Critical Appreciation of ‘The Visitor’ – Nissim Ezekiel

Introduction

The Visitor is a typical Nissim Ezekiel poem which deals with an ordinary event but made special my literary genius of Ezekiel. This poem was first published in the year 1965 in the collection ‘The Exact Name’.

Central Idea

Poem revolves around a very ordinary thought of expecting a visitor at home as a superstitious hearsay says that when crow caws it foretells of someone coming to your home. Hence poet starts expecting someone special to be come but contrasting things happen.

Themes

1. Superstition – It is the main theme of the poem. The narrator of the poem (most probably poet) saw crow cawed at his window three times and according to popular belief or superstition he starts to expect someone special to come at home that day.
2. Expectations against reality – It is a common human behavior which always thinks about extreme ends. Poet on finding crow cawed thought of either someone of highest soul like an angel or something evil would come. He spent the whole day thinking about that person and at the end a common passersby comes to kill some time.

Figure of speech

1. Alliteration – In phrases ‘crow has cawed’, ‘miracles of mind’ there is repetition of consonant sound /k/ and /m/ at the starting of the words hence it’s alliteration.
2. Simile – Poet has compared the crow’s act of craning his neck and showing his obstinate presence in the room of the narrator (poet) with a ‘nagging woman’. A complaining woman is very obstinate and makes her presence feel around you similarly the crow cawed three times and disturbed the poet. So it is a good example of simile.
3. Enjambment – It is a very common device used in mostly blank verse or free verse poetry. In this a line of poem is continued in following line or lines as the sentence is incomplete yet. For instance – Sleep-walking on the air of thought/With muddy clothes and floated down.

Biblical reference

Poem has used a biblical reference when poet is engrossed in thoughts of the impending guest. He was thinking in extremes and expecting an evil person may come which would test his promises and ruin his sleep as eve was tempted by the Satan made them break their promises done to the God.

Ordinary events are ignored

It is a basic human nature that we are in most cases forget ordinary events or ignore them or give negligible importance to them. Poet has used a beautiful reference of ‘Ebb-flow of sex and seasons’. There can’t be a better instance in terms of ordinary things. We find seasons come and go and hardly give any special importance to them similarly sexual activity is common among human and it needs no special focus to make it worth memorable. So miracles are structured inside the mind but in real life things are mostly ordinary and we tend to forget this reality.

Style of Ezekiel

Nissim Ezekiel’s style of writing has been unique in terms of dealing with daily life events and making them special with his genius mind. He used a folk belief or superstition and elevated it to new heights with his figurative language. He presented crow as a supernatural messenger that cawed ‘three times’ giving emphasis on it. Instantly he defuses all the hype and compared it to a nagging woman.  Later on poets belief of the upcoming person equivalent to angel or Satan  and again killed all the excitement with the ultimate revelation of the person is just a passerby want to kill some time. This event didn’t have anything to do with crow or the superstitious belief as such people or events are common in daily life which we see or face and ignore them. We give importance to them only when some expectations are related to them here due to a folk belief.

Structure and Rhyme Scheme

The poem has five stanzas in which each stanza is having six lines. There is no specific rhyme scheme or meter in the poem.

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