Conflicts of Life - Prajakta Kanegaonkar - Assignment Example

Conflicts of Life - Prajakta Kanegaonkar As a reader even if we understand the fictional value of the stories, the truth of the characters, thoughts and life’s irony doesn’t escape us. Voluntarily sacrificing life’s golden years to prove the bet is certainly not an easy decision to take and it is a definitely a fictional situation. It clearly highlights the will and the determination the young guy would have had to carry the sentence to win the bet for two millions. Anton Chekhov has excellently highlighted the dilemma the banker is facing when it comes to paying the guy his much deserved prize money. However the solitary confinement has elevated the status of the young man. He no longer cares for the material development and happiness his life is going to shower upon him. What he has gained in the fifteen years of time is priceless and to honor it he decides to breach the contract. The banker still faces the dilemma whether to feel happy for the money saved or to feel extremely envious for the knowledge and salvation his opponent gained or the despair of subjecting another life to utmost cruel and frivolous bet he placed in his young and reckless days. Chekhov leaves us o find the answers but the story manages to stay with the reader enabling him to struggle to find his or her own answers. The despairing middle class life is evident in Chekhov’s story Lottery Ticket. Merely matching of the serial number of the ticket triggers the dreams and unfulfilled wishes of the clerk and his wife. Although he himself doesn’t give much about the lottery ticket, the sudden possibility of winning an amount whi9ch can buy him his freedom arouses a lot of emotions within the clerk. His wife no exception to the situation thinks herself as the rightful owner of the money. The conflict of the rising emotions, happiness, jealousies and belittling each other reaches its peak when the series number goes wrong. The anticlimax of the story leaves the reader baffled and once again presents the irony of life in various colors. The simplicity of the conflict leaves sole impression on the reader’s mind, that no happiness is pure and unadulterated and it is always shrouded with unhappiness, mistrust and misunderstandings. It also highlights that not all pleasures in life can be bought and sold with money although undeniably money becomes the medium of achieving these. The helplessness of the blind man etches a cruel picture on the reader’s mind. It is simple the conflict of surviving in this world. It requires a great deal of courage and strength for the people who are able bodied to sustain and survive as well, and here we talk about a person who completely depends on others for his survival and livelihood. The conflict here is no with the society but with his own life and existence and merely surrendering to it. The futilities of the dreams which are young and fresh are once again highlighted in the diamond necklace. Looking good and being admired would be every woman’s dream, for the leading character it proves to be life’s worst turned struggle. The fight for her life becomes bearable because of the admiration and the praise she receives on the fateful night. The struggle which turns out to be futile at the end of the story leaves the reader baffled and in dismay, wondering about life’s twists and turns. The pride of a person would never let him surrender to the whims and fancies of life are the essence of the conflict in the last story. The charm of the entire struggle is the lead character’s unwillingness to surrender to life and its harshness. All the stories give an insight to the invariable and necessary struggle in the life of a human being and also inevitability of the conflict without which there is no progress. The Blind Man – Review Prajakta Kanegaonkar How we take our lives casually and for granted all the happiness it gives us! Could it be possibly the message the story wants to convey us? Forget the basic courtesy towards human beings but don’t we have any humanitarian aspect left within us to even treat the less capable people sympathetically? All these questions haunt the reader whenever he or she reads this particular story. The plot of the story is extremely blunt and direct. It attacks not only our senses but also our thinking capabilities. The story is pictorial and demonstrative. The reader actually visualizes the life of the blind man as if it is happening right in front of him. Every stage of his mundane and hapless life provokes the reader further to think about the double standards a society can have towards its inmates. It is not an easy task to survive and do well even when one is able bodied. Being blind has already set a negative mark against the man. Survival becomes an ordeal. There is simply no question of pride and honor. When one has to depend on the mercy of someone for food and shelter the question of pride and honor doesn’t come into picture at all. The pride is swallowed and silence is used like a weapon. After some time the reader senses the quiet surrender of the blind man to eventuality of his life. Sheer acceptance of his situation possible would have made it easier for him. But mere acceptance of the fate is not going to lessen the pain he would go through. The atrocities committed on him by his family and the people around him stand stark against his quiet acceptance of them. People playing practical jokes on him, playing with his food and leaving him cold to die all indicate the level at which the societal concern has dropped. Coming to think of it the story is widely applied even today. With the convenience of turning our backs to the people who are less fortunate and blessed we have come a full circle of atrocities and massacres. Bloodsheds and massacres don’t happen only in wars and battles. At least there the destruction promises reconstruction of the society. Where do we go from the moral destruction? Understandably the peasant society would be having its own problems. The economic strata of the society would compel to take a less sympathetic view of the blind man who is of no practical use. Here the story becomes obscenely one sided and very dark. Usually fictional element always balances the story by having the good and the bad pitted against each other. Even if we give the discount of writer’s creativity to it, one can’t escape the horror of the supposedly good element being so significantly absent from the story. In my opinion this is the element which keeps pulling the reader through the entire stark tale. Because we are used to the balancing act of good and bad we read the story till the end with at least the dim expectation of some soul helping the poor guy. The element of shock comes here when we found that the good element just doesn’t arrive in the story. The death which is described so vividly in few words indicates the writer’s powerful capability of expressions. The entire scene also describes in metaphors that weak can’t survive and are always shredded to pieces by the strong. It is said that the fiction is the mirror of the writer’s own experiences of life and the society he belongs to. When we put the story down we are certainly taken aback by the grim and dark atmosphere in the story along with the pain that stays far longer in the mind and the heart. The Bet- Capital Punishment Prajakta Kanegaonkar For any society across the world it is definitely a task to not only control crimes but also the criminals. Establishment of prisons has proven to be the most painful decision for any society. Unfortunately the establishing of prisons might have separated the criminals from the society but has not stopped the crime, so more and more severe punishments came into existence and practice. Capital punishments are such punishments. Death sentence versus life imprisonment is a very powerful and forceful debate going on world over today. Every moral society has faced this dilemma. In ancient times it would have been necessary to impose harsh punishments as the society was in its developmental stage. It became necessary to set the rules and regulations. To create the framework of the society it became necessary to create laws, to impose them and to indict the people who are not law followers. But slowly and steadily the debate of necessity of imposing such harsh punishments started taking root in the society. Today as we see there is a movement against death sentences. Anton Chekhov’s story turns the harsh lights on this debate powerfully. Although it starts as a practical joke or a very young zeal to win an impossible bet, the story gains a lot of momentum in the reader’s mind. For a casual reader it seems like a simple bet of two millions against fifteen years in solitary confinement of a young fellow. The person who places the bet, the banker is extremely sure that the young man would not last beyond four to five years of time. He is extremely sure of having his money saved. However the young man surprises him by sheer willpower and perseverance. The description of his solitary confinement has been given vividly. In the initial years he has fought to come to terms his confinement. His cries, his anguish, his frustration slowly turns into the quiet acceptance of his confinement. The time which is an enemy is turned into a friend. He reads a lot, he understands and learns music, he entertains himself by the most learned and knowledge way. He turns ascetic and true to the religion of knowledge he undertakes, he renounces the world just as when the world is going to welcome him again. The salvation comes through the realization that the money he will be earning is not worth what he has gained or achieved in all these years. This gives him courage to breach the contract. The story presents a very philosophical view towards life imprisonment. We have seen great leaders of the world who turned their lives into a great learning experience whenever they were confined to solitary confinements and life imprisonments. There are evident examples even today. These leaders have proceeded with their sentences as if the imprisonment is a piece of time cut from the eternity. However not every one is empowered by the thinking base like this. There would be so many prisoners who would wish there life being taken away instead of the death to be endured on everyday basis. The society never takes lenient view of the crimes and the criminals as well. Keeping away criminals has not stopped the crime. So the fundamental question is still unanswered. So death penalties prove equally pointless to life imprisonment. If we are not capable of creating life then what right do we have to take away the life of a human being? The question applies to both the forms of capital punishments. Both kill, one kills in an instant and the kills slowly. And even if both are not capable of stopping or lessening the crime in the society at least both would help to check the crime to an extent. It is very difficult to argue one capital punishment in favor to another or debate the issue. Once we accept the necessity of imposing the punishment, the external form changes. However death penalties have not proven their purpose and give away to life sentences which are a more lenient form. Life sentences also give the scope of infusing any responsibility towards life in the prisoner. It also presents the opportunity for reform as the prisoner is alive and possibly willing to learn and improve. This however comes as an exception to those who are psychological disorder cases or regrettably non improvable cases. There have also been cases where the societal ire has forced the authorities to issue a death penalty to the offender. Coming to think of it, the most powerful argument of creation of life versus deliberate destruction of life still holds true and basis of life sentence over death penalties. Today world over there are reformatory movements gathering force against death penalties. This story written by Anton Chekhov would have been an initial attempt to raise a very sensible argument on the issue. Although written as a pure fiction on the backdrop of a bet, it reflects the futility of material pleasures, wealth and even knowledge. The realization and salvation presented is definitely unmatched, but even then the question of death over life sti8ll remains unanswered. Read More