A Reconsideration of the Human Condition through Tagore’s Red Oleanders: Slavery and the Prospect of Freedom

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine how Rabindranath Tagore’s 1925 play Red Oleanders presents the human situation. Yaksha Town, a made-up community where everyone is a slave to the system, serves as the backdrop for the play. Through a thorough examination of Yaksha Town’s circumstances, the article first highlights how a totalitarian society robs each character of freedom and happiness before looking at how each character bears personal responsibility for their imprisonment within the system. The play’s protagonists’ story of captivity is also a story of humanity as a whole, since Tagore wants to depict the real world through the town’s condition. This essay additionally aims to clarify the playwright’s assertion that nature, not the propinquity of a materialistic system, is the means by which humanity might be freed from all forms of societal and personal bonds. Marxist and Existentialism theories are used to frame the entire conversation.