The Bull: NEB Class 12 English Guide

Author and purpose

Bhimnidhi Tiwari turns historical anecdote into social reform

The CDC textbook introduces Tiwari as a Nepali poet, story writer, dramatist and social reformer who established Nepal Natak Sangh in 1949 to promote theatre. The Bull draws on King Ranabahadur Shah’s recorded enthusiasm for bulls. Its purpose is not simply to mock affection for an animal. It exposes the political order that makes servants’ survival depend on pleasing a ruler’s mood.

Preceding history

Male’s death is dangerous because truth itself is forbidden

Ranabahadur maintained Thulo Gauchar and regularly released marked bulls at Pashupatinath. When Male became ill, he threatened that the bull doctor would be shaved if he reported a death. The play begins after the threat has made honest speech impossible. Laxminarayan must solve two problems at once: the animal is dead, and stating that fact may destroy three human lives.

Characters

Four roles reveal the hierarchy of feudal power

Ranabahadur Shah is a twenty-three-year-old king whose fondness controls resources and punishment. Laxminarayan Dahal is a subedar, court official and bull doctor skilled in chakari and indirect speech. Jitman and Gore are cowherds with almost no protection. Male never speaks or moves, yet the dead bull determines everyone’s actions and reveals how status can be attached to ownership rather than humanity.

Scene I setting

Dawn in Laxminarayan’s yard begins with domestic domination

The first scene occurs in Ashwin 1854 B.S. Laxminarayan sits waiting for a hookah and insults his seven wives with mocking names. This comic opening is not separate from the political satire. A man fearful before the king reproduces hierarchy inside his home. The play briefly exposes domination of women before the arrival of even more frightened cowherds.

News of death

Jitman and Gore arrive out of breath

The cowherds describe Male’s still eyes, stretched body and loose tail. Laxminarayan immediately imagines the king’s punishment: he may be shaved and the cowherds beheaded. He remembers that the king once burned his mouth for speaking loudly, leaving a dark patch where a moustache no longer grows. Bodily memory proves that their fear is grounded in arbitrary violence, not comic exaggeration alone.

Material satire

The bull eats luxury while keepers endure deprivation

Gore explains that a grass-eating animal was fed fine rice and split red-gram soup that it could not digest. The bull receives fruit, sugarcane, a mattress, quilt and mosquito net, while cowherds sleep on straw in winter. Prices rise to support the royal appetite. Tiwari reverses normal priorities so sharply that privilege appears both ridiculous and economically cruel.

Survival plan

Never announce the death before the king can name it

Laxminarayan orders the cowherds to remain in the cowshed, care for the body and never utter that Male is dead. He will speak at the palace in phrases that describe symptoms without delivering the prohibited conclusion. This is the key strategy: if the king recognizes death himself, the servants have not directly disobeyed his earlier threat.

Scene II

Euphemism and flattery control the palace conversation

At Basantapur, Laxminarayan bows deeply and reports that Male will not wake, eat, move or speak and is staring with still eyes. When questioned, he praises Male’s body, beauty, walk and fighting ability, comparing the bull’s uniqueness with the king’s greatness. He proposes a change of climate. His words sound medical and reverent while carefully circling the fact of death.

Unexpected danger

The king decides to inspect Male personally

Ranabahadur first permits the bull to be moved to a hill, then changes his mind and organizes a convoy to Thulo Gauchar. The decision threatens Laxminarayan’s verbal solution because the corpse cannot perform illness. He runs ahead of the royal party, warns Jitman and Gore, and converts the cowshed into a stage before the audience of power arrives.

Scene III performance

Massage, fan and medicine make death look like treatment

Jitman massages the hind legs, Gore waves a fan near the head and Laxminarayan grinds medicine. Before the king they claim continuous care. Male remains still while the king calls, orders him up and offers bananas. The actors never need to say the bull is alive; visible service supplies a performance of hope until the king tests the body himself.

Royal declaration

Ranabahadur becomes the person who says Male has died

The king notices that Male does not breathe or eat, that the ears droop and the tail is loose. He finally pronounces the death. The servants have achieved their narrow legal and rhetorical safety: they did not bring the forbidden statement to him. Laxminarayan outsmarts arbitrary authority by allowing authority to discover what everyone else already knows.

Staged mourning

Fear is transformed into visible loyalty

Jitman throws himself on the bull and cries that he has become an orphan. When the king grants him four hundred rupees, Gore produces even greater grief and receives five hundred. Laxminarayan praises their total service and joins the lament, hoping for favour and protection. Their mourning may contain relief and hardship, but it is also strategic theatre performed for survival.

Ending

Private speech restores the truth after the king leaves

Once Ranabahadur departs, Jitman wipes his sweat and says the carcass almost got them killed; Gore thanks God that they survived. Their vocabulary changes immediately from reverent “Bull Sir” to a dead body that threatened them. This contrast exposes chakari as coerced performance. The subjects’ public language belongs to the ruler, while honest judgement is possible only outside his hearing.

Chakari

Service becomes sycophancy under unequal power

Chakari is service offered upward with hope of favour. In the play it shapes posture, greeting, praise, grief and even medical language. The servants are clever, but their cleverness develops inside danger. Tiwari therefore satirizes both flatterers and the system that requires flattery. When truth carries punishment, exaggerated devotion becomes a rational survival skill.

Dehumanization

A royal bull receives more security than human workers

The deepest irony is not that Male is cared for well. It is that Jitman, Gore and Laxminarayan can be injured or killed for failing an animal. They sleep worse, eat worse and possess less legal value. Royal affection becomes unjust when institutions magnify one preference until ordinary lives are disposable. The bull functions as a measure of how far hierarchy has displaced human dignity.

Dramatic technique

Three locations turn politics into a theatre of fear

The yard introduces domestic and official hierarchy, the palace displays verbal submission and the cowshed stages bodily performance. Dramatic irony lets the audience know Male is dead throughout the royal inspection. Repetition of symptoms, exaggerated honorifics and sudden rewards produce comedy, while threats and scars preserve danger. Satire delights and instructs because laughter reveals the absurd logic of power.

Character judgement

Laxminarayan is resourceful but also embedded in hierarchy

He protects himself and the cowherds through quick thinking, euphemism and timing. He is not a simple heroic rebel: he flatters the king, hopes for favour, mistreats wives and benefits from court access. This complexity improves an exam answer. Laxminarayan resists one lethal consequence without challenging the system that produces it.

Plot map

Death → fear → euphemism → inspection → performance → reward

Exam evidence

Use precise details instead of calling it satire generally

Revision route

Build one answer from scene, evidence and judgement

1. Name the feudal relation or satirical target.
2. Locate the evidence in yard, palace or cowshed.
3. Explain the gap between public performance and private truth.
4. Connect the moment to dehumanization or chakari.
5. Judge Laxminarayan and the system separately.

Organize revision with the English roadmap, compare performance in A Matter of Husbands, and contrast tragedy through the Facing Death guide.