The Professor by Nissim Ezekiel – Summary & Analysis

In Short

• The poem is a dramatic monologue in which a retired geography professor encounters a former student and attempts to engage him in conversation
• The professor introduces himself as Professor Sheth, identifying the student as one he taught geography to years ago
• The professor explains his current life situation: he is retired but maintains good health, and his wife passed away some years ago
• He proudly details his children's accomplishments: one son is a Sales Manager, another is a Bank Manager, and both own cars
• He acknowledges his third child is "doing well, though not so well," describing him as the "black sheep" of the family
• His two daughters, Sarala and Tarala, are married to "very nice boys," representing his pride in their marriages
• He boasts about having eleven grandchildren, then interrogates his former student about having only three children
• The professor discusses family planning, asserting that he is not opposed to modern family practices and understands the need to "change with times"
• He delivers a commentary on global and Indian progress, noting that "our progress is progressing" and values are being replaced by new ones
• He emphasizes his good health at an advanced age, listing the ailments he does not have: diabetes, blood pressure, and heart attack
• He attributes his health to "sound habits in youth," then inquires about the student's health with feigned concern
• He reveals he is sixty-nine years old and hopes to "score a century" (live to 100), using cricket terminology
• He makes a physical observation about the student, noting he was "thin, like stick" but is now "man of weight and consequence"
• He invites the student to visit his residence if he's ever in the area, providing directions to his house
• The poem satirizes Indian middle-class values, pretension, social climbing, and the use of English with grammatical awkwardness
• The monologue reveals the professor's desperate attempt to maintain relevance and connection despite being retired and aging

The Professor – Line by Line Analysis

Opening Lines (1-4): The Introduction

Remember me? I am Professor Sheth.
Once I taught you geography. Now
I am retired, though my health is good.
My wife died some years back.

The poem opens abruptly with a question: "Remember me?" The opening immediately establishes the dramatic monologue form—the professor addresses someone silently, assuming recognition. The question reveals his anxiety about being forgotten, a concern that will dominate the entire poem.

"I am Professor Sheth" provides self-identification. The name "Sheth" is commonly associated with business communities in India, suggesting a specific cultural and social context. The capitalization of "Professor" emphasizes his former professional status and identity.

"Once I taught you geography" establishes the nature of their past relationship. Geography was the professor's subject, and the student was once his pupil. The word "once" creates temporal distance, suggesting many years have passed since their interaction.

"Now / I am retired, though my health is good" presents the professor's current situation. The line break creates emphasis on "Now," marking a transition from past to present. "Retired" indicates his professional life has ended, yet he immediately reassures the student (and himself) that his health remains good, suggesting anxiety about aging and irrelevance.

"My wife died some years back" introduces loss and sadness. The statement is matter-of-fact, without elaboration. "Some years back" is characteristically awkward English, using "back" colloquially rather than standardly. This grammatical peculiarity becomes important to understanding Ezekiel's satirical portrait: the professor's English is imperfect, adding to his characterization as a pretentious but flawed speaker.

The Children's Accomplishments (5-9): Pride in Success

By God's grace, all my children
Are well settled in life.
One is Sales Manager,
One is Bank Manager,
Both have cars.

"By God's grace, all my children" begins with religious invocation, common in Indian speech. "God's grace" credits divine favor for his children's success, a pious formulation revealing the professor's cultural background.

"Are well settled in life" uses the phrase "settled in life," which means established in respectable positions with financial security. This phrase emphasizes the professor's values: material success and social respectability are the markers of a good life.

"One is Sales Manager, / One is Bank Manager" catalogs his sons' professional positions. Both positions represent upper-middle-class respectability in Indian society. Sales Manager and Bank Manager are prestigious corporate roles, indicating the sons have achieved the professor's aspirations for upward mobility.

"Both have cars" adds material proof of success. Cars are expensive in India and symbolize wealth and status. The professor lists this detail with pride, suggesting cars are the visible sign of having "made it" in Indian middle-class society. This materialistic emphasis becomes part of Ezekiel's satirical critique.

The Black Sheep (10-11): Protecting the Imperfect Child

Other also doing well, though not so well.
Every family must have black sheep.

"Other also doing well, though not so well" refers to a third child. The construction "other also doing well, though not so well" is grammatically awkward, further establishing the professor's imperfect English. The repeated "doing well" suggests he's trying to present the child positively while acknowledging failure.

"Every family must have black sheep" is a proverbial statement meaning every family has at least one member who doesn't meet expectations or behaves badly. The phrase provides excuse for the third child's inadequacy. By invoking the proverb, the professor normalizes failure while implying the child is morally questionable.

The juxtaposition of these two lines—stating the child is "not doing so well" then immediately excusing it—reveals the professor's defensive psychology. He wants to present his family as successful while protecting himself from judgment about his imperfect children.

The Daughters (12-13): Marriage as Success

Sarala and Tarala are married,
Their husbands are very nice boys.

"Sarala and Tarala are married" presents the daughters' identities through their marital status. The parallel names (both beginning with "T" sounds) suggest Hindu Indian naming conventions. The daughters are identified primarily through marriage, reflecting patriarchal values: their worth is measured by whom they married rather than their own accomplishments.

"Their husbands are very nice boys" uses the diminutive "boys" to describe adult men, suggesting affection and approval but also a somewhat patronizing tone. "Very nice" is vague and conventional praise, indicating the professor judges the sons-in-law primarily on their propriety and respectability rather than specific qualities.

This line reveals gender expectations: the daughters' success is measured by marriage success, while the sons' success is measured by professional achievement and material accumulation.

The Grandchildren and Family Planning (14-17): Modernity and Control

You won't believe but I have eleven grandchildren.
How many issues you have? Three?
That is good. These are days of family planning.
I am not against. We have to change with times.

"You won't believe but I have eleven grandchildren" boasts about the number of descendants. "You won't believe" suggests the number is impressively large, creating an exaggerated sense of prolific fertility and familial success. The professor is proud of his fertility and that of his children.

"How many issues you have? Three?" "Issues" is an archaic or formal term for children. This is the first time the student speaks (indirectly, through the professor's reporting), and the professor immediately interrogates him. The word "Three?" with a question mark suggests mock surprise or subtle judgment. Having only three children implies the student hasn't been as successful in producing offspring.

"That is good. These are days of family planning." The professor quickly validates the student's small family, moving to discuss family planning. Family planning—population control—was a significant Indian government initiative from the 1960s onward, reflecting modernization and state control of reproduction.

"I am not against. We have to change with times." The professor claims he embraces modernity and family planning, asserting his adaptability to contemporary values. Yet he juxtaposes this claim with his pride in having eleven grandchildren, revealing inconsistency. His words celebrate family planning while his life represents pre-planning fertility.

Global and Indian Progress (18-21): Modernization Narrative

Whole world is changing. In India also
We are keeping up. Our progress is progressing.
Old values are going, new values are coming.
Everything is happening with leaps and bounds.

"Whole world is changing. In India also / We are keeping up" asserts that India is not being left behind by global change. "Keeping up" suggests India is following, not leading, global transformation. The professor positions India as catching up to the developed world.

"Our progress is progressing" is a tautological statement—progress progressing is a redundancy suggesting the speaker's imprecision or enthusiasm overriding careful language. This redundancy is humorous and contributes to Ezekiel's satirical portrait.

"Old values are going, new values are coming" presents a stark binary: traditional Indian values are being replaced by modern (Western) values. The passive voice suggests these changes are inevitable, not actively chosen. The professor seems ambivalent about this replacement, acknowledging loss ("Old values are going") while accepting inevitability.

"Everything is happening with leaps and bounds" uses an idiom suggesting rapid, dramatic change. The phrase emphasizes the speed and scale of transformation, suggesting the professor is somewhat overwhelmed by change while attempting to position himself as understanding and accepting it.

Health and Old Age (22-25): Physical and Social Anxiety

I am going out rarely, now and then
Only, this is price of old age
But my health is O.K. Usual aches and pains.
No diabetes, no blood pressure, no heart attack.

"I am going out rarely, now and then / Only, this is price of old age" explains the professor's social withdrawal as a consequence of aging. "Price of old age" suggests aging exacts a cost—reduced mobility and social engagement. The awkward word order ("now and then / Only") reveals the professor's non-native English usage.

"But my health is O.K." uses the informal abbreviation "O.K." (okay) to assert adequate health. "But" suggests he's defending against implications that old age means poor health. His repeated assertions of good health reveal anxiety about aging and mortality.

"Usual aches and pains" acknowledges minor ailments while normalizing them as expected in age. "Usual" suggests he accepts these as inevitable, minimizing them by calling them common.

"No diabetes, no blood pressure, no heart attack" catalogs the serious diseases he doesn't have. This list—presented as a positive assertion—ironically emphasizes the diseases the professor is anxious about. The specificity of these three conditions (common among aging Indian men) suggests cultural and personal concerns about mortality and bodily failure.

The Secret of Health (26-28): Youth as Protection

This is because of sound habits in youth.
How is your health keeping?
Nicely? I am happy for that.

"This is because of sound habits in youth" attributes his good health to youthful virtue. "Sound habits" suggests physical discipline, proper eating, exercise, and moral rectitude. The professor claims his current health is a reward for past virtue, creating a satisfying narrative where good behavior produces good outcomes.

"How is your health keeping?" The professor asks about the student's health. "Keeping" is slightly non-standard English (should be "How is your health?" or "How are you keeping?"), again revealing imperfect English. The question shows the professor's interest in and comparison with the student's physical state.

"Nicely? I am happy for that." The professor anticipates a positive response ("Nicely?") and expresses happiness. This forced cheerfulness and the professor's immediate expression of happiness suggest he's eager to maintain the conversation and find common ground with the student, revealing his loneliness and desire for connection.

Age and Aspiration (29-30): Longevity as Goal

This year I am sixty-nine
and hope to score a century.

"This year I am sixty-nine" states the professor's age precisely. Age becomes a central concern and measurement of the professor's progress through life.

"and hope to score a century" uses cricket terminology—"scoring a century" means scoring 100 runs. The metaphorical application to life suggests the professor hopes to live to age 100. This cricket reference is revealing: cricket is enormously popular in India, and the metaphorical language shows the professor's cultural immersion in Indian sports.

The ambition to "score a century" reveals continued ambition despite retirement and aging. The professor frames longevity as an achievement, something to accomplish, maintaining goal-oriented thinking even about aging.

Physical Observation (31-33): Weight and Consequence

You were so thin, like stick,
Now you are man of weight and consequence.
That is good joke.

"You were so thin, like stick" recalls the student's former appearance. The simile "like stick" is vivid but crude, suggesting the student was skeletal or insubstantial. The professor's recollection shows he's been observing the student carefully, noting physical change.

"Now you are man of weight and consequence" uses "weight" with multiple meanings: literal physical weight (the student has gained weight) and metaphorical weight (importance, substance, consequence). "Man of weight and consequence" suggests the student has become substantial—physically, professionally, socially significant. This compliment reveals the professor's recognition that the student has succeeded in life.

"That is good joke" follows the observation with explicit recognition that he's making a joke. The professor wants to ensure the student understands he's being playful and complimentary, not insulting. This need to explain the joke reveals some social anxiety: the professor worries the joke might be misunderstood or offensive.

Final Invitation (34-36): Offering Connection

If you are coming again this side by chance,
Visit please my humble residence also.
I am living just on opposite house's backside.

"If you are coming again this side by chance" extends an invitation conditional on the student's future return to the area. "This side" is colloquial Indian English for "this part of town." The phrasing suggests the professor assumes the student may not return but is hoping he will.

"Visit please my humble residence also" uses the formal "Visit please" (non-standard English word order) to invite the student to his home. "Also" suggests the visit would be in addition to the current chance encounter. "Humble residence" is a polite, self-deprecating phrase suggesting modesty about his home. This humility is somewhat performative—the professor is proud of his home but presents it as humble to be courteous.

"I am living just on opposite house's backside" describes the location of his home. "Opposite house's backside" is awkward English; standard phrasing would be "the back side of the house opposite" or "behind the house across the street." The awkwardness emphasizes the professor's imperfect English, particularly with possessive constructions and word order.

This final invitation reveals the professor's loneliness and desire to maintain connection with the student. The specific location details suggest he wants to facilitate the student's future visit, hoping he will be remembered and sought out.

The Professor by Nissim Ezekiel – Word Notes

Sheth: An Indian surname, commonly associated with business communities and merchant classes in Gujarat and other regions. The name carries connotations of respectable, middle-class status.

Geography: The subject the professor taught, emphasizing his role as an educator. The choice of geography (rather than a more prestigious subject) may be mildly satirical.

Retired: No longer working; having ended one's professional career. Retirement marks a significant life transition, and the professor's retirement is central to his current identity crisis and need for connection.

Settled in life: Established in respectable positions with financial security and social status. The phrase reflects middle-class values emphasizing stability and respectability.

Sales Manager: A corporate position managing sales operations. Represents upper-middle-class professional achievement in Indian corporate culture.

Bank Manager: A senior position in banking institutions. Represents prestigious, secure, respected employment, often aspirational in Indian middle-class culture.

Black sheep: A person who is regarded as a source of embarrassment or scandal within a family; someone who doesn't conform to family expectations. The phrase excuses the underperforming child through universalizing the concept.

Issues: Archaic or formal term for children or offspring. The use of "issues" rather than "children" gives the dialogue a somewhat dated or formal quality.

Family planning: Government initiatives and individual practices related to controlling population and family size. Became a significant Indian policy from the 1960s onward.

Progress: Advancement, improvement, development. The repeated references to progress reflect the post-independence Indian narrative of modernization and development.

Old values: Traditional, pre-modern Indian values including joint family systems, prescribed gender roles, and religious customs.

New values: Modern, individualistic, Western-influenced values including nuclear families, education for all, and consumerism.

Leaps and bounds: Rapid, dramatic progress and change. The idiom suggests excitement about transformation while potentially implying overwhelming or chaotic change.

Price of old age: The costs and consequences associated with aging, including reduced mobility, social withdrawal, and physical decline.

O.K.: Informal abbreviation for "okay"; adequate or satisfactory. The use of the abbreviation in formal speech adds a colloquial, imprecise quality.

Diabetes, blood pressure, heart attack: Three serious medical conditions common among aging Indian men, suggesting the professor's anxiety about mortality and bodily failure.

Sound habits: Good, virtuous, disciplined behaviors, particularly regarding physical health and moral conduct.

Score a century: Cricket terminology meaning to score 100 runs. Used metaphorically to mean living to age 100. Cricket is central to Indian popular culture, making this reference culturally significant.

Weight and consequence: "Weight" means both literal physical weight and metaphorical importance/substance. "Consequence" means importance and significance.

Good joke: The professor explicitly acknowledges his observation is humorous, revealing some social anxiety about potential misunderstanding.

This side: Colloquial Indian English phrase meaning "this part of town" or "this area."

Humble residence: Politely self-deprecating term for one's home, suggesting modesty while implicitly claiming respectability.

Backside: The rear or back portion. The awkward phrasing "opposite house's backside" creates humorous non-standard English.

Publication

"The Professor" was published in Nissim Ezekiel's poetry collection "The Exact Man" (1965). This collection marked an important phase in Ezekiel's development as a poet, establishing his distinctive voice and concerns.

"The Exact Man" was well-received by Indian literary critics and helped establish Ezekiel as a major contemporary Indian poet writing in English. The collection included other significant poems exploring Indian middle-class life, identity, and modernization.

Since its publication, "The Professor" has become one of Ezekiel's most frequently anthologized and studied poems. It appears in major Indian literature anthologies and is a standard text in Indian schools and universities studying contemporary Indian poetry in English.

The poem's accessibility—its simple language, dramatic monologue form, and satirical humor—has contributed to its continued popularity. Unlike some of Ezekiel's more formally experimental work, "The Professor" is immediately engaging and understandable, making it suitable for a wide range of readers.

The poem has been cited as an important early example of Indian writers in English addressing Indian life and culture with satirical distance, neither uncritically celebrating nor despising Indian middle-class values but examining them with complex irony.

Context

Nissim Ezekiel (1924-2004) was one of the most important Indian poets writing in English in the twentieth century. Born in Bombay (Mumbai) to a Jewish Indian family, Ezekiel spent much of his life in India though he studied and worked in America during the 1950s.

Ezekiel emerged as a significant poet during India's post-independence period (after 1947), when Indian writers in English were actively defining their identity and exploring the question of who they were writing for and about. The early post-independence period was marked by debates about whether writing in English (the language of the colonial rulers) was authentically Indian.

Ezekiel participated in these debates by insisting that English poetry could authentically express Indian experience. His work focused on Indian urban middle-class life, examining the culture, values, anxieties, and contradictions of this social stratum with satirical distance and psychological insight.

"The Professor" is characteristic of Ezekiel's approach: examining an Indian middle-class figure with sympathetic but critical irony. The professor is not portrayed as either villainous or admirable but as a fully human character whose values, anxieties, and contradictions reveal broader truths about Indian society.

The post-independence Indian context is crucial to understanding the poem. India was rapidly modernizing during the 1950s and 1960s, implementing large-scale development programs, industrialization, and educational expansion. Simultaneously, tensions existed between traditional Indian values and modern Western values, between rural and urban India, between the old and the new.

The professor embodies these tensions: he speaks of modernization ("we are keeping up," "our progress is progressing") while his values remain rooted in traditional concerns (his children's marriage, his family's status, his own respectability). He measures his life's success through his children's professional achievements and material accumulation—the very values of modernization that he acknowledges are replacing "old values."

The poem also addresses the question of English in India. The professor's imperfect English—grammatically awkward, occasionally non-standard—reflects the reality of English as an Indian language, not a native English speaker's language. Ezekiel's decision to represent the professor's actual speech patterns rather than correcting them to standard English was innovative, suggesting that Indian English was valid and worthy of literary representation.

The poem also reflects the experience of the educated middle class navigating between tradition and modernity, between India and the West, between rural origins and urban life. The professor's desperate attempt to connect with his former student reveals the social isolation and displacement that modernization produces.

Setting

The poem is set in contemporary India, specifically in an urban middle-class neighborhood. The setting is not explicitly named but appears to be an Indian city (likely from Western India, given the Sheth surname and the cultural references).

The poem takes place during a chance encounter between the retired professor and his former student. The meeting appears to occur on a street or in a public space where the professor encounters the student unexpectedly. The poem's structure—one continuous monologue—suggests this is a single conversation occurring in real time.

Temporally, the poem is set in contemporary post-independence India, likely the 1960s or 1970s, when India was rapidly modernizing and the tensions between traditional and modern values were particularly acute. The references to family planning, corporate jobs, and India "keeping up" with global change suggest this post-independence modernization context.

Socially, the setting is specifically the Indian urban middle class—educated, English-speaking, professionally employed, valuing material success and respectability. The professor's references to Sales Managers, Bank Managers, and car ownership locate him within this aspirational middle-class stratum.

The professor's current location—living "just on opposite house's backside"—suggests he lives in a modest neighborhood, possibly on the outskirts of a city. His "humble residence" implies he has respectable but not wealthy accommodation, consistent with a retired professor's pension.

The physical and emotional setting is one of social disconnection. The professor encounters his former student unexpectedly and desperately attempts to maintain engagement and connection. The monologue's one-sided nature emphasizes the professor's isolation and his difficulty in achieving genuine dialogue.

Title

"The Professor" is a simple, definite title emphasizing the central character's profession and social identity. The use of the definite article "The" suggests a specific, archetypal professor rather than an individual person.

The title's simplicity is deceptive. "The Professor" becomes a type—an Indian middle-class professor of the post-independence era, retired and struggling with aging, attempting to maintain relevance and connection. The title encompasses the character's entire social identity, suggesting his self-worth is tied to his former professional status.

The title is also somewhat ironic: what makes this poem about "The Professor" is not his pedagogical expertise but his desperate monologue about his personal life—his children's achievements, his health, his grandchildren. The professor has become defined by his children's success and his own aging rather than by his educational accomplishments.

Form and Language

"The Professor" is written as a dramatic monologue in free verse—no consistent meter or rhyme scheme. The poem employs the form of prose poetry, using line breaks for emphasis and dramatic effect rather than for metrical or rhythmic reasons.

The dramatic monologue form is central to the poem's meaning. A dramatic monologue is a poem in which a character speaks directly to a silent listener (or implied listener), revealing his character, personality, and psychology through speech. The form creates distance between the reader and the speaker, allowing the reader to observe and judge the speaker while sympathizing with his humanity.

The form of the poem mimics actual speech, with its hesitations, digressions, and emotional intensity. The professor jumps from topic to topic—from his retirement to his children's achievements to family planning to his health to his age to cricket to his house. This non-linear progression reflects the way an aging, lonely person might talk, using conversational association rather than logical organization.

Line breaks are used strategically for emphasis and to slow the reader's pace. Short lines create pauses, allowing time for the reader to absorb meaning. For example: "Remember me? I am Professor Sheth. / Once I taught you geography. Now" breaks after "Now," creating a pause that emphasizes the transition from past to present.

The language is deliberately simple and direct, avoiding elaborate poetic language. Words are mostly monosyllabic or common English words. This simplicity makes the poem accessible while also emphasizing the professor's speech patterns—he speaks plainly, without pretension in his vocabulary, though his syntax is sometimes awkward.

The language is characterized by grammatical imperfection and non-standard English constructions: "Other also doing well, though not so well," "I am going out rarely," "How is your health keeping?" "Visit please my humble residence also," "I am living just on opposite house's backside." These grammatical quirks are not errors introduced by Ezekiel but representations of Indian English as actually spoken by educated Indians for whom English is a learned, not native, language.

The poet employs Indian English vocabulary and phrases: "issues" for children, "this side" for this area, "settled in life," "black sheep," "weight and consequence." These locutions, while comprehensible to English readers, mark the text as Indian English rather than standard British or American English.

Repetition is used effectively. "Doing well" appears multiple times; "progressing" is repeated in the tautological "our progress is progressing"; health is discussed repeatedly with the professor returning to the topic multiple times. This repetition mimics the obsessive quality of the professor's concerns and the way an anxious, aging person might return to the same concerns repeatedly.

The tone shifts throughout the monologue from nostalgic to boastful to defensive to anxious to hopeful. These tonal shifts reveal the professor's emotional state and his desperate attempt to present himself favorably while revealing his deeper concerns and anxieties.

Meter & Rhyme

"The Professor" abandons traditional metrical and rhyming conventions entirely. The poem is in free verse, meaning there is no regular meter, rhyme scheme, or formal structure. Instead, the poem's structure follows the natural rhythms of speech.

The poem's line breaks are not determined by metrical feet but by syntactic units and for rhetorical effect. Short lines emphasize ideas: "Remember me?" stands alone. "Now" appears at the end of a line break, creating pause and emphasis on the temporal transition from past to present.

Without formal metrical constraints, the poem's rhythm mimics conversational speech. Some lines are longer, reflecting the natural flow of spoken English: "By God's grace, all my children / Are well settled in life." Other lines are short, reflecting pauses or emphatic statements: "Both have cars." "Every family must have black sheep." "That is good joke."

The poem's prosody is primarily driven by syntax and sense rather than sound. Enjambment (running lines into each other without pause) and line breaks create meaning through visual arrangement rather than through traditional prosodic devices.

The absence of rhyme and meter serves the poem's purposes: it creates the illusion of natural speech, allowing the reader to hear the professor's actual voice rather than imposing poetic formality on a prosaic monologue. The form emphasizes authenticity and immediacy—this sounds like an actual person talking, not a carefully constructed poem.

The Professor by Nissim Ezekiel – Themes

Theme 1: The Anxiety of Aging and Irrelevance

The poem centers on the professor's anxiety about aging and becoming irrelevant. Retired and no longer professionally active, he struggles to maintain identity and purpose. His repeated assertions of good health, his hope to "score a century," and his desperate attempt to connect with a former student all reveal anxiety about aging and mortality. The professor measures his life through his children's achievements because his own professional life has ended.

Theme 2: Middle-Class Values and Material Success

The poem satirizes Indian middle-class values: the emphasis on children's professional achievement, the possession of material goods (cars), respectable marriages, and numerical fertility (eleven grandchildren) as markers of a successful life. The professor's pride in his sons being a Sales Manager and Bank Manager, and both owning cars, reveals how success is measured through economic achievement and visible material signs.

Theme 3: Tradition and Modernity in Post-Independence India

The poem explores the tension between traditional and modern values in post-independence India. The professor claims to embrace modernization while his values remain rooted in tradition. He accepts family planning as necessary modernization while being proud of having eleven grandchildren. He discusses old values being replaced by new values while embodying traditional middle-class concerns about family status and respectability.

Theme 4: Social Disconnection and Loneliness

The monologue form reveals profound social isolation. The professor encounters a former student and desperately attempts to maintain engagement, but his monologue is one-sided. He asks questions and attempts conversation, but the student remains largely silent. His invitation to visit his home at the end suggests he hopes to maintain connection against the likelihood that the student will not return.

Theme 5: Language and Cultural Identity

The poem examines Indian English as a valid literary medium. The professor's imperfect, grammatically non-standard English reflects the reality of English as an Indian language. Rather than correcting these "errors," Ezekiel presents them as authentic Indian speech patterns, suggesting that Indian English is a legitimate form of English expression.

Theme 6: The Gap Between Aspiration and Reality

The professor's life reveals gaps between his aspirations and reality. He hopes to "score a century" (live to 100), but he is already showing signs of aging and disability. He claims to embrace modernization, yet his understanding of progress is superficial ("our progress is progressing"). He boasts of his children's success and his numerous grandchildren, yet he lives in a modest residence and is socially isolated.

Theme 7: Identity Through Others' Achievements

The professor's entire sense of self-worth is mediated through his children's and grandchildren's achievements. He has no independent sources of pride or identity beyond his former profession and his family's success. This dependency on others' achievements becomes pathological—his entire monologue is an enumeration of family members' accomplishments.

The Professor by Nissim Ezekiel – Major Symbols

Symbol 1: Cars

Cars symbolize material wealth, status, and success in Indian middle-class culture. The repeated mention of his sons "both have cars" emphasizes material accumulation as the visible sign of success. Cars represent the aspirational values of Indian middle class: prosperity, modernity, and visible respectability.

Symbol 2: Professional Titles (Sales Manager, Bank Manager)

Professional positions symbolize respectable, secure upper-middle-class employment. These corporate positions represent the modern professional world, achievement in India's developing capitalist economy, and the kind of success the professor values and has achieved for his children.

Symbol 3: The Cricket Century

The cricket metaphor ("score a century" meaning live to 100) symbolizes achievement and aspiration. Cricket is central to Indian popular culture, and the metaphor suggests the professor views longevity as an achievement, something to accomplish. The cricket reference also roots the professor's aspirations in Indian culture.

Symbol 4: The "Humble Residence"

The professor's modest home symbolizes his respectable but not wealthy economic position. He describes it as "humble," suggesting modesty while also implying it is respectable. The home is located on the "backside," suggesting peripheral or marginal social location. The specific location details reveal his desire to facilitate connection with the student.

Symbol 5: Aging and Health Concerns

The professor's health, aging, and mortality anxieties symbolize broader human anxieties about time, change, and the loss of physical and social vitality. The specific diseases he doesn't have (diabetes, blood pressure, heart attack) symbolize mortality threats. His age (69) and hope to reach 100 symbolize the desire to transcend time and mortality.

Symbol 6: The "Black Sheep" Child

The child who is "doing well, though not so well" symbolizes family failure, social anxiety about respectability, and the universal human tendency to have some family members who don't meet expectations. The black sheep represents deviation from middle-class success narratives.

The Professor – Major Literary Devices

Literary Device 1: Dramatic Monologue

Definition: A poem in which a character speaks to a silent listener, revealing his character, psychology, and situation through speech.

Example: The entire poem is Professor Sheth addressing a former student who remains largely silent, revealing the professor's character, concerns, anxieties, and values through his speech.

Explanation: The dramatic monologue form creates distance between reader and speaker, allowing the reader to observe and judge while sympathizing with the speaker's humanity. The form emphasizes the professor's isolation—he speaks at great length while receiving minimal response, revealing his desperate need for connection.

Literary Device 2: Satire

Definition: The use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to criticize or expose human folly, weakness, or vice.

Example: The poem satirizes Indian middle-class values—the obsession with children's professional achievement, material accumulation, respectability, and numerical fertility—by presenting them through the professor's boastful monologue.

Explanation: Ezekiel's satire is gentle rather than harsh. The professor is not portrayed as contemptible but as a fully human character whose values and anxieties reveal broader truths about Indian society. The satire allows the reader to laugh at the professor's pretensions while sympathizing with his isolation and aging.

Literary Device 3: Irony

Definition: A contrast between what is expected or intended and what actually occurs; discrepancy between appearance and reality.

Example: The professor claims to embrace modernization and family planning while boasting about having eleven grandchildren; he speaks of "old values going" while embodying traditional middle-class values; he asserts "our progress is progressing" in a tautological statement that undermines his claim of progress.

Explanation: The ironies in the poem reveal the professor's contradictions and contradictions within Indian society itself. His words reveal gaps between his surface claims and his deeper values, creating complex meaning.

Literary Device 4: Repetition

Definition: The deliberate recurrence of words, phrases, or ideas for emphasis and effect.

Example: The word "good" or "well" appears repeatedly: "doing well," "health is good," "well settled," "That is good joke." Health is discussed multiple times; the professor returns to his accomplishments and children's success repeatedly.

Explanation: Repetition creates emphasis and reveals the professor's preoccupations. His repeated assertions of good health and wellbeing suggest anxiety about the opposite. His repeated enumeration of his children's achievements suggests these are his primary source of pride and self-worth.

Literary Device 5: Understatement and Self-Deprecation

Definition: Representing something as less important or forceful than it actually is; or presenting oneself as less capable or worthy than one actually is.

Example: The professor describes his home as "humble residence"; he says his third child is "doing well, though not so well" before defending him with the black sheep excuse.

Explanation: The professor's understatement and self-deprecation reveal his social anxiety and his desire to present himself as modest and respectable. The defensive tone when discussing the child who isn't succeeding shows his shame about family imperfection.

Literary Device 6: Allusion and Cultural Reference

Definition: An indirect reference to another person, place, literary work, or cultural concept outside the poem.

Example: "Score a century" alludes to cricket, a central sport in Indian culture; the names "Sarala" and "Tarala" allude to Hindu naming conventions; the discussion of family planning alludes to India's post-independence modernization policies.

Explanation: The allusions ground the poem in Indian cultural context. They assume familiarity with Indian culture and address Indian readers directly, making the poem authentically Indian rather than generic.

Literary Device 7: Dialect and Non-Standard English

Definition: The representation of how people actually speak, including grammatical variations, word choice, and speech patterns that differ from standard English.

Example: "Other also doing well"; "I am going out rarely"; "How is your health keeping?"; "Visit please my humble residence also"; "I am living just on opposite house's backside."

Explanation: Ezekiel's representation of Indian English as actually spoken—with non-standard grammar and word order—suggests that Indian English is valid and worthy of literary representation. The dialect represents authentic Indian speech rather than corrected standard English, validating Indian English speakers' actual practice.

Literary Device 8: Rhetorical Questions

Definition: Questions asked for effect rather than to elicit actual answers, used to engage the audience or make a point.

Example: "Remember me?" (opening line); "How many issues you have?" (implying the professor expects/judges the answer); "That is good joke?" (seeking confirmation of the student's understanding).

Explanation: Rhetorical questions create engagement and reveal the professor's psychology. The opening question reveals his anxiety about being forgotten; the question about the student's children reveals his tendency to judge others by the same standards he applies to himself.

Literary Device 9: Tautology

Definition: A statement that is necessarily true because it repeats the same idea in different words; a redundancy.

Example: "Our progress is progressing" repeats "progress" in different forms, creating a circular statement that is true but uninformative.

Explanation: The tautology reveals the professor's imprecise language and perhaps his superficial understanding of modernization. His language reveals his overenthusiasm and imperfect grasp of English and concepts he's attempting to discuss.

Literary Device 10: Juxtaposition

Definition: Placing two contrasting elements side by side for effect.

Example: The professor's claims about embracing modernization are juxtaposed with his traditional values; his boasts about healthy living are juxtaposed with his anxiety about aging; his invocation of family planning is juxtaposed with his pride in eleven grandchildren.

Explanation: Juxtaposition reveals contradictions and creates irony. The contrasts between the professor's words and his underlying values expose the tensions in Indian society between modernization and tradition, between aspiration and reality.