“The Night of the Scorpion” is a poem by Nissim Ezekiel. In this poem, the poet describes a terrible night in which his father was stung by a poisonous stinging scorpion. She had been suffering for twenty hours and during that time the villagers, peasants, a saint and her husband tried to heal her. They used curses, herbs, prayers and all other forms of ancient medicine, but all their efforts were in vain. The poet here shows faith in superstition, a lack of knowledge in ancient Indian culture, and the uncomplicated love of a mother for her child, who did not stop thinking about her even in the darkest of times.
The poet was remembering how a scorpion stung his mother one night, which entered in their house because of ten hours of steady rain and took shelter beneath a sack of rice. After infecting the mother with its diabolic tail, the scorpion risked the rain again,which means it escaped from the house . The peasants came like ‘ swarms of flies’ means many people came to their house after listening to his mother’s injury .
They tried many things so that they could punk the poison of the scorpion . The line ‘with candles and lanterns they saw the scorpion on the mud–baked walls of the house ’ indicates the state of that people’s mind that they were in fear of the scorpion. They thought the mother will die that’s why they started praying to God so that he could forgive all of her sins. But nothing was working rather the mother’s pain was increasing . The poet’s father also tried different things, poured paraffin on the infected toe , holy man was uttering incantations but they failed too . After a long time , finally she recovered and thanked the god as her child his safe.
This poem is all about Indian culture , believe , superstition and a dark side of the ancient Indian people . Superstition was a static thing . It was totally controlling people’s life which we see in the poem . The poem is an alternative of today’s modern world because in todays world , no one would believe in such things . Now a days , people are conscious about their life and they don’t do anything without analyzing it in their own as they are educated . But in the ancient time , people used to believe in others’ statement as they were uneducated . This is my opinion about the poem .
