Nissim Ezekiel's subject in the poem has been drawn from the spectrum of Indian life. Night of the Scorpion deals with Indian customs, superstitious, blind faith and dogmatism juxtaposed with rational thinking. Ezekiel here shuns any comment on what he faithfully records and describes. The reader is free to draw his own conclusions.
The universally admired and acclaimed Night of the Scorpion (from The Exact Name, 1965) describes an Indian situation through forceful imagery, its ironic contrasts and the warmth of human love and affection. It is a brilliant narrative poem without any break or division into stanzas, except for the last three lines which stand apart:
“My mother only said
Thank God the scorpion picked on me
and spared my children.”
The speaker might be the poet himself or an imagined persona who speaks in the first person. We are told that his mother was stung by a scorpion one rainy night. It had been raining continuously for ten hours and, during this time, a scorpion had sought shelter beneath a bag of rice in the dark room. It stung the speaker's mother when she came to the room to fetch some rice. Having emptied its diabolic tail of all poison, it crawled out, risking its life in the rain again rather than being hunted and killed by the peasants with “lanterns and candles” who had come there on hearing the shrieks of the mother.
The peasants and neighbours gathered in a flash like a swarm of flies while the mother was lying in the centre of the room, crying with pain. They “buzzed” incantations and mantras in the name of God. Simple, well - meaning people, they were confident of the efficacy of prayer that could paralyse or render ineffective the harm caused by the scorpion, the symbol of evil. Ignorant and superstitious, they believed that if the scorpion moved, its poison would also move in the mother's blood. But if it remained still, the poison would not flow and spread. When they failed to locate the scorpion, they “clicked their tongues” in disappointment and started praying in order to exorcise evil.
“May the sins of your previous birth
be burned away tonight, they said.
May your suffering decrease
the misfortunes of your next birth, they said.
May the sum of evil
balanced in this unreal world
against the sum of good
become diminished by your pain.
May the poison purify your flesh
of desire, and your spirit of ambitions,
they said …”
All this while, the mother was writhing in pain as “more candles, more lanterns, more neighbours, more insects, and the endless rain” poured in. The speaker thus juxtaposes the world of myth, magic and superstition with the world of science, rationalism and scepticism. The speaker's father tried “powder, mixture, herb and hybrid” to ease the pain of his wife. He even poured paraffin on the bitten toe to burn out the poison as the child watched the flames with interest amidst the chanting of incantations and prayers for the mother's recovery and well – being. She suffered intense agony for full twenty hours till the pain subsided automatically.
The poem evokes superstitious practices which we still haven't outgrown. It enacts an impressive ritual in which the mother's reaction, towards the end, to her own suffering cancels out earlier responses, both primitive and sophisticated. The inter-relationship between the domestic tragedy and the surrounding community is unobtrusively established. According to Paul Varghese, “The success of the poet lies in the careful variation of rhythm which helps him to achieve different effects.”
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