Silence! The Court is in Session Literary Elements

Drama

English (translated from Marathi)

1960s India

Third-person limited

Tone: Speculative, hostile, mocking, incredulous, tense

Mood: confining, hostile, tense, merciless

Protagonist: Benare. Antagonist: everyone else.

Is the mock trial of Benare exposing the truth regarding her "unconventional" behavior?

Benare is "convicted" of immoral behavior; she will be allowed to live, but her child will be aborted.

In the very first scene, Benare struggles with the door and gets her finger stuck in the bolt; this foreshadows her later inability to escape the hall.

N/A.

1. "Oh, I've got a sweetheart / Who carries all my books" is a lullaby in English (21)
2. President Johnson is Lyndon Johnson, the American president from 1963-1968
3. Tukarum was a 17th-century Indian poet and sage (24)
4. Dhondo Keshav Karve was a 20th-century Indian reformer for women's welfare (66)
5. Inonesco refers to Eugene Ionesco, a 20th-century French-Romanian avant-garde playwright who was part of the Theatre of the Absurd (78)

The most powerful imagery is that of a courtroom and all its trappings, but this is deeply ironic because the play does not represent a real trial. Nevertheless, the "accused" is still at the mercy of the power of the legal system, showing that society's values and norms are enforced both in and out of this framework of the official system of censure and conviction.

The main paradox centers on the layers of fiction and reality that shift and converge: the trial is a fake one, but it begins to reveal actual truths.

Initially, the mock trial parallels Benare's actual life, yet as the trial proceeds, the two intersect and become one and the same.

1. "...the wound that's born to bleed / Bleeds on for ever, faithfully" (26)
2. "Why should my face fall? It stayed right where it should be!" (54)
3. "You're telling shame-faced lies!" (61)
4. "It's a lie—a barefaced lie!" (79)

1. There are numerous stage directions for setting, the actors, the lighting, etc.
2. Benare gives a monologue near the end defending herself. During this, Tendulkar has the other actors freeze, the lights change, and extraneous music and noise occasionally play. This gives the sense that we are watching something that is in Benare's head and not actually real.
3. Metonymy/Synechdoche: "To the public eye, she is unmarried" (47)
4. There is a play-within-a-play structure.