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प्रश्न
Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow :
An angry athlete is an athlete who will make mistakes, as any coach will tell you I was no exception. On the first of my three qualifying jumps, I leaped from several inches beyond the · take-off board for a foul.
(i) When and where is this story set? What reason does the narrator Jesse Owens give for the heightened nationalistic feelings at this time?
(ii) In which event had Owens been confident of winning a gold medal? Why?
(iii) What had, made Owens angry enough to make mistakes?
(iv) Name Owens' rival who approached him at this point. What advice did this athlete give Owens?
(v) How did the two athletes perform in the finals? What does Jesse Owens consider his 'Greatest Olympic Prize'? Why?
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उत्तर
(i) This story is set in the time of the Berlin Olympic Games of 1936. Because Hitler childishly insisted that his performers were members of a ‘master race’, heightened nationalistic feelings at this time were at an all-time high.
(ii) Jessie Owens gained, sweated and disciplined himself for six years. He had already made a world record in the long jump in the last year. So he expected to win the gold medal easily this time.
(iii) At the time of broad-jump trials, Jessie Owens was started to see a tall boy hitting the .pit at almost 26 feet on his practice leaps Jessie felt angry when he was told that Hitler had kept him under wraps obviously to win the jump with.hirn. Jessie was disturbed to think if Luz Long won, it would add some new support to the Nazis’ Aryan-superiority theory. Jessie was so disturbed that he made mistakes in his trial jumps.
(iv) Luz Long, a German, was Jessie Owens’ rival. On noticing Jessie Owens feeling disgusted, Luz Long counseled Jessie to focus on the jump by giving him a valuable tip. He said to Jessie, “Why don’t you draw a line a few inches in back of the board and aim at making your take off there?”
(v) The two athletes gave their best possible performance in the finals. They improved upon their previous records. As it turned out, Luz broke his own past record. But in doing so, he pushed Owens on to peak performance. When Owens won the medal, Long congratulated him by shaking his hand with him, without bothering about having to face the wrath of Hitler. To Jessie Owens, the greatest Olympic prize was not a gold medal but his new and noble friendship with Luz Long. He was happy to learn that the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.
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संबंधित प्रश्न
There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory. 1 will not dwell on, nor mourn over, our untimely decay, nor reproach my paleface brothers with hastening it, as we too may have been somewhat to blame.
Youth is impulsive. When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, it denotes that their hearts are black, and that they are often cruel and relentless, and our old men and old women are unable to restrain them. Thus it has ever been. Thus it was when the white man began to push our forefathers ever westward. But let us hope that the hostilities between us may never return. We would have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
What happened when the tribal young man became angry?
An old man with steel rimmed spectacles and very dusty clothes sat by the side of the road. There was a pontoon bridge across the river and carts, trucks, and men, women and children were crossing it. The mule-drawn carts staggered up the steep bank from the bridge with soldiers helping push against the spokes of the wheels. The trucks ground up and away heading out of it all and the peasants plodded along in the ankle deep dust. But the old man sat there without moving. He was too tired to go any farther.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
Who was sitting by the side of the road?
“You haven’t brought home that sick brat!” Anger and astonishment were in the tones of Mrs. Joe Thompson; her face was in a flame.
“I think women’s hearts are sometimes very hard,” said Joe. Usually Joe Thompson got out of his wife’s way, or kept rigidly silent and non-combative when she fired up on any subject; it was with some surprise, therefore, that she now encountered a firmly-set countenance and a resolute pair of eyes.
“Women’s hearts are not half so hard as men’s!”
Joe saw, by a quick intuition, that his resolute bearing h«d impressed his wife and he answered quickly, and with real indignation, “Be that as it may, every woman at the funeral turned her eyes steadily from the sick child’s face, and when the cart went off with her dead mother, hurried away, and left her alone in that old hut, with the sun not an hour in the sky.”
“Where were John and Kate?” asked Mrs. Thompson.
“Farmer Jones tossed John into his wagon, and drove off. Katie went home with Mrs. Ellis; but nobody wanted the poor sick one. ‘Send her to the poorhouse,’ was the cry.”
“Why didn’t you let her go, then. What did you bring her here for?”
“She can’t walk to the poorhouse,” said Joe; “somebody’s arms must carry her, and mine are strong enough for that task.”
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
How did Joe counter his wife on her remark about Maggie?
Discuss the following topic in groups.
What problems are you likely to face if you keep ants as pets?
Complete the sentence below by appropriately using anyone of the following:
if you want to/if you don’t want to/if you want him to
Don’t eat it____________________.
Notice how in a comic book, there are no speech marks when characters talk. Instead what they say is put in a speech ‘bubble’. However, if we wish to repeat or ‘report’ what they say, we must put it into reported speech.
Change the following sentences in the story to reported speech. The first one has been done for you.
I want to see the king.
Gopal told the guards_________________
What did the narrator do when he found Kari stealing the bananas?
How did the monkey respond to crocodile’s invitation?
Fill in the blank in the sentence below with the words or phrases from the box. (You may not know the meaning of all the words. Look such words up in a dictionary, or ask your teacher.)
Who stole the diamond is still a ____________.
How does Lady Macbeth attempt to divert the attention of the guests from Macbeth’s strange behaviour at the banquet?
