Research Methodology

 

What Is Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is passing off someone else's work as your own.

What does plagiarism mean in an academic context? It can mean turning in a paper that someone else wrote or copying ideas and phrases without crediting the source. Plagiarism can also mean falsifying citations or even copying your own work and passing it off as new.

So why is plagiarism bad? First, it's unethical to take credit for someone else's work. Plagiarism is essentially a form of theft.

Second, plagiarism violates academic honesty policies. Colleges teach students how to follow the best practices when it comes to sharing information and crediting creators. Plagiarism breaks those rules.

Finally, plagiarism devalues college degrees. If employers believe a large number of students cheated to graduate, that hurts everyone.

Is plagiarism illegal, though? While academic plagiarism doesn't violate the law, it does break schools' academic honesty codes. As a result, plagiarism can mean serious consequences for students, including academic probation and even expulsion.

What Are Some Examples of Plagiarism?

There are many types of plagiarism that go beyond paying someone to write a paper or turning in an essay you found online. Understanding the following examples can help students avoid accidental plagiarism.

Complete Plagiarism

Complete plagiarism means taking an entire assignment from an outside source and claiming it as your own. That includes submitting papers you found online or turning in an essay written by someone else.

Ghostwriting and contract cheating (i.e., paying for essays) also qualify as complete plagiarism.

Because complete plagiarism is the most extreme form, students often receive the biggest consequences for this.

It's also often one of the easiest types of plagiarism for professors to identify. Papers passed off as your own work often don't quite fit the assignment. What's more, plagiarism checkers can easily flag copied works.

Direct Plagiarism

Direct plagiarism means taking lines or paragraphs from someone else's work and incorporating them into your assignment.

Unlike complete plagiarism, the assignment usually contains some of your own writing as well. But directly lifting material from outside sources without citing them violates academic plagiarism policies.

Students sometimes accidentally plagiarize directly. If you're dropping quotes or data points into your paper without tracking sources, you might unintentionally incorporate that work into your paper and fail to cite it.

Paraphrasing Without Citing Sources

Is paraphrasing plagiarism? Yes, if you don't cite your sources.

Taking someone else's work and putting it into your own words without any acknowledgment violates schools' plagiarism policies. This includes changing a few words in sentences written by someone else and claiming ideas without attribution.

Fortunately, paraphrasing is one of the easiest forms of plagiarism to avoid if you simply cite the source.

False Citations

Falsifying citations might seem minor compared with copying entire paragraphs from someone else's work, but it still counts as plagiarism. A false citation is when you make up quotes or data points — this goes against plagiarism policies.

Making up citations for accurate information also crosses academic honesty lines.

False citations are one of the most common types of accidental plagiarism. Be sure to carefully track your sources and acknowledge all of them in your work.

Self-Plagiarism

Can you plagiarise yourself? At many schools, the answer is yes. That means you can't turn in the same paper in two classes. It also means you can't reuse material from old assignments in your current work.

Some academic dishonesty policies, however, do not cover self-plagiarism.

Is it plagiarism to use the same essay twice? It depends on the school. Columbia University's self-plagiarism policy, for example, prohibits "using any material portion of previously submitted work … without proper citation and/or the instructor's express permission."

Check with your professor before submitting anything that might qualify as self-plagiarism.

How Do Professors Check for Plagiarism?

Professors use an array of tools to check for plagiarism. At many colleges and universities, online submission platforms include an automatic plagiarism check.

Students often worry their work might trip plagiarism detectors accidentally. Say you quote from common sources like the Declaration of Independence. Will the plagiarism checker flag your assignment? Software designed to detect plagiarism can distinguish between normal sourcing and suspicious material.

Plagiarism detectors are only one tool instructors use to identify plagiarism. In many cases, professors find plagiarism simply by reading the assignment.

Several red flags trigger a more in-depth plagiarism check. For example, if a paper's topic does not directly match the assignment, that's a sign of potential plagiarism. When essays discuss outside sources with no citations from the assigned readings, that's another red flag.

Professors can even catch major shifts in writing style or abrupt changes in the paper's flow.

When professors suspect plagiarism, they can take several steps. They might review a report from plagiarism software or search phrases from the paper. They can also meet with the student to ask questions about the paper.

Keep in mind that professors do not need to find the plagiarized source to trigger consequences. If an instructor strongly suspects plagiarism, they can impose consequences.

What Are the Consequences of Plagiarism?

The consequences of plagiarism depend on your school's honor code and the professor. In many classes, students receive an automatic zero on plagiarized assignments. More extreme forms of plagiarism might mean automatically failing the class.

At many schools, plagiarism means a permanent letter in the student's records. For example, the University of Texas at Dallas maintains academic dishonesty records to track repeat violations.

Professors can also refer instances of plagiarism to the school's academic honesty board. At MIT, instructors can submit a complaint to the Committee on Discipline, which can suspend or expel the student.

The many consequences of plagiarism prove that plagiarism is never worth it. Even students who avoid getting caught hurt themselves because instead of learning the material and doing their own work, they take a shortcut.

Plagiarism ultimately erodes the value of everyone's degree.

What is Academic Integrity?

Academic integrity is primarily a core set of values that apply to everything you do. These values should guide and support all of your learning and academic work. They are:

Academic Integrity in Your Writing

Academic writing such as essays, reports, case studies, or dissertations, can be challenging. You have to present ideas and information using the right language and style, and you also have to demonstrate good critical thinking. This means you have to do research and/or read existing work on a subject, and then you have to build on it to form your own argument and conclusions. When you write your assignment, you have to acknowledge when ideas or information come from someone else.

You need to do this correctly in order to avoid plagiarism. For example, if you use the ideas of other people as if they were your own, ie, without referencing them, this would be considered plagiarism. At university, cases of plagiarism are taken very seriously and are viewed as an academic offence. Students are responsible for knowing and following the regulations. It’s essential that you always cite your sources appropriately.

Top Tips for Ensuring Your Academic Integrity in Writing

• Make certain you fully understand what you read, so you can use it accurately and appropriately.
• Take clear, accurate notes during your reading and research.
• Summarise and paraphrase ideas where possible (but always reference them)
• Be sure to acknowledge other work every time you use ideas, information or words from it.
• Develop your own voice and style in your writing
• Develop your own ideas
• Leave plenty of time to complete your assignment
• Ask for help from a tutor or advisor if you need it.

Works Cited

Carlton, Genevieve. “What Is Plagiarism? And Why Is It So Bad?” BestColleges, 28 April 2022, https://www.bestcolleges.com/blog/what-is-plagiarism/. Accessed 28 March 2023.

“What is Academic Integrity?” FutureLearn, https://www.futurelearn.com/info/courses/prepare-to-study-uk/0/steps/48595. Accessed 28 March 2023.

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Comparative Literature in Indian Languages

 Introduction 

The developments in Indian comparative discourse have taken place according to Lord Macaulay’s (1835) predictions in the theory of downward infiltration of education in the Indian caste system. This history of hierarchical comparativism cannot be studied without a reference to the rigid frame of four castes and varna-s: the Brahman priestly caste, Kshatriya warriors, Vaishya tradesmen, and Shudra servants. Within this frame there are thousands of sub castes and tribals with separate cultures, crafts and neo-casteist classifications of literature (mainstream, rural, regional, dalit, and tribal, respectively) in the same language. This is one of the hurdles in making learning more dialogic and dwarfs development of, in Emily Apter’s words, “democracy of comparison” (9). A foreigner can hardly understand Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s “critique on the sign and the signifying monkey” (“Race” 902) in terms of the Indian caste system. It is not a coincidence that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi begins his autobiography with a reference to his “Baniya caste” (Vaiyshya varna), Raja Rao’s Serpent and the Rope parades superiority of the protagonist that he was born a Brahmin, and especially a number of dalit self-auto-photo-narratives exhibit markers of the castes of authors in the titles of books. The diversity of religions and hundreds of languages has added new dimensions to this caste system and that is not identical to classes as Marxists tend to believe. India is neither a multilingual “melting pot” like the U.S. or Canada nor a country with a single official language like China.

Constitutionally recognized languages are twenty four and spoken languages are hundreds: Hindi 551.4, English 125, Bengali 91.1, Telugu 85, Marathi 84.2, Tamil 66.7, Urdu 59, Kannada 50.3, Gujarati 50.3, Oriya 36.5, Malayalam 13.8, Punjabi 31.4, Assami 18.9 (all figures are in millions, 1991 Census). Five percent of English educated elites with “cultural capital” dominate the rest of the population. Sixty percent of the population is illiterate. The sudden rise of English to the second largest language in prominence is not an accident of a neo-colonial situation. 

The classical poet Chandrashekhar privileged comparative thinking, but it was too hierarchical to be effective to produce new knowledge. In contrast, Karl Marx criticized the British Parliament and Press for being responsible for “the emergence of sharp class divisions … and a so called ‘public opinion’ which is manipulated by the Brahmins of the press have, on the contrary, brought in to being monstrous sameness of character that would make Shakespeare,” and further pointed out how new bungalows of lords being built on the banks of the Thames with the “blood and flesh of the colonized people” (Deshmukh 265) and Fyodor Dostoevsky ridiculed the Indian Brahman priest in the prisoners’ mime show in The House of the Dead. Such internationalizations of the image of Indian culture also display intricacies in Indian cultural politics of aesthetics. Colonial records reveal how the Brahmins, traditional monopolizers of scholarship and guardians of religion and culture, internalized English and mediated Western knowledge and power structures

This was present first in European imperialism and today it is a major component of Indian diaspora. It is on this historical background that humanities scholarship in India is in need of “home-grown framework”-s of comparative scholarship with reference to Indigenous “ancient cultures with substantial theoretical thinking embedded in both scholarship and creative works”

The legacies of Anglophone scholarship

Since 90 percent of teachers at all levels during the colonial period belonged to the Brahmin/priestly caste, postcolonial comparativism is determined by their literary tastes. For example, the histories of literature in any Indian language exhibit 99 percent names of the contributors from this subculture group only (see, e.g., Jog). Such a discourse of power by the priestly class and that mediated and mediates Western culture and imperialism is bound to use it to maintain its traditional hegemony. Library holdings and curricula in the beginning of the twentieth century display such Western comparative texts as Frank Byron Jevons’s Comparative Religion (1908), A.W. Jackson’s (1862–1937) An Avesta Grammar in Comparison with Sanskrit Phonology Inflection-word Formation with an Introduction on the Avesta or Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett’s Comparative Literature (1886), etc. But the discipline of comparative literature did not strike deep roots in India because of the resistant Vedic cultural structures and caste conditioned literati. For example, Ganesh Sadashiv Bhate, who was educated in England, wrote a number of comparative essays in 1913, which were posthumously published in 1995. Tryambak Shankar Shejwalkar was a historian and critic in comparative scholarship and vision and he warned his own priestly class not to mediate Western scholarship instead of performing such in a comparative Indian-Western context: in consequence, his work was disregarded. 

Vasudev Balawant Patwardhan (1870–1921)—editor of the weekly Sudhakar (Reformist) and a scholar of English and philology at Fergusson College Pune—suggested the inclusion of comparative chapters on affinities between Western literature in the history of Marathi literature. However, his proposal was turned down by the conservative teachers of Sanskrit and Marathi (see Jog). Thus the Janus face (or two layers/voices, i.e., Indigenous and Western) of modern Indian languages and literatures remains unexplored. The achievements of two students of his college, who studied in England, exhibit two distinct sub-caste conditioned cultural contributions to humanities scholarship: Panjabrao Shamrao Deshmukh’s The Origin and Development of Religion in Vedic Literature (1933) was a pioneering comparative study and B.S. Mardhekar, who studied Anglophone aesthetics of modernism and attended poetry writing workshops in England during the years 1929–1933 for his Indian Civil Service examination but failed the exams. He returned to India to publish his Arts and Man (1937) in English and Saundrya ani Sahitya (1955) in Marathi and became the father of modernism and new poetry (see Patil, Anand, Samagra). Mardhekar’s work is relevant because of his studies of European and U.S.-American literature and the transplantation of British modernism in Bombay (see Edman; Shoemaker). Importantly, Mardhekar’s theories of aesthetics and “new” poetry generated formalist criticism in Marathi. While René Wellek and Austin Warren’s Theory of Literature (1949) and its translation remain a “Bible” of critical thought in India still today, in contrast, Wellek’s Discriminations: Further Concepts of Criticism (1970) neither entered university curricula nor appeared in translation and thus suggests that the move from formalism has not been recognized in India. While new criticism has diminished in the U.S., it survives in India. Following Paulo Freire, I describe this as the “pedagogy of the oppressed” (Teekavastraharan 203–18) and postulate (see British Bombay) how conflicts of caste constitute a persistent factor in the study of literature in India.

 In turn, the postulate ought to lead Indian comparativism to the internationalisation of the study of literature and culture—among others—to include aspects of interculturality. Since its inception in the mid-twentieth century Western-based comparative literature in India has been displaying a rich colonial legacy along with its paradoxes and mediating Anglophone aesthetics. But even if we consider Anglophone-based scholarship in India, within such, for example, although 26/11, 13/7 and other symbolic references to terrorist attacks in India have acquired the semiotic significance of 9/11 in New York, Indian scholars have not produced interdisciplinary interventions like Apter, whose book “was shaped by the traumatic experience of September 11, 2001” (viii). The impact of the Cold War in humanities scholarship is a further interesting subject for research but here, too, the colonial impact is felt: K.M. George’s edited volume Comparative Literature (1984) is a misnomer because it is a merely juxtaposed survey of literature. Better work is presented, for example, by Sisir Kumar Das who compared literary terms in Indian languages and compiled a comparative English history of Indian literatures. Namwar Singh pleaded for the decolonization of the Indian mind, but this occurred two and half decades after Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s avowed comparativism and Nativism.

 A theoretical problem that tortures a teacher of English in the “Third World” is the question of what kind of English studies would replace it. Indian authorities of university curricula attempt to restructure syllabi by replacing Hamlet in place of Othello, but hardly displace either by Derek Walcott’s The Branch of the Blue Nile (1995) or by a Chinese play. Hence, the level of scholarship is not only conditioned by Western paradigms but also by the Indigenous paradigm which fails to make the understanding of Edward W. Said’s notion of the “worldliness of text” (The World). Although the Government of India has issued priority to comparative humanities and made it mandatory to establish interdisciplinary schools of languages and literatures, these were usually transformed into departments and thus the institutional presence of the discipline of comparative literature is met with resistance. As I indicate above, this does not mean that there is no comparative scholarship in India; what this means is that because of the lack of a good number of full-fledged departments of comparative literature and thus degree granting institutional presence with the corresponding availability of teaching positions, the discipline lacks relevant presence compared with, for example, departments of English. This situation is similar to the West (i.e., the U.S. and Europe): Susan Bassnett declares the death of comparative literature in 1993 or Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak remains Euro-U.S.-American centred with characteristics from hierarchical “innate Nativism.” While Haun Saussy declares that comparative literature has achieved a place in the sun intellectually, this positive view is not borne out on the institutional level (see Tötösy de Zepetnek, “The New Humanities” 55) and in my view this is relevant to the situation of comparative literature in India as well. 

Spivak’s problematic notion of “can the subaltern speak?” or one of V.S. Naipaul’s indictments that Indians need certificates of recognition from foreigners show how Spivak’s and Naipaul’s caste inheritance makes them ignore the inter caste battle for recognition (see, e.g., Shih, “Global Literature”). Moreover, Salman Rushdie’s charge of “shadow literatures” (ix) cannot be answered adequately unless Shu-Mei Shih’s concept of “comparative racialization” is modified in Indian contextures as “comparative castealization” of culture and literature (“Comparative Racialization” 1347). The notion of the “empire writes back” was privileged by Western scholars, but hardly practised in India except perhaps in power politics. The use and misuse of caste not only in literature but also in all walks of life is a serious issue, and hence the need of the merger of comparative literature and cultural studies. For example, Roy Moxham brings to the light how the plot of the film Bandit Queen was a convincing lie devised to criticise Thakurs (Kshatriyas): the “true story is that there are no upper caste guys” in Phoolan Devi’s village and “even director Shekhar Kapur admits that” (9). To boot, this international “fakedom” (see Ruthven) of caste politics was accepted as “true” by Robert Young Jr. in his Postcolonialism Theory (2003). And thus, for example, Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s concepts of “race, writing, and difference” (“The Blackness”) have not yet gained currency in India. 

Rethinking the study of culture with comparative dialogism

 The effects of globalization in culture need to be studied comparatively because Western literature, cinema, song, music, dance, and the many types of popular culture are part and parcel of contemporary Indian culture. A few scholars such as Aparna Dharwadkar and Vinay Dharwadkar have exposed the misuse of Western texts that colonize Indian literati and scholars again. But it is necessary to study, as Stephen Greenblatt suggested by the phrase “invisible bullets,”not only the poetics of culture but also the politics of style and caste-culture in adaptations of Western texts. The narratives about the West’s shaping of colonial identities are not paired with both the narratives about the colonizer’s shaping of Indigenous identities and of their own identities. “India” is not, in Homi K. Bhabha’s terms, “narrating” in comparative double voice but more powerfully in an alien master’s voice. Thus I postulate that we need new models for agency in comparative studies. 

The future of comparative literature and comparative cultural studies in India

 In relation to the intellectual history and development of comparativism in India, the institutional presence of the approach is relevant: the first Department of Comparative Literature was established at Jadavpur University in 1956, at that time following the French model. The Department, along with the publishing of the Jadavpur Journal of Comparative Literature, paved the path for new developments. Since then and particularly since the 1990s—while based, principally, on Anglophone scholarship—comparative literature scholarship in India produced a wide array of work including studies about Western texts compared with Indian and within Indian literatures (see, e.g., Bandyopadhyay; Chanda; Mohan; Pollock). An important development is that the Comparative Literature Association of India (established in 1987) founded a digital journal, sāhitya: The Journal of the Comparative Literature Association of India in 2011. Among other journals published in India of interest is the Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics published since 1978 at the Vishvannath Kaviraja Institute.

Conclusion

“Comparative Literature in Indian Languages” Anand Balwant Patil discusses developments in humanities scholarship in India. He posits that giving much space to “modern” Anglo-American aesthetics in university curricula is itself a politics of aesthetics. The changed political status quo after 1947 effected a change in the mediation of Anglophone aesthetics in humanities scholarship. For example, India has no school of postcolonial studies to offer a blueprint of the “postcolonial project” to counterbalance the influx of Anglophone scholarship. Patil presents a discussion of the status quo of comparative scholarship in India, its theoretical underpinnings, and argues for the development of homegrown comparative scholarship in the humanities. 

Work Cited:

Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.

Das, Sisir Kumar. “Western Terms and Their Indian Adaptations.” Jadavpur Journal of Comparative literature 19 (1980): 1–17. 

Das, Sisir Kumar. “Terms for the Medieval Indian Long Forms.” Jadavpur Journal of Comparative Literature 24 (1984): 74–75.

Ghandhi, Mohandas Karamchand. The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Trans. Mahadev Desai. Ahamadabad: Navjeevan P, 1929.

Naipaul, V.S. Literary Occasions: Essays. London: Picador Paperback, 2011.

 Ngũgĩ, wa Thiong’o. “On the Abolition of the English Department.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: Norton, 2010. 2092–97.

Patil, Anand Balwant. "Comparative Literature in Indian Languages." Companion to Comparative Literature, World Literatures, and Comparative Cultural Studies (2013): 299-310.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Death of a Discipline. New York: Columbia UP, 2003

Walcott, Derek. A Branch of Blue Nile. London: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1986

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Code: 22414:Paper 207:Contemporary Literatures in English

Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English ,

M.K.Bhavnagar University.

Vachchhalata Joshi

Vachchhalatajoshi.14@gmail.com

Roll no.19

Topic : ThirdGender Identity in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness 

Submitted to: 

Department of English,MKBU

Arundhati Roy

“And the air was full of Thoughts and Things to Say. But at times like these, only the Small Things are ever said. Big Things lurk unsaid inside.”

― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

Suzanna Arundhati Roy

born 24 November 1961

Arundhati Roy is an Indian author, political activist, and essayist known for her powerful writing on a range of social and political issues. She was born on November 24, 1961, in Shillong, Meghalaya, India. Roy is best known for her debut novel "The God of Small Things," which won the Booker Prize in 1997 and became an international bestseller.

Roy's writing often explores themes of social justice, inequality, and human rights abuses, with a particular focus on the marginalised and oppressed. In addition to her literary works, she has been involved in various political and social causes, including environmental activism, anti-globalization protests, and campaigns for the rights of indigenous people and other marginalised communities.

Roy has authored several books, including “The God of Small Things" "Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy," and "Broken Republic: Three Essays." She has also received numerous awards and honours for her writing and activism, including the Sydney Peace Prize, the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize, and the Sahitya Akademi Award.

Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness: Brief Summary Arundhati Roy, the Booker prize winning author of The God of Small Things (1997), wrote The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017), her second fiction, twenty years after her debut with the former.

The novel weaves together stories of people navigating some of the darkest episodes of Modern Indian history, from land reform that dispossessed poor farmers to the 2002 Godhra train burning and Kashmir insurgency. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is at once an aching story and a decisive demonstration. One follows Anjum, a trans-woman, struggling to make a life for herself in Delhi. The world she conjures is often brutal. Psychoanalysis, the Freudian theory, is dealt with in this novel. The story begins and ends in the graveyard. It possesses the strong voice of the LGBT community in Modern India.

The long-awaited second novel of Arundhati Roy was published as anticipated in the middle of fictional enthusiasm. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness had been loved and disgusted, praised and criticised with vigour and graphics. The Ministry of Utmost happiness seemed to be broadly agreed by reviewers and critics as “a riotous carnival” (Aitkenhead, 2017), “a hulking, sprawling story” (Sehgal, 2017), “large and labyrinthine” with “a shaggy structure and polemical bent”. Whether these traits were regarded as strengths or defects lies in the difference between reader responses. As the guide for the stories, Roy gets criticised when people are disturbed by the widespread plotting, cast, temporal and geographical expansion of the Ministry of Utmost Happiness (Mendes & Lau, 2019). Akbar (2017) finds it as “diffuse, unfocused & everything and anything at once”. In an interview, however, Roy explained that the supposed impartiality of the novel is a storytelling device meant to empower the allegedly precise construction and form that the novel is anticipated to adapt to: Fundamentally, I think what I mean is that there is a danger of fiction becoming domesticated, you know, of too much of a product that must be quickly described, catalogued, put on a particular shelf, and everybody has to know what the theme is. And, to me, I wanted to blow that open (Goodman & Shaikh, 2017).

The opening lines of the Ministry of Utmost Happiness showed how Roy was genuinely worried with sentiments and impact materials of the heart in her portrayals of bigotry, violence, and disgraceful lack of regard for humanity. She relentlessly depicted “joy in the saddest places” (Aitkenhead, 2017). Roy framed romantic love among her characters as poignant in both her novels, placing them in the midst of what might be harassed and strictly prohibited. She casts honestly in and of love as snatched happiness in the otherwise dreadful scenery of injustice, waste and sorrow, brief and transitory times of translucent beauty (Mendes & Lau 2019). Roy's love stories in both Velutha and Ammu in The God of Small Things and Tilottama and Musa in The Ministry of Ultimate Happiness are undoubtedly like those in which lovers found themselves in vulnerable social and political circumstances and were likely to perish. In reality, both heroes unfortunately died young, a cost to their loves, but also a blow to their purposes.

Hijras are isolated from society, deprived of their basic rights and forced to lead a life without self-respect even in a post-globalised position. They are subjugated by male, female and even by hijras within the society. The word hijra is derived from the Persian word hiz which means ineffective and incompetent. The alternative words for hijra are hijada, hijra, hijrah, and it is pronounced as “heejra” or “hijra”. The word hijra refers to ‘eunuchs’ or ‘third gender’ in India and some South Asian countries. Though they have combined gender identities, they adopted feminine gender roles and adorned themselves with feminine attires. The famous feminist of Indian writing in English Das (1982) in the poem “The Dance of the Eunuchs” portrayed the objectification of the eunuchs who adopted women identity and thus they were defined by the normative rules. Das (1982) mentioned that, “It was hot, so hot, before the eunuchs came to dance, wide skirts going round and round They danced and They danced, oh, they danced till they bled”

The reader gets to know that when Anjum’s mother discovered that Anjum was a Hijra (Eunuch), she kept that as a secret and named her Aftab -a male’s name. She was in panic as “Everything was either masculine or feminine, man or woman. Everything except her baby.” (Roy, 2017, p. 8). The lack of dichotomous gender distinctions affects her mother, and in that way, she starts the process of Othering her own daughter. We can say that in her family Anjum/Aftab is The Other because of having this “in-between” characteristic. In addition, when her father acknowledged the secret, “he embarked on the cultural project of inculcating manliness in Aftab.” (p. 17) Her family tried to suppress her female identity, and in this sense, they try to colonise her body and her sexuality. Assumi (2018) observed that, “The in-between identity of Anjum and her patched together body depicts the cultural conflict of the colonised countries after colonisation.”

A person’s identity is defined by his body and sexual identity is a society which is a repressive and negative force. Therefore, power relation occurs, and it is centralised by a group of people and it includes the hierarchical divisions based on social, political, and economic practices and institutions. Roy portrayed the polarisation of gender and race regarding the identity of hijras who are treated as inferior, untouchable and marginalised in Indian society.

“The world was ordered by gender divisions with gender giving meaning to social divisions”

Gender is related to the social divisions of class, race, disability, and sexuality. Hijra community is divided and segregated in society for the differences of sexuality. They are treated and discriminated against as third gender in India and the recent word for hijra is transgender to the people of the world.

Anjum considered herself mentally and internally disturbed, while some wanted her to step into the traditional system. Anjum had a body that crossed the usual boundaries between male and female. The tale of Anjum highlighted the challenges of life in a culture characterised by an idealist explanation of gender. The understanding of self in children started with the sex-related categorization of self as male or female. It was also observed that some forms of activity were linked to a single sex and were considered to be stable. Such a gender-based differentiation reinforces sexual inequalities according to feminist theorists.

India is a multiracial and multicultural country where the concepts of gender, class and caste create a sense of discrimination among different categories of people. The gender identity impacts on hijras’ lives; they do not get gender recognition, employment, proper housing, and health-care services properly. They face discrimination and inequality so harsh that they feel that they are inferior.

In the novel, The Khwabgah was Anjum’s place of liberation and self expression, “Once she became a permanent resident of the Khwabgah, Anjum was finally able to dress in the clothes she longed to wear...” (p. 25). Outside, in the Duniya (World), her double voice “frightened other people'' (p. 28) and even members of the Government “...like everyone else, they feared being cursed by a Hijra.” (p. 67). People alienated her because of something superficial, or lack of information, or myths, and Anjum had to fight against gender hierarchies, accept gendered norms and, in that way, be part of the anti-colonial resistance. She set her emotional instincts free and remained in the Khwabgah for thirty years. One day, she found a baby girl who was abandoned or lost. Anjum took her to Khwabgah and named her Zainab. After some time, she encountered a massacre in Gujrat that was the outcome of the Godhra train attack. She got a traumatic shock from that incident and decided to leave Khwabgah. She took refuge in a local cemetery and transformed it into a guest house and named it ‘Jannat Guest House’. She also started funeral services for poor, isolated and subjugated people of the society.

Conclusion

Hijras belong to lower classes and poorer castes who experience marginalized economic structure. Though Anjum faced many adverse situations in mainstream social spaces, she tried to accommodate herself in the changing world. It is important that people should come forward to eradicate discrimination and economic hardship that these transgenders go through. This paper explored that hijras are human beings, and they have rights to live with dignity. Being a trans woman comes with sufferings in the present community. The world needs to change. Gender does not matter when it comes to a heart of acceptance. Accepting everyone as they are, is what we need. Change in gender creates no difference in the emotions, pains, sufferings, care, love and anger in a person. When society fails to understand this, voicing out and protests happen. Feminists arose when women were marginalized. Similarly, in the present world, the transgender community needs an up-rise after all the hardships they underwent.

Work cited:

Roy, Arundhati. The Ministry of Utmost happiness. Hamish Hamilton, 2017.

Suleman, Danish, and Dr Ab Rahman. "Transgender issues in Indian society from the viewpoint of Arundhati Roy’s novel, the ministry of utmost happiness." Suleman, D., & binti Ab Rahman, F.(2020). Transgender Issues in Indian Society from the Viewpoint of Arundhati Roy’s Novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. South Asian Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities 1.3 (2020): 159-172.

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Assignment: African Literature

 

Code: 22413:Paper 206:The African Literature

Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English ,

M.K.Bhavnagar University.

Vachchhalata Joshi

Vachchhalatajoshi.14@gmail.com

Roll no.20

Topic: The Joys of Motherhood: Women’s Portrayal in African Literature

Assignments Submitted to: 

Department of English,MKBU

Writer Introduction

Buchi Emecheta was a Nigerian-born British author and activist known for her novels, autobiographical works, and essays. She was born on July 21, 1944, in Lagos, Nigeria, and died on January 25, 2017, in London, England.

Emecheta was the fourth child of nine born to Igbo parents. Her father was a railway worker, and her mother was a homemaker. She was raised in a traditional Igbo household where girls were not encouraged to go to school. However, Emecheta was determined to get an education and taught herself to read and write. She eventually won a scholarship to attend the Methodist Girls' High School in Lagos.

In 1960, at the age of 16, Emecheta married Sylvester Onwordi, and they had five children together. Her marriage was often difficult and abusive, and she eventually left her husband and moved to England in 1962. As a single mother, Emecheta faced many challenges but managed to continue her education and earn a degree in Sociology from the University of London.

Emecheta's writing often explored the themes of race, gender, and identity, drawing on her own experiences as a Nigerian woman living in Britain. Her first novel, "In the Ditch," was published in 1972 and was based on her experiences as a struggling single mother in London. She went on to publish over 20 books, including novels, children's books, and autobiographical works.

Some of Emecheta's most famous works include "The Joys of Motherhood," "Second Class Citizen," and "The Bride Price." Her writing was widely praised for its frank portrayal of the challenges faced by women in Nigeria and the diaspora. She was also a vocal advocate for women's rights and worked as a lecturer and speaker, sharing her experiences and promoting education and empowerment for women.

Emecheta received many honours for her writing and activism, including the Order of the British Empire in 2005. Her work continues to be celebrated and studied for its contribution to African and feminist literature.

“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

The Joys of Motherhood

The Joy of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta, published in colonial Nigeria in the early to mid-20th century, is one of the most intricate Bildungsroman novels ever written. It follows the protagonist over the course of twenty-five years. The progression of the protagonist, Nnu Ego, from a powerful, tradition-bound figure to a feminist has been highlighted by the author. Her attempts to demonstrate the validity of motherhood are sadly frustrated at every point by a complicated and wide-ranging collection of paradoxes that she is unable to reconcile. The first chapter of the book, "The Mother," and the final chapter, "The Canonized Mother," are both dedicated to all moms. 

In the rigid and tradition-oriented Ibo society, women were acknowledged as 

‘the trees that bear fruits’

The traditions played a vital role in the progression of an idea of motherhood. They believed that motherhood would bring the contended and distinguished life Emecheta employs the technique of mother’s introspection in which the protagonist realised that she has not brought fulfilment in the family. Found herself as a doubly colonised mother, Nnu Ego expresses the sufferings as well as sacrifice in her statement just after the birth of her twin daughters. Being caught in the web of childbirth and complicated situations, she had one such epiphanic moment. The psychological temperament and grief of a mother expressed in the following statement which presents the Nigerian women’s response to the widespread predicament.

 In her monologue, she says, 

“God, when will you create a woman who will be fulfilled in herself, a full human being, not anybody’s appendage? I was born alone, and I shall die alone. What have I gained from all this? Yes, I have many children, but what do I have to feed them on? On my life. I have to work myself to the bone to look after them. I have to give them my all. And if I am lucky enough to die in peace, I even have to give them my soul. They will worship my dead spirit to provide for them: it will be hailed as a good spirit so long as there are plenty of yams and children in the family, but if anything should go wrong, if a young wife does not conceive or there is a famine, my dead spirit will be blamed. When will I be free?”

In the Nigerian writings, this is something new where introspective female characters give voice to their emotions. The classic novel, The Joy of Motherhood, challenges the extraordinary expectations of women in the name of the ideal mother and helps to solidify an African women’s literary tradition. While articulating this idea from the traditionalist point of view of Nnu Ego, Emecheta gave impetus to the reality that women have the collective accountability to condemn and contribute to the societal order. The novel was given the title borrowed from the closing sentence of Flora Nwapa’s famous novel, Efuru. The closing sentence elevates a paradox about the much consulted childless river goddess Uhamiri: “She has never experienced the joy of motherhood. Why then did women worship her?''

“On her way back to their room, it occurred to Nnu Ego that she was a prisoner, imprisoned by her love for her children, imprisoned by her role as the senior wife. She was not even expected to demand more money for her family; that was considered below the standard expected of a woman in her position. It was not fair, she felt, the way men cleverly used a woman’s sense of responsibility to actually enslave her. They knew that the traditional wife like herself would never dream of leaving her children.”

― Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood

 The Joy of Motherhood, the tale of a mother, Nnu Ego, is written with subtlety, power and abundant compassion. (New York Times) The theme is closely related with the novel, Efuru. In this magnum opus, the same concerns are articulated but the world of Nnu Ego is darker than Efuru. Her motherhood has failed in birth and death because of the twice colonial situation. The western masters suppressed the native Ibo people; as a result, they started to dominate their women. The colonial forces had changed the visage of self-reliant villages where Nnu Ego found herself trapped. In the unfamiliar city life, she wanted to be a good daughter for her father as she carried values with her, a good mother and a good wife to Nnaife Owulum- a man selected by her father. Even her father, Agbadi who was a great chief and elephant huntsman, and the proud ona, is not different from the other men. When he came to know that Nnu Ego had left for Lagos, he consoled himself as, “Let her go, she is as barren as a desert.” (39) One of the eldest wives of Agbadi, eldest mother of Nnu dies from the strain of pretending to be a ‘complete woman”. Interestingly, the predicament of wives and mothers were not cramped to any specific generation. The very first encounter with her husband gave horrendous shock as she describes him as a “pregnant cow”. Her husband asked his connubial rights at the very first night and raped her without giving a choice to change her mind. 

In Emecheta’s novels, rape is a recurring narrative and that becomes a symbol of manhood. The male characters controlled their wives in the name of tradition. She robustly contends that sexual enjoyment is as essential for women and as for men. The present distinctive work of art which analyses the catastrophic insinuations of th experiences of a conventional African female trapped in between the conventional Igbo society and the contemporary industrialised world. It presents a serious study of the unfair treatment and dependence of Ibo women. The author questions the legality of deep-rooted male social liberties and women’s helplessness.

Conclusion

Toni Morrison’s Bluest Eye and Emecheta’s The Joy of motherhood depict truthful and vivid descriptions, blueprint of self-investigation and general perception of the female psyche, consciously unnoticed by the male writers. The inner voice forces the protagonist to shift from the collective realisation to the individual perception. Just after the burst of emotion, Nnu Ego turns to be a feminist as she utters the realistic words, “I am a prisoner of my own flesh and blood. Is it such an enviable position? The men make it look as if we must aspire for children or die. That's why when I lost my first son I wanted to die, because I failed to live up to the standard expected of me by the males in my life, my father and my husband-and now I have to include my sons. But who made the law that we should not hope in our daughters? We women subscribe to that law more than anyone. Until we change all this, it is still a man's world, which women will always help to build.” Without motherhood, Nnu Ego feels empty and struggles very hard to be a mother. Emecheta wants to convey the point that bearing more than five or six children does not mean that a mother is going to be prosperous in her old age. She examines the institution of motherliness, unpleasant experiences mixed up in motherliness, and its shock on the minds of the 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 ended the novel by giving an ironic title to its chapter as “The Canonized Mother”. Nnu Ego had to experience patriarchal slavery throughout her life and died in solitude. All mothers, Ona, Akadu and Nnu Ego, have been victimised in the patriarchal and traditionally strong Ibo society. But Emecheta’s Nnu Ego challenges the conservative conception that producing numerous children will give a woman much ecstasy. 

Work Cited:

Emecheta, Buchi. The joys of motherhood. Penguin UK, 2022.

Kapgate, Laxmikant. (2020). Mother’s Intricacy In Buchi Emecheta’s The Joy Of Motherhood. 

Morrison, Toni. "The Bluest Eye. 1970." New York (1994): 751-59.

Nnoromele, Salome C. "Representing the African woman: Subjectivity and self in The Joys of Motherhood." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 43.2 (2002): 178-190.

Words : 1777

Play

Act I

Before Othello begins, Roderigo has been pursuing Desdemona, a Venetian noblewoman. One night, he hears from his soldier friend, Iago, that Desdemona has secretly married his General, the Moorish Othello. Iago bears a grudge against Othello for overlooking Iago for a lieutenant position. Instead, Othello chose Michael Cassio, leaving Iago only at the low rank of ensign. Iago urges Roderigo to continue his pursuit of Desdemona. He knows Senator Brabantio, Desdemona's father, will dislike having Othello as a son-in-law. So late at night, Iago and Roderigo wake Brabantio and tell him the news of Desdemona. Brabantio angrily summons the militia to arrest Othello. At that moment, officers arrive to summon Brabantio to an urgent meeting of the Senate. The Senate is concerned about the imminent threat of a Turkish invasion fleet on Cyprus. Full of fury, Brabantio goes to the council.

Brabantio interrupts the council, claiming vengeance against Othello. Othello is already there because he has just been put in command of the forces to repel the Turks. Othello explains how his stories of military prowess have helped him earn Desdemona's love (good storytelling is the most important trait in a companion, after all). Afterwards, Desdemona is called to reinforce the tale and defend her marriage. Following Desdemona's defence, her father disowns her, and she chooses to go with Othello on his campaign. She plans to travel in the care of Lieutenant Cassio and with Emilia, Iago's wife.

Act II

In Cyprus, Montano, the governor of Cyprus, and his soldiers greet Cassio, Iago, Desdemona, and Emilia as they disembark. Othello soon arrives with news that storms at sea have dispersed the Turkish fleet. A night of celebration is proclaimed. Roderigo confesses doubts about his potential to woo Desdemona, but Iago assures him that there is hope. He urges Roderigo to challenge Cassio to a duel that night, since (as Iago claims) Desdemona is actually falling in love with him. When the night comes, Iago gets Cassio drunk, and Roderigo incites his anger. Montano, the governor, is stabbed during his attempt to contain Cassio. Othello is angered by the fight and blames Cassio, stripping him of his recently conferred officer status.

The next day, Iago convinces Cassio to ask Desdemona for help in regaining his post. When Cassio asks, Desdemona innocently agrees. Meanwhile, Iago has sown seeds of jealousy in Othello’s mind, suggesting that Desdemona is overfond of Cassio. With no reason to suspect Iago of bad intentions, Othello begins to watch his wife. Othello becomes angry when Desdemona cannot find the first gift (a handkerchief) he had ever given her. The handkerchief is embroidered with strawberries and especially important to Othello. But Desdemona had not lost the handkerchief. Iago had instructed Emilia, his wife, to take it. Iago then hid the handkerchief where Cassio would find it. When Desdemona urges her husband to reconsider Cassio’s demotion, Othello gets jealous and suspects her of infidelity.

O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster

— OTHELLO, ACT 3 SCENE 3

Act IV

Iago continues to inflame this jealousy. He encourages Othello to listen in on, and misinterpret, part of a conversation between Cassio and his mistress, Bianca. Cassio and Bianca discuss how Cassio obtained the embroidered handkerchief that he then gives to Bianca to copy. Othello’s agitation at what he hears brings on an epileptic fit. After recovering, he orders Iago to kill Cassio. Desdemona cannot understand Othello's change of attitude towards her. Othello even strikes her in the presence of her relative, Lodovico, who has arrived as an ambassador from Venice. As she prepares for bed, she talks with Emilia, singing to relieve the distress she feels at losing the trust of her husband.

Meanwhile, Roderigo has begun to suspect Iago is not quite the friend he seems. Still Iago persuades him to attack Cassio that night (again, to be able to court Desdemona). In the fight that ensues, Iago goes undetected and wounds Cassio. He then enters again as himself to accuse and kill Roderigo for the act of wounding Cassio.

Othello comes to his sleeping wife's bedroom to murder her as punishment for her supposed adultery. He smothers her with a pillow as she asserts her innocence. Emilia alerts the household, causing Iago and others to come to the scene. Othello defends himself, mentioning the handkerchief as evidence. Emilia realises what has happened and betrays Iago‘s plots against Othello. Iago, reacting to his wife's accusations, stabs and kills her. Iago is arrested and sent to trial after Othello wounds him (he doesn't even die). Othello, facing the inevitability of his own trial, uses a hidden weapon to commit suicide. The play ends with Cassio reinstated and placed in command as Governor of Cyprus.

As the play opens, the reader is introduced to the court of Mohammad Bin Tughlaq, a Muslim Sultan (Emperor). Tughlaq declares that he is shifting his capital from Delhi to Daultabad (also known as Deogiri). Daultabad is in south India and at a long distance from Delhi. He has two purposes behind this decision. First, it will help him to rule over southern part of India effectively and increase fraternity and unity among Hindus and Muslims as Daultabad is a Hindu-majority city. Second, it will help him saving his capital against the attacks of Mongols from the north.

A man named, Aziz appears in the court. Aziz has changed his identity from a Muslim to a Hindu with a definite purpose. Tughlaq is well known for Secularism. Despite being a Muslim Sultan, Tughlaq shows a great heart towards Hindus. He desires to be seen as an idealist who wants a unity between Hindus and Muslims. In order to win hearts of Hindus, he favors Hindus more in his decisions and policies. So Aziz takes the name as Vishnu Prasad, a Hindu Brahmin. He has filed a case against sultan Tughlaq for acquiring his land unfairly. He is given a handsome amount on the name of land acquisition. Later in his court, he invites public to get settled in Daultabad. He doesn’t force the public but leaves it up to them whether to move or to remain there. Aziz, with his friend Aazam, plans to cheat people and get money on the way to Daultabad.

The scene shifts, as now Tughlaq is playing chess in his private chamber. His stepmother appears. She is quite concerned about his eccentric approach in his administration. It is also revealed that Tughlaq had murdered his father and his brother in the past to get to the throne. She scolds him for his negligence towards the uprising led by Ain-ul-Mulk, an old friend of Tughlaq. Ain-ul-Mulk has now turned into an enemy. He is marching with his thirty thousand soldiers to attack the state. On the other hand, Tughlaq has only six thousand soldiers. If the battle takes place, his defeat is quite certain. His stepmother asks Ziauddin Barani, a historian of that time, to keep Tughlaq away from the company of foolish advisors and councilors.

Sheikh-Imam-Uddin, another character, appears on the stage. He doesn’t like the Sultan at all. In fact, he incites the people against Tughlaq for his eccentric decisions. Tughlaq himself is well aware of the fact that Sheikh has ill desires against him. Tughlaq calls him and asks him to visit Ain-ul-Mulk with a proposal for peace. Sheikh is asked to be dressed as a royal person and is sent on an elephant. Tughlaq has done this with an intention. Later news comes that Sheikh-Imam-Uddin is murdered. He was mistaken for Tughlaq by the enemies for his royal dress and riding on elephant. Ratan Singh reveals that it was Tughlaq’s plot. This incident comes as a first instance of the dark side of his character.

Ratan Singh, Amirs and Sayyids are planning to murder the Sultan as there is no other way left for them to stop his foolish acts. They argue about Daultabad city and its Hindu majority population. They persuade Sihabuddin to join them. But he hasn't made up his mind yet. They plan to murder him during the prayer. Later their plan is revealed, they all are caught and beget death sentence. Tughlaq orders for their dead bodies to be hanged in public. He takes another ridiculous decision to have currency minted on copper and brass metal. Adding more to his foolishness, he declares that the all coins will have an equal value, no matter whether the coin is made of gold, silver, copper or brass. He also announces a ban on prayers. Even people now start terming him as a foolish Sultan. Now Tughlaq wants to shift there as soon as possible. On the way, many people die of hunger, disease, etc. Aziz appears with his friend Aazam and tells him how to deceive others and extract money.

Now the scene shifts to Daultabad. It is reported that Najib, a confidante and an advisor of Tughlaq, is murdered. His stepmother comes and scolds him that the economy of the state is collapsing as the people have minted so much fake currency on copper and brass. They have exchanged it for gold and silver coins. So his foolish decision is to be held accountable for this crisis. But Tughlaq is frustrated by Najib's murder. So many people, whomever he suspects, are executed. Finally it is revealed that Najib was poisoned by Tughlaq’s stepmother. When Tughlaq discovers this, he orders her arrest. She is stoned to death. All such decisions are presented as the severe frustrations of his mind.

It is announced to the public that when Ghiyasuddin-Abbasid arrives, the ban on the prayers will be lifted. But the people are no way interested in it as they are dying of hunger. The life of common man is devastated. But Tughlaq is preparing for Ghiyasuddin-Abbasid’s welcome. Aziz appears and murders Ghiyas-uddin-Abbasid. Now Aziz disguises himself as Ghiyas-uddin-Abbasid with a motive to fudge the Sultan. Aziz manages to deceive Tughlaq with his new identity. Later Aazam is murdered and somehow, his true identity is revealed to Tughlaq. Now Aziz tells him everything whatever he had done in past to cheat him. The revelation of these facts really impresses Tughlaq. He appoints him on a powerful position in his court. Having taken this decision, Tughlaq goes to sleep. When he wakes up, he realizes himself as he has gone mad. The play ends here.

All my Sons

The curtain rises on Joe Keller reading the newspaper in his backyard in a small town soon after the end of World War II. A strong wind the night before has toppled an apple tree that was planted to honor Larry Keller, Joe and Kate’s son. A neighbor, Frank Lubey, visits and says that Kate has asked him to use Larry’s horoscope to determine whether November 25, the day Larry disappeared, was a “fortunate day.” Another neighbor, Dr. Jim Bayliss, engages in conversation with Joe, too.

A young woman named Ann (Annie) Deever arrived the night before and sleeps inside. Ann is staying in Larry’s room and used to be Larry’s girlfriend. Sue Bayliss and Lydia Lubey also appear and converse with their husbands. A boy named Bert pretends to be a police officer that Joe hires, and he imagines a jail in Joe’s basement.

Chris Keller, Joe and Kate’s other son, enters and tells Joe that he saw Kate in the yard the night before when the tree fell and that she ran into the house, crying. They agree that Kate clings to the hope that Larry will return, but they both acknowledge that it’s impossible. Chris tells Joe that he has invited Ann to visit because they are in love and intend to marry. When Kate appears, she describes a vision she had of Larry flying his aircraft over their house, calling for his mama. When Kate admits that she can’t handle the reality of Larry’s death, Joe and Chris agree that they will tell Kate about the impending wedding that evening at dinner after a few drinks.

When Ann joins them in the yard, Jim asks about her father in prison. It is revealed that Ann’s father, Steve Deever, and Joe were business partners. Three years earlier, their factory built aircraft engines for the Air Force. When it was discovered that someone had knowingly shipped cracked engines that resulted in the deaths of twenty-one American pilots, Steve Deever was found guilty, but Joe was exonerated because he wasn’t in the plant the day the faulty engines were shipped. The entire play revolves around this past event. Ann accepts Chris’s marriage proposal and listens to Chris’s own war story. At the end of Act One, Ann gets a phone call from her brother, George, who has just visited Steve in prison. George will arrive soon to talk to Ann, but no one knows why.

Chris saws the broken apple tree in the beginning of Act Two. Sue and Ann discuss marriage, and Sue criticizes Chris’s idealism. She suggests that everyone knows that Joe was guilty, too. Jim has gone to pick up George from the train station and returns, warning Joe that George is angry and means to start trouble. George has come to confront Joe and to bring Ann home. When George appears, he and Chris talk about work. George is wearing his father’s hat and confesses to Ann that they have treated Steve poorly by not communicating with him and not believing his story of what really happened at the factory. Steve told his son the truth, that Joe gave the order to ship the cracked engines and then faked being sick so as not to come to the factory that day. George wants to confront Joe directly, but Ann talks him into waiting. Lydia is happy to see George because they were once romantically involved.

When Joe appears, he inquires about Steve and offers him a job at the plant when he is released from prison, but George makes it clear that Steve hates Joe and anyone else who profited from the war. When Kate claims that Joe hasn’t been sick in fifteen years, George immediately recognizes the lie about having the flu, which was his excuse for not being at work the day of the incident. Joe tries to correct Kate’s slip, but it’s too late. Suddenly, Frank appears to tell them that Larry’s horoscope reveals that he might still be alive, which only reinforces Kate’s delusion. Chris calls the idea insane, but Kate holds fast, and George wants to leave with Ann. In a moment of clarity, Kate reveals to her son, Chris, that she knows about Joe’s role in the munitions shipment. Stunned by the truth, Chris explodes at his father in fury.

Act Three takes place in the dead of night. Chris has driven away, and Kate sits on the porch alone. Jim appears and reassures her that Chris will return. He also tells Kate that he’s known all along about Joe’s guilt. Kate tries to explain to Joe that Chris believes in more than money and family, a value that Joe cannot agree with. Joe claims that he’d kill himself if there was something more important than family. Ann appears with a letter from Larry, a piece of evidence that she’s been holding back from the family. Ann wants Kate to free Chris from the lie about Larry, but since Kate refuses, she must share the truth. Chris appears and apologizes to Ann for being a coward. He can no longer be in Joe’s business and will find a new life in Cleveland. His idealism has turned into cynicism.

When Joe reappears, another fight ensues. Joe tells Chris to throw away the family money if he considers it dirty. Chris admits that he worshiped Joe blindly and now sees the world for what it is. Ann chooses to share Larry’s letter, which contains the revelation that finally breaks this family in half. In the letter, Larry confesses to committing suicide in response to Joe’s crime. Joe responds to this news by quietly claiming that he now understands and goes inside to shoot himself. The play ends with Kate holding Chris, trying to comfort him, and telling him that he must go on living.