Chapter Night of the Scorpion
Answers
"Night of the Scorpion" is a poem written in 1965. The poem's speaker uses first person to relate a memory of his mother being bitten on the toe by a scorpion on a rainy night in India.
In the third stanza, the peasants of the village arrive, and with them come their various fears, beliefs, and superstitions. They search unsuccessfully for the scorpion, believing that it can continue to hurt the speaker's mother with every movement it makes. The peasants believe in reincarnation, and expecting that the woman will die, they pray over her. They pray that her sins, ambitions, and desires in her current life will be burned away and that her suffering will make her transition into her next life an easy birth.
The speaker's father, described as a "sceptic, rationalist," is so desperate to ease his wife's pain and save her life that he accepts every home remedy and prayer that the peasants offer. The speaker watches a priest administering rites to his mother.
Twenty hours later, the speaker's mother has come through the sting and is on the mend. Though her suffering has been great, her only comment at the end of the ordeal is that she is glad that it was she, and not any of her children, who was stung by the scorpion.