Allegory In The Play Of Tagore's 'The Post Office'

Introduction:
Drama is a kind of literature which mainly expresses its meanings through acting. The appeal in a symbolic drama is chiefly dialogue dependent which delivers the ultimate effect. Hence, it is bound within the confines of sensory perception. But, at the same time there are some incidents or occasions which cannot be comprehended solely through sense experiences; they demand some supra-sensory feelings and understandings. Tagore’s The Post Office’ is such a kind of play that breaks through the confines of normal intelligibility and takes us to a realm that exists beyond the limits of sensory perceptions. The term allegory has been derived from Greek ‘allegoria’ meaning ‘speaking otherwise’. According to J.A.Cuddon, “an allegory …show more content…
They mostly carry on an undertone of allegory but their main concern is to look for the infinite in the finite and the eternal in what is temporal. ‘The Post Office’ is not an exception in this regard. Being a symbolic play it has less incidents; the progress is kept up through the coming and going of characters – the Dairyman, the Watchman, the flower-girl Sudha and the group of boys. Their movability is contrasted with the sick, feeble Amal sitting in a closed room by the side of an open window. In the second Act he is not even able to sit in a place – he is shown lying in a bed, waiting for the arrival of the letter from the post office, waiting for the final hour to come. Now the representatives from the outer world have come and encircled his bed. His imaginative romantic mind casts its contagious spell upon the gaffer who says, “My eyes are not young; but you make me see all the same.” 10 What the gaffer could see remains a mystery – whether it was the world of wonder the boy was so eager to interact with or the world of the dark, the gloom and the mysterious associated with death. While all others are apprehensive of the approaching doom, it is Amal who remains completely unaware of this. He is not shown to bear the intolerable pain and suffering generally associated with death. Death has been shown in a new light that goes in accordance with Tagore’s philosophy of life. As Amal captures fresh bouts of sickness the doctor detects ‘a peculiar quality in the air’ and instructs Madhav to shut that one piece of window which facilitated Amal’s imaginative excursions into the outer world in the first Act. This ‘closing’ of the window blocking the sunrays to come inside allegorically signifies the blocking of the mind against the light of knowledge that facilitates all sorts of reformation. Tagore was a person who was instrumental in bringing about reformation in various sectors of the society. He was against any type of