9416-1.doc

Course: English Literature (9416)
Semester: Spring, 2021
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ASSIGNMENT No. 1
Q.1 From the tree diagram given in Unit 1 elaborate how literature can be divided into different
categories.
A term like “Elements of Literature” might seem kind of imposing. In reality, you were exposed to each and
every element of literature before you could even read. Every story you have ever experienced has, in fact,
contained all of these elements. You may not have realized it at the time, but something as simple as “Green
Eggs and Ham” has the same core structure, and same basic components as “King Lear”.
Narrative fiction, that is, the telling of a story, must follow certain patterns. These patterns can be chopped up,
rearranged, and sometimes purposefully hidden by the storyteller, but all the necessary elements are there. No
matter how complex or sprawling a story may be, it has a beginning, an end, a setting, a cast of characters, and a
plot. Being able to property identify those elements, and parse them out in an academic way does require a
little literary direction, and a little practice. That’s where this list comes in so you can write your book today.
Plot
Simply put, the plot is the sequence of events which make up a story. It is everything that happens from the
beginning to the end. Crafting a good plot is essential to a story being understood. Even though the story itself
might be mysterious, or purposefully written out of order, at the end of the story, the readers and listeners
should be able to grasp everything that happened. As the story unfolds, the audience should experience
emotional reactions, curiosity, and even an artistic appreciation for the story. Plot is the most basic, but also the
largest and most all-encompassing of the literary elements.
Typically, plots follow a specific pattern called an arc. Beginning with “Exposition” wherein the stage is set,
and characters are introduced, it next moves onto a “Catalyst”. Sometimes also referred to as the “Inciting
Incident”, the Catalyst is the event which sets the story in motion. The story then goes on to experience “Rising
Action”, or the mounting of events leading up to the “Climax”, or turning point of the story. The climax is
often the most exciting or emotional part of the story. Afterwards, the plot begins to descend into “Falling
Action” which is where the characters hurtle towards the ending. This phase of the story may be brief, but also
tense, as the ending is still uncertain. Finally, the plot ends in the “Denouement”, or the final resolution of the
story.
Setting
The setting of the story is the location in which the events take place. This backdrop could be in any geographic
location, and in any time period (real or imagined). Writing a compelling setting is one of the main elements of
literature, and the sign of a talented author. The setting helps to accent the mood and context of the story. It
helps the audience to understand the surrounding culture, landscape, and moment in time. A story set in a
speculative, totalitarian future will feel significantly different than a story set in rural America during the 1930s.

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Character
A character is a person, animal, or any other being of significance in a story. Characters are the vehicles by
which the audience is able to travel through the plot and setting. Whatever the characters experience is made
known to the audience, and they are therefore able to feel and interpret the various situations in the story.
Characters can be numerous, or sparse. There are several stories with only one character, while others have
casts of hundreds -each given a unique voice. If an author wants the audience to understand something
important, or react to something in a certain way, they accomplish this through the thoughts, words and
emotions attributed to the characters.
Characters will often include familiar archetypes like a hero, a villain, a fiend, a love interest, a rival, a mentor,
and so on. Characters can be “round”, meaning they have a lot of complexity and depth – or they can be “flat”
meaning they are somewhat one-note and do not change much throughout the story. It’s all a matter of what the
story calls for in order for the author to get his or her point across.
Theme
Theme may be one of the more subtle elements of literature. The theme of the story is different from the plot,
because whereas the plot tells you what happened in the story, the theme tells you what the story was really
about. This is usually in terms of a single word or short phrase such as “Love”, “Jealousy”, “One person can
make a difference”, or “The dangers of greed”. Stories often have more than one theme. Themes are central to
the story, but often not explicitly stated by any of the characters. Rather, theme becomes apparent by observing
what the characters do, and how it effects them.
For instance, a novel such as “The Joy Luck Club” has themes of “Family”, “Tradition”, “Loss”, “Mothers and
Daughters”, and “Immigration”. All of these are concepts that are visible throughout the story, even if the
characters never stop to specifically point them out.
Mood
Mood is an overall feeling your audience can pick up from experiencing the story. It is usually influenced
greatly by the setting. If a story were to be set in a boardwalk dance hall during the 1920s, the mood of that
story might be raucous, frivolous, and perhaps a little seedy or dangerous. Meanwhile, a story set at the peak of
an uninhabited mountain might promote moods of loneliness, physical endurance, and isolation.
Audiences can also take a lot of cues from the narrator’s attitude. Since the reader depends on the narrator to
feed them the story, the way that character feels about the story, is often how the audience feels about the story.
The mood is presented via a characters actions and reactions. Also related is the manner in which the story is
written – sometimes called “diction“. If a narrator’s diction is loose and unpolished, that creates an informal
mood. Likewise, if the narrator’s diction is gruff and profane, that gives the reader a pretty good feel for what
the mood of the story will be.

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Conflict
To put it simply, conflict is the “problem” present in every story. It could manifest very literally as two
characters physically fighting with one another, or it could be a little more abstract, like an unreasonable
deadline on an important project. Characters in a story are going to have different objectives and goals. These
are likely to clash and become incompatible at some point in the story. When that incompatibility is brought
up, that is when you will find the conflict in the story.
There are four basic types of conflict in the elements of literature. They are:
Man against man: Meaning one character in the story is up against another character.
Man against nature: A character is at the mercy of the weather, the elements, the local fauna, or any other
aspect of nature. The character must overcome it in order to succeed.
Man against society: Rather than one enemy, the character is at odds with the entire social and/or governmental
structure of the story.
Man against self: Something in the characters tendencies or actions are thwarting the chances of success. The
character is either literally or figuratively self-destructive.
Q.2 What is symbolism? Explain the phenomenon based on the following excerpt from Shakespeare’s
work:
“All the worlds a stage,
And all the men women merely players,
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts”
A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object,
or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between
otherwise very different concepts and experiences. All communication (and data processing) is achieved
through the use of symbols. Symbols take the form of words, sounds, gestures, ideas, or visual images and are
used to convey other ideas and beliefs. For example, a red octagon is a common symbol for "STOP"; on maps,
blue lines often represent rivers; and a red rose often symbolizes love and compassion. Numerals are symbols
for numbers; letters of an alphabet may be symbols for certain phonemes; and personal names are symbols
representing individuals. The variable 'x', in a mathematical equation, may symbolize the position of a particle
in space.
Shakespeare draws readers’ attention toward the drama everyone lives throughout their lives. He is really
reducing the life of human beings to a performance, or an acting role, which might look ridiculous. Simply, he
means that all human beings are players, who play their assigned roles in every day. For instance, if somebody
is a soldier now, he is playing the role Lord has allotted to him. Same is the case with other professionals. Even
several roles are common such, as the role of a young lover, a haughty middle-aged man, or a great golfer.

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All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
The idea behind this phrase is fortune and fate. Jacques deploys a famous theatrical metaphor of seven stages of
human life in this speech. He compares the world to a play, or a stage, and all men and women are merely
actors or players on this stage called the world. All the people enter into this world through different routes, and
exit on an different route. They enter into this stage when they are born, and leave it when they die. During this
entire life span, every person plays different parts or roles, and these parts are known as seven stages, which are
like different acts of a drama or play.
The speaker, Jacques, begins “All the world’s a stage” by asserting that life is like a stage on which “men and
women merely” play roles. They play different parts throughout their lives, as the speaker is now. In the bulk
of this monologue, the speaker spends time going through the seven ages of man. One starts in infancy, moves
through childhood, and into the best part of their life when they’re a lover, soldier, and judge. Later, they lose
control of their senses and eventually can’t take care of themselves.
Shakespeare uses the monologue in As You Like It to compare life to a stage on its most basic level. His
speaker, Jacques, is suggesting that life is a stage, and men and women are players who take on
different roles throughout their lives. The concept comes, in part, from medieval philosophy. The “seven
ages” dates from the 12th century. There was a tapestry of King Henry V depicting the seven stages of man. For
theological reasons, medieval philosophers constructed groups of seven as in the seven deadly sins. Therefore, it
is believed that the “seven ages” derives from medieval philosophy.
Shakespeare makes use of several literary devices in this speech. Some are:
 Simile: ‘creeping like a snail”; “soldier… bearded like the pard”; etc.
 Metaphor: The entire speech itself is more like symbolism; men and women are portrayed as players
whereas life is portrayed as the stage. Shakespeare uses the “stage” as an extended metaphor.
 Repetition: Another figure of speech used in this monologue; words like sans, age, etc. are repeated for
the sake of emphasis.
 Anaphora: It is used in the eighth and ninth lines, beginning with the word “And”.
 Synecdoche: “Made to his mistress’ eyebrow”; “And then the justice”; etc.
 Alliteration: “his shrunk shank”; “quick in quarrel”; etc.
 Onomatopoeia: “pipes / And whistles in his sound”
 Asyndeton: “Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”

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In the first lines of ‘All the world’s a stage,’ the speaker, Jacques, begins with the famed lines that later came to
denote this entire speech. He declares that “All the world’s a stage” and that the people living in it are “merely
players.”
This sets up what is one of the most skilled conceits in all of English literature. Every person, no matter who
they are, where they were born, or what they want to do with their lives, wakes up every day with a role. They
enter, they exit, just like performers.
It’s important to note at this point that these lines would be read on stage in front of an audience. The extended
metaphor would not be lost on anyone listening or watching. The actor is declaring to the audience that “you”
are just as much of an actor as he is.
Before the listener starts to get concerned about the role they have to play, Jacques adds that a “man,” (or
woman) plays many different parts in their lives, as an actor does. Whoever the actor may be on stage is not
only “Jacques” he’s also many other characters throughout his career. It’s in the fifth line of the monologue that
Shakespeare brings in a slightly more complex concept, that of the “seven ages” of humankind. The first of
these is the “infant”.
Q.3 Every writer brings a unique style to the story or the poem they compose. Explain by discussing the
style of William Wordsworth.
William Wordsworth was one of the founders of English Romanticism and one its most central figures and
important intellects. He is remembered as a poet of spiritual and epistemological speculation, a poet concerned
with the human relationship to nature and a fierce advocate of using the vocabulary and speech patterns of
common people in poetry. The son of John and Ann Cookson Wordsworth, William Wordworth was born on
April 7, 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, located in the Lake District of England: an area that would become
closely associated with Wordsworth for over two centuries after his death. He began writing poetry as a young
boy in grammar school, and before graduating from college he went on a walking tour of Europe, which
deepened his love for nature and his sympathy for the common man: both major themes in his poetry.
Wordsworth is best known for Lyrical Ballads, co-written with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and The Prelude, a
Romantic epic poem chronicling the “growth of a poet’s mind.”
Wordsworth’s deep love for the “beauteous forms” of the natural world was established early. The Wordsworth
children seem to have lived in a sort of rural paradise along the Derwent River, which ran past the terraced
garden below the ample house whose tenancy John Wordsworth had obtained from his employer, the political
magnate and property owner Sir James Lowther, Baronet of Lowther (later Earl of Lonsdale).
William attended the grammar school near Cockermouth Church and Ann Birkett’s school at Penrith, the home
of his maternal grandparents. The intense lifelong friendship between William Wordsworth and his sister
Dorothy probably began when they, along with Mary Hutchinson, attended school at Penrith. Wordsworth’s
early childhood beside the Derwent and his schooling at Cockermouth are vividly recalled in various passages

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of The Prelude and in shorter poems such as the sonnet “Address from the Spirit of Cockermouth Castle.” His
experiences in and around Hawkshead, where William and Richard Wordsworth began attending school in
1779, would also provide the poet with a store of images and sensory experience that he would continue to draw
on throughout his poetic career, but especially during the “great decade” of 1798 to 1808. This childhood idyll
was not to continue, however. In March of 1778 Ann Wordsworth died while visiting a friend in London. In
June 1778 Dorothy was sent to live in Halifax, Yorkshire, with her mother’s cousin Elizabeth Threlkeld, and
she lived with a succession of relatives thereafter. She did not see William again until 1787.
In December of 1783 John Wordsworth, returning home from a business trip, lost his way and was forced to
spend a cold night in the open. Very ill when he reached home, he died December 30. Though separated from
their sister, all the boys eventually attended school together at Hawkshead, staying in the house of Ann Tyson.
In 1787, despite poor finances caused by ongoing litigation over Lord Lowther's debt to John Wordsworth's
estate, Wordsworth went up to Cambridge as a sizar in St. John’s College. As he himself later noted,
Wordsworth’s undergraduate career was not distinguished by particular brilliance. In the third book of The
Prelude Wordsworth recorded his reactions to life at Cambridge and his changing attitude toward his studies.
During his last summer as an undergraduate, he and his college friend Robert Jones—much influenced by
William Coxe’s Sketches of the Natural, Civil, and Political State of Swisserland (1779)—decided to make a
tour of the Alps, departing from Dover on July 13, 1790.
Though Wordsworth, encouraged by his headmaster William Taylor, had been composing verse since his days
at Hawkshead Grammar School, his poetic career begins with this first trip to France and Switzerland. During
this period he also formed his early political opinions—especially his hatred of tyranny. These opinions would
be profoundly transformed over the coming years but never completely abandoned. Wordsworth was
intoxicated by the combination of revolutionary fervor he found in France—he and Jones arrived on the first
anniversary of the storming of the Bastille—and by the impressive natural beauty of the countryside and
mountains. Returning to England in October, Wordsworth was awarded a pass degree from Cambridge in
January 1791, spent several months in London, and then traveled to Jones’s parents’ home in North Wales.
During 1791 Wordsworth’s interest in both poetry and politics gained in sophistication, as natural sensitivity
strengthened his perceptions of the natural and social scenes he encountered.
Wordsworth’s passion for democracy, as is clear in his “Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff” (also called “Apology
for the French Revolution”), is the result of his two youthful trips to France. In November 1791 Wordsworth
returned to France, where he attended sessions of the National Assembly and the Jacobin Club. In December he
met and fell in love with Annette Vallon, and at the beginning of 1792 he became the close friend of an
intellectual and philosophical army officer, Michel Beaupuy, with whom he discussed politics. Wordsworth had
been an instinctive democrat since childhood, and his experiences in revolutionary France strengthened and
developed his convictions. His sympathy for ordinary people would remain with Wordsworth even after his

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revolutionary fervor had been replaced with the “softened feudalism” he endorsed in his Two Addresses to the
Freeholders of Westmoreland in 1818.
While still in France, Wordsworth began work on the first extended poetic efforts of his maturity, Descriptive
Sketches, which was published in 1793, after the appearance of a poem written at Cambridge, An Evening
Walk (1793). Having exhausted his money, he left France in early December 1792 before Annette Vallon gave
birth to his child Caroline. Back in England, the young radical cast about for a suitable career. As a fervent
democrat, he had serious reservations about “vegetating in a paltry curacy,” though he had written to his friend
William Matthews in May 1792 that he intended to be ordained the following winter or spring. Perhaps this
plan was why he was reading sermons early in 1793, when he came across a sermon by Richard Watson,
Bishop of Llandaff, on “the Wisdom and Goodness of God” in making both rich and poor, with an appendix
denouncing the French Revolution. His democratic sympathies aroused, he spent several weeks in February and
March working on a reply.
By this time, his relationship with Annette Vallon had become known to his English relatives, and any further
opportunity of entering the Church was foreclosed. In any case Wordsworth had been reading atheist William
Godwin’s recently published Political Justice (1793), and had come powerfully under its sway. “A Letter to the
Bishop of Llandaff” is the youthful poet and democrat’s indignant reply to the forces of darkness, repression,
and monarchy. Its prose shares something of the revolutionary clarity of Thomas Paine’s. Wordsworth, in fact,
quoted Paine in his refutation of Bishop Watson’s appendix: “If you had looked in the articles of the rights of
man, you would have found your efforts superseded. Equality, without which liberty cannot exist, is to be met
with in perfection in that state in which no distinctions are admitted but such as have evidently for their object
the general good.” Just how radical Wordsworth’s political beliefs were during this period can be judged from
other passages in this “Letter”: “At a period big with the fate of the human race, I am sorry that you attach so
much importance to the personal sufferings of the late royal martyr . ... You wish it to be supposed that you are
one of those who are unpersuaded of the guilt of Louis XVI. If you had attended to the history of the French
revolution as minutely as its importance demands, so far from stopping to bewail his death, you would rather
have regretted that the blind fondness of his people had placed a human being in that monstrous situation. ...”
“A Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff” is remarkable partly because Wordsworth seems to have begun
relinquishing its tenets almost as soon as he had composed them. Though he remained for the time being a
strong supporter of the French Revolution, the poetic side of Wordsworth’s personality began asserting itself,
causing the poet to reexamine, between 1793 and 1796, his adherence to Godwin’s rationalistic model of human
behavior, upon which Wordsworth’s republicanism was largely founded. Whether “A Letter to Bishop the of
Llandaff” remained unpublished through caution or circumstance is not clear. As Wordsworth turned his
attention to poetry, he developed, through the process of poetic composition, his own theory of human nature,

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one that had very little to do with Godwin’s rationalism. During this period Wordsworth met another radical
young man with literary aspirations, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
In 1794 and 1795 Wordsworth divided his time between London and the Lake Country. In September 1795
William and Dorothy Wordsworth settled at Racedown Lodge in Dorset, where they would live for two years.
In The Prelude Wordsworth wrote that his sister “Maintained a saving intercourse / With my true self,” and
“preserved me still / A poet.” At Racedown Wordsworth composed the tragedy The Borderers, a tragedy in
which he came fully to terms with Godwin’s philosophy, finally rejecting it as an insufficiently rich approach to
life for a poet. Then Wordsworth for the first time found his mature poetic voice, writing The Ruined Cottage,
which would be published in 1814 as part of The Excursion, itself conceived as one part of a masterwork, The
Recluse, which was to worry Wordsworth throughout his life, a poem proposed to him by Coleridge and
planned as a full statement of the two poets’ emerging philosophy of life.
In 1797, to be closer to Coleridge, the Wordsworths moved to Alfoxden House, near the village of Nether
Stowey. Because of the odd habits of the household—especially their walking over the countryside at all
hours—the local population suspected that the Wordsworths and their visitors were French spies, and a
government agent was actually dispatched to keep an eye on them. The years between 1797 and 1800 mark the
period of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s close collaboration, and also the beginning of Wordsworth’s mature
poetic career. Wordsworth wrote the poems that would go into the 1798 and 1800 editions of Lyrical Ballads—
poems such as “Tintern Abbey,” “Expostulation and Reply,” “The Tables Turned,” “Goody Blake and Harry
Gill,” and “Michael.” During 1798 Wordsworth also worked on a piece of prose setting out his evolving ideas
on justice and morality. Called the “Essay on Morals” by later editors, it was set aside and never finished.
Wordsworth seems to have been attempting to work out and justify his changing political and social ideas—
ideas that had begun to develop intuitively during the process of poetic composition. The poet in Wordsworth
was beginning to dominate the democrat, and the poet found a political philosophy based on power, violence,
and reason anathema.
In September 1798 the Wordsworths set off for Germany with Coleridge, returning separately, after some
disagreements, in May 1799. In Germany Wordsworth continued to write poems, and when he returned to
England he began to prepare a new edition of Lyrical Ballads. The second edition—that of 1800—included an
extended preface by Wordsworth, explaining his reasons for choosing to write as he had and setting out a
personal poetics that has remained influential and controversial to the present day. For Victorian readers such as
Matthew Arnold, who tended to venerate Wordsworth, the preface was a fount of wisdom; but the modernists
were deeply suspicious of Wordsworth’s reliance on feeling: poets such as T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, while
they could accept the strictures on poetic diction, found the underlying theory unacceptable. Subsequent critics
have focused on the literary and historical sources of Wordsworth’s ideas, demonstrating that, while the poet
certainly reinvented English poetic diction, his theories were deeply rooted in the practice of earlier poets,

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especially John Milton. This preface, Wordsworth’s only extended statement of his poetics, has become the
source of many of the commonplaces and controversies of poetic theory and criticism. For Wordsworth, poetry,
which should be written in “the real language of men,” is nevertheless “the spontaneous overflow of feelings: it
takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”
Q.4 Read the excerpt of “In Other Rooms Other Wonders” by Daniyal Moeenuddin and discuss the
theme of the story.
Daniya Meenuddin’s book ‘In Other Rooms, Other Wonders’ which releases today (Feburary 9), is the most
anticipated work of fiction by a Pakistan author since Mohammed Hanif’s ‘A Case of Exploding Mangoes’. It
promises to be equally engrossing.
The book is already getting rave reviews. William Dalrymple, writing in the Finanical Times, says that the book
“is quite unlike anything recently published on the Indian side of the border, and throws the gauntlet down to a
new generation of Indian writers.” The New York Times calls it “mesmerizing”:
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, is like watching a game of blackjack, the shrewd players calculating their way
beyond their dealt cards in an attempt to beat the dealer. Some bust, others surrender. But in Mueenuddinâ€™s
world, no one wins.
Mueenuddin who practiced law in New York for some years after studying at Dartmouth College and Yale Law
School, now lives on a farm in Pakistan’s Southern Punjab. His short stories have been making waves recently,
and have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope, and The Best American Short Stories 2008.
Although he had an excellent memory, and knew the lineage of all the old Lahore families, K.K. allowed Husna
to explain in detail her relationship to him, which derived from his grandmother on his motherâ€™s side. The
senior branch of the family had consolidated its lands and amassed power under the British. Husnaâ€™s family,
a cadet branch, had not so much fallen into poverty as failed to rise. At one time, her grandfather had owned
thirty or forty shops in the Old City, but these had been sold off more than thirty years ago, before Lahore grew,
in the nineteen-fifties and sixties, and prices increased. Encouraged by K.K., given tea and cakes, Husna forgot
herself, falling into the common, rich Punjabi of the inner city. She told with great emphasis a story about her
mother, who remembered falling and breaking her teeth on the steps leading into the courtyard of a lost family
home, steps that were tall and broad to accommodate the enormous tread of a riding elephant.
He flourished on a signature ability: a technique for cheating the electric company by slowing down the
revolutions of its meters, so cunningly performed that his customers could specify to the hundred-rupee note the
desired monthly savings. In this Pakistani desert, behind Multan, where the tube wells pumped from the aquifer
day and night, Nawabâ€™s discovery eclipsed the philosopherâ€™s stone. Some thought he used magnets,
others said heavy oil or porcelain chips or a substance he found in beehives. Skeptics reported that he had a deal
with the meter men. In any case, this trick guaranteed Nawabâ€™s employment, both off and on the farm of his
patron, K. K. Harouni.

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Q.5 Climax is the turning point of the story. Change the climax of the story ‘Sohni Mahiwal’ given in
your textbook and explain how it impacts the end of the story?
In literature, the turning point or climax is the point of highest tension in a narrative; it’s the most exciting and
revealing part of a story. It leads the rising action into the falling action before a story is resolved and reaches
the conclusion. From a narrative’s beginning, all of the action rises up to the turning point, where questions are
answered, secrets are revealed, conflicts are resolved, and everything begins to come to a close. It is a central
and key narrative device for authors of all genres, both fiction and nonfiction. The turning point is an important
part of all stories because it brings out the final action that is necessary for the narrative to end. It’s what the
audience spends their time waiting for, and it leads to the conflict’s resolution. Without turning points,
narratives would be incomplete and boring—all audiences read and watch stories with the expectation that the
action will climb to a peak, and then work back down to a conclusion. The audience has to deduce for
themselves the characteristics of the character by observing his/her thought process, behavior, speech, way of
talking, appearance, and manner of communication with other characters, as well as by discerning the response
of other characters. What does Mahiwal mean? I asked, having never heard of the name before. "It's not a real
name but it's the nickname given to a man who herds water buffalo," my mother answered and with that she
began. In a village along the Chenab River in Punjab, there was a potter who created the most lovely
earthenware pots in the region. He went by the name Tulla. His pottery was known in all the land and people
would come from all over would to purchase his beautiful pottery. The pots were well baked and sturdy while
coming in various shapes and sizes. All of the pots had wonderfully intricate hand-painted designs that would
set them apart from any other pot. The day Tulla and his wife had a daughter was the happiest day of their
lives. She was the prettiest baby girl they had ever seen. Others agreed, so they named her Sohni, meaning
“beautiful” in Punjabi. Their wonderful daughter only grew more and more lovely with age. Tulla had taught
his daughter the art of painting lovely designs on his pots. As she grew older and Tulla’s eyesight grew worse,
Sohni was the only one who painted the designs. She added her own style to them. One day, a very wealthy
young man from the great city Bukhara in Uzbekistan came to Tulla’s home to buy some pottery. His name
was Izzat Baig. While he was examining which pieces to buy, he happened to see Sohni, in full concentration
on a pot she was painting. He could not take his eyes off of her. She was bent with her head in tilted over a
small pot used to store sweets in. Using a small, fine brush, Sohni used meticulous strokes to achieve her
desired pattern. Izzat Baig was in love. He asked Tulla if he could buy the pot that she was painting. He
replied that that pot needed to be baked still before it could be purchased. Otherwise, it would be useless and
fall apart without being baked. Izzat Baig said he would return tomorrow for it. After purchasing the pot the
next day, he found excuses to return day after day just to buy more and more pots. He had had his fill but his
eyes had not drunk enough of Sohni. They wanted more. When it was time for him to leave, he told his fellow
travelers to go on without him. He was going to stay in this village for a while longer. Days passed and his

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money supply dwindled but he continued to visit Sohni at her father’s shop. Tulla decided to hire Izzat Baig as
a water buffalo herder. Because of this, he became known as Mahiwal, or buffalo man. Love, by nature, is an
infectious disease. If one is affected, others around the sickly cannot help but to feel the same symptoms. This
was the case for Sohni. She saw Mahiwal day after day. She knew he came only to see her and she had grown
accustomed to it. Whenever he was late, her heart sank but as soon as she would see him coming up the road,
she felt like she was flying again. Love had taken a hold of her, too. The two lovers began to meet in secret.
Their union was blissful. Their separation, intolerable. But each day they would meet whenever they could,
happily stealing moments just to be with each other. Love never hides though. Neither did Sohni and
Mahiwal’s love. This kind of love was forbidden. It was arranged then that Sohni would marry another potter
who lived nearby. When the marriage ceremony was completed, Sohni moved to a neighboring house.
Mahiwal, distraught, took up residence in a small hut across the river from Sohni’s house. He renounced the
lands he came from and believed that the earth under Sohni’s feet was his dargah, or shrine. Sohni’s husband
was a pottery merchant who had to travel long distances that caused him to be away for days on end. At night,
Sohni would sit up and look across the river at her lover. One night she got the idea of using a baked
earthenware pot to aid her to stay afloat as she crossed the river. Because she did not know how to swim, she
held on the pot tightly. Her life depended on it. Mahiwal saw her coming and swam until he met her and they
successfully made it across the river in each other’s arms. Mahiwal, at this point in his life, was poor. He did
not have enough money to properly feed his Sohni. On one such night when Sohni was going to come,
Mahiwal realized that he had no food to feed her. Without thinking, he carved a piece of his thigh. Without
telling his beloved of his pain, he swam a part of the way to her wearing dark clothes so the blood would not
show. Sohni ate the meager banquet laid before her with great relish that he prepared this meal out of love for
her. After Sohni returned from her nightly meeting with her love, Sohni’s sister-in-law saw her replace the
earthenware pot that she had used to travel across the river in the bushes underneath a window. She stood
aghast and thought of a plan to wreck these unsolicited meetings. Sohni’s sister-in-law placed an unbaked pot
for Sohni to use the following night. The next night, Sohni took the pot and began her journey to meet her
lover. When she was a quarter of the way across, she realized something was wrong. The sturdy piece of
pottery that served as her lifesaver was melting into the water. She called for her Mahiwal. Mahiwal heard his
love’s cries. He swam as far as he could with his limp leg. He met her drowning body halfway through the
river but he could not hold himself up against the current. While holding on to each other, they both drowned in
the Chenab River. I glanced over at my children thinking that they would both be asleep but I was wrong. Out
of all the stories, this was the one that seemed to interest them the most. It amazed me the things that actually
grab a child's attention. Both Reza and Mehru had not stirred from their place. When my mother finished, she
sat back and sipped on her chai, waiting for any remarks.
Q.6 Define the following:

12
i. Onamotopoea
Onomatopoeia, is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound
that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal
noises such as oink, meow (or miaow), roar, and chirp. Onomatopoeia can differ between languages: it
conforms to some extent to the broader linguistic system; hence the sound of a clock may be expressed as tick
tock in English, tic tac in Spanish and Italian (shown in the picture), dī dā in Mandarin, katchin katchin in
Japanese, or tik-tik in Hindi. Although in the English language the term onomatopoeia means 'the imitation of a
sound', the compound word onomatopoeia (ὀνοματοποιία) in the Greek language means 'making or creating
names'. Words that imitate sounds are called ὴχομιμητικό (ēchomimētico) or echomimetic). The
word ὴχομιμητικό (ēchomimētico) derives from ὴχώ, meaning 'echo' or 'sound', and μιμητικό, meaning
'mimetic' or 'imitating'.
In the case of a frog croaking, the spelling may vary because different frog species around the world make
different sounds: Ancient Greek brekekekex koax koax (only in Aristophanes' comic play The Frogs) probably
for marsh frogs; English ribbit for species of frog found in North America; English verb croak for the common
frog.
Some other very common English-language examples are hiccup, zoom, bang, beep, moo, and splash. Machines
and their sounds are also often described with onomatopoeia: honk or beep-beep for the horn of an automobile,
and vroom or brum for the engine. In speaking of a mishap involving an audible arcing of electricity, the
word zap is often used (and its use has been extended to describe non-auditory effects generally connoting the
same sort of localized but thorough interference or destruction similar to that produced in short-circuit
sparking).
ii. Imagery
Part of the figurative language in a literary work, whereby the author uses vivid images to describe a
phenomenon
There are five major types of sensory imagery, each corresponding to a sense, feeling, action, or reaction:
Auditory imagery pertains to sounds, noises, music, or the sense of hearing. (This kind of imagery may come
in the form of onomatopoeia).
Olfactory imagery pertains to odors, aromas, scents, or the sense of smell.
Gustatory imagery pertains to flavors or the sense of taste.
Tactile imagery pertains to physical textures or the sense of touch.
Other types of imagery include:
Kinesthetic imagery pertains to movements.
Organic imagery / subjective imagery, pertains to personal experiences of a character's body, including
emotion and the senses of hunger, thirst, fatigue, and pain.[1]

13
Phenomenological, pertains to the mental conception of an item as opposed to the physical version.
iii. Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It
may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often
compared with other types of figurative language, such as antithesis, hyperbole, metonymy and simile. One of
the most commonly cited examples of a metaphor in English literature comes from the "All the world's a stage"
monologue from As You Like It:
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances ...
—William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 2/7
This quotation expresses a metaphor because the world is not literally a stage, and most humans are not literally
actors and actresses playing roles. By asserting that the world is a stage, Shakespeare uses points of comparison
between the world and a stage to convey an understanding about the mechanics of the world and the behavior of
the people within it.
According to the linguist Anatoly Liberman, "the use of metaphors is relatively late in the modern European
languages; it is, in principle, a post-Renaissance phenomenon". In contrast, in the ancient
Hebrew psalms (around 1000 B.C.), one finds already vivid and poetic examples of metaphor such as, "The
Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the
horn of my salvation, my stronghold” and “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” At the other extreme,
some recent linguistic theories view all language in essence as metaphorical.
The word metaphor itself is a metaphor, coming from a Greek term meaning to "transfer" or "carry across."
Metaphors "carry" meaning from one word, image, idea, or situation to another, linking them and creating a
metaphor.
Q.7 How is a detective novel different from other kinds of novels. Explain with examples from any
detective novel you have read.
Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—
either professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around
the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained
extremely popular, particularly in novels.[1] Some of the most famous heroes of detective fiction include C.
Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Hercule Poirot. Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew,
and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades.
Some scholars, such as R. H. Pfeiffer, have suggested that certain ancient and religious texts bear similarities to
what would later be called detective fiction. In the Old Testament story of Susanna and the

14
Elders (the Protestant Bible locates this story within the apocrypha), the account told by two witnesses broke
down when Daniel cross-examines them. In response, author Julian Symons has argued that "those who search
for fragments of detection in the Bible and Herodotus are looking only for puzzles" and that these puzzles are
not detective stories.[2] In the play Oedipus Rex by Ancient Greek playwright Sophocles, Oedipus investigates
the unsolved murder of King Laius and discovers the truth after questioning various witnesses that he himself is
the culprit. Although "Oedipus's enquiry is based on supernatural, pre-rational methods that are evident in most
narratives of crime until the development of Enlightenment thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries", this narrative has "all of the central characteristics and formal elements of the detective story,
including a mystery surrounding a murder, a closed circle of suspects, and the gradual uncovering of a hidden
past."[3] The One Thousand and One Nights contains several of the earliest detective stories, anticipating
modern detective fiction.[4] The oldest known example of a detective story was "The Three Apples", one of the
tales narrated by Scheherazade in the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights). In this story, a
fisherman discovers a heavy, locked chest along the Tigris river, which he then sells to the Abbasid
Caliph, Harun al-Rashid. When Harun breaks open the chest, he discovers the body of a young woman who has
been cut into pieces. Harun then orders his vizier, Ja'far ibn Yahya, to solve the crime and to find the murderer
within three days, or be executed if he fails in his assignment.[5] Suspense is generated through multiple plot
twists that occur as the story progressed.[6] With these characteristics this may be considered an archetype for
detective fiction.[7] It anticipates the use of reverse chronology in modern detective fiction, where the story
begins with a crime before presenting a gradual reconstruction of the past.[4]
The main difference between Ja'far ("The Three Apples") and later fictional detectives, such as Sherlock
Holmes and Hercule Poirot, is that Ja'far has no actual desire to solve the case. The whodunit mystery is solved
when the murderer himself confessed his crime.[8] This in turn leads to another assignment in which Ja'far has to
find the culprit who instigated the murder within three days or else be executed. Ja'far again fails to find the
culprit before the deadline, but owing to chance, he discovers a key item. In the end, he manages to solve the
case through reasoning in order to prevent his own execution.[9]
On the other hand, two other Arabian Nights stories, "The Merchant and the Thief" and "Ali Khwaja", contain
two of the earliest fictional detectives, who uncover clues and present evidence to catch or convict a criminal
known to the audience, with the story unfolding in normal chronology and the criminal already known to the
audience. The latter involves a climax where the titular detective protagonist Ali Khwaja presents evidence
from expert witnesses in a court.[4]
Several authors have attempted to set forth a sort of list of “Detective Commandments” for prospective authors
of the genre.
According to "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories," by Van Dine in 1928: "The detective story is a kind
of intellectual game. It is more—it is a sporting event. And for the writing of detective stories there are very

15
definite laws—unwritten, perhaps, but nonetheless binding; and every respectable and self-respecting concocter
of literary mysteries lives up to them. Herewith, then, is a sort of credo, based partly on the practice of all the
great writers of detective stories, and partly on the promptings of the honest author's inner
conscience."[64] Ronald Knox wrote a set of Ten Commandments or Decalogue in 1929,[62] see article on
the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.
A general consensus among crime fiction authors is there is a specific set of rules that must be applied for a
novel to truly be considered part of the detective fiction genre. As noted in "Introduction to the Analysis of
Crime Fiction",[65] crime fiction from the past 100 years has generally contained 8 key rules to be a detective
novel:
 A crime, most often murder, is committed early in the narrative
 There are a variety of suspects with different motives
 A central character formally or informally acts as a detective
 The detective collects evidence about the crimes and its victim
 Usually the detective interviews the suspects, as well as the witnesses
 The detective solves the mystery and indicates the real criminal
 Usually this criminal is now arrested or otherwise punished

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