Question

IS THE FROG AND THE NIGHTINGALE A SIMPLE FABLE OR A SYMBOLIC POEM? Justify...

Answer 1

Vikram Seth's "The Frog & The Nightingale" is a satire, mocking about the superiority of the undeserving, shrewd money-minded people existing in our society today. The frog's characteristics - shrewdness, cowardice, money-mindedness, jealousy, vice - are often found in the people of the higher hierarchical order; while the innocence and simplicity (like the Nightingale in the poem) surfaces within the deserving people. Sadly, our society is such, that the deserving and talented individuals are turned into "little puppets", in the hands of the shrewd people. And, in reality, the latter end up winning the stakes.