This blog is a response to a task assigned by Vaidehi Ma'am(Department of English, MKBU). The blog is about a satire: A tale of a Tub written by Jonathan Swift. For more detail about this blog click here.
A Tale of a Tub is a satire on religion, written by Jonathan Swift. It was written to give favor to the Anglican Church but It was interpreted differently by readers. It was published in 1704. It gives metaphorical reference to God, bible and three different parts of Christianity.
Q: 1) How far do you think Digression is necessary?
Ans.
If we consider digression in the reference to a Tale of a Tub then digression becomes really difficult to understand. When a person who does not know the context then he/she would be lost in digression. And this satire has come out differently than Swift wanted, it was interpreted differently.
In day to day life if we see then digression has its own importance. Because human beings have limited capacity to work and the same work they can't do for a very long time. They get bored, they get tired, so they need some escape. Then digression enters which provides space to recover from monotonous life and spend some time with other activities. That is why holidays and different festivals are there to make people do something different. Then digression becomes a blessing for human beings and they can enjoy life by doing something different.
Sometimes we also consider digression as a bad habit because when we try to focus on some important work and digression enters then it would be really difficult to concentrate on work so It also has its disadvantages.
Q: 2)Identify any one movie/web series/song/poem/novel which talks about a sensitive topic like religion. Write in brief about it and explain what kind questions are raised through that work.
Ans.
In Jonathan Swift’s satire we find he talks about Christianity and different parts of the religion, he metaphorically tried to say the bible should not be changed or altered.
Same thing we find in the Bollywood movie ‘OMG- Oh My God’. There we find the same concept: with the name of religion people are just trying to exploit people in every possible way. The movie tries to find the real meaning of religion, God and what people should see in society.
As we know that a religion is a sensible topic when one hears about religion he\she would take it personally or his\her own religious beliefs. Same thing happened with the movie. Many religious institutions boycotted the movie, saying that the movie is opposing the idea of their religion. Many accepted the movie as well, when they saw it was not about religion but it was about the people who are doing business in the name of religion.
In the movie main character Kanji Mehta, in the name we find the hint of religion but he is atheist, we see that he is rebellious toward wrong beliefs of religion. Then the earthquake comes and he loses his shop. Then the insurance company says that it is an act of god so he would not get any returns from the insurance company then he tries to take legal action against the god. And he points out the wrong system of religion.
In the movie we see Kanji Mehta is a really strong character. He struggles a lot and loses his property and family. Still he does not lose his hope and fights against society that can not see the truth. Now the whole world is against him because everyone has a faith in god and he says if god exists then come into the court and return the money that is lost because of his act.
Kanji also argues that he has given lots of money to temples, he shows different receipts of given money. Now if god is not there to give money then these religious people have to give my money back because they say that god exists and they have direct contact with god.
The movie satirises many religious beliefs of contemporary time. It also gives a space to think twice before following any path. It questions superstitions and the so-called religious system.
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