Nissim Ezekiel: Night of the Scorpion — MCQs with Explanations

Nissim Ezekiel is regarded as the father of modern Indian English poetry and the founder of the Bombay School of poetry, which emphasized clarity, precision of image, and urban sensibility.

Nissim Ezekiel was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) on 16 December 1924 into a Bene-Israel Jewish family.

A Time to Change (1952) was Ezekiel's first collection of poems, published by Fortune Press in London.

Latter-Day Psalms (1982) won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1983, recognising Ezekiel's significant contribution to Indian English poetry.

Ezekiel was born into the Bene-Israel Jewish community of Mumbai, a heritage that influenced his sense of cultural duality and identity.

The Golden Threshold (1905) is by Sarojini Naidu, not Nissim Ezekiel. Ezekiel's collections include The Third, The Unfinished Man, and The Exact Name.

Ezekiel's poetry is internationally praised for its clarity, lucidity, precision of image, and variety of form, with irony and humour as consistent elements.

Nissim Ezekiel died on 9 January 2004 in Mumbai after a long illness, including Alzheimer's disease.

Collected Poems 1952–1988 was published in 1989, bringing together seven individual volumes of verse along with uncollected poems.

Ezekiel was the first significant representative of modern Indian English poetry and is considered the post-Independence progenitor of the genre, writing with an Indian sensibility in English.

The poem is set in a rural Indian village, evident from the presence of peasants, mud-baked walls, and traditional healing practices.

The poem is written in free verse, without a fixed rhyme scheme or metre, allowing the rhythm to adapt to the incident and emotions portrayed.

The poem is an eight-stanza poem, with each stanza containing between three and eighteen lines.

The poem is a narrative poem — it tells a story of a specific incident (the mother's scorpion sting) with a clear sequence of events and characters.

The speaker is Ezekiel himself, narrating a childhood memory of the night his mother was stung by a scorpion. The poem begins with "I remember," signalling personal recollection.

The tone is enigmatic and non-judgmental, suggesting ironic detachment from the peasants' faith while also acknowledging the mystery of suffering.

The title refers literally to the night when the speaker's mother was stung by a scorpion, though "night" also symbolises darkness and ignorance.

The central event is the scorpion sting suffered by the speaker's mother and the community's response to it.

The poem juxtaposes the world of magic, superstition, and blind faith represented by the peasants with the world of science and rationality represented by the father.

The rural setting highlights the community's traditional beliefs, superstitions, and collective response to crisis, reflecting shared cultural practices.

Maternal love and self-sacrifice are central themes, culminating in the mother's final statement that she is grateful the scorpion spared her children.

"Night of the Scorpion" was first anthologised in Collected Poems (1952–1988), though it is one of Ezekiel's early poems.

The "endless rain" reinforces the sense of prolonged suffering and the trapped, isolated condition of the rural household during the crisis.

The villagers invoke karma, rebirth, and God's name, but they do not represent scientific medicine — that is the father's domain. The villagers rely on mystical and ritualistic remedies.

The poem explores multiple responses to suffering — superstitious, rational, ritualistic, and maternal — without offering a simple resolution, making it a complex meditation on human suffering.

The mud-baked walls, combined with the absence of electricity (candles and lanterns), indicate rural poverty and infrastructural deficits.

Calling the scorpion's tail "diabolic" links it to the devil and evil, reflecting the villagers' perception of the scorpion as a manifestation of the "Evil One".

"Night of the Scorpion" is generally taken to be an ironic presentation of the contrast between popular superstition and sceptical rationalism.

The non-judgmental tone allows readers to witness the villagers' faith, the father's rationalism, and the mother's selflessness without the poet imposing a single interpretation.

Ezekiel's first collection was published in 1952, after India gained independence in 1947, making him a post-Independence pioneer of Indian English poetry.

The poem states, "Ten hours / Of steady rain had driven him / To crawl beneath a sack of rice".

The scorpion crawled "beneath a sack of rice" to escape the steady rain.

The poem uses the phrase "flash of diabolic tail in the dark room," emphasising the scorpion's sudden and evil nature.

"Diabolic" means devilish or evil, linking the scorpion to the "Evil One" and the forces of darkness in the poem.

The poem states the scorpion "risked the rain again" after parting with his poison, meaning it went back out into the rain.

"The peasants came like swarms of flies" is the simile used to describe the arrival of the villagers.

The poem states they "buzzed the Name of God a hundred times / to paralyse the Evil One".

The repetition of God's name was intended "to paralyse the Evil One," reflecting the belief that the scorpion was an agent of evil.

"With candles and with lanterns / Throwing giant scorpion shadows / On the mud-baked walls / They searched for him".

The candles and lanterns threw "giant scorpion shadows" on the mud-baked walls, creating an ominous image of the unseen threat.

The poem explicitly states, "They searched for him; he was not found".

"They clicked their tongues" is the gesture the peasants made, expressing worry, sorrow, and resignation at not finding the scorpion.

The peasants believed, "With every movement that the scorpion made his poison moved in Mother's blood, they said".

The villagers said, "May your suffering decrease the misfortunes of your next birth".

The villagers said, "May the sum of evil balanced in this unreal world against the sum of good become diminished by your pain".

"May the poison purify your flesh / Of desire, and your spirit of ambition, they said".

"They sat around / On the floor with my mother in the centre, / The peace of understanding on each face".

The poem describes "The peace of understanding on each face" as the villagers sat around the mother.

The poem uses anaphora: "More candles, more lanterns, more neighbours more insects, and the endless rain".

The line reads: "More candles, more lanterns, more neighbours more insects, and the endless rain".

"My mother twisted through and through groaning on a mat" vividly describes her physical agony.

The poem states she was "groaning on a mat".

The father is explicitly described as "sceptic, rationalist" — a man who relies on reason rather than faith.

The father, despite his rationalism, "trying every curse and blessing, / powder, mixture, herb and hybrid" — showing desperation that transcends his scepticism.

"He even poured a little paraffin / upon the bitten toe and put a match to it" — a dangerous and desperate measure.

"I watched the flame feeding on my mother" — a haunting image suggesting the cure was as painful as the affliction.

The holy man performed rites to tame the poison with an incantation, representing another traditional/ritualistic response to the crisis.