Mother of a Traitor by Maxim Gorky

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The Mother of a Traitor This story written by Maxim Gorky, is a story of a conflict between 'ambition' characterized by a 'traitor' a brave but heartless son; and 'life 'represented and characterized by the 'Mother of a Traitor', where the heartless son appears with power and prowess, is easily victimized in the hand and lap of a mother who is appeared in the story very ordinary developed because of the urgency of time. It also signifies through out the history, such ambitions appeared in the name of war; however, ultimately, the life got the victory over the death and human civilized continued, through such difficult hurdles. The story is a study on the underlying essence of the mothers, who are more than kind-hearted and loving, a cruel destroyer for the sake of preservation of life, for which she has especial duty imparted by the nature. Moreover, this story is another quest within human psychology, which shows there is another truth within human mind, and man is something, more than a selfish creature, which makes one dedicated for the sake of society in the cost of the complete destruction of the selfish interests. Usually, the son is the most lovely and precious one for a mother, for which she is always ready to sacrifice any thing even her life. However, the mother sacrifices the life of her son for the preservation of the society and herself for the sake of her love to her son, in this story. To get to such truth the writer leads us (the readers) through the imagined situation for the story to develop, where the enemy has surrounded a city for several days and each and every part of the hope for life of the citizen has-been lost. There is nothing else than the shadow of death for the citizen. Gradually, the cause after such situation is revealed, the most loving son of another is leading the enemy to attack upon the city to fulfill the hunger of his ambition, without caring the old men, children, women and anything in the city. It hurts the mother extremely, who is so despised by the citizen that, either they don't care her at all or she listens herself the mothers cursing her womb staying at the side of their slain sons. The incident of the central character Mona Mariana’s encounter with the mother of slain man, breaks and balance and intensifies the story forcing hereto take bold decision for the sake of her city where she was born, and where her forefathers spent their lives for its construction and even their bones are buried there, and which is going to be cruelly destroyed by her lovely son. First she thinks of persuading her son to cancel such evil and desires to take most difficult departure from the loving city and meet her son, the piece of her heart. She feels proud of her son, so smart, active and brave, and proudly raises her head, while listening to the enemy soldiers singing a song on his admiration. However, all of her proud on her son is sunk down, when the son didn't care at all for her feelings, in spite of his love for her. When she got tired

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of persuading her son, for the preservation of the city, the conflict between her love for the son and her love for the city got into the climax. Meanwhile, she looked to the city through a tend hole, which was waiting for her decision for its life's sake, like a wounded and dumb animal, she couldn't ignore the expectation of the city for its life's sake. She took unexpected and drastic decision of killing her son for the sake of the preservation of the city and killed herself for the sake of her son and to remain together and to share the fate of the son. This story, which starts from the conflict within the mind of a mother ends at the solution of the problem at the cost of the life of a traitor and his mother. On the other hand the wounded and hopeless city gets life and lives new life after the end of the story. The effective images used there, make this story, successful, in terms of attaching the readers with the situation and giving the experience of both hopeless citizen and the mother in the difficulty of her mental conflict. The images used in the first part of the story, which gives the picture of the despaired city as if it is such a small and tender creature within the jaws of dreadful animal, which can be crushed down at any moment without any hope of support of averting such inevitable destruction at any moment. The story is rich with symbol and images, which can easily attach the audience (readers) emotionally to the story: particularly, the image of the city in the dark night like a prey between the jaws of enemy at the initial part, and the image of the city as a dumb and wounded animal at the succeeding part, are successful to make the audience feel with or identify with the central character and motivate them be sacrificed if needed for the sake of their country and society. Knowledge and Wisdom This short prose piece, written by Bertrand Russell, criticizes the general and superficial sayings on the terms 'Knowledge' and 'Wisdom', and illustrates concretely, going deep to make the meanings of these terms. In this highly complicated world of science and technology, people say knowledge insufficient and wisdom is no longer possible and needed. The writer asserts this saying doesn't contain the truth because the real meaning of wisdom doesn’t agree with such easy-going meanings. According to him, 'Wisdom ‘means sense of proportion, in other words, it is giving equal importance to every aspect of a problem. Similarly, Wisdom Includes both knowing the things of distance in time and place (widening the horizon of mind), as well as giving place for them the level of feelings. It is a process of developing the capability of taking the things at the level of feelings. Having wisdom is developing the impartiality within us, being free from the limitation of here and now created by our selfish and physical senses within us. It is the process of emancipating the innate capacity of the mind, keeping it above the disturbances of the sensual perceptions. The development of the wisdom is not extraordinary activities like that of some sages; rather it accords with our natural growth, as the mental horizon of the newly born child keeps on growing, wisdom also keeps on developing. Now, the science is not
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able to yield expected success and result, because of the lack of the wisdom. A scientist applies whole of his life and energy, in the quest of some truth and discoveries, he has very little time to think about its bad results. Therefore, the boon of modern medicine has been changed into the cause of over population and scarce of food, and the alternative source of energy, the nuclear physics has been used to make the destructive bomb. Therefore, along with the advancement at the sector of science and technology, the wisdom is equally necessary and needed. Moreover, it should be one of the objectives of modern education system.

Use and Misuse of Science This prose piece, written by Cyril Garbett is an attempt to give the solution of the most burning problem of the modern age, the massive destructive result because of misuse of modern science, while science itself is the boon for the life at present. The evil result of the science is also not beyond the Human understanding. There is ethical principle within everyone in this world, which should be manifested and it should be made able to control the activities of science and discoveries, especially while the negative results are foresighted. Then only the good result, the boon of the modern science is justified. Otherwise, the drastic change, which the modern science has brought into the life of billions of people, which was the privilege of the few within a few decades ago, remains within the shadow of the misuse and destructive result of the science and technology. There are many examples, which make us proud for the advantages brought into our life, at the sector of communication, transportation, medicine, education, and so on, which have not only made our living longer, and comfortable but also deepened the quality of our life. Still due to the misuse of the science we are always living under the shadow of death and destruction, for which this age has surpassed to all the previous ages, with the nuclear bombs, with their capacity of claiming the destruction of this earth more than seven times at once. Beauty While reading the essay on Beauty by American feminist writer Susan Sontag, It seems she is trying to create such human society which stays above the discrimination of Male and Female, imposed upon traditionally. Moreover, it is useless and senseless to delimit human being restricting from complete development, including the qualities, which are supposed only for male and only for female. It seems it is needless to differentiate betweenmale and female except few of the natural duty. Otherwise, whatever thequalities have been imposed upon Male and Female are not appropriate withthe modern time.Most importantly, the Male should be free from the wrong concept thatdelimit him from some of the essential qualities of life, as softness, wisdom,sensitivities, politeness and it is needless for him to remain always proud,and prowess as well as harsh. Similarly, for the Female it is needless to remain always,
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weak, soft, indecisive, immature, bodily and fragmented. These attributes particularly for the male and female are not natural but of the social product, produced at a certain stage of history, which automatically changes and must be changed along the course of time. This assay beauty, reflects the spirit of modern feminist movement, and reveals a truth that the narrow-minded and imbalanced interest of male chauvinism has manipulated even the language and word as 'beauty', for which the females are not aware of and are always living the incomplete and superficial life depending on the male. Language is dynamic and sensitive, which is easily influenced with the sociopolitical situation. It also serves as the weapons for one group to suppress and weaken another. In this essay, 'Beauty', the ordinary word serves as an example, which has been influenced and been deviated a lot from its original meaning and is being widely used as the veil covering the underlying truth of the female. Now a beautiful female with her high intellectual, physical and spiritual capacity is taken so surprisingly, as if these capacities don's have any relation with the word beauty and it is taken as if a beautiful lady should never be so capacious in these sectors. Moreover, with the adjective 'beautiful' for any female, we understand her always tender, superficial, dependent and weak, evaluating and admiring her physical attraction in terms of the parts of her body (so inhuman evaluation),while the correspondent term for male 'handsome', needs complete view and complete evaluation. In reality, the word in the Greek, the root of western civilization, with the meaning similar to beauty, includes all the physical, intellectual and spiritual capabilities and attributes of a female and there is no such clear difference between the male and female. Therefore, there must be a mistake in some part of the History, which shrank down the meaning of beauty. At the medieval time, when Christianity had strong dominance over all through the western world, humanity had been suppressed and beauty and attraction used as the source of the evil and against God. Simultaneously, female started to be taken as the source of evil and destruction. They were thought the subject to be suppressed and always depending on the male and being the source of pleasure. Again the humanism is restored in this world; still the meaning of the word, beauty and the attitude to the female is not changed. Female are always deprived of their inborn intellectual, spiritual and physical capacities. Female are living in the false value of flatter with the term beauty. It is a great misfortune that even the highly intellectual women and women writers are not free from such concept evaluating a female in terms of the superficial and skin-color, how an ordinary lady can be expected free from such mental snares. Paradoxically, women are praised with the false assumption that beauty is the source power, but they should be aware that this is not the power to do anything rather it is the power to stimulate the male to do something upon them, and to be completely possessed by male, and to be consumed by even at the cost of self destruction.

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Custom This essay by an anthropologist, Clyde Klukhohn is an anthropological view on the human life and culture. Different than the thinkers of the other fields man anthropologist thinks human life and human civilization differently. According to him, there is something else than the biological reality and scientific advancement inevitably associated with human life in this colorful world society. It divides the human being into different cultural sectors. In spite of so great similarity in biological and scientific phenomenon among all the human beings in this world, some of typical behavior makes very deep and effective impact on their life. For example, Chinese dislike milk and milk products; Japanese have the Hara-kiri; some of the Koryak females like their husband to marry another wife, which is the issue of intolerance and jealousy for the female in America. Some of the people devour the meat of snake, which makes disruptive reaction for the people of other places. The children of Indiana cultural do not like to dance boys and girls together, where the physical touches, within same clan are considered as the incestuous and immoral. These differences are caused only because of the geographical and climatic differences. Though these differences seem insignificant superficially, they have great impact on one's life. One can live in the same culture where his habits have been formulated, rather than one biological identity. If an American is brought to inner China, where the Chinese culture is imparted into his essence of life, he is more Chinese than American in spite of his blood and complexion. These customs make greater differences than the biological realities within the physical body of one individual. Understanding of human life is not complete only with the biological understanding and without the understanding such cultural differences, which are generally known as the custom. A question is asked why the world is so much diversified that one feels completely alien while going to different society, in spite of the similarities in the biological factors in our body, as well as similarities in our behavior with the science and technology. Similar question can also be asked here how the world would be in case there is single custom all-through the world. Can we make the world with single custom? What would be its result? Would the world be as beautiful, as creative, and living worthy as we are seeing now? No most importantly man would lose the desire to live once his/her difference is omitted or suppressed completely.

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