English Literature And Theory This blog contains the explanation of various critical theories that provide a new insight to view literature and interpretation of various literary texts.

During the penitential prayers, the Rabbi, a religious mentor, disappears from the public sight. All the Jews guess that he might have gone up in the heaven. When he is noticed with the other gurus during the holy prayers, he seems very busy with the arrangements for good care and food for all those attending prayers.

Once, during the holy prayers, one of the Litvaks laughs away the existing opinions on the cause of the Rabbi missing away in public and declares that the Rabbi is not be able to ascend the heaven before his death. One day, as being very curious about the Rabbi's whereabouts, the Litvak tries to track down the places where Rabbi stays on the Friday morning. The Litvak walk quietly into the Rabbi's room and hides himself under the bed. The Litvak passes the night sleepless and keeps awake till the next morning. As soon as it is morning, he hears the Rabbi complaining for an hour about the Israelite's sorrows and miseries. Kept unseen from the notice of the Rabbi, the Litvak sees the latter leaving the house with an axe held in hand and leading to jungle. There, the Rabbi is seen cutting down a tree and making a bundle of the logs. With the bundle of wood, the Rabbi moves into the house of a sick old woman of the Jewish race and tries to persuade her to buy logs. As the poor lady denies to buy the logs for having no money with her, the Rabbi assures her of God's help and urges her to buy the wood on credit. When the woman agrees to follow his words, the Rabbi senses out her actual situation and does the job himself in the shabby and ill-furnished room of the woman. The Litvak is deeply impressed by the Rabbi's commitment to help out the poor woman and decide to be his true follower. After all the Litvak declares that it is not other but the Rabbi, himself, who deserves to attain a secure place if not higher than the heaven.

Richard Wright was only nineteen years old. One day in the bank lobby while he was standing beside a desk, he saw a White man was badly criticized in a magazine. He was called a "fool". Wright wondered why this White man, H.L Mencken, was badly scorned by another white man. Curiosity drove him to read about Mencken and his writings. According to him, Negroes were allowed to use only the parks and playgrounds, but never a public library. As a matter of fact, an idea led him to take help from Mr. Falk, an Irish Catholic, often condemned for being his less biased about the Blacks. When he contacted, Mr.Falk advised the speaker to keep his aim secret from other Whites. Thus he secured a card. He wrote a note and made false signature. He went to the library. He overcame the librarian's suspicion. She gave him two books which inspired him to read further other books. He kept on reading one after another. Every book developed his thinking power about the life of the Negroes in the land of the White, He was immensely in agony. He say prejudices prevalent against the Negroes in the North America. He was able to tolerate the hunger but the vice against the black people was intolerable. Since the number of the Negroes was too thin in the South, he thought that it was not possible to organize Blacks ti struggle against the Whites. Open fighting would be equal to committing a suicide. He believed that in no ground educated Negro could be less competent than any White for his black color. Ultimately he decided he would live there and write against injustice, inhumanity, cruelty, prejudices, apartheid and much other social discrimination.

One dry day, the Pandava brothers walked off miles from their shed in search of a deer. After walking miles, every of the five brothers grew tired and too thirsty. But there was no trace of water near by. Shahadeva, the youngest brother, went away for water on the command of the eldest brother, but Shahadeva did not return on expected time. Yudhisthira sent Nakula to bring report of cause of Shahadeva's delay to return with water. But he too did not come back sooner as expected. Neither did Bhima and Arjun respectively, as they left the eldest brother on his will to fetch out the two brothers already delayed to return. Finding none of his brothers as back as yet, Yudhisthira grew impatient and moved-off tracking their footsteps. After walking away some distance, he reached a lake by an open, green field. But suddenly while discovering four of his younger brother's lying all cold, either as unconscious or dead near the lake, he was shock-stricken.

As Yudhisthira did not know what to do with, he simply began to sob bitterly for long on the bank later, for being much thirstier, as he dragged himself to the edge of the water with head down for a drink, he happened to hear Yaksha's voice warning him to drink water only after showing his full ability to answer the question, Yushisthira said even the earth is not more respectful than the mother for an individual. Again, one should give up his self pride to be respected by the following beings. Further he added that only the person who loses desires can really be rich. Similarly having all his questions answered correctly Yaksha got satisfied with Yudhisthira and as a reward he wanted to restore the life of any one of Yudhisthira's brothers. Instantly Yudhisthira wished to have Nakula's life back. Yaksha was greatly surprised and asked him the reason for his unexpected wish to have Nakula's life restored instead of his own brothers. He justified the cause saying it would be morally unjust for Nakula and Shahadeva were the brothers from Madri's line. So if their lives were not restored, her lineage would come to end. Hence Yaksha was very pleased. As the conversation was going on in between, there appeared Yama, Yaksha's own heavenly brother who declared that sonce he had come down to help the Pandavas, he would restore the lives of all four younger brothers. More over, Yama assured them of his full protection during the rest of his exile.