Alexander T. K. Elnabli
“The Gita” from Amar Chitra Katha
In order to support students in accessing multimedia text sources and also to make vivid a spiritual text that is visually rich in Hindu culture but may be unfamiliar to many students, I have selected the comic book retelling of the Mahabharata’s “Bhagavad Gita” for this text set. This text is an ideal choice for several reasons. First, it is of spiritual importance to a significant percentage of the world’s population and continues to be referenced and retold into the present. Second, its translation from Sanskrit into Romance languages and eventually English in the 18th and 19th centuries have made it an influential philosophical and artistic inspiration to thinkers and writers in the English language, showing up in a variety of allusions from Thoreau’s reference to it in Walden to the Wachowskis’ references in The Matrix film series. Finally, it provides insight and answer to the essential humanistic question “What does it mean to be human?”
This version of the Gita story simplifies and dramatizes the philosophical dialogue between Arjuna and Lord Krishna on the Kurukshetra battlefield about whether Arjuna is justified in fighting his own family and friends. It is nicely self-contained, in that it opens with the background context for the war that results in the famous battlefield scene that actually constitutes the original Gita. The context for the story is a war between two groups of cousins, the Pandavas and the Kauravas, over who has the right to rule the kingdom. Arjuna and Krishna are both Pandavas. Krishna is a friend, cousin, philosopher, god, and guide to Arjuna. Arjuna’s distress at how it can be morally right to kill his cousins is met in dialogue by Krishna’s injunction to adhere to his duty, or dharma. In this graphic novel version, Krishna’s advice to spiritual realization through devotion, bhakti, knowledge, jnana, and disciplined action, karma is illustrated rather than merely described in dialogue. In order to support students in accessing the comic book medium, teachers will provide a scaffolded guide on how to read comics.
While the contents of even the graphic retelling of the Gita is worthy of a unit of study on its own, students should focus on the following key ideas because of their relation to the ideas and themes explored in the earlier two text sets as well as their distinct response to the essential question. First, that the condition of suffering and death is a mere bodily condition to be distinguished from the human soul, something that is more essential to the human. Second, that if bodily changes are superficial and what matters is enlightenment of the soul, then our actions that affect the body are insignificant. Third, that actions which lead the soul to enlightenment are the only justified actions, and these include fulfilling one’s duty, spiritual devotion, seeking knowledge, and disciplined action.
In order to support students in making the connection between this and the other texts they have studied, teachers should note that “what it means to be human” here is not the condition of suffering highlighted in Text Set 1 but one of release from suffering through performing certain types of soul-oriented action. It is outside the scope of this unit to guide students in noting parallels between this view and some interpretations of Christian theology as depicted in various textual sources. It is important that students not narrowly conclude these texts are somehow making altogether opposite claims. Instead, students should be supported in discussions that articulate similarities and differences without taking these to be final. This is the condition of reading excerpts, and students should understand that.
“The Dry Salvages” by T. S. Eliot
In order to provide students with a manageable text for this unit with an explicit allusion, I excerpt only the third poem in Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” also known as “The Dry Salvages.” I reserve this poem for the final text set, as it is the longest and most challenging, and students will benefit from the earlier practices before arriving at this one. As this is an especially challenging poem, teachers should have students read the entire poem twice but only focus their close reading, Three-Reads strategy on stanza 3, which specifically includes the allusion to Gita.
Dry salvages refer to a group of rocks with a beacon off the coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts. In this poem, Eliot explores the nature of time and human existence, looking for meaning in life while dramatizing the struggle between the physical and spiritual worlds. The connection between these questions and themes and the Gita is made explicit when Eliot asks in stanza III, “I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant.” In the stanza, Eliot presents a series of wistful and poetic images describe the passing of time as both causing regret for a lost past and the impending future into which life fades. In this way, the poem directly connects to themes from Text Set 1, as does the Gita, but alludes to the Gita in a way that answers that question about what it means to be human in distinct, modern terms. Eliot enjoins the reader to “fare forward” into the future, embrace and celebrating action in life without bemoaning the lost past or the need to accomplish a specific “fruit of action” in the future.
While initially enigmatic to students, this poem’s meaning becomes much clearer with the background knowledge of the story of Krishna and Arjuna, the lessons Krishna teaches, and an understanding of the meaning of the word “action” that Eliot employs in allusion to the Gita. As in the text sets above, students should read the poem first, attempt an interpretation, then study the alluded to text before finally returning to a re-read discussion, and final write on the connection between the poem and its source text.
In teaching this poem within the context of this unit, teachers should be careful not to get distracted analyzing excessive literary devices in Eliot’s poem. The key focus should be to unlock meaning that is gained through knowledge of the allusion’s source and for students to articulate that meaning in discussion and formal writing.
