Summary of night of the scorpion by Nissim Esikel

"Night of the Scorpion" by Nissim Ezekiel is a well-known poem describing a night when the poet’s mother is stung by a scorpion, and the ensuing reactions in an Indian village. The poem opens with the scorpion, driven by ten hours of heavy rain, hiding under a sack of rice before stinging the mother and escaping back into the night. The villagers quickly gather, chanting prayers and searching with lanterns, believing their rituals and superstitions can counter the poison. They say her suffering may purify her soul or lessen the evil in the world, linking her pain to past and future lives. The poet’s father represents rationality, trying a range of remedies from traditional medicine to scientific ones, even burning the wound with paraffin, but nothing seems effective. Amidst the chaos—a blend of superstition, faith, and science—the mother suffers in silence for twenty hours until the pain disappears. When it is over, her only words express a mother’s selfless love: “Thank God the scorpion picked on me and spared my children Thus the poem highlights themes of superstition, science, and above all, a mother’s selfless love.