According to scholar Pona Mohanta, "The concern of the villagers and the poet's father seem rather superficial when pitted against the heartfelt feelings of his mother." It is a universal truth that a mother cannot tolerate the pain and suffering of her children. The last lines of the poem carry the irony, that is, the poet's mother expresses her gratitude to God for saving her children.
My mother only said Thank God the scorpion picked on me And spared my children. It came from a religious background and Ezekiel wrote this poem trying to give the impression of anger, but also an underlying message of motherly love, along with a hint of culture and superstition:Īfter twenty hours it lost its sting. Nissim Ezekiel's poem "Night of the Scorpion" presents a rural Indian village and its people. A sign of her prevailing love and affection for her children is shown when she thanks God that she was stung and not her children. After twenty hours, the poison loses its sting.
The peasants, finally accepting the fate of the mother, try to put a positive spin on the situation by saying that even if the mother died, her next life (an Indian belief) would be less painful, as she is atoning for her future sins by enduring this pain. The speaker watches the vain holy man performing his deceptive incantations but he cannot do anything to stop it. This reflects in one of the village peasant's saying, "May the sins of your previous birth / be burned away tonight," which the father tries to do, not for burning her sins but to burn away the poison residing inside the mother, which reflects her sins being atoned for. The speaker's father who was a sceptic and rationalist, tried to save his wife by using powder, mixture, herbs, hybrid and even by pouring a little paraffin upon the bitten toe and put a match to it. Many things were tried to help relieve the mother's pain but none worked. This could also be implying that the shadows of the various house hold utensils and other items are converted by the brain of the searchers into the shadow of a scorpion - as that is what they are looking for. By saying, "With candles and with lanterns / throwing giant scorpion shadows / on the mud-baked walls," the speaker is implying there is still evil haunting the house, even after the scorpion had left the house. The villagers tried to find the scorpion but they could not. They tried to provide reasons and many relied on superstition to guess what the problem was. The speaker is displeased by their arrival, comparing them to flies (unwanted and irritating) as they veritably buzzed around the mother. It is also implied that they live in a caring, closely-knit village by the fact that the neighbours feel welcome at all. Their reason for this is that they believe that as the scorpion moves, his poison moves in the blood of the mother. The scorpion then flees the scene and, thus, risks the rain again.Ī picture of a religious village is created by what the neighbours do to paralyse the scorpion: "buzzed the name of God". The way in which the mother is bitten is also shown in "flash / of diabolic tail" the speaker manages to suggest that the scorpion is demonic with its "diabolic" tail, and emphasises its speed with the word flash. The speaker specifically remembers this night due to this event namely, the mother getting bitten. The poem opens in a way that suggests reflection-the speaker remembers (and, is so, older now) the night his mother was stung by a scorpion, which bit the mother because of its predatory impulse, while hiding beneath a bag of rice to escape from the rain.
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