The Prophet's Hair

"The Prophet's Hair," contains mystery, magic, and more significantly, morality, as an overt theme carried throughout the story.

The Prophet's Hair," is more like a moralistic fairy tale using religious elements: a silver vial containing a famous relic brings catastrophe upon the greedy.

'The Prophet's Hair', extends Rushdie's range into the magical realism he exploited so effectively in Midnight's Children. The form is that of a folk tale, the tone crisp, swift and pointed. But for those who read the story years ago in the London Review of Books, extra-textual considerations may loom largest. Which of us, as we revelled in what seemed like story-telling at its purest and most sovereign, could have guessed that the fundamentalist madness which destroys the lives of all the protagonists would one day be visited on the author himself?

The Prophet's Hair," a charming, folkloric story, is Rushdie at his best. In the opening paragraph, a "rich idiot" from Srinigar goes looking for a dependable professional burglar in the seediest part of town, and is promptly robbed. It turns out that a moneylender has found the eponymous relic and, despite the hue and cry raised by its loss, declines to hand it to the authorities, justifying himself with the thought: "the Prophet would have disapproved mightily of this relic-worship." The unforeseen consequences of the relic's presence lead to the search for a burglar to take it away.

Salman Rushdie guides the reader through a tale of greed, betrayal, and the testing of human relationships. In many ways, the story reads like a fable, with the exception of Rushdie's typical English vernacular and ancedotes. Most of us can remember Aesop's Fables tales of moral dilemmas. A fable or parable, to some, have moral guidlines and lessons to learn from. In Rushdie's short story, his character's are in constant moral dilemma's when faced with the relic of the Prophet's Hair. The hair, supposedly belonged to the prophet Mohammed, and its significance to the community was undoubtedly important.

The theft of a holy relic from the Hazratbal mosque at Srinagar, seems more fantastic but even this is apparently based on an actual occurence. In this story, a wealthy Indian moneylender finds the missing relic one of the Prophet Muhammad's hairs and forsakes liberal self-indulgence for pious self-denial. His fanaticism is such that it eventually brings about not only his own death, but that of his family, through madness, suicide and murder. For a writer in [Salman Rushdie]'s situation to attempt even this kind of veiled satire when the object of the satire is the state of Islam seems brave to the point of foolhardiness. Perhaps he feels he has nothing more to lose by remaining silent on such themes.

Rushdie depicts the brutality of certain Indian traditions with wonderful irony: With a parent's absolutist love, Sheikh Sin, had made sure they were all provided with a lifelong source of high income by crippling them at birth, so that, as they dragged themselves around the city, they earned excellent money in the begging business.

Answer: Rushdie also recasts the relic from holy relic to secular icon by removing it from its religious framework (it had been removed from the mosque, where it was worshiped as a religious relic, placed into the hands of a moneylender (a profession that Mohammed forbade), where it was viewed as a prized possession for its rarity and monetary value but not its religious significance, then it was stolen by the thief, Sin, who viewed it as a means to retire – again monetary value - and avoid an ignominious death). How does this recasting of the Prophet's hair from holy to profane affect Rushdie's view of Islam and
the Prophet?

Despite being reframed from holy relic to secular icon, the Prophet's hair continues to work miracles. Discuss

Dramatic monologue in poetry, also known as a persona poem, shares many characteristics with a theatrical monologue: an audience is implied; there is no dialogue; and the poet speaks through an assumed voice—a character, a fictional identity, or a persona. Because a dramatic monologue is by definition one person’s speech, it is offered without overt analysis or commentary, placing emphasis on subjective qualities that are left to the audience to interpret.

Prufrock

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, commonly known as Prufrock, is a poem by T. S. Eliot, begun in February 1910 and published in Chicago in June 1915. Described as a "drama of literary anguish," it presents a stream of consciousness in the form of a dramatic monologue, and marked the beginning of Eliot's career as an influential poet. With its weariness, regret, embarrassment, longing, emasculation, sexual frustration, sense of decay, and awareness of mortality, Prufrock has become one of the most recognized voices in 20th-century literature,[1] and is the quintessential urban zeitgeist of the 20th century.

Ray Douglas Bradbury, August 22 1920 -

Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois (1920). When he was 12 years old, a traveling carnival came to town, and Bradbury met a magician named Mr. Electrico, who talked to him about reincarnation and immortality, and those ideas excited Bradbury so much that he withdrew from his friends and devoted himself to his imagination. He said, "I don't know if I believe in previous lives, I'm not sure I can live forever. But that young boy believed in both, and I have let him have his [way]. He has written all my stories and books for me."
One night, Bradbury was out for a walk when a policeman pulled up on the side of the road to ask what he was doing. He said, "I was so irritated the police would bother to ask me what I was doing — when I wasn't doing anything — that I went home and wrote [a] story." That story became a novella called "The Fireman" and eventually grew into his first and best-known novel, Fahrenheit 451 (1953), about a man named Guy Montag who lives in a future world in which books are outlawed and burned wherever they're found. Montag is one of the firemen whose job it is to burn the books. One night he takes a book home that he was supposed to destroy and reads it. The act of reading persuades him to join an underground revolutionary group that is keeping literature alive.
Ray Bradbury said, "I don't try to describe the future. I try to prevent it."

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). Prufrock and Other Observations. 1917.

T.S. Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri (1888). His poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is one of the most anthologized poems in the English language. It begins:
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Eliot wrote most of the poem when he was only 22 years old. While it was a work in progress, he subtitled the poem "Prufrock among the women." The part "The Love Song of" came from a Rudyard Kipling poem, "The Love Song of Har Dyal." At the time, T.S. Eliot went by "T. Sterns Eliot." a formulation that he emulated in the title "J. Alfred Prufrock." When he was growing up in St. Louis, Missouri, there was a furniture store there named "Prufrock-Littau Company" — but decades after the poem was published, Eliot wrote to a friend: "I did not have, at the time of writing the poem, and have not yet recovered, any recollection of having acquired this name in any way, but I think that it must be assumed that I did, and that the memory has been obliterated."
The poem was published a few years after it was written, with the encouragement of Ezra Pound, who was serving as Poetry magazine's overseas editor. He wrote in 1915 to Harriet Monroe about T.S. Eliot: "He has actually trained himself AND modernized himself ON HIS OWN. The rest of the promising young have done one or the other, but never both." Aside from stuff that had appeared in school newspapers and magazines, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" was T.S. Eliot's first published poem. In 1917, it appeared in book form, the first of 12 Eliot poems in Prufrock and Other Observations.
Other famous poems by T.S. Eliot include "The Wasteland," which begins "April is the cruellest month" — and "The Hollow Men," which concludes:
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats 5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question … 10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; 25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go 35
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— 40
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare 45
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all— 55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? 60
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress 65
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! 75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 85
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while, 90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— 95
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while, 100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: 105
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . . 110
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use, 115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old … 120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me. 125

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963

A Time to Talk


When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

Jerome David Salinger, 1919 - 2010

Jerome David Salinger, the novelist J.D. Salinger, was born in New York City in 1919. He wanted to be a writer, and his dream was to publish his fiction in The New Yorker, which rejected his work over and over. In November of 1941, he finally got an acceptance letter from The New Yorker for a short story called "Slight Rebellion Off Madison," about a teenager named Holden Caulfield. It was set to come out in the Christmas issue, but then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and the story was put on hold. Salinger was drafted into the Army, deployed in the ground force invasion of Normandy, and he was part of the Battle of the Bulge and some of the worst fighting of WWII. When the war ended, Salinger checked into an Army general hospital in Nuremberg, suffering from shell shock. In 1946, The New Yorker finally published "Slight Rebellion Off Madison." Salinger took the character of Holden Caulfield, and he wrote an entire novel about him. And even though it got mixed reviews and Salinger refused to help with publicity at all, it was a best seller: The Catcher in the Rye (1951). And Salinger became a celebrity, which he hated, so he became a recluse.

“You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phoney stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart.”

"I hate phonies."

"She is the queen of the phonies."

"I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody."

"Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behaviour. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as some day, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry."


"It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to."


"What I like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while...What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though."


"I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all.... If they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy."


"I don’t know about bores. Maybe you shouldn’t feel too sorry if you see some swell girl getting married to them. They don’t hurt anybody most of them, and maybe they’re all terrific whistlers or something. Who the hell knows? Not me."

"I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect."

"Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody."

William Maxwell Hetherington, 1803 - 1865

Oh! ! beautiful is God’s green earth I

When in the gentle Spring
Its flowery beauties leap to birth,

And wild-wood echoes ring.
Instructive with melodious joy,
Glad Nature’s anthem pure and high,
To Him whose goodness gave them birth
Oh ! beautiful ia God’s green earth!