Question

'All right!' you 'll cry.'All right!' you'll say,
'But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children?Please explain!'
We'll answer this by asking you,
'What used the darling ones to do?
'How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?'
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!

Read the lines given above and answer the question given below.

Explain with reference to context.

Answer 1

These lines are taken from the poem TELEVISION, written by Roald Dahl, a British novelist, short story writer and a poet. It is taken from his collection ‘Revolting Rhymes’. It is a stinging satire on Television. In this poem Roald Dahl expresses concern over what the modem invention the television set has done to children. He points out that watching TV has become a craze in modem time. Children of today spend hours together in front of the ‘idiot box’. Roald Dahl is addressing all British parents and telling them that the most important thing one must learn while raising children is to keep them away from the television set. He also says that it is possible to come to a better solution to the problem by not installing a television set in their homes in the first place.

In these lines, Dahl anticipates what the parents’ next question would be. They might agree to take away the television set from their children but will ask how they are supposed to now keep their children entertained and occupied.

In these lines, Dahl tells parents that they cannot have forgotten how children kept themselves entertained before the recent invention of the television.

In these lines, Dahl says that before the coming of television children would read and it is a shame that now they don’t.

In these lines, Dahl creates the alternate landscape that has been mentioned in the section on the poem’s setting. In this landscape, children’s rooms are filled to the brim with books.