Genre
Drama
Setting and Context
Dharmapura, India
Narrator and Point of View
As this is a play, it uses third-person limited, although Bhagavata speaks to the mindset of others.
Tone and Mood
Tone: lively, questioning, anxious
Mood: playful, apprehensive, confining
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonists/antagonists are Devadatta and Kapila.
Major Conflict
There is conflict between the two friends when Devadatta realizes that Kapila is attracted to Padmini. There is also conflict after their heads have been put on the wrong bodies; both feel that they are the logical choice for Padmini to be with moving forward and both argue their points with the other.
Climax
The men kill each other and Padmini commits sati on a funeral pyre because she realizes she feels incomplete on her own.
Foreshadowing
Bhagavata foreshadows the friends' transposed heads and Hayavadana with his early paean to Ganesha, a god with an elephant head and a boy's body.
Understatement
Bhagavata says that he is surprised to see the Hayavadana character walking onto the stage, which is an understatement since this figure is a man with the head of a horse; surprise is far too calm of a term to describe this reaction.
Allusions
1. Hindu gods and goddesses (Ganesha, Rudra, Kali), as well as Hindu social and religious rituals (pooja, namaskara, sati)
2. The Shastras—the sacred Hindu books (106)
3. Pandavas and Draupadi (129): husband and wife in the Hindu epic "Mahabharata"
Imagery
The most conspicuous imagery is that of the masks and bodies to which they are attached, and the switching that takes place frequently. With this, Karnad is commenting on the problems with identity, such as the dichotomy between the head and the body.
Paradox
1. At the start of the play, the god Ganesha, who is a boy with the head of an elephant, is said to be the god of perfection and success. He is also the embodiment of this. This is a paradox because he is a hybrid of two creatures, and the other characters in the play find an incompleteness in being a hybrid that does not suggest perfection or success at all.
Parallelism
1. The bodies that belong to the new heads parallel each other in their return to the head's original bodily form.
2. Padmini's initial lapse in affection for Devadatta is paralleled by her later lapse in affection for him.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
N/A
Personification
1. "And the head is bidding good-bye to the heart" (95)
2. "The wrong road stuck to my feet—wouldn't let it go" (123)
3. "...this body, this appendage, laughed and flowered out in a festival of memories to which I'm an outcaste" (126)
4. "it [the body] wasn't made for this life. It resisted. It also had its revenge" (128)
