to take part in the reckoning that is taking place with the mortals. The Forest Head is a spirit who presides over the forest, and during the welcoming of the Dead Man and Dead Woman, various spirits of different natural elements are called upon to speak their piece. These include Spirit of the Rivers, Spirit of the Palms, Spirits of the Volcanos, and others. All of these elements of nature are personified through verse, showing us the connection between the human and the natural world.

Birth

One of the unresolved features of the Dead Woman is the fact that she was killed while pregnant with a child. She returns to the world of the living still with a pregnant belly, and during the welcome ritual, the fetus appears as a Half-Child, who is caught between being influenced by the spirit world and remaining with his mother. The Half-Child is a tragic figure, as he was never given the relief of life, and when he is given a chance to speak he says, "I who yet await a mother/Feel this dread/Feel this dread,/I who flee from womb/To branded womb cry it now/I'll be born dead/I'll be born dead." The figure of the child is a tragic one, standing in as the ultimate symbol for the wrongs done to the Dead Man and Dead Woman, and the unresolvedness of their plight.

Ritual

Another major theme, as well as a formal element of the play, is ritual and tradition. Throughout, we see the characters going through traditional motions in order to understand more about their circumstances. These rituals include the ceremony for the self-discovery of the mortals, in which the mortals must relive their crimes, the Dead Man and Dead Woman must be questioned, and the mortals revealing their secret wrongs.

Another ritual that gets performed is the Dance of Welcome, in which the spirits of the forest perform and deliver monologues. Then the Dance of the Half-Child determines with whom the unborn child will go. Often, rituals, dances, and formal representations stand-in for literal events. Indeed, the entire play can be seen as stringing together the different formalized rituals that make up the narrative.

Wounds Trauma 

People sometimes suffer from their traumatic pasts. As all characters who are roaming in the forest have their traumatic experiences. Obaneji knows all these things and he wants that they all can accept their deeds and atonement for it. In the forest Obaneji also asks all about their past and what they have done. Demoke told his story and Rola and Obaneji helped him to move on. The other example is of the dead man & woman who had a terrible end of their life. Their wounds were not filled but they faced a lot of trouble and trauma because they opposed the king.  (From Gradesaver)

But in the end, the dead man & woman didn't get justice and the wish of Aroni remained incomplete. The play is very interesting and complex. But overall the play wants to teach us that we should always learn from the past, don't use power on those who are powerless, and learn to move on from the past events. 

Thank You.

Thinking Activity:The Joys of Motherhood

Hello Friends

I am Daya Vaghani, a Student of the Department of English, MKBU. As a part of the syllabus, we are studying the paper on African Literature. This task is assigned by Yesha Ma’am as a part of the thinking activity. In this blog, I am going to write about the African novel The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta. Let's begin with the author’s introduction.

Buchi Emecheta

Buchi Emecheta is a Nigerian novelist. Her themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence, and freedom through education have won her considerable critical acclaim and honors, including an Order of the British Empire in 2005.

Buchi Emecheta used to say,

 “I work toward the liberation of women but I’m not a feminist I’m just a woman.”

 Buchi Emecheta was born on July 21st, 1944 in Lagos Nigeria. Her father, who was a railway worker, died when Emicheta was eight. Her mother also died, later on, leaving Emecheta an orphan. She lived with different family members while attending Methodist Girls High School on a scholarship that she won. Emecheta was known to be very intelligent, and her desire to obtain an education was always noticeable. Despite her challenging childhood she continued to work hard in school to pursue her dreams. At the age of sixteen, she married Sylvester Onwardi who she was betrothed to at age eleven. One of her dreams was to move to England, and after a bit of convincing, they journeyed to England with their two children in the year 1962.

Emecheta’s living condition in England was entirely different than she was used to in Nigeria. At twenty-two, Emecheta was a mother of five living in a strange land and being abused by her husband. She worked as a librarian and attended London University in 1970 where she studied and earned her degree in Sociology in four years. Soon after she started to work as a social worker. Emecheta found her job to be very rewarding. She loved writing and decided to write her first novel. Filled with pride and excitement, she shared the moment with her husband. Filled with jealousy and rage her husband destroyed her manuscript. Emecheta reported feeling as if she had lost a child, this malicious act was enough to ask for a divorce from her abusive husband.

Emecheta’s first book in The Ditch (1972) focused on the single immigrant mothers in the UK and also did her second novel Second Class Citizen (1974). Her love for writing produced more than 20 novels which are also based on her past experiences, sexual politics, and racial prejudice. Emecheta’s work continued with The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977), The Joys of Motherhood (1979), Nowhere to Play (1980), The Moonlight Bride (1980), The Wrestling Match (1980), Our Own Freedom (1981), Double Yoke (1982), Naira Power (1982), Destination Biafra (1982), The Rape of Shavi (1983), Adah’s Story (1983), Head Above Water (1986), A Kind of Marriage (1986), Family Bargain (1987), Gwendolen (1989) The Family (1989), Kehinde (1994) and The New Tribe (2000).

The Joys of Motherhood 

The Joys of Motherhood is a novel written by Buchi Emecheta. It was first published in London, UK, by Allison & Busby in 1979 and was reprinted in Heinemann's African Writers Series in 2008. The basis of the novel is the "necessity for a woman to be fertile, and above all to give birth to sons". It tells the tragic story of Nnu-Ego, the daughter of Nwokocha Agbadi and Ona, who had a bad fate with childbearing. This novel explores the life of a Nigerian woman, Nnu Ego. Nnu's life centers on her children and through them, she gains the respect of her community. Traditional tribal values and customs begin to shift with increasing colonial presence and influence, pushing Ego to challenge accepted notions of "mother", "wife", and "woman". Through Nnu Ego's journey, Emecheta forces her readers to consider the dilemmas associated with adopting new ideas and practices against the inclination to cleave to tradition. In this novel, Emecheta reveals and celebrates the pleasures derived from fulfilling responsibilities related to family matters in childbearing, mothering, and nurturing activities among women. However, the author additionally highlights how the 'joys of motherhood' also include anxiety, obligation, and pain.

“God, when will you create a woman who will be fulfilled in herself, a full human being, not anybody’s appendage? she prayed desperately.”

― Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood

Motherhood – game of power and control

Many African authors have been dealt with the notion of motherhood. Catherine Obianuju Acholunu has coined the term ‘Mothers’ as an alternative to Western feminism. Buchi Emecheta’s The Joy of Motherhood (1979)discuss motherhood in the Ibo society as a power game of desire and control. Nnu Ego tries to become an ideal mother. But found no life outside the preview of motherhood. (Kapgate)

The Joy of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta is one of the most sophisticated Bildungsroman books produced in colonial Nigeria between the early and mid-twentieth centuries, describing the protagonist's twenty-five-year journey. The protagonist, Nnu Ego, has progressed from a powerful tradition-bound character to a feminist, as the author has highlighted. Her efforts to prove the validity of motherhood are thwarted at every point, regrettably, by a tangle of inconsistencies that she finds herself unable of resolving.

The novel is devoted to all mothers, beginning with "The Mother" in the first chapter and ending with "The Canonized Mother" in the last chapter. It provides a caustic examination of patriarchal, colonial restraints encountered by women like Nnu Ego, whose societal worth is predicated on two factors: first, her ability to produce children, and second, her readiness to meet male-oriented Ibo culture's demand and serviceability. As a passionate author in finding the difficulties encountered by Nigerian women, she stated in a talk  with Adeola James that  

“in Joys of Motherhood…I created a woman who had eight children and died by the wayside”( Adeola )

Traditions played an important part in the development of the concept of motherhood. They assumed that motherhood would deliver a fulfilled and distinguished life to the protagonist. Emecheta uses the technique of mother's introspection in which the protagonist realizes that she has not brought fulfillment to the family. Nnu Ego, who is a doubly colonized mother, describes her sorrows and sacrifices in a statement released shortly after the birth of her twin daughters. She had one of these epiphanic moments when stuck in the web of delivery and a difficult position. The following remark expresses the psychological temperament and sadness of a mother, and it represents the Nigerian women's response to the prevalent problem. (Kapgate)

The Joy of Motherhood, the tale of a mother, Nnu Ego, is written with subtlety, power, and abundant compassion. (New York Times)

Nnu Ego feels empty without motherhood and has fought hard to be a mother. Emecheta wishes to convey the message that having more than five or six children does not guarantee that a mother would be rich in her later years. She looks at the institution of motherhood, the horrible experiences that come with it, and the impact it has on the brains of Nigerian women.

According to Katherine Frank, "The complete futility of motherhood that we find in The Joys of Motherhood is the most heretical and radical aspect of Emecheta's vision of the African Women".

The author has given the novel's final chapter the satirical title of "The Canonized Mother." Throughout her life, Nnu Ego was subjected to patriarchal enslavement and died alone. In the patriarchal and traditionally strong Ibo society, all three moms, Ona, Akadu, and Nnu Ego, have been mistreated. However, Emecheta's Nnu Ego defies the conventional wisdom that having a large family will provide a woman with a lot of ecstasies.

Thank You..

Work Cited

• Adeola, J. “Buchi Emecheta,” In Their Own Voice: African Women Writers Talk. London: Currey, 1990, p. 43.
• Kapgate, Laxmikant. (2020). MOTHER’S INTRICACY IN BUCHI EMECHETA’S THE JOY OF MOTHERHOOD.
• Frank, Katherine. “The Death of the Slave Girl: African Womanhood in the novels of Buchi Emecheta “, World Literature Written in English, 21.2,1984, p.490.

 

Group Task- The Only Story by Julian Barnes

 

🟦Group Task

"Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question."(The Only Story P-3)

We are studying "Contemporary Literature" in M.A. Semester 4. As a part of this a group task was assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad sir to work in a team which allows students to enhance their teamwork skills. As a part of this we have worked on 'The Only Story' 13th  novel of Julian Barnes.This novel is about the self-exploration of the protagonist #Paul_Robert.This is the memory novel with the major theme of love.The whole narration is about the 19 year old Paul and 48 year old Susan MacLeod.

It has become a great Learning experience to develop our teamwork skills, which provides opportunities to learn from each other's mistakes.By reading original novel I learnt so many things that we can't expect from the summary only.The one most interesting thing I found is that don't rely only on the memory. As Barad sir always says that keep questioning everything,keep taking notes, documenting the things is the good habit for us. Beacuse we don't know when we forgot the things.So documenting everything is very necessary .At the end of the novel sir gave very important remark that still we are not able to find the learning outcome from the literature.It should be the life learning outcome and it is the major concern of any literary text.

Click here to know more about this novel(Thinking Acrtivity)

Here is the video recording of our introductory presentation.

Thinking Activity:The Only Story

Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question.

(The Only Story)

Hello friends!

As a part of curriculum we are studying Contemporary Literature.This blog is about The Only Story by Julian Barnes.After completing each and every unit our teacher gave us a task of thinking Activity.This task is assigned by Prof.Dilip Barad sir Many of you may thought that why Critical thinking is important.Well,critical thinking is at the forefront of learning, as it aids a student reflect and understand their points of views. This skill helps a student figure out how to make sense of the world, based on personal observation and understanding.So let's discuss the various points given by sir about this novel.Click here to visit teacher's blog.

Click on the image to visit my  blog on the Group Task.

🟦Brief Introduction of Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes is a one of the greatest contemporary English writers.

Born: 19 January 1946 (age 76) Leicester, England

Pen name: Dan Kavanagh (crime fiction), Edward Pygge

Occupation: Writer

Genre: Novels, short stories, essays, memoirs

Literary movement: Postmodernism

Notable awards:

• Prix Femina 1992 
• Commandeur of L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres 2004 
• Man Booker Prize 2011
• Jerusalem Prize 2021

Spouse: Pat Kavanagh(m. 1979,Died:  2008)

Julian Barnes-Official Website

🟦About The Only Story by Julian Barnes

The Only Story is a novel by Julian Barnes. It is his thirteenth novel and was published on 1 February 2018. The novel is about the life story of Paul Roberts, who we first meet as a 19-year-old Sussex University undergraduate returning to his parent's house in the leafy southern suburbs of London (Sutton, in Surrey, is suggested as a model.) The time is the early sixties, and there are a few references to current events. Paul joins the tennis club, which is one of the few opportunities such places offer for socialising. In a random-draw mixed doubles, he is thrown together with Susan MacLeod, a 48-year-old married woman with two daughters older than Paul. Improbably, Paul and Susan become lovers and she eventually leaves her family to set up house with Paul in South London. Having nothing to do but a little housekeeping, Susan soon descends into alcoholism and dementia. Paul departs and embarks on foreign travels, picking up jobs and women at random.

Paul is a quintessentially alienated character. With no interest in either politics or religion, and no particular ambition, he takes life as it comes. As he narrates his life in this book, he freely admits that memory is unreliable and he may not be telling us the truth.

🟦Memory Novel - Structurally as well as thematically

In this novel, the idea of memory is dealt by Julian Barnes very interestingly.Memory prioritises when we retell the story as the story narrated in this novel The Only Story.It is said that

"History is collective memory; memory is personal history"

"Trauma is memory"

When we look at the history of nation, history of society, history of human beings we may think that what is that and perhaps it is the memory of everybody.And that collective memory becomes history.Then what is memory? Memory is our personal history.It is a personal life that is lived in personal spaces.The life that is narrated or not narrated,told to anybody or not just told to self also or a history is only written for self and we do not share that with anybody else So it's is memory that is personal history which is not perhaps shared with anybody but it is only for us.When We are all alone we may going back to history our past and then we may be taking about that as a collectively.We go back into time and we write history that is what the forefathers the people on this earth in this society that time has lived and have done all this kind of things.

In form of literature we find that when there is one person (Paul Roberts) sitting there in his old age and going back into the past of his personal life and telling us the story of his life.That person will go back into memory that is only way that we can tell the story of the self.We will have to revisit our memory to tell others.So what is memory,how do we look at the memory? When anybody is revisiting the memory and trying to get historical evidence from his life and telling us the life story.Is it reliable or not? Can we say that well this is a true story because histories are normally considered as a true stories.Somebody individually tell a story is it reliable or not?.

We blindly do not rely on history.If there is the connection between history and memory it means that we also do not rely on memory.It may be our own personal memory.Through this novel Julian Barnes wants to prove that we have to be very careful of our memories.

While discussing this point in classroom sir has gave some others concerns to understand this novel.

🟦Film - Memento

This film is philosophically more significant.Memento is a 2000 American mystery thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, and produced by Suzanne and Jennifer Todd. The film's script was based on a pitch by Nolan's brother Jonathan, who wrote the 2001 story "Memento Mori" from the concept. Guy Pearce stars as Leonard Shelby, a man who suffers from anterograde amnesia, resulting in short-term memory loss and the inability to form new memories. He is searching for the people who attacked him and killed his wife, using an intricate system of Polaroid photographs and tattoos to track information he cannot remember. Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano co-star.(from wikipedia)

Memento is kind of film which seems to unreality because it deals with an idea that somebody has a problem with memory.He is suffering from a kind of a mental disease where he is forgetting everything within 15 or 30 minutes.

🟦 Trauma is memory

Dipesh chakravarty in "Memories of Displacement:The Poetry of Prejudice of Dwelling" refers to this not in context of looking at memory narrative or ethical concern or like Memento or Julian Barnes is looking but his concern is more about post colonial about subaltern studies.Sir ga e example of partition literature.

Example : Partition literature is full of trauma,it is all about memory, what went wrong and Nas a part of a memory of what went wrong. Writers were writing stories on that.So that experience is a very traumatic experience.In that way trauma itself is a memory.

Historical narrative and memory narrative goes in opposite way.Historical narrative is public while memory narrative is very personal.Historical narrative speak about outside trauma while memory narrative speaks about internal trauma of individual.

If we talk about this novel then traumatic experience lived by Susam Macleod.

In the novel, we come across the story of Eric and his love affair. So it is the best example of a memory novel. Paul suddenly talks about him. Eric had a relationship with American women and Eric was ready to leave earthly things but at the moment he realised that he was going the wrong way and he saved himself but Paul was not able to do this.

“Then there was the case of Eric. Of all his friends, Eric had truly been a man of good intentions, and therefore had always ascribed good intentions to others. Hence the lack of rebuke after he’d received a kicking at the fair. In his early thirties, working in a local planning department, and with a decent little house in Perivale, Eric had become involved with a younger American woman. Ashley said she loved him; a love which expressed itself as wanting to be with him all the time and never wanting to meet his friends. And Ashley wouldn’t sleep with him, no, not now anyway, but certainly later. Ashley had her faith, you see, and Eric, having been religious himself in his youth, could understand and appreciate that. Ashley wasn’t a member of an established church, because look at all the harm established churches had caused; Eric could see that too. Ashley said that if he loved her, and agreed with her contempt for worldly possessions, then he would surely join her in such beliefs. And so Eric, temporarily cut off from his friends, put his little house up for sale, planning to give the proceeds to some cockamamie sect in Baltimore, after which the couple would move there and be married by some cockamamie religious theorist, or shaman, or sham, whereupon Eric, in exchange for his Perivale house, would be granted squatter’s rights in perpetuity in his new wife’s body. Fortunately, almost at the last minute, some survival instinct asserted itself, and he had cancelled his instructions to the estate

agent, whereupon Ashley vanished from his life for ever.”............

Another reference is that when Eric was beaten that time Paul was run away and afterward he said that he went to help the police, so all such things describe somehow that Pual is a coward, fails and loses character. He made so many wrong decisions throughout his life and his remorse is never ever accepted. 

🟦'The only Story’ as a Postmodern Novel. 

Julian Barnes belongs to the generation of British postmodernist writers, and postmodernism is not exclusively a literary phenomenon.Barnes’s The Only Story (2018) is quite different from his previous fictional works as it depicts man's absurdity and experience of life's awful powers, like anguish, estrangement, breakup, alienation, and purposelessness skirting either on agnosticism or sustenance.Barnes, in The Only Story (2018) investigates the person's awareness of being isolated from the entire mechanical assemblage of social rituals and ceremonies. He opens the text by uttering the following words:( Nawaz, 2021)

Most of us have only one story to tell. I don’t mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless  stories. But there’s only one that matters, only one finally worth telling, this is mine (Barnes,2018, p. 13).

Barnes believes that fatigue, which includes a state of heightened hesitance, holds the key to opportunity.repeatedly. As Barnes speaks through Paul:

 The time, the place, the social milieu? I don't know how significant they are in anecdotes about affection. Maybe in the days of yore, in the works of art, where there are fights among affection and obligation, love and religion, love and family, love and the state (Barnes, 2018, p. 13).

🟦Theme of Love (Passion + Suffering) 

One of the reviewer of this novel Ellen Prentiss Campbell observe that

 "Remember,as you read this small book , generally and specifically about love, remember that suffering is,after all, the Latin root for passion".

This is similar to what Amitav Ghosh is doing in etymological study in Gun While discussing this theme we referred to the root of the word passion.

The Etymology of Passion:

The word ‘passion’ is one of those words where the modern application appears disconnected from the original meaning. The word itself comes from the Latin root word, patior, which means to suffer. It’s first use in English appeared around 1175 AD. Oddly enough the word is more frequently used in writing than in speech.Many of the modern applications of ‘passion’ no longer convey the idea of suffering at all. It’s present use is one describing an intense desire, which is often sexual in nature. (Murrah, “The Etymology of Passion.”)

So we can say that love is the passion but it cannot be isolated without suffering.This is how philosophically Barnes wants to explore the idea of love.In the Only Story the passion turn into suffering.The story of youth of 19 years Paul's passionate attraction towards Susan MacLeod 48 years old married woman of two daughters.This is nothing but a story of passion turning into suffering.

"Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question" (Barnes, 2018, p. 3)

But then we find counter argument by the speaker…

"You may point out – correctly – that it isn’t a real question. Because we don’t have the choice. If we had the choice, then there would be a question. But we don’t, so there isn’t. Who can control how much they love? If you can control it, then it isn’t love. I don’t know what you call it instead, but it isn’t love."

Paul is giving his own defence that it was his  mistake to fall in love with a middle aged woman.But can we think of all these things when we are in love?well we can't because if we think then we are not in love.That is how he was carried towards suffering, drifted like a wooden log.

“Most of what I’d read, or been taught, about love,didn’t seem to apply, from playground rumour to high-minded literary speculation. ‘Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart/’Tis woman’s whole existence.’ How wrong – how gender-biassed, as we might now say– was that?

At the early stage of his life Paul thought that love is blissful.But as the end of the novel he himself find it full of pain suffering.

Quotes related to the theme of love

“First love fixes a life for ever: this much I have discovered over the years. It may not outrank subsequent loves, but they will always be affected by its existence.”(P-71)

“Perhaps love could never be captured in a definition; it could only ever be captured in a story.”(P-206)

“In love, everything is both true and false; it's the one subject on which it's impossible to say anything absurd.”(P-169)

“Love was by its very nature disruptive, cataclysmic; and if it was not, then it was not love.”

"And who does not want their love authenticated?”

(P-65)

🟦Critique of Crosswords

In this Novel two people are playing crosswords, one is mr. Gordon Macleaod and another is Joan.In ‘The Only Story’ Julian Barnes has captures the nuances of social life lived in the 20th century England. The crosswords was something so significant aspect of this traditional British activity that several characters of this novel are found meaningfully engaged with it. 

It is said that Crossword puzzles have several benefits like:

• They can strengthen social bonds. Completing a crossword puzzle on your own is impressive, but you should never feel bad if you need to ask for help. ...
• They improve your vocabulary. ...
• They increase your knowledge base. ...
• They can relieve stress. ...
• They boost your mood.

However, the postmodernist novelist Julian Barnes is not interested in this traditional meaning involved in crosswords.

See, how Paul Roberts, the narrator of the story, explains the hidden aspects of this British pass-time activity:

“Everyone in the Village, every grown-up – or rather, every middle-aged person – seemed to do crosswords: my parents, their friends, Joan, Gordon Macleod. Everyone apart from Susan. They did either The Times or the Telegraph; though Joan had those books of hers to fall back on while waiting for the next newspaper.

I regarded this traditional British activity with some snootiness.

I was keen in those days to find hidden motives – preferably involving hypocrisy – behind the obvious ones.

Joan’s habit of ‘cheating at crossword':

Paul Roberts has observed during visits to her home that she cheats while doing crossword puzzles. He is quite surprised at this habit of hers. Once he directly asks it to her. Here is her reply:

“‘Why do you cheat at crosswords?’ 

Joan laughed loudly. 

‘You cheeky bugger. I suppose Susan told you. Well, it’s a fair question, and one I can answer.’ She took another pull of her gin. ‘You see – I hope you never get there yourself – but some of us get to the point in life where we realize that nothing matters. Nothing fucking matters. And one of the few side-benefits of that is you know you’re not going to go to hell for filling in the wrong answers in the crossword. Because you’ve been to hell and back already and you know all too well what it’s like.’ 

‘But the answers are in the back of the book.’ 

‘Ah, but you see, to me that would be cheating.’”

Apart from Joan, it is Gordon Macleod who is found doing crosswords in the novel. On two occasions, he is found solving the crosswords with Paul Roberts. The answers to the puzzle are ‘Taunton’ – a name of a town – meaning continue mocking at – and - ‘TREFOIL,   REF – arbiter – in the middle of TOIL – work.’ If we read these words in context of the relations between Paul and Gordon we may find it symbolically significant. Taunton – making mockery of something/somebody and Trefoil – a popular warning symbol signifies triangular relation among Paul – Susan – Gordon. Both these words in the crossword puzzle seems to signify a taunt on Paul’s middling in between Susan and Gondon’s not-so-happy married life.  

To conclude, we can say that the reference to ‘Crossword’ is spread across the novel. It is referred critically as a British time-pass activity. It also makes the snootiest critique of this habit. Apart from these socio-cultural references, the crossword puzzle has symbolic significance to study the character of Joan as a counterfoil to Susan. It is also useful to study the strained triangular relationship between Paul Roberts, Susan and Gordon Macleod.(from material)

👉While studying Julian Barnes's  The Only Story sir has discussed about the wordle game.If you are on Twitter you would have definitely seen people sharing posts from Wordle, a set with its unique yellow, green, and grey boxes. These posts are accompanied by two numbers. The first indicates the game number and the second is the number of attempts out of six that the player needed to win.

Wordle has become so popular on Twitter that some of the microblogging platform’s users have started muting the word. For those who haven’t figured it out by now, Wordle is a daily word game that can be played online. It’s like a password without clues and can be played only once a day. Every day there is a new word to guess and players get six chances to go at it.

🟦Paul - the unreliable narrator

“You understand, I hope, that I’m telling you everything as I remember it? I never kept a diary, and most of the participants in my story – my story! my life! – are either dead or far dispersed. So I’m not necessarily putting it down in the order that it happened. I think there’s a different authenticity to memory, and not an inferior one. Memory sorts and sifts according to the demands made on it by the rememberer. “

Paul is the unreliable narrator of this novel.Beacuse whatever he is telling to readers is based on his personal memory.hHe says that he never kept a diary.So how can we rely on one's own memory.It is very problematic.Paul is not sure about his life experiences. He himself is counter arguing the things in this novel.

🟦Susan - madwoman in the attic

The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination is a 1979 book by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, in which they examine Victorian literature from a feminist perspective. Gilbert and Gubar draw their title from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, in which Rochester's wife ( Bertha Mason) is kept secretly locked in an attic apartment by her husband. In their book, Gilbert and Gubar discuss the angel/monster trope in novels written by women, covering the works of Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, George Eliot, Emily Dickinson, and the Brontës. They claim that 19th-century female writers carried a lot of rage and frustration about the misogynistic world they lived in and the predominantly male literary tradition they tried to enter, and that this gender-specific frustration influenced these writers’ creative output. According to Gilbert and Gubar, their rage was often shown through the figure of the mad woman. They conclude by urging female writers to break out of this patriarchal dichotomy and not to let themselves be limited by its impositions.

The title of the book is derived from Jane Eyre‘s Bertha Mason, who is locked away by her husband Mr Rochester in the attic of Thornfield Hall. She is an ominous character, full of uncontrollable passion, violence, sensuality, and madness, almost bestial in her behaviour.

We can compare the character of Bertha and Susan Macleod. Bertha was suffered by his husband and here Susan is suffering from some kind of this thing. She becomes an alcoholic. She speaks lies to Paul. Somewhere she is stuck with responsibility. She was beaten by his own husband. She had extramarital affair with Paul, she somewhere wants love, some kind of warmness but she was constantly become a victim of hatred, sexual pleasure and was beaten so many times.  Susan also become a victim of child abuse when she went to his uncle Hemph’s house. When finally she went with Paul there she feel lonely and that time she become alcoholic like anything. In the end, Paul also abandons her and her daughter Clara taking care of her.  Susan’s character is fascinating because there is another character who counterpointed Susan's character. 

🟦Joan - one who understood existential enigma

Through Paul's narrative we come to know about the character of Joan.Susan is telling story to Paul.Joan is sister of Gerald.After death of Gerald Joan suffered a lot becau in her family Gerald was very near to Joan that also has does kind of damage to Joan.Joan can save herself from the damage.We may question that was it there nothing wrong happened with Joan as Susan is suffering from her life.Joan was living with yeppers/dog first and the she has another dog called Sibyl.Sybil is a mythical character (an old lady in a prison or jar).In the novel we find the description of Joan's character:

She was a large woman in a pastel-blue trouser suit; she had tight curls, brown lipstick, and was approximately powdered. She led us into the sitting room and collapsed into an armchair with a footstool in front of it. Joan was probably about five years older than Susan, but struck me as a generation ahead. On one arm of her chair was a face-down book of crosswords, on the other a brass ashtray held in place by weights concealed in a leather strap. The ashtray looked precariously full to me. No sooner had Joan sat down than she was up again.

Joan is the tennis player and partner with Paul.Joan has many affairs with the rich man.When Gerald was died Joan was devastated towards life.And when one devastated from life they don't go for human beings but rather find the pet animals.Joann Was doing the same in this novel.Sibyl as her ultimate company.

‘Why do you cheat at crosswords?’ Joan laughed loudly. ‘You cheeky bugger. I suppose Susan told you. Well, it’s a fair question, and one I can answer.’ She took another pull of her gin. ‘You see – I hope you never get there yourself – but some of us get to the point in life where we realize that nothing matters. Nothing fucking matters. And one of the few side-benefits of that is you know you’re not going to go to hell for filling in the wrong answers in the crossword. Because you’ve been to hell and back already and you know all too well what it’s like.’ 

🟦Whom do you think is responsible for the tragedy in the story? Explain with reasons.

This tragedy happed because of Paul. He has the nature to escape from an uncomfortable and tough situation. The ship of his relationship was broken because of his escape, his childisness. When his relationship was broken than he started to blame others.Beacuse when the love story begins at that time Paul is of 19 years old while Susan is 48 years old. here Paul stated blaming Gordon for domestic violence so here Paul blaming that if Gordon had not acted badly with Susan this tragedy might not happen.

🟦References

• Barnes, Julian. The Only Story. Penguin Random House UK. 2018. Book. 24 January 2022. 
• Gilbert, Sandra M. The Madwoman in the Attic : the Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979.
• http://newenglishliterature.blogspot.com/2012/02/julian-barnes.html
• Julian Barnes: Official Website, http://julianbarnes.com/
• Nawaz, Arshad, et al. “Postmodern Absurdist Critique of Julian Barnes’s The Only Story.” Global Language Review, 2021.

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