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The Day of the Scorpion Paul Scott 9780226743417 Books

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The Day of the Scorpion Paul Scott 9780226743417 Books

Nothing becomes this second volume of Paul Scott's RAJ QUARTET so much as its opening and closing. As he had done several times in THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN, Scott leaps ahead in his prologue to post-Partition India. His image of a woman in a burqa in a Hindu town, trailing a distinct scent of Chanel No. 5, symbolizes the disorder that the British left behind them after Independence in 1947, and the demise of their own imperial dreams. The violence of that demise is suggested by the title image, a scorpion apparently stinging itself to death in a ring of fire, which returns in Scott's epilogue with startlingly literal application. Indeed the last fifty pages or so of the novel are equally superb, as Scott takes his many diverse themes -- the approaching end of the Raj, the personal lives of several English characters caught in the middle of it, the war against the Japanese and its realignment of old loyalties, the emerging models for a new India, and of course the lingering repercussions of the events in Mayapore that were the subject of the first book -- as he takes all these and ties them together through subtle reference and hinted outcomes, making this diverse, even sprawling volume at last emerge as an intricate indivisible structure.

One of the characteristics of THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN was Scott's predilection for telling a story obliquely, though the narrative of characters only peripherally connected to it. For a time, it seems as if he is about to do the same here. The novel proper opens with the arrest of the politician Mohammed Ali Kasim, a prominent member of Ghandi's Congress Party that urged passive resistance to British rule even in wartime. His interview with the regional Governor and the letters and journals he keeps in prison form a superb summary of the political situation, setting idealism against pragmatism with admirable skill. A little later, the focus turns once more to Lady Manners, the widow of a previous governor; she is also a link to the first volume, which centered on the apparent rape of her niece Daphne in the Bibighar Gardens in Mayapore in 1942. Daphne died in childbirth, but Lady Manners has defied decorum by taking on her half-caste daughter Parvati. Her neighbors in Kashmir keep their distance, all except for Sarah Layton, the elder daughter of an entrenched military family. Unlike her pretty sister Susan, who plays her role in the center of a throng of admiring young officers, and whose marriage is the central event of the novel, Sarah keeps to herself, quietly conventional on the outside, but inwardly questioning the whole Imperial ethos.

From here on, Scott alternates two different ways of telling his story. He still likes his set pieces raking over past events in detail, but now he tends to put these into extended interview format, in which one character is induced to tell his side of a story to others. Taken literally, these are somewhat implausible; there is a long conversation between two wedding guests on a verandah and a scene involving a badly injured man in a hospital bed, neither of which could have lasted that long in real life, though the content of each is fascinating. In between these, however, Scott for the first time tells his story straight, as an omniscient narrator describing events as they happen. I was struck in the first volume by how different the book felt to the wonderful Granada TV series that was made from it. But in this one, I was on home ground, as the story progressed from episode to episode in familiar fashion. Yet familiar only in following the same linear storytelling as the series; it would be doing Scott an injustice to think of this as normal. One example: the interrogation by the Mayapore Superintendent of Police, Ronald Merrick, of the man accused in the rape case, an English-educated Indian named Hari Kumar. The television series placed it chronologically, in I think the second episode, and had to make certain decisions in staging it, thus ending any mystery. But Scott dances around the event in his first volume, only providing details in the middle of this one, and I suspect there will be other revelations still to come. So perhaps knowing the television version is actually a disadvantage?

But not, I think, in terms of the characters. I am amazed by how perfectly the television actors captured the essence of each, without any discord between read words and remembered image. Yet reading Scott, I was also struck by how much his text adds. Especially in the case of the two characters who I think of as the protagonists of this volume: Sarah Layton and Ronald Merrick. They are as different as can be, occupying different ends of the middle class, the privately educated English rose and the grammar school boy who has pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. Yet they are linked by daring to question the established values. Sarah goes through the social motions, but does not feel she belongs. Merrick criticizes the Indian army types as amateurs compared to his own professionalism -- a comparison that will mean more to people who know the gentlemen-versus-players division in English cricket, but he is absolutely right. Their common skepticism makes for two scenes of extraordinary sympathy between them, even though Sarah later says that Ronald appalls her. Tim Piggott-Smith gave a wonderful performance of Merrick on television, but Scott is able to show him utterly more sympathetic at one moment, then in the next section make him seem more perverted and despicable (though always understandable) than he ever was on screen. And while Geraldine James was perfect as the well-spoken but gawky Sarah Layton, her portrayal seems almost static compared to the tissue of contradictions and self-questioning that make the character so fascinating in the novel. All leading to the seduction scene at the end that, fine though it was on screen, is nothing like the brilliant tour-de-force of Scott's writing, ushering in those final sections that, as I said, are the glory of the whole book.


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The Day of the Scorpion Paul Scott 9780226743417 Books Reviews

I like the entire series. I recently watched "The Jewel In the Crown on WPSU.. There were 4 episodes and I liked it so well that I purchased the RAJ Quartet, all 4 volumes.. I am not disappointed. The book are well written about a very important era in India's history and the domination of the English. The adjectives you use do not describe the books because they follow history.
Not the equal of volume 1 The Jewel in the Crown, but still totally worth it. If you enjoyed Jewell, you'll want to read it. "Scorpion" introduces new main characters, but retains a few from "Jewell", most notably Merrick and Kumar. We're introduced to the Layton family of Pankot as they navigate India's looming independence. Will take a rest, and then continue on to volume 3. Enjoy.
The Raj saga continues its evocative manner of telling the story of love, politics, subterfuge, heroics and death in the time of British rule of India. The telling is so rich and beautiful in its detail that it seduces one into turning the page, long after one should be asleep in bed.

This four-book series was the inspiration on the PBS "Jewel of the Crown," which is one of my favorite PBS series. However, the PBS series doesn't hold a candle to the experience one gets from reading the books.

I will be lost when I've finished the last book.
The second book in the quartet and am finding the novels to be quite compelling reading. Many of the characters from Jewel in the Crown again make an appearance. Particularly enjoyed reading Hari Humar's side of the story regarding his relationship with Daphne Manners and the aftermath. This novel is evocative of time and place and has a bit of everything politics, culture, romance and prejudice. Lengthy novel which I enjoyed a touch more than The Jewel in the Crown.
The four volumes of the Raj Quartet overlap and complement one another, while at the same time forwarding the main storyline of the slow twilight of the British ascendancy in India, always with the rape of a white girl by Indian men as the central lodestone everpresent in the background, the nightmare which is seldom mentioned but which none can drive from their minds. Events occur, are discussed, witnessed as newspaper reports, court documents, interviews, vague recollections from years later, or perceived directly by the main characters. Then the next volume will take two or three steps back into previous events, and these same events will be perceived from another angle, perhaps only as a vague report heard far away across the Indian plain, or witnessed directly by another character, or discussed in detail long after their occurrence over drinks on a verandah. This may at times seem like rehashing, indeed as one reads the four volumes one will be subjected to the account of the rape in the Bibighar Gardens many times over; but what will also become apparent is that additional details, sometimes minor variations in interpretation and sometimes crucial facts, are being added slowly to the events discussed, as though the window to the past were being progressively wiped cleaner and cleaner with successive strokes of Scott's pen. In this way he draws the picture of the last days of the Raj not in a conventional linear fashion, but recursively, and from multiple angles. One gets the clear impression of life in India during the first half of the 20th century as similar in nature Fragmented, multifaceted, largely dependent upon perspective and experience and never perceived whole or all at once.
Book 2 introduces what is going to be the main storyline of the tetralogy, although the rape in the Bibighar Gardens will remain in the back of everyone's mind, and sometimes at the front, throughout. First of all there is Mohammed Ali Kasim, a respected Indian Congressman arrested by the British as a matter of course when Congress finalizes its "Quit India" resolution; and his son Ahmed, the dissolute intellectual who spends his time in one of the remaining Princely States of India. Second, the Layton family is introduced, a typical example of the British military in India. Sarah Layton, the elder of the two daughters, is exquisitely rendered and will become one of the series' most familiar and constant characters. Ronald Merrick, the police officer who victimized Hari Kumar during the Bibighar Gardens affair, slouches back into the story as the best man at Susan Layton's wedding, only to be made into an unlikely hero and martyr at the end of the novel.
Nothing becomes this second volume of Paul Scott's RAJ QUARTET so much as its opening and closing. As he had done several times in THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN, Scott leaps ahead in his prologue to post-Partition India. His image of a woman in a burqa in a Hindu town, trailing a distinct scent of Chanel No. 5, symbolizes the disorder that the British left behind them after Independence in 1947, and the demise of their own imperial dreams. The violence of that demise is suggested by the title image, a scorpion apparently stinging itself to death in a ring of fire, which returns in Scott's epilogue with startlingly literal application. Indeed the last fifty pages or so of the novel are equally superb, as Scott takes his many diverse themes -- the approaching end of the Raj, the personal lives of several English characters caught in the middle of it, the war against the Japanese and its realignment of old loyalties, the emerging models for a new India, and of course the lingering repercussions of the events in Mayapore that were the subject of the first book -- as he takes all these and ties them together through subtle reference and hinted outcomes, making this diverse, even sprawling volume at last emerge as an intricate indivisible structure.

One of the characteristics of THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN was Scott's predilection for telling a story obliquely, though the narrative of characters only peripherally connected to it. For a time, it seems as if he is about to do the same here. The novel proper opens with the arrest of the politician Mohammed Ali Kasim, a prominent member of Ghandi's Congress Party that urged passive resistance to British rule even in wartime. His interview with the regional Governor and the letters and journals he keeps in prison form a superb summary of the political situation, setting idealism against pragmatism with admirable skill. A little later, the focus turns once more to Lady Manners, the widow of a previous governor; she is also a link to the first volume, which centered on the apparent rape of her niece Daphne in the Bibighar Gardens in Mayapore in 1942. Daphne died in childbirth, but Lady Manners has defied decorum by taking on her half-caste daughter Parvati. Her neighbors in Kashmir keep their distance, all except for Sarah Layton, the elder daughter of an entrenched military family. Unlike her pretty sister Susan, who plays her role in the center of a throng of admiring young officers, and whose marriage is the central event of the novel, Sarah keeps to herself, quietly conventional on the outside, but inwardly questioning the whole Imperial ethos.

From here on, Scott alternates two different ways of telling his story. He still likes his set pieces raking over past events in detail, but now he tends to put these into extended interview format, in which one character is induced to tell his side of a story to others. Taken literally, these are somewhat implausible; there is a long conversation between two wedding guests on a verandah and a scene involving a badly injured man in a hospital bed, neither of which could have lasted that long in real life, though the content of each is fascinating. In between these, however, Scott for the first time tells his story straight, as an omniscient narrator describing events as they happen. I was struck in the first volume by how different the book felt to the wonderful Granada TV series that was made from it. But in this one, I was on home ground, as the story progressed from episode to episode in familiar fashion. Yet familiar only in following the same linear storytelling as the series; it would be doing Scott an injustice to think of this as normal. One example the interrogation by the Mayapore Superintendent of Police, Ronald Merrick, of the man accused in the rape case, an English-educated Indian named Hari Kumar. The television series placed it chronologically, in I think the second episode, and had to make certain decisions in staging it, thus ending any mystery. But Scott dances around the event in his first volume, only providing details in the middle of this one, and I suspect there will be other revelations still to come. So perhaps knowing the television version is actually a disadvantage?

But not, I think, in terms of the characters. I am amazed by how perfectly the television actors captured the essence of each, without any discord between read words and remembered image. Yet reading Scott, I was also struck by how much his text adds. Especially in the case of the two characters who I think of as the protagonists of this volume Sarah Layton and Ronald Merrick. They are as different as can be, occupying different ends of the middle class, the privately educated English rose and the grammar school boy who has pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. Yet they are linked by daring to question the established values. Sarah goes through the social motions, but does not feel she belongs. Merrick criticizes the Indian army types as amateurs compared to his own professionalism -- a comparison that will mean more to people who know the gentlemen-versus-players division in English cricket, but he is absolutely right. Their common skepticism makes for two scenes of extraordinary sympathy between them, even though Sarah later says that Ronald appalls her. Tim Piggott-Smith gave a wonderful performance of Merrick on television, but Scott is able to show him utterly more sympathetic at one moment, then in the next section make him seem more perverted and despicable (though always understandable) than he ever was on screen. And while Geraldine James was perfect as the well-spoken but gawky Sarah Layton, her portrayal seems almost static compared to the tissue of contradictions and self-questioning that make the character so fascinating in the novel. All leading to the seduction scene at the end that, fine though it was on screen, is nothing like the brilliant tour-de-force of Scott's writing, ushering in those final sections that, as I said, are the glory of the whole book.