How does the poet reveal the tensions between the Urban Living and Natural World in Night of the Scorpion?
“Night of the scorpion” revolves around the clash between two opposites. This poem brings forth a divide between the emerging urban rationalism and rural traditionalism. The movement toward modernity was one of the popular motifs in the post-independence era. Ezekiel also puts forth the contrast between western and oriental beliefs. These dialectical ideas are illustrated through the actions of the villagers (also, the holy man) and that of the rational father. Both parties tried to cure the mother through their own sets of beliefs and methods, but in the end, it was only with time that the sting healed. So, in any sort of binaries ever created by humans, nature and time remain the superior forces. Interestingly, the qualities of mother nature are fused into the character of the mother, who only desired her children’s welfare.
This poem communicates a tension between urban living and the natural world that Ezekiel returns to again and again in this work. The speaker's community, which lives close together and keeps itself informed about its residents, rose up in this work to surround the mother as she burned. The antagonist of the poem is the scorpion, who is forgiven by the speaker very early on since he was indoors simply for survival:
"Ten hours / of steady rain had driven him
to crawl beneath a sack of rice"
In this way, the true force of chaos and evil is the rain, which drove the scorpion indoors and beats down upon the speaker and his family throughout their ordeal:
"More candles, more lanterns, more neighbors,
more insects, and the endless rain"
Like "Monsoon Madness," the natural world is a force of its own in "Night of the Scorpion" and is directly responsible for all of the characters' troubles.
