"Night of the Scorpion," included in the AQA Anthology, is a poem written by the Indian Jewish poet, Nissim Ezekiel. Summary It starts in a house at night where it is raining and a scorpion, in order to take some shelter, comes to the house. This poem is about how the scorpion stung the poet's mother and the mother's love for her children. I remember the night my mother was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours of steady rain had driven him to crawl beneath a sack of rice. The poem opens in a way that suggests reflection—the speaker remembers (and, is so, older now) the night his mother was stung by a scorpion, which bit the mother because of its predatory impulse, while hiding beneath a bag of rice to escape from the rain. The speaker specifically remembers this night due to this event namely, the mother getting bitten. The way in which the mother is bitten is also shown in "flash / of diabolic tail"; the speaker manages to suggest that the scorpion is demonic with its "diabolic" tail, and emphasises its speed with the word flash. The scorpion then flees the scene and, thus, risks the rain again. A picture of a religious village is created by what the neighbours do to paralyse the scorpion: "buzzed the name of God". Their reason for this is that they believe that as the scorpion moves, his poison moves in the blood of the mother. It is also implied that they live in a caring, closely-knit village by the fact that the neighbours feel welcome at all. The speaker is displeased by their arrival, comparing them to flies (unwanted and irritating) as they veritably buzzed around the mother. They tried to provide reasons and many relied on superstition to guess what the problem was. The villagers tried to find the scorpion but they could not. By saying, "With candles and with lanterns / throwing giant scorpion shadows / on the mud-baked walls," the speaker is implying there is still evil haunting the house, even after the scorpion had left the house. This could also be implying that the shadows of the various house hold utensils and other items are converted by the brain of the searchers into the shadow of a scorpion - as that is what they are looking for. Many things were tried to help relieve the mother's