The Rats And The Frog Analysis

Moreover, within a span of few pages we find the mention of a large array of animals and birds and Sita is noted to share a strange bond with them. She is carefree, and hardly shudders at the thought of taming the snakes. Her spontaneous handling of the serpentine creature is noted in the lines, “She had no quarrel with the snakes. They kept down the rats and the frogs.” The narrator’s hint at the importance of the ecological food chain in the lines cannot be overlooked. We find the narrator referring to a large group of animals portraying the exotic reserve of the highlands. We note the mention of not only snakes but also that of black scorpions, rats, frogs, hyaena, elephants, somber stag, python and simultaneously that of the domestic goats
The symbiotic processes that continue among the various aspects of nature, help retain the ecological balance. The human dependence on nature is noted throughout the story. The fisherman’s family is noted primarily to survive on fishing. Sita’s grandfather thus thinks about the marketability of the fishes caught. For assuaging the hunger, Sita depends on the simple yet nutritious natural resources such as goat’s milk and a handful of dried peas. The human connection with the good earth and the roots is also noted in Sita’s licking up the lip smacking raw mango juice when the boy in the boat offers her orchard fresh mangoes that were intended to be sold in the market if not the flood had distorted the boy’s plans. Thus nature and humans in Bond’s short stories are often noted to make a single united whole complementing each
The protagonist of the story Miss Mackenzie, an elderly yet not a grumbling spinster, rather a polite and a spirited one is shown to share an intrinsic bond with nature. She lives amidst the serene hills in the Himalayan Mulberry Cottage. A cat shares the snug refuge with her and the wide range of the Himalayan flora, the dahlias, chrysanthemums, gladioli, the highland orchids, the wild begonia, the purple salvia, the blue gentian, the purple columbine, the anemone and the edelweiss are close to her heart. She grows few of them in her small garden plot and during the chilly winter she waits eagerly for the mountain autumns and springs when the colourful primroses would set a riot of hues, bringing the little boy of the local English medium school, Anil back to her. Miss Mackenzie, although encountered the boy first when he had trespassed into her garden in search for the wild flowers, the confident, frolicsome and appealing composure of the boy could not let her retain her rigidity for long. They knew not when their common love for the wild flowers brought them closer and the elderly lady and the teenage boy started sharing a bond of unstinted happiness over the book ‘ Flora Himaliensis’ and the prospect of the wild flowers, living the momentary joys of life to the hilt. The glum winter reminds her of the youthful