Analysis of Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech

The “I have a dream” speech by Martin Luther King is recognised as one of the best speeches ever given. Here Stevie Edwards looks at what makes it so memorable.

There is also YouTube clip of the Martin Luther King Speech

More than 40 years ago, in August 1963, Martin Luther King electrified America with his momentous ‘I Have A Dream’ speech, dramatically delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

His soaring rhetoric demanding racial justice and an integrated society became a mantra for the black community and is as familiar to subsequent generations of Americans as the US Declaration of Independence. His words proved to be a touchstone for understanding the social and political upheaval of the time and gave the nation a vocabulary to express what was happening.

The key message in the speech is that all people are created equal and, although not the case in America at the time, King felt it must be the case for the future. He argued passionately and powerfully.

So what were his compositional strategies and techniques?

Certainly King’s speech was well researched. In preparation he studied the Bible, The Gettysburg Address and the US Declaration of Independence and he alludes to all three in his address.

Stylistically the speech has been described as a political treatise, a work of poetry, and a masterfully delivered and improvised sermon, bursting with biblical language and imagery. As well as rhythm and frequent repetition, alliteration is a hallmark device, used to bang home key points.

The format is simple – always an aid to memorability! It falls into two parts.

The first half portrays not an idealised American dream but a picture of a seething American nightmare of racial injustice. It calls for action in a series of themed paragraphs. “Now is the time” is the first:

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

Likewise the theme “we can never be satisfied” sets some goals:

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “when will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

The second half of the speech paints the dream of a better, fairer future of racial harmony and integration.

The most famous paragraph carries the theme “I have a dream” and the phrase is repeated constantly to hammer home King’s inspirational concepts:

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed — “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, and rough places will be made plains, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

While the address has a very strong message for white people and hints at revolution, King’s words are mostly about peace, offering a vision everyone could buy into. At the end of the speech he brings in a unifying passage themed around freedom:

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation this must come true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California.

But not only that — let freedom ring from Stone Mountain in Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual,

Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Three factors added to the impact of the speech:

• The remarkable emotion of King’s delivery in terms of both voice and body
• The site at which it was delivered – on the steps of the memorial to the President who defeated southern states over the issue of slavery
• The mood of the day, a sense of perpetuated slavery among black people and the gradual realisation of a sense of guilt among white people

Described by one linguistic scholar, King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech was “not a legal brief on the intricacies of the civil rights movement in America, nor an intellectual treatise on the plight of black people.” Rather, it was a “fervent emotional sermon, forged out of the language and spirit of democracy. King’s mastery of the spoken word, his magnetism, and his sincerity raised familiar platitudes from cliché to commandment.”

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Footnote:

‘I Have A Dream’ has been widely acclaimed as a rhetorical masterpiece. What is Rhetoric?
Here are some famous definitions:

Plato: [Rhetoric] is the “art of enchanting the soul.” (The art of winning the soul by discourse.)

Aristotle: Rhetoric is “the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion.”

Cicero: “Rhetoric is one great art comprised of five lesser arts: inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronunciatio.” Rhetoric is “speech designed to persuade.”

Quintilian: “Rhetoric is the art of speaking well.”

Francis Bacon: “The duty and office of rhetoric is to apply reason to imagination for the better moving of the will.”

George Campbell: [Rhetoric] is “that art or talent by which discourse is adapted to its end. The four ends of discourse are to enlighten the understanding, please the imagination, move the passion, and influence the will.”

"I Have a Dream" speech Summary

"I Have a Dream" speech Summary 

Summary

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday was first observed as a national holiday in 1986. However, his life had become a fixed part of American mythology for years prior to this. Indeed, to many African Americans whose rights he helped expand, to many other minorities whose lives his victories touched, and to many whites who welcomed the changes his leadership brought, King's life seemed mythological even as he lived it. He is celebrated as a hero not only for the concrete legislation he enabled, but for his articulation of dreams and hopes shared by many during an era of upheaval and change.

After lengthy theological training in the North, King returned to his home region, becoming pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. As a promising newcomer free from the morass of inter-church politics, King became the leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott when it broke out in 1955. That year-long non-violent protest, which led to a Supreme Court ruling against bus segregation, brought King to the attention of the country as a whole, and led to the formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, or SCLC, an alliance of black Southern churches and ministers. This group elected King their president, and began looking for other civil rights battles to fight.

The episodes immediately following met with less success, but nonetheless provided King with the opportunity to refine his protest strategies. Then, in 1963, King and the SCLC joined a campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, to end segregation there and to force downtown businesses to employ blacks. Peaceful protests were met by fire-hoses and attack-dogs wielded by local police. Images of this violence, broadcast on national news, provoked outrage, and this reaction created a political atmosphere in which strong federal civil rights legislation could gain favor and passage, and the next year President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Meanwhile the SCLC, under King, was repeating the tactics of Birmingham in Selma, Alabama, this time for the sake of African American voter registration. Once again, images of the police brutality directed at the protest enabled the passage of federal legislation, this time the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The community of black activists felt that these two major victories marked the limit of what gains could be made politically, and thus after 1965 King began to focus on blacks' economic problems. His strategies and speeches concentrated increasingly on class as well as race, and addressed the United States as a whole. King had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and this recognition encouraged him to broaden his scope: by the time of his death, he was speaking out virulently against the Vietnam War, and was organizing a Poor People's March on Washington.

When King was assassinated in 1968, the nation shook with the impact. Riots broke out in over one hundred American cities. King was almost immediately sanctified by the white-controlled media, which, however, in its coverage of his accomplishments, also neglected the radicalism of his final three years. Instead his contemporaries focused (as we continue to focus today) on the spirit and the accomplishments of the middle of King's career. For many born after his death, he is known best for the "I Have a Dream" speech, which reflects this spirit, and which he delivered in 1963 at the height of his fame. The federal holiday commemorates this King, who articulated the progressive, human hope of the early 1960s.

Context

With the end of the Civil War in 1865 came the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, declaring slavery illegal and freeing roughly four million African Americans, who had previously been held as property by white Americans. This new, massive, uneducated and unemployed group posed an immediate concern for those in control of the Southern states; but the question of who controlled these states remained up for debate. The federal government officially held control, by keeping Union troops in the South and passing numerous pieces of civil rights legislation (Congress had been unified by the exclusion of Southern representatives). However, many Southern whites resisted Washington's policies by passing discriminatory local laws and forming white supremacy groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan.

For the freed slaves at the center of this conflict, life at first seemed to improve. The first decade after the war, a period known asReconstruction, brought changes suggesting that freedom could lead to prosperity. Strong federal legislation–including various Civil Rights Acts, as well as the Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed civil rights for all, and the Fifteenth Amendment, which guaranteed voting rights for blacks–enabled some blacks to win local office, and some to gain economic independence. A number of blacks were even elected to Congress.

In the mid 1870s, however, when Reconstruction ended and federal troops pulled out of the South, white Southerners quickly reversed the progressive changes. Many communities passed "Jim Crow" laws, which segregated public facilities. Some laws forbade black men from marrying white women; others classified blacks not employed by whites as destitute and subject to arrest; others created voting qualifications that kept blacks from the polls. The federal government implicitly affirmed such local statutes when, in 1896, the United States Supreme Court, in the case Plessy v. Ferguson, declared the legality of "separate but equal" services and facilities for African Americans. This ruling, especially in its application to schools, greatly disadvantaged blacks. By the end of the century, people who had slaved by law under white taskmasters now slaved by economic necessity under the system of farming known as sharecropping, in which black farmers exchanged massive portions of their harvests for the right to work a white landowner's property.

The two most prominent African American leaders of this era were Booker T. Washington, a former slave and founder of the Tuskegee Institute, and W.E.B. DuBois, a professor of sociology and reformer, who had graduated from Harvard University. At the 1895 Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta, Washington delivered a speech in which he asserted that it was the responsibility of African Americans to improve their own lot, and that blacks could be diligent manual workers first and specialized professions later. Many white people embraced this view of race relations, but its opponents–both black and white– dubbed it the "Atlanta Compromise." DuBois overtly attacked the spirit of Washington's address, advocating faster change. The contrast between these leaders foretokened a similar contrast in the 1960s between pacifistic leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., and militant leaders like Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael.

Between the turn of the century and the Great Depression, little changed for most African Americans. Life was characterized by the injustices of second-class citizenship; legal and political inequity represented the least vicious of these–all too commonly they were manifested in lynch mobs and murders. European immigration to the United States increased, and many African Americans resented these newcomers, who gained instantly the rights that were still denied blacks. In 1909 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded, and it went to court to fight for civil rights. The prejudice of the justice system against blacks, however, was clear. In the 1906 Brownsvillecase, African American soldiers, without trial or even evidence, were found guilty of shooting civilian whites, and were dishonorably discharged from the Army. In 1931 nine black men from Scottsboro, Alabama, were similarly convicted, this time of rape, on the unsubstantiated testimony of a few whites. These were just the best known of many unfair trials.

In the face of such injustices, not to mention the injustices of everyday life, some blacks of this era thought the only solution was to separate themselves from white society, either by creating their own organizations, businesses, and services, or by leaving the United States for Africa or the Caribbean. The most famous advocate of the latter proposal was Marcus Garvey, a separatist leader who campaigned in Northern cities.

When the Great Depression hit America in 1929, President Franklin Roosevelt began to implement public policies that benefited people on the margins of society, including African Americans. New Deal legislation, augmented by the successes of the NAACP, improved economic opportunities for blacks; once some blacks gained economic resources and influence, they could more effectively foster groups that protested legal and social inequality. World War IIfurther raised the bar of expectation: abroad, African Americans gave their lives in battles against the racist Hitler; at home, a labor shortage provided industrial jobs for blacks, and led to a mass migration from Southern farms to Northern cities. When the War ended, therefore, and white society tried to resume old forms of discrimination, blacks had seen what life could offer them; they refused to return to their former state of oppression.

Civil rights emerged as a national issue. The landmark ruling of the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas overturned Plessy v. Ferguson,asserting that separate facilities could never be equal. The next major civil rights event was the Montgomery Bus Boycott; which inaugurated Martin Luther King, Jr. as the leader of the Civil Rights Movement. The Movement would dominate the domestic arena of United States politics in the 1950s and most of the 1960s.

Timeline

January 15, 1929: ·Martin Luther King, Jr. is born 

September 20, 1944: ·King enters Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia 

June 1948: ·King graduates from Morehouse College with a Bachelor's Degree in sociology 

September 1948: ·King enters Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania 

June 1951: ·King graduates with a Bachelor's Degree in Divinity studies 

September 1951: ·King enters Boston University 

June 18, 1953: ·King marries Coretta Scott in Marion, Alabama 

May 17, 1954: ·United States Supreme Court rules segregation unconstitutional inBrown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas 

October 31, 1954: ·King becomes pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery Alabama 

June 5, 1955: ·King receives his PhD from Boston University 

November 17, 1955: ·King's first child, Yolanda Denise, is born 

December 1, 1955: ·Rosa Parks is arrested for disobeying segregationist policies on a Montgomery bus 

December 5, 1955: ·Montgomery Bus Boycott begins 

January 30, 1956: ·King's home is bombed 

November 13, 1956: ·United States Supreme Court rules bus segregation unconstitutional 

January 1957: ·Southern Christian Leadership Conference forms in Atlanta, electing King president 

February 1957: ·King is featured on the cover of Time Magazine 

October 23, 1957: ·King's second child, Martin Luther King III, is born 

September 17, 1958: ·King's first book, Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story is published 

September 20, 1958: ·A mentally ill black woman stabs King in at a Harlem book- signing 

February 1959: ·King studies non-violent tactics during a trip to India 

January 1960: ·King returns to Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta 

October 19, 1960: ·King is arrested in Atlanta, at one of hundreds of sit-ins that occur throughout the year 

January 30, 1961: ·King's third child, Dexter Scott, is born 

May 1961: ·King assists in negotiations for the Freedom Riders 

December 1961: ·King goes to Albany Georgia, to aid a desegregation campaign, and is arrested 

July 27, 1962: ·King is arrested again in Albany 

March 28, 1963: ·King's fourth child, Bernice Albertina, is born 

April 1963: ·King spends a week in a Birmingham, Alabama jail and writes a letter to the nation 

May 3-5, 1963: ·Police attack protestors in Birmingham 

June 1963: ·King's second book, a collection of sermons, Strength to Love is published 

August 28, 1963: ·250,000 people march on Washington, and King delivers his "I Have a Dream" speech 

December 3, 1963: ·King meets with Lyndon Johnson to discuss civil rights legislation 

January 1964: · Time Magazine names King "Man of the Year" 

June 1964: ·King's book Why We Can't Wait is published. 

July 1964: ·The Civil Rights Act is signed into law 

September 18, 1964: ·King meets with Pope Pius VI 

December 10, 1964: ·King receives the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway 

February 2, 1965: ·King arrested in Selma, Alabama, during voter-registration drive 

February 21, 1965: ·Malcolm X is assassinated 

March 1965: ·King leads a march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery 

August 1965: ·President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act into law 

August 1965: ·Massive rioting occurs in Watts, California 

August 1965: ·King begins to speak out against the Vietnam War 

February 1966: ·King moves to Chicago to commence a SCLC campaign there 

June 1966: ·Stokely Carmichael popularizes Black Power as a civil rights rallying cry 

July 1966: ·King leads demonstrations in Chicago 

April 4, 1967: ·King delivers his first sermon devoted entirely to the issue of Vietnam 

November 27, 1967: ·King announces his vision of a Poor People's March on Washington 

March 28, 1968: ·King leads a march of black sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee 

April 4, 1968: ·King is assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, in Memphis 

April 1968: ·riots break out across the nation in reaction to King's death 

November 2, 1983: ·King's birthday becomes a national holiday 

PowerPoint presentation for postmaster

The Postmaster
Rabindranath Tagore

Summary

—This story revolves around the life of a postmaster who is appointed to hold the post in the small village of Ulapur.

—Originally from the busy city of Calcutta; tries to adapt his new lonely life in the remote village.

—Managed to get a friendship & companionship from an orphan girl name Ratan until the girl is ‘attached’ & ‘‘dependent’ on him.

—Decided to leave Ulapur after he recovered from his fever.

—Refused to take Ratan with him; Ratan is heart-broken.

Theme

1. Sense of Belonging & Separation

~The Postmaster: to live in the city/ mother, elder sister & elder brother

~Ratan: to remember her family/ mother, father & little brother

2. Companionship

~different caste/socio-economic status

~level of education

~generation gap

3. Reciprocal Relationship

~both lonely-chat, eat & spend time together

~call the Postmaster “Dada Babu” – parental figure

~teach Ratan how to read

Literary  Criticism Theories

1. Marxist Criticism:

    Marxist criticism focuses on how works mirror complex historical, social & cultural realities and in its concentration on the plight of the marginalized in society ( Schmidt & Crockett,2009).

 ~ “He was assisted in his housework by a destitute orphan girl, in return for a little food. (p. 1)” – master & servant

~‘Ratan would be sitting on the doorstep and waiting for that call, but she never came into the house immediately.’ (p.2) – loyal & obedient

~ ‘Dada Babu, will you take me to your home?’ ‘How could I do that!’, said the

    postmaster with a laugh. He never bothered to explain to the girl why it is not possible. (p.5)’ – miscommunication> different caste & dowry (companionship & potential spouse)

2. Post Colonial Criticism:

    Post colonial criticism focuses its attention in two directions: at

    literary texts currently being produced in former colonial regions, to discover the ways in which they respond to the impact of colonialism and its aftermath on their cultures, and at canonical texts to discover evidence of colonial themes. ( Schmidt & Crockett, 2009).

~The title of the short story: The Postmaster; no proper noun is used for the main character except Dada Babu > social position represents superiority/class/caste.

~The was an Indigo factory nearby and, using his influence, its English proprietor had managed to get a post office establish. (p.1) – source of change

~ Tagore’s background-growing up in the midst of Britain’s colonization of India.

Characters & Characterization

1. The Postmaster:

   ~early 20s-not married, the youngest in his family (like Tagore)

   ~educated/privileged background/high caste

   ~lack in social skills: confused or arrogant. (p.1)

   ~feel alone & exiled-expresses happiness with poetry

2.Ratan:

   ~around 12-13 years old, the eldest in the family

   ~orphan/illiterate

   ~innocent/naïve about different gender relationship & marriage

       customs

   ~longing for affection & emotional security- parental figure

Issues

1.Reality of Life: “Separation & death are a recurrent fact of life. What

    is the point of going back? Aren’t we all solitary on this earth? (p.7)”

    BUT the reason the Postmaster wants to leave the village

    because he wants to be closer to his own family members.

    Solitary? 

2.Hope: Ratan hopes to  be apart of the Postmaster’s life;

    changed how she addresses the Postmaster “Sir do you need any

    help?” (p.2 ) to “Dada Babu did you call me?” (p.4)

     “She simply went on wandering around the posthouse with tears in

     her eyes. Perhaps she had a faint hope that Dada Babu might come

    back-she couldn’t leave the place, breaking that magic bond. (p.7)”

3. India’s traditional marriage customs: close interaction

    between the Postmaster & Ratan- lead to misunderstanding to

    others-Ratan has reached the appropriate age of marriage-

    child marriage is common in Indian at this period of time.

    ‘The prospects of her getting married soon looked faint’ (p.1)

Important Lines

1.‘Occasionally he wrote poetry expressing romantic sentiment  of

    happiness…sensitive person’s life would be revived again’ (p.1)

    Postmaster’s temporary loneliness.

●

2. ‘An odour emitted…complaining repeatedly to the world’ (p.3) ~

     Symbolizes the Postmaster expressing his loneliness.

3. The young Ratan was no longer a little girl… ‘Are you feeling a little 

    better Dada Babu?’ (p.4) ~ prove her love & ability to take care

    of him.

  

The Postmaster Summary

Summary of The Postmaster

                            

In the small village of Ulapur, an Englishman who owns an indigo factory near it manages to get a post office established. A postmaster from Calcutta gets separated from his family and transferred to this village. From the noise of the city, he comes to a deserted village with just scattered glimpses of people. 
Tagore, a lover of nature, uses it to describe the surroundings. The postmaster's office has a green, slimy pond, surrounded by dense vegetation. The way he describes this shows that postmaster is not in a position to appreciate his closeness to nature. There are three central themes to this story. 

                              Firstly, the story revolves around 'longing and separation'; starting and ending with this. The postmaster is taken away from his family and brought to a remote village. He was in a village, where its busy people were no company, and he was left with not much work to do. He tries to pacify his longing emotions by writing poetry. However, the fact that he tries to write something external to him, like nature, makes it an impossible venture. 
An orphan girl of the village, Ratan, helps him with his daily chores. He speaks to her about his mother and sister in the evenings, and would keep enquiring about her family. He would speak with sadness of all those "memories which were always haunting him". 
Secondly, 'companionship', and thirdly 'dependency' can be seen through how the relationship between the postmaster and Ratan grows through the course of this story. Ratan did not have many memories of her family to be recalled. There were only fragments, like pictures, of her father coming home in the evening, and her little brother whom she played with, fishing on the edge of the pond. 
                                Once she met the postmaster, 'Dada', she spent her days with him. She would sit outside his shed, being only a call away from him, and doing all the small chores. Dada would share his meals with her. Then in the evenings, she would listen to him talking about his relatives and in imagination make them her own. 
                                Tagore translates the longing ringing in Dada's heart to nature, when he says, "A persistent bird repeated all the afternoon the burden of its one complaint in Nature's audience chamber." A man, who initially failed his attempt at verse, thinks of this as parallel to his emotions. Poetry is something that comes from the inner overflow of emotions. He hopes for the presence of a loving human being he could hold close to his heart. 
                                 The postmaster can't stand the quietude of Ulapur. He longs for the noises of traffic and life in Calcutta. 
One evening, he tells Ratan that he is going to teach her to read. She grows closer to him. She sees him as her only relative. She grows dependent. 
But, as the season's rain seemed like it would never end, like the constant patter on the roof, Dada was troubled by his heart's exile. He falls sick in his solitude. Ratan takes care of him, and he recovers just taking her presence for granted. But, he then decides that he has to leave this village. He writes an application of transfer, based on the unhealthiness of the village. The transfer is rejected. 
He tells Ratan that he has resigned and will be leaving the village. She asks him to take her with him. He thinks of it as an absurd idea and she is haunted by his reaction. Next morning, she fills a bucket of water for him. He bathes and waits for the next postmaster to arrive. 
                                 He consoles Ratan saying that he would inform the postmaster about her. He even offers her some money to keep. She refuses both and expresses that she doesn't want to stay there any more. 
                                  Ratan has lived a life of loneliness. Dada was her only companion, and the only one who seemed to understand her. She is broken, when he has to leave without her. 
He leaves as soon, as the new postmaster arrives. He hesitates for a moment as the boat leaves, but it is too late for him to take her with him. Tagore illustrates the two ways a human mind works. The postmaster uses the element of philosophy to console himself. He tells himself that meeting, attachment, and departing are all part of life. It will all settle with the passage of time. The wind that fills the sails of the boat indicates the reason the postmaster fills his heart with, as he separates himself from the village. 
However, Ratan stands outside the office "with tears streaming from her eyes." She has succumbed to a common human folly, as Tagore expresses, of hope. She has been separated from her only bond and now longs for it to return.
                               Tagore ends by saying that humans often fall into hope than seeing the reason, and long before we realize, disappointment becomes too hard to handle.

summary of the entitled poem ‘Ecology’ by ramanujan

This poem, ‘Ecology’ is taken from Ramanujan’s third volume of poems, ‘Second Sight’, published in 1986. The speaker seems to be the poet himself or some imaginary person who is loyally devoted to his mother. He is very angry because his mother has a severe attack of migraine; a very bad kind of headache, often causing a person to vomit; which is caused by the fragrance of the pollen of the flower of the Red Champak every time it is in bloom. The fragrance is heavy and suffocating as the yellow pollen spreads everywhere. Even the doors of the speaker’s house cannot prevent the strong smell from entering the house. The walls of the house are able to absorb almost everything-the sounds, sights, the human voices, the harsh sounds produced when new shoes are worn. But they cannot stop the fog of pollen dust from the Champak trees.
            The loving son therefore decides to cut down the tree, but he is prevented from doing so by his mother who sees the positive side of the tree in her garden. She says that the tree is as old as her and had been fertilized by the droppings of a passing bird by chance which is considered to be a very good omen. The positive side of it is that the tree provides many basketful of flowers to be offered to her gods and to ‘her daughters and daughter’s daughters’ every year, although the tree would give a terrible migraine to one line of cousins as a legacy. The yellow pollen fog is the yellow dust of pollen carried in the air which is thick and heavy like fog which covers the earth.

This poem portrays Ramanujan’s strong interest in the family as a very important theme of his poetic craft. His memories of the past would inevitably bring pictures of his family, especially his mother who is self sacrificing. There is also a reference to his Hindu heritage as he mentions the gods and the ancient beliefs in the poem. The sense of irony is indicated when the mother very angrily protests the idea of cutting down the tree even though she is suffering very badly from the migraine caused by it. She has a kind of emotional attachment to the tree, saying that it is as old as herself.
            ‘Ecology is a poem which could be read as one single sentence. However, each stanza has one particular idea. There is a casual connection between the ideas and they flow from one stanza to the next. ‘Flash her temper’; an instance of the use of irony because she is very angry at the idea of having the tree cut down. The actual meaning of the word ‘Ecology’ is not followed here but the poet seems to convey the thought that a particular kind of tree may have both negative and positive factors and therefore it need not be pulled down.

The Postmaster by Tagore

Love has the uncanny ability to ensnare unsuspecting men and women, bringing them in close proximity in the most unusual circumstances, and then letting an incongruous spark doing the rest!

Something similar happens in Rabindranath Tagore’s short story ‘The Postmaster’, where a young Calcutta boy is posted in an obscure, small village, Ulapur. The village is populated with Indigo agents and employees, who neither had time nor inclination to mix up with an arrogant, moody, sombre educated man!

Forced to eke out a solitary living and desperate for human company, he opens his heart to the only avid listener available, an orphan girl, about twelve or thirteen years of age, named Ratan. She is an unlucky girl, standing alone at the threshold of youth, with no possibility of marriage or a friendly alliance.

Ratan does housework and odd jobs for the Postmaster, in return of a little food. And, as her work demands her to remain in close vicinity of the young Babu, they soon develop a comfortable companionship, feeling at ease with each other, slipping into casual conversation, sharing details about their respective families, and some heartfelt emotions, thus slowly developing a strange yet intimate relationship.

But, as in Tagore’s typical style, none of them shows any inclination towards external show of emotions or delve on the physical aspect of their close liaison. In fact, till the very end, it remains unknown whether their feelings were indeed love or just a passing infatuation or even a platonic affection misinterpreted as romantic mooring! The story ends ambiguously, with longing and separation ruling the roost.

However, despite its sombre end, I liked the story for its irony. Here, the author tries to bring together two individuals, who have nothing in common. One is a pedantic city boy, the other an illiterate village belle. One feels romantic on seeing green leaves, is stirred by beauty of the moon, while the other believes love is equivalent to caring for a sick man, and dutifully serving your lover. The relationship is flawed from the very beginning. It is doomed to fail, yet it grips both the protagonists in a strange bond till the very end.

Further, the story prominently focuses on a very well established aspect of love. Man and woman interpret it in different manner. A man craves for company and is happy to find it in any form, a beloved, a friend or even a servile dependent. But a woman can never be reckless in finding love. She is by nature monogamous and gets emotionally involved with her partner in a way that she is ready to negate her very existence for her lover. But, man likes to remain a free bird, and at the very first sight of a bond, flies away.

In a way, Ratan is in the wrong end from the very beginning. She is just a victim of destiny, which played havoc with her life, by making her an orphan. And, when she has abandoned all hopes of being married, fate brings her face to face with a man, she admires and falls in love with.

On the other hand, the Postmaster is a man lost in thoughts. He considers himself aloof and poetic, but actually he has just been forced to be the kind of man, he comes across as. In other circumstances, he would be quite a different person, for whom Ratan would have no meaning at all.

In a nutshell, The Postmaster is essentially the expression of those unsolved mysteries, those unanswerable queries, those tough dilemmas, we all encounter at certain point of our lives. A hesitation to owe your feelings often result in a permanent loss. The story could have ended happily, if only the protagonists could have been a little honest each other. However, much remains unsaid in this psuedo romantic tale, ending in separation and longing.

Here, Love is explored in a very different way, minus all the sweet nothings. Tagore in his signature humane style, acted out a heavenly drama on the hard earthy plane. The story is short, crisp, at times funny and mostly sombre. But more than anything, I liked the ironical and satirical tone, which made the story readable and entertaining.