How Much Land Does a Man need? short story by Leo Tolstoy

         

           "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" is story written by Leo 
Tolstoy. In which he tells the story of a peasant named Pahom, who boasts that if he had enough land, he wouldn't fear the Devil. After a series of moves, however, it's clear that no matter how much land Pahom has, he will never truly be happy.
                                       
Summery of short story.
  
        An elder sister from the city visits her younger sister, the wife of a peasant farmer in the village. In the midst of their visit, the two of them get into an argument about whether the city or the peasant lifestyle is preferable. The elder sister suggests that city life boasts better clothes, good things to eat and drink, and various entertainments, such as the theater. The younger sister replies that though peasant life may be rough, she and her husband are free, will always have enough to eat, and are not tempted by the devil to indulge in such worldly pursuits. 

                                    

       Pahom, the husband of the younger sister, enters the debate and suggests that the charm of the peasant life is that the peasant has no time to let nonsense settle in his head. The one drawback of peasant life, he declares, is that the peasant does not have enough land: “If I had plenty of land, I shouldn’t fear the Devil himself!” The devil, overhearing this boast, decides to give Pahom his wish, seducing him with the extra land that Pahom thinks will give him security.
Pahom’s first opportunity to gain extra land comes when a lady in the village decides to sell her three hundred acres. His fellow peasants try to arrange the purchase for themselves as part of a commune, but the devil sows discord among them and individual peasants begin to buy land. Pahom obtains forty acres of his own. This pleases him initially, but soon neighboring peasants allow their cows to stray into his meadows and their horses among his corn, and he must seek justice from the district court. Not only does he fail to receive recompense for the damages but also he ruins his reputation among his former friends and neighbors; his extra land does not bring him security. 

      Hearing a rumor about more and better farmland elsewhere, he decides to sell his land and move his family to a new location. There he obtains 125 acres and is ten times better off than he was before, and he is very pleased. However, he soon realizes that he could make a better profit with more land on which to sow wheat. He makes a deal to obtain thirteen hundred acres from a peasant in financial difficulty for one thousand rubles and has all but clinched it when he hears a rumor about the land of the Bashkirs. There, a tradesman tells him, a man can obtain land for less than a penny an acre, simply by making friends with the chiefs. 

       Fueled by the desire for more, cheaper, and better land, Pahom seeks directions for the land of the Bashkirs and leaves on a journey to obtain the land that he thinks he needs. On arrival, he distributes gifts to the Bashkir leaders and finds them courteous and friendly. He explains his reasons for being there and, after some deliberation, they offer him whatever land he wants for one thousand rubles. Pahom is pleased but concerned; he wants boundaries, deeds, and “official sanction” to give him the assurance he needs that they or their children will never reverse their decision. 

        The Bashkirs agree to this arrangement, and a deal is struck. Pahom can have all the land that he can walk around in a day for one thousand rubles. The one condition is that if he does not return on the same day to the spot at which he began, the money will be lost. The night before his fateful walk, Pahom plans his strategy; he will try to encircle thirty-five miles of land and then sell the poorer land to peasants at a profit. When he awakes the next day, he is met by the man whom he thought was the chief of the Bashkirs, but whom he recognizes as the peasant who had come to his old home to tell him of lucrative land deals available elsewhere. He looks again, and realizes that he is speaking with the devil himself. He dismisses this meeting as merely a dream and goes about his walk.

       Pahom starts well, but he tries to encircle too much land, and by midday he realizes that he has tried to create too big a circuit. Though afraid of death, he knows that his only chance is to complete the circuit. “There is plenty of land,” he says to himself, “but will God let me live on it?” As the sun comes down, Pahom runs with all his remaining strength to the spot where he began. Reaching it, he sees the chief laughing and holding his sides; he remembers his dream and breathes his last breath. Pahom’s servant picks up the spade with which Pahom had been marking his land and digs a grave in which to bury him: “Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed.”

The postmaster by Rabindranath Tagore

                               
                                     

                                                    
 Summary:

      “The Postmaster,” a story by Rabindranath Tagore, concerns an unnamed postmaster who is assigned to a remote post office in a small rural Indian village. The village is near a factory, and the owner of the factory, who is English, manages to have the post office created. The narrator of the story seems to be a resident of the village, since the narrator refers to “our postmaster.” The postmaster is from the huge city of Calcutta and feels out of place in such a distant rural village. The post office seems to contain only two rooms: the office itself, and the postmaster’s living quarters. These are located in a “thatched shed” near a stagnant pond circled by thick foliage.

         The workers in the nearby factory work so much that they have no time to befriend anyone. Besides, they are not especially good company for “decent folk.” In addition, people from Calcutta are not particularly good at socializing. They can appear to be arrogant or uncomfortable. In any case, the postmaster has few companions, and he does not have many activities to keep him occupied.
Occasionally he tries to write a bit of poetry. The rural landscape might have inspired the kind of happy poetry he sought to compose. But the postmaster is uninterested in the landscape and would be happy if it were replaced by a paved road and numerous tall buildings. His wages are not great; he must do his own cooking, but he shares his suppers with “Ratan, an orphan girl of the village, who did odd jobs for him.” In the evening, when the village is filled with appealing sights and sounds—the kind that would inspire poets—the postmaster lights his lamp and calls for Ratan.

         Ratan, who has been waiting for the nightly call, typically asks whether she has indeed been called. She then routinely lights the fire needed for cooking. The postmaster, however, typically tells her to wait a while and let him smoke his pipe, which Ratan then always lights for him. After this nightly ritual has been completed, the postmaster usually talks with Ratan. He asks her whether she remembers her parents, discovering that she has fonder memories of her father than of her mother. She can even recall a little brother, with whom she would playfully fish. Often her conversations with the postmaster last a long time—so long that the postmaster doesn’t cook and Ratan instead prepares a very hasty light meal.

            Sometimes in the evenings, the postmaster himself recalls his home, his mother and sister, and others whom he misses. He cannot share these thoughts with the local workers, but he feels comfortable discussing them with the innocent young girl. Eventually Ratan begins speaking of the members of the postmaster’s family as if they are members of her own and as if she has long known them. In her heart, she can vividly imagine how each of them looks.

       One noon, when the rains have stopped, the wind blows gently and the smell of the lush vegetation beneath the blazing sun feels like the earth breathing on one’s skin. A bird, dedicated to singing the same song over and over, unburdens itself to Nature. The postmaster, however, is idle. He looks at the vegetation and at the increasingly distant rain-clouds and wishes that there were someone—anyone—nearby with whom he had something in common, someone with whom he could share a mutual love. This same thought, he imagines, is precisely what the bird is trying to utter. It is also what the surrounding leaves are attempting to say. Yet no one realizes, or would find it credible, that a thought of this kind might overcome a poorly-paid postmaster during a noontime break from his duties.

         The postmaster summons Ratan, who has been lying beneath a guava-tree, determinedly eating immature guavas. Ratan quickly responds to the summons, asking the postmaster, whom she now calls “Dada,” if he has been calling for her. He replies by saying that he has been considering the possibility of teaching her how to read. For the rest of the workday he tells her about the alphabet. Quickly, Ratan begins to learn about double consonants. 

Home Burial by Robert Frost.

  

           

     This dramatic poem 'Home Burial' was written and published in 1914. In this dramatic narrative Frost has depicted a critical situation arising between husband and wife over the death of their son. There is the drama of social adjustment in human relationship. In this narrative poem, Frost describes a tense conversation between a rural husband and wife whose child has recently died. As the poem opens, the wife is standing at the top of a staircase looking at her child’s grave through the window. Her husband, at the bottom of the stairs, does not understand what she is looking at or why she has suddenly become so distressed. The wife resents her husband’s obliviousness and attempts to leave the house. The husband begs her to stay and talk to him about her grief; he does not understand why she is angry with him for manifesting his grief in a different way. Inconsolable, the wife lashes out at him, convinced of his apathy toward their dead child. The husband mildly accepts her anger, but the rift between them remains. She leaves the house as he angrily threatens to drag her back by force.
                      
Here is video based on poem Home Burial .

Analysis: 

                  this poem is a dramatic or pastoral lyric poem, using free-form dialogue rather than strict rhythmic schemes. Frost generally uses five stressed syllables in each line and divides stanzas in terms of lines of speech. 

            This poem describes two tragedies: first, the death of a young child, and second, the death of a marriage. As such, the title “Home Burial,” can be read as a tragic double entendre. Although the death of the child is the catalyst of the couple’s problems, the larger conflict that destroys the marriage is the couple’s inability to communicate with one another. Both characters feel grief at the loss of the child, but neither is able to understand the way that their partner chooses to express their sorrow.
   
            The setting of the poem – a staircase with a door at the bottom and a window at the top – automatically sets up the relationship between the characters. The wife stands at the top of the stairs, directly in front of the window overlooking the graveyard, while the husband stands at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at her. While the couple shares the tragedy of their child’s death, they are in conflicting positions in terms of dealing with their grief. 
   
           With her position closest to the window, the wife is clearly still struggling with her grief over the loss of her baby. Incapable of moving on at this point in her life, the wife defines her identity in terms of the loss and would rather grieve for the rest of her life than grieve as a sort of pretense. The husband has dealt with his sorrow more successfully, as evidenced by his position at the bottom of the staircase, close to the door and the outside world. As a farmer, the husband is more accepting of the natural cycle of life and death in general, but also chooses to grieve in a more physical manner: by digging the grave for his child. Ironically, the husband’s expression of his grief is completely misunderstood by the wife; she views his behavior as a sign of his callous apathy.

        Ultimately, each character is isolated from the other at opposite ends of the staircase. In order for the marriage to succeed, each character must travel an equal distance up or down the staircase in order to meet the other. The husband attempts to empathize with his wife, moving up the staircase toward her and essentially moving backward in his own journey towards acceptance of his child’s death. Even so, the wife is unable to empathize with her husband and only moves down the staircase after he has already left his position at the foot.
  
        When the wife moves down the staircase, she assumes the upper hand in the power struggle between the two by ensuring that her husband cannot move between her and the door and stop her from leaving. Without the physical capacity to keep her from leaving, the husband must attempt to convince her to stay through communication - something that, as the poem demonstrates, has been largely unsuccessful throughout their marriage.

       
Theme: 

           In this poem we find various theme like, Death, lack of communication, power, sadness etc...

Death:
            In entire poem we find theme of death. Here in this poem two type of death describe: first, death of child and other was death of marriage. Death of child is became major problem in both couples life. Because of child's death we find death  of the relationship of husband and wife.

Lack of communication:
          Because of child's death we find lack of communication in husband and wife. So lack of communication is leads towards the end of the relationship. Both are not able to communicate with each other , that's way we find end of the relationship,   
  

One night @ the call center

Hello reader,

This blog is my part of classroom activity on One night @ call center by Chetan Bhagat.

To show the worksheet of given task click here. 

 

 Que - 1:Comment on Narrative structure of the novel. Compare with that of Life of Pi.

Ans: In one night @ the call center we find that writer himself was travelling in train from Kanpur to Delhi. And then he meets a young girl, who tells him a story on condition of writing it as his second novel. He listens the story and story is told by Shyam – one of the characters of the novel. So here we find three layers of narration;

1) Entire story was author’s dream sequence

2) In train beautiful lady narrates the story of ‘one night @ the call center’ with her perspective.

3) Author maid narrator Shyam of his story, so third layer of the story was the perspective of the Shyam.

         chetan Bhagat makes very good use prologue and epilogue in his novel. In prologue, writer himself comes as character and talks with the reader. It looks like Bhagat is well aware bout the literary tradition of writing. Use of epilogue is also very interesting as much as prologue. Bhagat raise question that people cannot believe in this story so that lady gives alternative, element of God.

Competition with “Life of PI” by  Yann Martel.   

        There are many parallel/ similarities in Narrative technique of One Night @ The call center by Bhagat and "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel. For example, in beginning of both the novel we find the use of Prologue. Both the writer himself presents in the prologue how they got inspiration about writing their second novel. Both the writers meets person who tells them stories - a young lady in ON@tcc and an old man in Life of Pi. Both tell that you can meet the real people to collect more information.

Other parallel is Experience of God. There is not clarity about God, but rather it’s indicated and experienced. One can't say with surety that God is present or not.

        And one more point is First person Narration in both the novels- Shyam and Pi- narrator and protagonist in both the novels.

        And in the epilogue of both the novels alternative reading is given. When Japanese insurance agents listen the story of Pi, they are not ready to believe it. They say our company won’t believe this. So Pi tells another story replacing Animals with human beings. When Yann Martel asks what correct story is, Pi tells a story which I told you. But now it’s your story, you can write the way you wish. The same lines are also found in ON@tcc also. When Bhagat asks to that lady, people may not believe in story with the God's call. So the lady tells that you can replace the lines of God with Military uncle.So, this is the parallel in Narrative technique in both novels, which is quite interesting.  

 

Que – 2: What is popular literature? Is ON@tcc popular literature? Illustrate.

Ans. Popular Literature is literature that is enjoyed by a large mass of people.  Popular writing includes those writing intended for the mass and those that find favor with large audience. It can be distinguished from artistic literature in that it is designed primarily to entertain. Popular literature, unlike high literature, generally does not seek a high degree of formal beauty or subtlety and is not intended to endure. The growth of popular literature has paralleled the spread of literacy through education and has been facilitated by technological developments in printing. With the Industrial Revolution, works of literature, which were previously produced for consumption by small, well-educated elites, became accessible to large sections and even majorities of the members of a population.

One night at the call center as popular literature. 

ON@tcc can be considered as popular literature because it does not have proper plot structure, there is plot between love and break up-love of Shyam and Priyanka. It does not have that deep philosophy about life. And character blindly believing in god’s call. You do not require intellectual understanding after reading it. Plot follow simple story line like, love and breakup. All character has some kind of the problem with their family member. So it shows modern mind set of the people which Chetan Bhagat very well represented in his novel. So we can say that this novel is come in the category of popular literature.

Que – 3: What do you understand by self-help book. Is ON@tcc self-help book? Illustrate.

Ans: self-help book means that books who represent the realty of the time. Self-help book show the real image of the society and we also learn in the self-help book. With help of the self-help books readers solve their problem and also improve their self. Self-help book present the modern culture.

  

            In chetan Bhagat all book we see that he give one activity on one page, this page shows the self-help book most important Characteristics.

        In One Night @ the Call Center he gives activity like this:

        Before you begin this book, I have a small request. Right here, not down three things. Write down something that

1            1)You fear,

            2)Makes you angry and

                 3)You don’t like about yourself.

         

      Here we see that Chetan Bhagat gives one small exercise, in this exercise he asks some question, and that three questions about our personal thing. All three question about our own self. He ask like our fear, when we angry and do not like about our self. So these all things present that Chetan Bhagat saw that our self because we all have some dark side. Something we don’t like about ourselves, something that makes us angry and something we want to change about ourselves. The difference is how we choose to face it. Here Chetan Bhagat connects to us with all character, and say that how we handle this types of situation in our life, that depend on our self. So from this entire thing we can say that ON@TCC is self-help book.

Que – 4: How far can this novel be categorized as cyberpunk?

  

 Ans: This novel is known as cyberpunk novel because of we can find some technological elements in the work. And we can see it in the novel like use of mail, F.M., Bug, etc. So we can say it categorized as cyber punk novel. It is a postmodern science fiction genre noted for its focus on high tech and low life. In this novel we see that Vroom hacks Bakshi's email and writes email to Esah on his behalf and blackmail Bakshi and exhorted money from him to start new company with Shyam. So from this all element we can say that one night @ call center is a cyberpunk novel.

Education, Technology and ELT

Hello reader,  

This blog is part of my classroom activity of unite three language laboratory.

Here is blog link of given task.

Video – 1: Changing Education paradigms – Sir Ken Robinson

 In this video sir ken Robinson talks about changing paradigms of education. Every country on the earth at the movement is reforming public education. There are two reasons for it.

 

:    Economy: For that people has trying to work out how do we educate our children to take their place in the economics of the 21st century.

          Culture: Every culture try to figure out how do we educate our children.

In education there are two types of people, 1) Academic and 2) Non-academic. Many kids have not purpose for them going to the school, so they reach in collage and get college degree. They have degree but it has not guarantee of job. In which he discussed various ideas like Divergent Thinking and Collaborative learning. Divergent thinking is the same like creativity. Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. Divergent thinking isn’t synonym but essential capacity for creativity. Sir Robinson did one research – Longitudinal test on various age group people like KG to 13-15 age groups and fined their thinking capacity. In divergent thinking multiple answered was there. 

Video – 2: Build a school in the cloud by – Sugata Mitra:

In this video Sugata Mitra talks about future of learning. British Empire is the biggest empire in the world. They created a global computer med up of the people. It called the bureaucratic administrator mission. They produced another mission the school. The school produced people who then become parts of bureaucratic administrative mission. They must know three things,

1)    They must have good handwriting, because that time is handwriting and all data in handwritten document.

2)    They must be able to read

3)    They must be able to doing multiplication, division, addition and subtraction in their head.

Because of technology people work anywhere they won’t, whenever they won’t. Present day schooling preparing for that world. He has experiment on slum children in Delhi like “Hall in wall”. In which he put his computer in slum area and he found that slum children learn faster than any children and they also taught their elder. He did same thing at various places and he found that in a 9 months group of children left alone with a computer in any language they rich the same standard of the office sectors in the west. So by this experiment he prove that not only reach children know knew thing or knowledge about technology but if we provide that kind of facility to slum children they also do good work.

Video -3: The future of learning by – Sugata Mitra

      In this video Sugata Mitra talks about traditional education system and modern education system. In traditional education system good handwriting and write down carefully is most important. It was run for several years even though first printing press was not established. In oral tradition of education system to sit down, do not talk, paid attention, listen carefully and remember carefully what you listen this all thing are became important. In modern education technology gives us broader way of looking.   

Video-4: Reinvent education – Salman Khan:

In this video Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan academy, a carefully structured series of education.  It is constructed on the idea of flip learning. Here he talks about how we learn from technology. He posted his video for his cousin on YouTube for his cousin’s solving problem and then he got feedback from other student. So he keep started posting video on YouTube because student can access knowledge from anywhere. He said that students can learn better from the video rather than from books and teachers can use technology in classroom not taught just traditional way. He show the power of interactive experiences, and talks for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom script and give students video lectures to watch at the home and do homework in the classroom with teacher available to help. 

  

Video – 5: Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants by – Marc Prensky 

           In this audio Marc Prensky talks about Digital native and Digital Immigrants. Today’s student represents the first generations to grow up with this new technology. They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video games, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age. So this student, who was born in the 21^st century they get readily technology so they known as digital native. Computer games, email, the Internet, cell phones and instant messaging are integral parts of their lives. Digital immigrants mean those people who were not born in a time when technology was not readily available to use it. They believe that their students can’t learn from watching TV and playing video games which suggests the traditional mindset of digital immigrant while digital natives have laptops rather than books in their libraries.

      

 “Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.”

 Digital Native is different from their predecessor not only in clothes and test of food but also in language and technology. Technology has become the integral part of their lives.

Video 6: David Crystal: The Effect of New Technologies on Engish: 

      In video David Crystal talks about the effect of new technology on English language. Think about past technology, in 15^th century medium of printing come. So suddenly we have new verity of language. We have news also news paper, so in the style of the news paper had-line, cartoon, caption, additional this all things became important in the news paper. In 19^th century development of the telephone became most important invention of this century. Before this people not know how to use telephone. In 20^th, century, in 1920 broadcasting come and then in 1990 internet took place in the global world. Now Google gives whatever answered you need. Slowly and staidly teacher should became multitasker because now student have internet and know the answer that’s why teacher should became ready for this digital time. Through the development of the face book people know about the world within 24 hour.

Video – 7: David Crystal: The Biggest Challange for English Language Teachers in the times of Internet: 

 

         In this video David Crystal talks about ‘the biggest challenge for English language teacher in the times of internet. In 21^st century so fat language is changes. It changes for two reason first, internet language (face book, blog etc…) which moving faster and faster. Second is Globalization (television, movie) in which English became important language. Teacher is respect for tradition action for taught English language. If learner is improve listening comprehension and reading comprehension so they learn English very well. People choose American and British English and people who are choose for own way of like African, Indian, south English studies. There are most difficult two jobs in the world that are,

1)   Transpiring and interpreting

2)   Language teaching

Teachers job are not easy because they get job that study southern English.  Because of Google teacher’s job will be easy.

Video- 8 David Crystal: Texting is 'Good' for English Language: 

 

                                          

 

       Here in this video David Crystal is talks about texing and importance of the text massages. For that he invented theory which called “Texting is good for English language”. Texting is a kind of language is studied by linguistics. As per he said that texting is a kind of language. Texting first start in the late 19^th century so before this there is no discussion about it. Texting start with the invention of the mobile phone.