Skip to main content

Eight o’clock

Summary:

The protagonist (maim character) stood and heard the bell of the church tower.
In the morning the bell was heard all over the town and it reminded the people of their task and pushed them out.After every fifteen minutes the clock hit the bell- one, two, three and four.
An unpleasant event was about to happen. The hour was quiet near against desire.
He stood and counted the quarter strike.It was four. He therefore cursed his luck because he could do nothing to protect himself from the unhappy thing.Then the clock gathered all its strength and struck eight.

Four levels:

1.  Literal comprehension:
The main character in the brief drama stood and heard the clock tower striking the quarter bells every fifteen minutes.It was heard all over the town in the morning.It pushed the people out people remarking them of their day.As the unavoidable hour was coming near, he stood and counted four and cursed his luck because the unpleasant event was about to take place.When the clock struck eight collecting its strength, he was doomed.

2.  Interpretation:
The poem might be trying to tell us that the feeling of the person who is going to face a terrible thing.
At that moment he is so much conscious of time. To him every second is important.He lives every second restlessly being conscious of every moment.He may be going to be hanged or he may be undergoing a terrible experience.

3.  Critical thinking:
Like a musical composition, this poem has used a beautiful repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of the words.For e.g. we find the repetition of ‘st’ sound in the first line and of “str” in the last line.The final word ‘struck’ is a serious pun, that is, an assuming use of the word with two meaning.The first meaning of the word ‘struck’ is to inform the time by the hitting of the bell and its second meaning is to hit the protagonist forcefully

4.  Assimilation:
After reading the poem I identified myself with the protagonist.In the examination hall, the answer books are distributed fifteen minutes earlier.Then I keep on waiting for fifteen minutes restlessly.Before the bell rang I guess the type of questions that may be asked.I count every second and when the bell rings and I get the question paper.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Thinking as a hobby

Summary: As a boy Golding found that there were three grades of thinking, but later when his hobby was thinking that could not think at all. His headmaster first brought the subject of thinking before him. There were three statuettes in his study. One was an armless lady in bath towels worried about the slipping of the towel. Next to her, was a crouching leopard ready to jump down at the top drawer of filling cabinet labeled A-AH. Beyond the leopard was a naked muscular man. He sat looking down with his chin on his fist and his elbow on his knee. The statutes were the symbols of the whole of life to the headmaster. To him the lady was the Venus (beauty) of Milo. She was love. She just wanted to be beautiful. The leopard was Nature and was being natural. The man was Rodin’s Thinker, an image of pure thought. Golding was punished for not obeying the teachers. He was taken in the headmaster’s study and was asked to think the thinker. But Golding did not understand him because he was no...

A most Forgiving Ape

Summary: We do not very much about the gorilla but we think that we know him well. Our source of knowledge is horror films and adventure books. We don’t have his really satisfactory photograph.We do not know anything about his life cycle and social structure. We know a little about the animal. An eighteen month old gorilla may try to trace the outline of his own shadow.A male gorilla helps a female to climb up a steep rock-step. His love for the female and the family is quite human.The family members eat together and sleep making their beds. A full-grown male rises to six foot and weighs six hundred pounds.He is strong that he can remove the head of a man with his hands. But the female is much smaller and lighter.They have a strong smell, a mixture of human sweat, manure and charred wood. They can see clearly, but they are probably deficient in both hearing and smelling.They appear to be talking to each other in high- pitched voices. When they are in danger the male makes a fright...