A Writer’s Guide on Rage, Reflection, and Retribution

by Mandira Pattnaik

Andrea Cassani

When I think of anger, it fills me with rage. Do not go gentle into that good night, …Rage, rage against the dying of the light (1). My anger is my light and I am raging against it. Anger against war, against capitalism, against injustices, against my own deprivation and incapability. With my rage-filled heart, I think of anger, again.

Anger, wild-haired and half-dressed,/picked out in blue and silver thread bunched against the crimson,/rough against the fingertips, she/rides a black boar dappled with blood/and waves her double-headed axe — (2)

Anger and rage fuel and phantomise me — flux in a hollow pipe, pushing against each other, one wins, then the other. What am I supposed to do with all this energy?

Old Norse word angr birthed the English “anger”, but it curiously meant “grief” or “vexation,” and is a close relative of anguish (distress) and anxiety. But “rage” originates from the Latin rabies, meaning “madness” or “fury.” Anger is not rage or vice versa. Anger is a normal emotion (why else are humans, factory-set with it?) but rage is uncontrolled anger, associated with destruction. Anger (Sanskrit: Krodha) in Hindu philosophy is one of six “enemies of the mind.” These six negative traits are considered internal obstacles to achieving inner peace and moksha (liberation from the cycle of birth and death) — others being Kama (Desire/Lust), Lobha (Greed), Moha (Attachment/Delusion), Mada (Pride/Arrogance) and Matsarya (Jealousy/Envy). Yet, interestingly, in Hindu mythological texts, rage is depicted as a powerful and dangerous emotion used as a righteous force against injustice. Goddesses Durga and Kali embody righteous wrath, course-correcting the future of society, once even standing atop her husband, who lay in supine position having tried and failed to control her.

To me, anger and rage are therefore, inalienable, even though they are unequal — separable only by the degree of control and not the final outcome. For example, my response to our entrenched patriarchy is anger, which is consistent throughout my life, manifested in heterogenous forms. I rage because I have a continued aversion to the taping together of the father’s or husband’s name in every document on earth bearing the female’s name. Similarly, my response is a hot argument every time a male has wanted to control my choices in the slightest manner.

When I began writing, it became easier. I realized that it is possible, and doable, to channel rage and anger into the positive act of representing oneself. I tamed that anger and rage into several of my fictional stories. It is indeed therapeutic.

Arundhati Roy writes about her mother’s rage in her memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me. She describes her mother’s rage as something that added to her being — as fuel aids fire, complementing her talent as a writer. She describes the rage she witnessed as a child (and obviously which both bruised and scarred her for life) as a powerful, complex force. Arundhati explores the origins of that anger, and the “soul-crushing meanness” it inflicted, concluding that it was not just as an attack on her, but a violent response to the realities of motherhood itself. For Mary Roy, it was survival. Mary Roy married the first man who proposed to her to escape a violent home run by a violent father. She soon left her alcoholic husband with her two children — Arundhati and her sibling, defied all odds, put them through boarding school and built the iconic school, Pallikoodam, in Kottayam, Kerala.

I relate to this familiar story in many broken Indian homes — commonly the woman’s rage against her own children — but Mary Roy is unique in her fight back and resilience. I’m sure many writers universally can identify with this familial crisis. Commonly also, the rage often remains unexplained and untreated, sometimes directed at herself too. The anger against its root cause is never embodied. Arundhati did what many others fail at: tracing the source. And finally, a creative response as a corroboration of defiance. The memoir is an attestation that rage exists.

Similarly, rage against racial discrimination is also not uncommon. Responses in literature are aplenty. I have lived with that anger, on that anger, beneath that anger, on top of that anger, ignoring that anger, feeding upon that anger, learning to use that anger before it laid my visions to waste, for most of my life. Once I did it in silence, afraid of the weight of that anger. My fear of that anger taught me nothing. Your fear of that anger will teach you nothing, also. Women responding to racism means women responding to anger, the anger of exclusion, of unquestioned privilege, of racial distortions, of silence, ill-use, stereotyping, defensiveness, misnaming, betrayal, and coopting. (3)

Like others, drawing motivation from that relief and therapy gained by channeling my rage, I have healed myself somewhat. I have written about the futility of wars and my anger about the aftermath — the loss of home, displacement, the fracture of lives in the present, and repeated sense of loss over generations. I have reflected upon the dangers of deforestation, directing my anger to craft climate displacement pieces like "Shapes of Outliers."

In outliers, I trace my family’s ancestry, which are in present-day Bangladesh. In the early 1900s, my great-grandparents freely moved between the two Bengals — East and West, then undivided Bengal. When East Pakistan (present day Bangladesh) was carved out, they found themselves living and working in West Bengal, present day India, and that is how we came to identify with this country. They were neither refugees nor victims of partition. Yet, the separation from family and ancestral land left a residual rage in them, which I perceived when I met my grandparents as a child. I witnessed this anger boil down to nostalgia at times. Now that they are no more, I wish they had projected this rage and nostalgia on paper, so generations could read about that lost heritage. I have recollections of their reminiscences: names of places that stuck to me as idle, rusted pegs, on which something one can imagine must have hung. I sometimes put these recollections in my stories. While writing about them, I can feel their rage and loss in my veins, but infinitely more controlled, running like nourishment, a river through a fertile plain.

In any event, a writer must unapologetically control and discipline the anger that they feel within. That is the difference between rant and monologue. Between opinion and art. There’s constant damming, and a controlled bargain — what I am willing to divulge, and how passionately I feel about an issue. For example, I often write about girls’ education, or rather the lack of it in the global south. The grant of education is a stated goal for consecutive governments, but it begs answers if that education is partial, or the supporting mechanism fails. Also, education towards what, where, and how, is important. When I write about this issue, I am in their place, in their shoes — I am one of those girls denied a safe and secure environment to study. I can feel myself running between stranded trucks to reach an exam center ("Crocodile Teeth"), or dreaming of completing higher education and finding a teaching job while thinking of “girls who had been plucked off the firmament” ("Stitches"). With each such completion, I hope that my anger, projected to the world in a creative and disciplined manner, helps to emphasize the problem.

As always, discipline comes with practice. With rigorousness. I believe that oneness with the theme that angers me also means that I have learnt to live with it, even if we are in violent disagreement. I have obviously tackled the issue for years, examined it from different angles, all of which aid in enabling this positive transformation of rage.

I understand that there is an ethic of anger — a secret code. It frequently slides into unreasonableness, and one may sometimes misdiagnose the source. It is not without peril to play with the “fire” within (also the common symbolic representation of anger and rage!). Even so, creatively channeling fire is important so as not to fall into the loop of injustice-forgive-forget-repeat. Remember, it is only the powerful and unjust who preach “forgive-and-forget” when they perceive the victim might start revolting.

One final thing to bear in mind is that fire has a bad habit of consuming itself. I am not sure I’ve tamed my rage fully, or if any living human is capable of it, since anger has been classified as a “natural emotion,” but anyone who crafts creative work with anger must be cautious as to not offer themselves into the sacrificial pit. Some have been punished as a consequence. I feel this is akin to retributivist theories of punishment — a justice system where proportional punishment is given to an offender because they deserved it for their wrongdoing. If anger is allowed for too long, and instead of healing, the creative outcome only supplements the suffering — it is indeed doom. Detrimental to the purpose and even altogether a failure, anger or rage must therefore remain a vehicle, justified solely in virtue of its contribution to enlightened awareness or valuable outcomes.

Quote References:

1. Dylan Thomas; 1957

2. April Bernard; 2014

3. Audre Lorde in the essay The Uses of Anger; 1981