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Sign in. From the creators of SparkNotes, something better. Literature Poetry Lit Terms Shakescleare. Download this LitChart! Teachers and parents! Struggling with distance learning? Our Teacher Edition on Silence! The Court is in Session can help. Themes All Themes. Symbols All Symbols. Theme Wheel. Everything you need for every book you read. The way the content is organized and presented is seamlessly smooth, innovative, and comprehensive.
Leela Benare: is a school teacher of eight years standing. She comes across as a vivacious and unconventional woman. She seems to have a mind of her own and is very forthright. She has a sense of fun. She is also able to laugh at the foibles and eccentricities of the various members in the group.
Sukhatme: Arrives on stage along with the rest of the characters. He is introduced as a lawyer in the stage directions. He comes in smoking a beedi.
Servant: Possibly a porter hired from the station, he is one of the general factotum which arrives on stage. Balu Rokde: As a young boy he was given shelter by the Kashikars, who fed, clothed and educated him while he ran errands and performed odd jobs for them.
He accompanies them and takes orders from them. Ponkshe: Is introduced as the Science student. Leela Benare tells us that he has failed his intermediate examinations, these are examinations that would have allowed him to join the university. Ponkshe smokes a pipe, has taken his inter exams for the second time and works as a clerk at the Central Telegraph office. And her husbands surname are the only way in which she is represented throughout the play. This perhaps is her only public identity.
She is known as the wife of Mr. It is her husband who calls all the shots and is shown as very rude to her, putting her down and cutting her short on every occasion. The taking on of a marriage usually involves a change of the surname for a woman. The man retains his own name. This is accepted as conventional practice all over the world.
There are feminists who have voiced their apprehensions about how this change of surname indicates the subservient status that a woman occupies in contrast to her husband, including a gradual erosion of female identity and selfhood. Today a small percentage of women do use their own surnames. Kashikar: The dominant spouse, he has indulged his wife by stopping on the way to the hall and buying her flowers to put in her hair.
He is referred to as the chairman of the group by Benare and sees himself as a man of superior intelligence. He is shown to have a great sense of self-importance and sees himself as undertaking any and every action only with Prime objectives in view. Local Resident Karnik is an experimental theatre actor, shown as habituated to chewing pan As you will notice, there are minor characters and there are major characters even in a play like Shantata which does not have a conventional romantic storyline.
For instance, in Abhigyan Shakuntalam, the narrative begins with the king out on a hunt. In the process he strays into a hermitage and encounters with a beautiful young woman to whom he is attracted. Over Seven Acts, Kalidasa traces the moods of love, longing, parting, separation, misunderstanding and eventual reunion over a period of a few years.
In Shantata, the action of the play takes place over a single evening. There are young men and a young woman in this play. However the play is not an exploration of romantic love that blossoms into commitment and adult responsibility. These different people may never have met each other were it not for the Sonar Moti Tenement. With the exception of the Kashikars who are husband and wife and Balu Rokde, who has been raised by them, the rest of the characters connect with each other through dealings in a very public world.
Each member of the group is different from the other in terms of age, gender or social status. This is definitely the breaking of new ground. Tendulkar is addressing issues in the play that deal with collective psychology and its shaping of individual responses.
First Act of the Play The playwright describes the setting of the play which takes place in an old community hall, which is used by the residents of the village for a range of social, cultural and group activities. Samant enters carrying a lock and a key and a green cloth parrot. Leela Benare is a member of Amateur group of actors in Bombay. Miss Benare who follows him is carrying a purse and a basket of equipment.
There are also a number of miscellaneous objects piled up on the stage. We are shown Benare standing in the doorway sucking on her bruised finger. Samant provides commentary on this, communicating to us that she has crushed a finger presumably while bolting the door. We are plunged immediately into the lives of the characters.
While we see Samant as a kindhearted person, While exploring the hall, Samant and Benare fall into conversation. Samant is a regular frequenter of the hall. Presumably he lives in the village. Benare is a visitor and Samant tells her about the various cultural events that the hall is regularly used for. Both of them have reached the hall much before the other members of the group. Benare gets off at the station and walks in the direction of the hall much faster than all the other characters.
Only Samant is able to keep pace with her. The rest of the troupe is yet to come in. Benare and Samant have met only a short while ago. Benare is presented as a lively and inquisitive young woman. Benare, who is an outsider and a woman who is engaged with the public sphere due to her teaching, has a different approach to Samant. Benare is extremely outgoing and perhaps a little provocative? When she tells Samant that she likes him very much, he is a little confused.
Why does she tell him this? Is she attracted to him? She hardly knows Samant. Again, she looks at the hall and announces that she likes the hall very much. Benare is depicted as an impulsive and excitable young woman. Her questions to Samant enable us to learn more about the surroundings and also about Samant that he is a bachelor.
We learn that he lives with his married elder brother. He has a sister-in-law who leads a regular community life. There is a nephew whom Samant is very fond of. Benare is a school teacher. She has been working as a school teacher for the past eight years.
She loves her work and draws great pleasure from teaching. She enjoys teaching. Despite her passion for her work,there is perhaps an attempt to remove her from her job.
She also puts her hand on her stomach, quite unconscious of the gesture. Benare begins to tell Samant and the viewers about the group of motivated social workers who will be assembling to rehearse for a play.
In fact, we hear about most of the characters from her in the first Act. While she tells Samant about each of the characters, we also get a brief sketch of what they seem like to Benare. She questions the purpose of life as to why people talk about idealism and do not pay attention to the predicaments of others.
What she has been through is ignored and made a victim of the crime she unintentionally committed. She is not the only one who is the culprit but others are also equally responsible for the crime but everything is posed on women and men are set free from all charges.
Therefore, she said life is not commendable of life itself as it is bound by what others say. Formation of Social Context through Proverbs The social context reflected through proverbs in the play pertains to the socio-cultural dimensions.
As far as social aspect is concerned, proverbs in the play have a lot more to convey about socio-cultural aspects in the play. The mock court trail is under progress, and the very purpose of the performance is to make society aware of the evil in society. Selection of the charge for mock court trail is praised by Mr. Kashikar that shows his concern for his own decision for the welfare of society.
The focal social element in the play is women. The way Ms. Socio- culturally women are considered holy. The understood context in the play is that of imaginary and as the performance aims to create awareness in society, the proverbs which evoke social awareness had to be used. Therefore, as per the requirement of social context, proverbs are used in the play. It expresses the view of society about nature of truth. We cannot hide the truth for long time.
It will come out by any means, and the same thing happened in case of Ms. Benare in present situation. Benare did unlawful things for which she receives the punishment. She is about to be expelled from her job for her wrong actions. Socially unacceptable action upholds the consequences.
Traditionally, women are considered unfit for freedom in Indian context where men have been considered superior to women. Free nature of woman poses doubt about her character. Further, social burden is questioned by Ms. Benare as to why a person cannot live life as per his or her will.
She suspects the hypocrisy by using a modified version of Mr. As a result, we can say that proverbs in the play are socio-culturally loaded and state the socio-cultural norms of society. Formation of Physical Context through Proverbs According to Verschueren, physical context is marked by the use of reference points related to time and space Sometimes, they are used with certain changes to fit into the context Mieder x.
Proverbs are adaptable to the time and space as they are evolved throughout ages. Proverbs used in the play do not merely pertain to particular time and space, but they are universally applicable to the similar situation irrespective of time and space.
The physical context reflected through the use of proverbs may not directly be related to absolute temporal and spatial references, but they do correspond to the physical context in the play. The mock court room is physical situation, and time of the mock drill is day time.
As for Mr. The physical context as said before is the court room, and arguments are at the core of court room. We even consider the mother to be equal to god. Occasionally, proverbs literally activate different physical contexts and they relate to different physical attributes in the situation. Consequently, the bag is something that has covered the truth, and it will be uncovered shortly. These proverbs are used in the context where Ms. Benare is going to receive what she deserves as a result of her behaviour.
Literally the proverb pertains to the physical world of plantation. In the play it shows that Ms. Benare performed an illegal act and as the consequence of which she is going to suffer. Benare behaved is not acceptable in the socio- cultural setting universally and at the moment particularly.
Therefore, it is argued that freedom to women leads to loss of culture. In the present physical context, the proverb relates to Ms. Benare as she performed an unacceptable act. The physical observation has led to the formation of this proverb. Taking the above proverb, Ms. Particularly women in the present context are suppressed to have free opinion; as a result of this life is not worthy of life for them. Conclusion To conclude, we can say that proverbs enable us to create psychological, social and physical word picture and let us peek into what a person thinks, how society functions and which physical features are used to adapt these proverbs into or which proverbs can be used as per the need of the situation.
The following observations are made while analyzing proverbs in the play. The act of convincing, motivating, advising, warning, and moralizing the characters is done through the use of proverbs thereby generating mental context. Social welfare, significance of womanhood and motherhood, social awareness, social and personal ethics are evoked through proverbs.
The Court is in Session. Halliday, M. Explorations in the Functions of Language. London: Edward Arnold, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, Hickey, L.
The Pragmatics of Style. London: Routledge, The Pragmatics of Translation. Clevendon: Cromwell Press Ltd,
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