For Whom The Bells tolls

 This blog is in response to the task given by Yesha ma'am. In this blog, I am going to write about my understanding of the novel "For Whom The Bell Tolls" by Earnest Hemingway. 

In what basic way is Robert Jordan a typical Hemingway hero?

Robert Jordan, the protagonist of Ernest Hemingway's novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls," is a prime example of a Hemingway hero. Hemingway's heroes are known for their stoic masculinity, love of adventure, and a deep sense of duty. Robert Jordan embodies these characteristics in many ways.

One of the most significant ways in which Robert Jordan is a typical Hemingway hero is through his love of adventure. Hemingway's heroes are often seen seeking out new and exciting experiences, and Robert Jordan is no exception. He is a professor of Spanish who has volunteered to fight for the Republican cause during the Spanish Civil War, placing himself in the middle of the conflict.

Jordan's love of adventure is also tied to his sense of duty. Hemingway's heroes are often driven by a strong sense of duty or honor, and Robert Jordan is no exception. He sees his mission to blow up a bridge as essential to the war effort, and he is willing to risk his life to complete it. Throughout the novel, Jordan is motivated by a deep sense of responsibility to his fellow soldiers and to the cause he has joined.

Robert Jordan is also a typical Hemingway hero in his stoic masculinity. Hemingway's heroes are known for their stoicism, or their ability to remain calm and composed in the face of danger or adversity. Jordan embodies this characteristic throughout the novel, remaining calm and focused even when facing impossible odds. He also displays a deep sense of masculinity, defined by his physical strength, courage, and ability to take charge in difficult situations.

Finally, Robert Jordan is a typical Hemingway hero in his love for nature and his ability to find solace in it. Hemingway's heroes often find a sense of peace and clarity in the natural world, and Robert Jordan is no exception. Throughout the novel, he takes moments to appreciate the beauty of the mountains and the river, finding solace in the natural world even amidst the chaos of war.

In conclusion, Robert Jordan is a prime example of a Hemingway hero. His love of adventure, sense of duty, stoic masculinity, and appreciation for nature all make him a typical Hemingway hero. "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is a classic example of Hemingway's style and the themes he explores in his writing, and Robert Jordan is a fitting embodiment of those themes.

In Short,Robert Jordan can be considered a typical Hemingway hero in "For Whom the Bell Tolls." Hemingway's heroes have unique traits of heroism and are often seen as tragic characters. Jordan fights for an ideal in a foreign land and believes that a republican form of government is better than a totalitarian state. As the novel progresses, his task becomes more complicated, but he remains brave and determined. Critics may argue that Jordan's love for Maria is a weakness, but it is his genuine love for her that enhances his mission. Despite his flaws, Jordan fights for liberty, equality, and the rights of the people, making him an imitable personality.

On Being Asked for a War Poem by William Butler Yeats

 On Being Asked for a War Poem:

           'On Being Asked for a War Poem' is written by William Butler Yeats. (To know more about William Butler Yeats and his other poem please visit this blog. http://avanijani18.blogspot.com/2022/12/poems-of-wbyeats.html )

  When we first look at the title, the very first question strikes in our mind that “Who asked for a war poem?”. Through some research one will surely come to know that, that person is - American novelists, Henry James and Edith Wharton – who were good friends and who both came to live in Britain – who approached him: Wharton was editing an anthology, The Book of the Homeless, the profits from which would go towards helping refugees of the war. That anthology appeared in 1916, complete with Yeats’s contribution, which appeared under the alternative title ‘A Reason for Keeping Silent’.

Poem :

I think it better that in times like these

A poet's mouth be silent, for in truth

We have no gift to set a statesman right;

He has had enough of meddling who can please

A young girl in the indolence of her youth,

Or an old man upon a winter’s night.

This is the poem which echoes Irony of poet and sounds like- “Sorry not Sorry” Yeats responds by declining to write about the war, saying that giving advice to politicians isn't really the point of poetry, and then suggests that he writes not for political causes but for people such as old men and young women, who have leisure to read poetry for itself.

In this poem Yeats tells us while shouting silently that he is Being muted by politicians and even citizens don't want to hear reality and they're busy in trivial matters.The final two lines are the only ones which might cause some real head-scratching from readers (and critics), but Yeats appears to be making an appeal to the broad readership that poetry enjoyed: young girls might enjoy his romantic verses about old Ireland, while an old man might enjoy the ballads.

For Surreal imagination used by W.B Yeats in this poem visit this link http://avanijani18.blogspot.com/2022/12/surreal-imagination-used-by-wb-yeats-in.html

surreal imagination used by W.B Yeats in his poem

1] The Second Coming:

Poet satirize the faith of people who are waiting for the second coming of God. These pictures describes exact meaning 

there's buffering in connecting with the God.

2] On Being Asked for War Poem:

At the end, after knowing well the poems of W.B.Yeats one can well get the idea that what he's trying to convince us. Following image portrays/ concludes the main idea of Yeats poems :

Poems of W.B.Yeats

 This blog is the response to the thinking activity on the 'W.B. Yeats poem'  by Dr.Dilp Barad.

            William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was born in Dublin. His father was a lawyer and a well-known portrait painter. Yeats was educated in London and in Dublin, but he spent his summers in the west of Ireland in the family’s summer house at Connaught. The young Yeats was very much part of the fin de siècle in London; at the same time, he was active in societies that attempted an Irish literary revival. His first volume of verse appeared in 1887, but in his earlier period, his dramatic production outweighed his poetry both in bulk and in import. Together with Lady Gregory he founded the Irish Theatre, which was to become the Abbey Theatre, and served as its chief playwright until the movement was joined by John Synge. His plays usually treat Irish legends; they also reflect his fascination with mysticism and spiritualism. Countess Cathleen (1892), The Land of Heart’s Desire (1894), Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902), The King’s Threshold (1904), and Deirdre (1907) are among the best-known.

            After 1910, Yeats’s dramatic art took a sharp turn toward a highly poetical, static, and esoteric style. His later plays were written for small audiences; they experiment with masks, dance, and music, and were profoundly influenced by the Japanese Noh plays. Although a convinced patriot, Yeats deplored the hatred and the bigotry of the Nationalist movement, and his poetry is full of moving protests against it. He was appointed to the Irish Senate in 1922. Yeats is one of the few writers whose greatest works were written after the award of the Nobel Prize. Whereas he received the Prize chiefly for his dramatic works, his significance today rests on his lyric achievement. His poetry, especially the volumes The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), The Tower (1928), The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), and Last Poems and Plays (1940), made him one of the outstanding and most influential twentieth-century poets writing in English. His recurrent themes are the contrast of art and life, masks, cyclical theories of life (the symbol of the winding stairs), and the ideal of beauty and ceremony contrasting with the hubbub of modern life.

The Second Coming : 

            One can well observe the frustration of Yeats Through his poems. I.e. ‘A prayer For My Daughter’ in which he satirizes his crush Maud Gonne, also in his poem ‘The Second Coming’ he aims at the beliefs of people who are waiting for God/rebirth of God.

                    The opening lines of the poem impart us a picture of the disintegration that has overtaken the Christian civilization. The diminishing force of Christianity is conveyed to us through the idea that Christianity is like a falcon - a symbol for a man who no longer hears the call of the falconer, i.e. God. As a result, the falcon has lost contact with the falconer and it becomes directionless. Things are falling apart and there is no stabilizing force. The shadow of disorder, lawlessness, and confusion is looming over the world. The "blood-dimmed tide" is the tide of violence. This tide has drowned the "ceremony of innocence".

            The "ceremony of innocence" represents for Yeats those fanatical men who have seized power. The ruthless, full of passionate intensity of fanaticism seems to rule the whole world. As a result, the pure and best men have grown skeptical and they have lost all conviction.

            The indication is that some new revelation or a new "coming" is near. The first revelation or the first coming was the birth of Jesus Christ which heralded the Christian civilization.

            The phrase "Spiritus Mundi" stands for "spirit of the world". The Stoics used this phrase for the vital force of the universe but it should be noted that William Butler Yeats has employed it for a kind of corporate imagination similar to the racial subconscious described by psychologists.

            In other words, the phrase "Spiritus Mundi" has caused to be the property of any personality that signs, even direct messages flow from "Spiritus Mundi" which the poet and the philosopher have only to see, hear, and recognize.

            The Sphinx - the shape with the lion's body and the head of a man represents ruthless and merciless violence, "moving its thighs" conveys the clumsy, powerful, and stirring of the shape into life.The shadows of the desert birds reel away from it in the giddiness of a nightmare. As it shows things moving, birds over the desert see it and begin to scream.

            During the twenty centuries of Christian civilization, this beast was sleeping but is about to make its appearance in the world. This will be the "Second Coming" and it will supersede Christ who was born two thousand years ago in Bethlehem.

            The new period in Human history will be one of monstrous animal power. Thus, William Butler Yeats' 'The Second Coming" contains a "horror-vision" of the destruction of the world as we know it and the prophecy of an era of infinite and sheer cruelty and suffering.

For other poem by W.B.Yeats visit this link - https://avanijani18.blogspot.com/2022/12/on-being-asked-for-war-poem-by-william.html

For Surreal imagination used by W.B Yeats visit this link -

https://avanijani18.blogspot.com/2022/12/surreal-imagination-used-by-wb-yeats-in.html

The Great Dictator

 This is the blog about “ Zeitgeist of the 20th Century: From Modern Times to the Era of Great Dictators” in response to the task given by the Head Of the Department, Dr. Dilip Barad. This blog deals with the Zeitgeist of the 20th century with the help of the movie “The Modern Times” and “The Great Dictator” By Charlie Chaplin, which directly attacks the ‘Mechanism’ and cruelty of ‘Hitler’ and his ‘Dictatorship’.Both movies are written and directed by Charlie Chaplin and he was the leading actor as well in both films. for 'Modern Times' click here- https://avanijani18.blogspot.com/2022/12/modern-times.html 

The Great Dictator : 

            The film is obviously a satire on Adolf Hitler, represented by Adenoid Hynkel, and its story is based on Hynkel looking exactly like " a Jewish barber ": both are played by Charles Chaplin. But it begins with a notice: " Any resemblance between Hynkel the dictator incidental ". [ Prologue ] This is a story of a period between two World Wars -- an interim in which Insanity cut loose. Liberty took a nosedive and Humanity was kicked around somewhat 

            20 years after the end of WWI, in which the nation of Tomainia was on the losing side, Adenoid Hynkel has risen to power as the ruthless dictator of the country. He believes in a pure Aryan state and the decimation of the Jews. This situation is unknown to a simple Jewish Tomainian barber who has been hospitalized since a WWI battle. Upon his release, the barber, who had been suffering from memory loss about the war, is shown the new persecuted life of the Jews by many living in the Jewish ghetto, including a washerwoman named Hannah with whom he begins a relationship. The barber is ultimately spared such persecution by Commander Schultz, whom he saved in that WWI battle. The lives of all Jews in Tomainia are eventually spared with a policy shift by Hynkel himself, who is doing so for ulterior motives. But those motives include a desire for world domination, starting with the invasion of neighboring Osterlich, which may be threatened by Benzino Napaloni, the dictator of neighboring Bacteria. Ultimately Schultz, who has turned traitor against Hynkel's regime, and the barber may be able to join forces to take control of the situation, using Schultz's inside knowledge of the regime's workings and the barber's uncanny resemblance to one of those in power.

                The Great Dictator—Charlie Chaplin’s masterful satire of Adolf Hitler—began filming in September 1939, right at the start of World War II. By the time it was released in 1940, the Axis had been formed, and Nazis were already occupying much of France. The threat was not at all abstract: critic Michael Wood notes that the movie premiered that December, in London, amid German air raids. The following December, of 1941, would yield its own devastating threats from the air—this time on American soil, which would clarify for Americans the realness of this war by bringing it home. It was, in other words, a strange moment to be making a comedy about Adolf Hitler—even a satire holding him to account, and even one in which Chaplin himself, who was at that point one of the most famous movies stars in the world, famous for playing the ambling, lovable Little Tramp, took on the role of Hitler. In 1940, Germany and the US had yet to become enemies; feathers, it was worried, would be ruffled by a movie like this. But Chaplin was already unwittingly bound up in the era’s iconographies of evil. His likeness, the Little Tramp, with that curt mustache and oddly compact face of his, had already become a visual reference for cartoonists lampooning Hitler in the press. And he was already on the Nazis’ radar: the 1934 Nazi volume The Jews Are Looking At You referred to him  as "a disgusting Jewish acrobat." Chaplin wasn’t Jewish. But he was frequently rumored to be. And when he visited Berlin in 1931, he was mobbed by German fans, proving that his popularity could surpass even the growing ideological boundaries of a nascent Nazi Germany—hence their hatred.

                Chaplin was aware of all of this—and of the fact that he and Hitler were born only four days apart, in April of 1889, that they had both risen out of poverty, and that they had enough points of biographical comparison, overall, to spook any sane person. Let’s not overstate their similarities: One of these men would go on to make the world laugh, and the other would go on to start a world war and facilitate the Holocaust. Humorously, that split would come to be echoed in The Great Dictator. Chaplin does double duty, playing the movie's two central roles. One, the character of Adenoid Hynkel, is a Hitler spoof by way of a short-tempered and preposterously powerful personality, a dictator of the fictional country Tomainia. And in the opposing corner, Chaplin offers us a variation on his classic Little Tramp, a Jewish barber who saves a high-ranking officer’s life in World War I and, after a plane accident and years of recovery in the hospital, wakes up to the seeds of World War II being sewn in his country.

                The Great Dictator is a classic for a reason. It's startling in its depictions of violence, which stand out less for their outright brutality than for how memorably they depict the Nazis’ betrayal of everyday humanity. And it's renowned as well as for its resourceful and original humor, which combines Chaplin at his most incisive and balletic with raucous displays of verbal wit. This was Chaplin’s first sound film; his previous feature, the 1936 masterpiece Modern Times, was by the time of its release considered almost anachronistic for being a silent film in a sound era. Dictator avails itself of this technological progress, making perhaps its most successful bit out of the way Hitler speaks, the melange of rough sounds and brutish insinuations that have long made footage from his rallies as fascinating as they are frightening.

            The Great Dictator understands Hitler as a performer, as an orator wielding language like the unifying, galvanizing power that it is. But it also understands him as a psyche. This of course means it’s full of what feels like sophomoric jokes, gags in which Hitler’s insecurities, his thirst for influence, his ideological inconsistencies (an Aryan revolution led by a brunette?), and zealous dependency on loyalty come under fire. It isn’t a psychological portrait, but The Great Dictator feels much the way movies like Modern Times did: like a story about the travails of an every-man who’s suddenly, with no preparation, launched headlong into machinery too great, too complex, too utterly beyond him, for it not to result in comic hi-jinks.

            That’s the how barber’s first scenes out of the hospital, as beautifully staged and timed by Chaplin, feel: like watching the Little Tramp turn a corner and walk, completely unaware, into a world war. He sees "Jew" written on his barbershop, for example, but because he’s an amnesiac just released from the hospital, he has no idea why it’s there and starts to wash it away. This is illegal, of course, and when the Nazis try to tell them so, he, thinking they’re run-of-the-mill brutish anti-Semites, douses them with paint and runs away. Much of the humor, at least in the clearly-marked "Ghetto," where the Barber lives, plays out this way: a terrifying game of comic irony in which what the Barber doesn’t know both empowers and threatens to kill him.

                The Hitler scenes, by contrast, are a ballet—at times almost literally—of alliances and petty tasks. The highlight must of course be a scene of Hitler alone, having just renewed his faith in his plan to take over the world, dancing with an inflated globe of the planet, bouncing it off his bum, posing like a pin-up on his desk as the globe floats airlessly skyward. You can’t help but laugh. But that laughter doesn’t mute the brooding danger of it. You see the globe, the ease with which he lifts it up, manipulates it, makes a game of it, and realizes that this is precisely what a dictator wants. It's a guileless and child-like vision, from his perspective, of his own power.

                The Great Dictator’s famous climax finds these two men merging, somewhat, into one. It’s a rousing speech ostensibly delivered by the Jewish barber, who (for reasons best left to the movie to explain) has been confused for Hynkel by the Nazis and is called upon to speak to the masses. And then he opens his mouth—and the man that emerges is Chaplin himself, creeping beyond the boundaries of character, satire, or even the artificial construct of a "movie," as such.

                The speech makes a case for humanity in the face of grave evil. "We think too much and feel too little," Chaplin says. "More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness." You’ll recognize this theme—"more than machinery we need humanity"—throughout Chaplin’s work, and it rings especially true here. Chaplin emerges, fully human, as himself, breaking free of the film’s satirical trappings, to deliver one from the heart. It’s a scene that plays well on its own, as a standalone speech. For a long while, it was hard to find a version online that hadn’t been modified with dramatic "movie speech" music by way of Hans Zimmer. Youtube comments imply a recent upswing in activity, of people finding the speech anew in the Trump era, and that makes sense. But the scene plays even more strangely, more powerfully, in context, where it’s less easily lent to meme-able political messaging, where it has to brush up against everything else in the movie that’s come before.

                It’s startling, frankly. The Great Dictator’s tone to this point never feels so earnest. How could it, what with its balletic Hitler and its foreign dictatorships with names like Bacteria. From the vantage of 1940, Chaplin couldn’t quite see where the war would take us, and it remains the case that some of the film play oddly—but all the more insightfully for it—today. What’s clear from its final moments, to say nothing of much of the rest, is the power in this tension. Insofar as it can sense but not see the future, you could say that The Great Dictator is a film made in a cloud of relative ignorance. Yet look at how much it says, how far it goes. It makes it hard to make excuses for films made since, which often have the benefit of hindsight yet little substance to say about what they see in the rearview. We know more, much more, about Hitler today than we did in 1940. 

Comparison : 

                After viewing ‘The Great Dictator’ I would like to compare the situation of Jews with Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu And Kashmir. The majority of Jammu and Kashmir made Kashmiri Pandits and other minorities leave their native place. The militants tortured them barbarously and made them leave that place. Many Movies have portrayed this incident but we can not rely on Movies because it has many fictions in them the story of real and well-known Kashmiri Hindus in their own words, clears the picture very well. Here’s the link to the very famous news channel NDTV, covering the story of Kashmiri pandits: NDTV Interview And here’s the famous book of Rahul Pandita, he’s a journalist and well-known author for which he describes Kashmiri Hindu Minorities: Our Moon has Blood Clots.

Since 1989, Jammu and Kashmir have been affected by the conflict between the Indian state and a movement demanding independence. This book explores the effect of that conflict on the Hindu Pandit minority of the Kashmir Valley. The displacement of the Kashmir Pandits has been drastic with the majority having fled Kashmir within the first year of the conflict and relocating to Jammu and elsewhere. They are one of the most prominent internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the region. Kashmiri Pandits are historically associated with state bureaucracies from the precolonial to postcolonial regimes and have been prominent landowners in Kashmir. While Kashmiri nationalism declares independence from the Indian state, the Pandits are located in the union between India and Kashmir. This book attempts to explore their experiences by looking at their relationship to Kashmir and the place they have relocated to, where they have rebuilt their lives. Focusing on ‘camp colonies’ (the same way Jews were living ) and the lives of Pandits across the city, the book reveals a tension between the recovery of ordinary life after loss and the inability to feel truly settled and to find one’s place in the world. This book explores how they seek recognition as victims through engagements with political parties, organizations, and organs of the Indian welfare state. But this process is caught in a struggle between the uniqueness of victimhood and the universality of violence and suffering. Thus, this book attempts to understand experiences of dispossession among people who occupy a politically ambivalent location.

                There are some fine memoirs by Pandits who had to leave Kashmir. But perhaps the most authoritative account of how and why they left is contained in an essay by Sonia Jabbar, The Spirit of Place, published in Civil Lines 5. Across three pages of closely printed text, Jabbar lists 36 Pandit men and women murdered by jihadists, their names, their dates of birth and death, their native village, and their family members. The matter-of-fact listing is followed by this paragraph in the writer’s own voice:

                “These are just a few of the names of the Pandits who were killed by the militants between 1989-1991. I’d love to add some nine hundred more for you to get the complete picture. These women and men were not killed in the crossfire, accidentally, but were systematically and brutally targeted. Many of the women were gang-raped before they were killed. One woman was bisected by a mill saw. The bodies of the men bore marks of torture. Death by strangulation, hanging, amputations, and the gouging of eyes, were not uncommon. Often their bodies were dumped with notes forbidding anyone—in pain of death—to touch them. 900 brutal killings out of a population of around 350,000 Pandits over 24 months is a startling figure. Anyone who says Jagmohan engineered the Pandit exodus is a liar.” (From Hindustan Times)

                The first and greatest tragedy of the Kashmiri Pandits was that they were forced to flee their homeland. It was their own people who turned on them or looked the other way as they were turned upon when the forces of jihad made the Pandits their manic victims. The cultural, poetic, and mystical ties that once bound the Pandits to Kashmiris of other faiths were brutally sundered by Islamic fundamentalists. Now, only their memories, mostly bitter memories, remain.

            Hitler was proud of being ‘Aryan’ and was torturing others who were non-Aryans. And people followed him largely! And were considered him a hero by addressing him very often with “Hail Hynkel” the same way the misguided majority of Jammu and Kashmir were idolizing Ashfaq Majeed Wani, Shaheed Shabir Sideeqi, and other militants as ‘pure’ and many more. Here is one Facebook post regarding the pureness of this militant in comparison to ‘Aryans’/Hitler: Ashfaq Majeed Wani

It's not happened during the 19s’ but till today in Jammu and Kashmir, the majority locality is threatening Kashmiri Hindus. Here’s the article which covers the whole incident: Dainik Bhaskar Article 

        It's not only Kashmiri Hindus that are suffering but the Muslim community, Asians all are suffering from recisim and many more throughout the world. Charlie Chaplin presented very close image in 'The Great Dictator' which is still relevant and will continue to be relevant in future also.

(Words :2557

Images: 6

Gifs: 2)

Modern Times

     This is the blog about “ Zeitgeist of the 20th Century: From Modern Times to the Era of Great Dictators” in response to the task given by the Head Of the Department, Dr. Dilip Barad. This blog deals with the Zeitgeist of the 20th century with the help of the movie “The Modern Times” and “The Great Dictator” By Charlie Chaplin, which directly attacks the ‘Mechanism’ and cruelty of ‘Hitler’ and his ‘Dictatorship’.

Both movies are written and directed by Charlie Chaplin and he was the leading actor as well in both films.  Before discussing more, let’s have a glance at the great personality of Charlie Chaplin…

"Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease from pain."

 - (From “Mr. Chaplin Answers His Critics”; The Comedian Defends His Ending of ‘The Great Dictator by Charles Chaplin, The New York Times, 27 October 1940.)

Charlie Chaplin, byname of Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, (born April 16, 1889, in London, England—died December 25, 1977, Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland), British comedian, producer, writer, director, and composer who is widely regarded as the greatest comic artist of the screen and one of the most important figures in motion-picture history.

 life and career:

Chaplin was named after his father, a British music-hall entertainer. He spent his early childhood with his mother, the singer Hannah Hall after she and his father separated, and he made his own stage debut at age five, filling in for his mother. The mentally unstable Hall was later confined to an asylum. Charlie and his half-brother Sydney were sent to a series of bleak workhouses and residential schools.

Using his mother’s show-business contacts, Charlie became a professional entertainer in 1897 when he joined the Eight Lancashire Lads, a clog-dancing act. His subsequent stage credits include a small role in William Gillette’s Sherlock Holmes (1899) and a stint with the vaudeville act Casey’s Court Circus. In 1908 he joined the Fred Karno pantomime troupe, quickly rising to star status as The Drunk in the ensemble sketch A Night in an English Music Hall.

While touring America with the Karno company in 1913, Chaplin was signed to appear in Mack Sennett’s Keystone comedy films. Though his first Keystone one-reeler, Making a Living (1914), was not the failure that historians have claimed, Chaplin’s initial screen character, a mercenary dandy, did not show him to best advantage. Ordered by Sennett to come up with a more-workable screen image, Chaplin improvised an outfit consisting of a too-small coat, too-large pants, floppy shoes, and a battered derby. As a finishing touch, he pasted on a postage-stamp mustache and adopted a cane as an all-purpose prop. It was in his second Keystone film, Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914), that Chaplin’s immortal screen alter ego, “the Little Tramp,” was born.

His 35 Keystone comedies can be regarded as the Tramp’s gestation period, during which a caricature became a character. The films improved steadily once Chaplin became his own director. In 1915 he left Sennett to accept a $1,250-weekly contract at Essanay Studios. It was there that he began to inject elements of pathos into his comedy, notably in such shorts as The Tramp (1915) and Burlesque on Carmen (1915). He moved on to an even more lucrative job ($670,000 per year) at the Mutual Company Film Corporation. There, during 18 months, he made the 12 two-reelers that many regards as his finest films, among them such gems as One A.M. (1916), The Rink (1916), The Vagabond (1916), and Easy Street (1917). It was then, in 1917, that Chaplin found himself attacked for the first (though hardly the last) time by the press. He was criticized for not enlisting to fight in World War I. To aid the war effort, Chaplin raised funds for the troops via bond drives. (Britannica) 

        “On the morning of March 2, 1978, nine weeks after Charlie Chaplin's funeral in Vevey, Switzerland, the superintendent of the village cemetery discovered fresh mounds of dirt, wet with rain from the night before, around the great man's burial plot and a yawning hole in the middle. The casket had vanished. Could it be that even in death the most famous comedian in the world was still capable of the tricky moves that had inspired so much laughter? The disappearance of his body was, after all, no less bizarre, no less unexpected, than the comic inventions of his films or the events of his long and colorful life. To me, the image of his empty gravesite came to symbolize his historic elusiveness, as a person no less than as a performer, and the difficulties he presents to the biographer of pinning him down.” (Kenneth Lynn. in ‘Charlie Chaplin and His Times') 

            He had a very sorrowful childhood, Charlie Chaplin’s father, a British music hall entertainer, and mother, singer Hannah Hall, separated, and Chaplin spent his early childhood with his mother. When the mentally unstable Hall was later confined to an asylum, Chaplin and his half-brother, Sydney, were sent to a series of workhouses and residential schools. Though he made out successful throughout not only in history but till date!   In his last years, Chaplin was accorded many of the honors that had been withheld from him for so long. In 1972 he returned to the United States for the first time in 20 years to accept a special Academy Award for “the incalculable effect he has had on making motion pictures the art form of this century.” It was a bittersweet homecoming. Chaplin had come to deplore the United States, but he was visibly and deeply moved by the 12-minute standing ovation he received at the Oscar ceremonies. As Alistair Cooke described the events,

Chaplin made one of his final public appearances in 1975 when he was knighted. Several months after his death, his body was briefly kidnapped from a Swiss cemetery by a pair of bungling thieves—a macabre coda that Chaplin might have concocted for one of his own two-reelers. 

  Modern Times: 

As one can well observe the lead role which is obviously played by ‘Tramp’, always behaves so innocently/witty throughout the movie. Tramp is that he looks at life through the eyes of a child, a naive observer as he “innocently” bumbles along. But we can only love this comic character if we can manage to avoid objectively seeing what is happening to him in his time. He simply does not seem to know fully, nor understand his world well enough, when he acts; thus, the consequences of his actions seem comic. But if we do not identify with its main character and look at the film in its historical context, then we see the debris and remnants of his actions as disastrous, not as hilarious. The machines of Chaplin’s modern times of the mid-1930s dehumanize all the film’s characters—the Tramp, his associates, as well as the “gamine.” In Modern Times, industrialization affects all the characters: from “the factory boss nursing his ulcers,” as recorded in Chaplin’s preliminary notes, to the unemployed workers in the street ( Chaplin: His Life and Art 460)2.

Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp is an enigmatic representation of the modern man in the modern times of the 1930s. He is swept up and carried along by the “modern” (contemporary) socio-economic currents of his age, in which he remains a vagabond who comically struggles with his fate. As we will see, he places himself (or, more often than not, his circumstances place him) into many roles that include—in addition to a factory worker—shipyard worker, thief, night watchman, and waiter, but he seems most comfortable when placed (often of his own volition) as a prisoner living in “his comfortable prison cell.” Exactly halfway through the film, his passive acquiescence to his storm-tossed fate will be tested by a woman. And he will continue to fail.

1] One can well observe the starting of the movie, which starts with the ‘Clock’ which symbolizes two things: 1] Mechanism, 2] slavery of Time. this clock shows that every man is the slave of the clock which is being made by machines. 

2] The second aim in the movie was - “ Herd”, the first camera focuses on the herd of sheep and in second focuses on the herd of men. This signifies that like sheep men also don't use their own thinking and follow the ‘herd’ rather than mind and prove Gujarati saying - 

“ટોળાંમાં બુદ્ધિ ના હોય” 

3] The third thing which highlights the “ Machines” in the movie shows huge machines and tiny humans which clearly drags our attention to what Tramp/Charlie wants us to observe.

4] The fourth thing which is relevant today is the control of individual privacy. In the movie, the boss keeps an eye on all the employees in the washrooms also. In today’s time, the Government is keeping an eye on every single person through the CCTV camera (But it will never work when a Government/Government employee/Rich person is at fault). And aunties also played a vital role as CCTV cameras throughout history, the way they will always be ready for interfering in the personal life of everyone. 

5] The fifth important aspect of this movie that drags one’s attention toward it, is Poverty. when the rich were thinking of a huge villa at the same time Tramp and his girlfriend were dreaming of food. Tramp represents Marxist theory.

6] Police arrested Tramp while he was holding a red flag unintentionally and police arrested him without confirming his crime. In today’s time also we can find many examples of this behavior for poor and helpless people. Salman Khan’s ‘Hit And Run’ case is the most relevant example.

The movie ends with an open road which shows Hope. The whole movie throws on a very detailed observation of Charlie Chaplin in the disguise of Tramp.

words: 1580