Comparing Dharker's Blessing versus Ezelkiel's Night of the Scorpion

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Blessing & Night of the Scorpion ‘Blessing’, by Imbilz Dharker and ‘Night Of The Scorpion’ by Nissim Ezelkiel both teach us a lot about another culture. Both poems are set in India and so the people in the poem haven’t got much and so cherish what they do have. I shall analyse the similarities and the differences between the two enthralling poems and then evaluate my findings. ‘The Night of the Scorpion’ was written by Imbilz Dharker and is based in India. The title immediately draws the reader’s attention as it makes you wonder what it means. It also gives an evil and sinister feel to the poem. The first line is brunt and too the point “I remember the night my mother was stung by a scorpion”. “The night of the Scorpion” has very strong religious links as it refers to religion many times throughout the poem. You can feel the narrator’s distain for the scorpion in the opening lines “flash of diabolic tail in the dark room”. The word diabolic may be a reference to the devil. Diablo is the Spanish word for devil and there are more mentions of the devil later on, when the poem refers to the scorpion as “The evil one”. The people in the poem are all very religious, except possibly the father of the narrator, “buzzed the Name of God a hundred times to paralyse the Evil One”. The peasants of the story use phrases such as “May the sum of evil balanced in this unreal world” showing that they believe that it is the will of God that is causing this and only he can stop this. The peasants go about trying to find the scorpion “they searched for him, he was not found” but alas they could not. This increases the drama and tension of the poem as the reader wants to know what will happen now that they have not found the scorpion. The peop... ... middle of paper ... ...arn. In conclusion “Blessing” and “The Night of the Scorpion” are very similar. They are both about poor undeveloped countries, both poems have a lack of something (water/medical knowledge). The people in both stories are highly religious and express their emotions freely. The people in both poems fell desperation at some time. However there are also big differences between the two poems like for example “Blessing” is a lot more positive than “The Night of the Scorpion” which is very dark and sinister. Both poems have strong morals but they do differ. The people’s values are also very different. The people in “Blessing” are desperate for water but in “The Night of the Scorpion” it has rained for ten hours. Both of the poems are very strong with a clear message, they move you with emotive language, and they are both well thought out poems with underlying messages.

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