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Question
In the short story, Quality, what causes the death of the younger Gessler brother?
Options
Slow starvation, rigid work schedule and dwindling customers.
Fever and cold due to bad weather.
Rude customers.
Inability to clear loans.
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Solution
Slow starvation, rigid work schedule and dwindling customers.
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When the liner had finally vanished over the horizon, I was absolutely alone in the stormy night sea. First I thought I had to swim one way, then another. It was not even midnight yet, and I had no hope at all of finding my way in this terrible night time ocean. I began to feel afraid. Waves of fear rolled through me, starting from my hands and feet, attacking my heart and then reaching through my neck to my head. Waves broke over me and water went into my snorkel. I realised I would not be able to last even half an hour in such a condition.
I saw individual stars, but I could not distinguish the constellations they belonged to. Then dawn came and put out all my stars and I felt my solitude more keenly. The sky was grey at first, then blue-violet shades appeared. In a few minutes, the colours became brighter, with dark red strips cutting across the sky!
The rising sun came up over the ocean. I was surrounded by large waves. The clouds turned pink and swept across the sky in all directions. It was a windy day.
There was no land visible. I grew alarmed. Had I made a mistake in my calculations? Perhaps the current had carried me a long a way off the course during the night?
An hour passed, perhaps two. "Landlll" I could not deny myself the pleasure of shouting the magic word aloud and of hearing my own voice. Perhaps it was my ghostly island of Siargao? I almost felt I had succeeded - now at least I had hope.
The sun looked out for the last time, as if it was saying goodbye to me, and hid itself away again. In a few minutes the sky was filled with all the colours of a rainbow, the bright shades changing and merging as I watched. At first the clouds became deep red and then their edges turned bright orange. A little while afterwards, the clouds turned lilac and dark violet. Darkness fell swiftly. My second lonely night in the ocean began. The stars came out unnoticed. I changed course and headed for the south west. As it turned out, this was an unforgivable mistake.
Evening was approaching. The ocean around me was full of life; large fish often leapt out of the water and big birds flew right above my head. I could see the island distinctly now. A line of dancing palms stretched the length of its shore. The sides of the mountain were covered in many different shades of green.
An hour passed, perhaps more. It was extraordinarily quiet. Then suddenly to my horror, I discovered my island had noticeably begun to move north and was drifting further and further in that direction right before my eyes. Before I had worked out what was happening and could sharply change my course towards the north, the southern tip of the island had appeared in front of me and, beyond that, open ocean stretched to the very horizon. I was totally at the mercy of the current and realised to my alarm that it was slowly carrying me past the land.
My third night in the ocean crept up unnoticed. This third night in the ocean was very dark, much darker than the two previous ones. I almost decided to die as I had no hope of seeing another dawn. I was suddenly aware of a quiet voice: "Swim to the sound of the breakers."
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At last I obeyed. Again I heard an approaching rumble. What I suddenly saw at a distance of about 30 or 40 metres has imprinted itself on my memory forever. It was a gigantic wave with steep, very slowly falling crests. Never in my life had I seen such an enormous wave - it even seemed to be touching the sky. It moved very slowly and was fantastically beautiful.
The wave did not break over me as I assumed it would. An irresistible force dragged me up its steep slope right to the very foot of the falling crest. Instinctively I clutched my mask snorkel and managed to take a deep breath. The crest started to break over me and pulled me under it. For a moment, I found myself in the air
under the crest as ifin a cave. Then my body was in a swirling current of water; the inner power of the wave made me recover several times, twisting me in all directions before it subsided.
I realised that I had to try to keep my body on the crest and I quickly took up a horizontal position. This time the wave quickly grabbed me and carried me at great speed for quite a long distance on its crest.
I got up to the surface easily and swam in the direction the waves were heading. "Somewhere there, beyond the reef, there should be a lagoon," I hoped.
Suddenly, I felt something hard under my feet. I could stand up to my chest in water! Around me I could see random currents of water, splashes of foam and phosphorescent spray, all swirling about. Before I fully came to my senses, another large wave approached and carried me some distance further. I was up to my waist in water when a new wave picked me up, taldng me several metres forward. Now the depth of the water was only up to my knees. I had enough time to take a few tentative steps, to catch my breath and look around.
I surfaced at the foot of very tall palm trees. I left a trail of luminous water and my body glittered like some princess's ball-gown. Only now did I feel completely safe. The ocean was behind me ....
(a) I saw individual stars, but I could not distinguish the constellation they belonged to. Then dawn came and put out all my stars.
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(b) Indeed there had been a distant rumbling for some time, although I had paid no attention to it. Now that I started listening to it I thought it sounded like the characteristic noise of jet airplanes constantly landing and taking off.
Therefore, rumbling means ............
(c) It was a gigantic wave with steep, very slowly falling crests. Never in my life had I seen such an enormous wave. It seemed to be touching the sky.
Therefore, gigantic means ............
(d) The wave did not break over me as I assumed it would. An irrsistible force dragged me up its steep slope, right to the very foot of the falling crest.
Therefore , irrisistible means.....................
(e) For a moment, I found myself caught in the air under the crest, as if in a cave . Then , my body was in the swirling current of water ; the inner power of the wave made me recover several times , twisting me in all directions before it subsided .
Therefore , swirling means..........
(f) All around me I could see random currents of water splashes of foam and phosphorescent spray of luminous water and my body glittered like some princess's ball gown.
Therefore, phosphorescent means .................
Working in groups of four, create your own mystery story. You may use the following chart to plan your story.
| Title of 'Solve-it Story' | |
| Main Character | |
| Secondary character | |
| Setting (where and when) | |
| Problem | |
| Main events | |
| Climax | |
| Solution |
Here's a glimpse of a naughty child whose life is full of fun and frolic .
One of the reasons why Tom's mind had drifted away from ita secret troubles was that it bad found a new and weighty matter to interest itself about. Becky Thatcher had stopped coming to school. Tom bad struggled with his pride a few days and tried to "whistle her down the wind," but failed. He began to find himself hanging around her father's house all night and feeling very miserable. She was ill. What if she should die! There was distraction in the thought. Tom Sawyer no longer took an interest in war, nor even in piracy. The charm of life was gone; there was nothing but dreariness left. He put his hoop away, and his bat; there was no joy in them any more. His aunt was concerned. She began to try all manners of remedies on him. She was one of those people who are Infatuated with patent medicines and all new-fangled methods of producing health or mending it. She was an inveterate experimenter in these things. When something fresh in this line came out, she was in a fever, right away, to try it; not on herself, for she was never ailing, but on anybody else that came handy.
2. She tried every remedy she could. Yet, not with standing all this, the boy grew more and more melancholy and pale and dejected. She added hot baths, sitz baths, shower baths, and plunges. The boy remained as dismal as a hearse. She began to assist the boy with a slim oatmeal diet and blister-plaster&. She calculated his capacity as she would judge and filled him up every day with quack cure-alls.
3. Tom had become indifferent to persecution by this time. This phase filled the old lady's heart with consternation. This indifference must be broken up at any cost. Now she heard of Pain-killer for the first time. She ordered a lot at once. She tasted it and was filled with gratitude. It was simply fire in a liquid form. She dropped the water treatment and everything else, and pinned her faith on Pain-killer. She gave Tom a teaspoonful and watched with the deepest anxiety for the result. Her troubles were instantly at rest, her soul at peace again; for the 'indifference' was broken up. The boy could not have shown a wilder, heartier interest, if she had built a fire under him.
4. Tom felt that it was time to wake up; this sort of life might be romantic enough, in his blighted condition, but it was getting to have too little sentiment and too much distracting variety about it. So he thought over various plans for relief and finally hit upon that of professing to be fond of Pain-killer. He asked for it so often that he became a nuisance and his aunt ended up by telling him to help himself and quit bothering her. If it had been Sid, she would have had no misgivings to alloy her delight; but since it was Tom, she watched the bottle clandestinely. She found that the medicine did really diminish, but it did not occur to her that the boy was mending the health of a crack in the sitting-room floor with it.
5. One day Tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt's yellow cat came along, purring, eyeing the teaspoon avariciously and begging for a taste. Tom said: "Peter, now you've asked for it, and I'll give it to you, because there ain't anything mean about me; but if you find you don't like it, you mustn't blame anybody but your own self."
6. Tom pried his mouth open and poured down the Pain-killer. Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air, and then delivered a war-whoop and set off round and round the room, banging against furniture, upsetting flower-pots, and making general havoc. Next he rose on his hind feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of enjoyment, with his head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming his unappeasable happiness. Then he went tearing around the house again spreading chaos and destruction in his path. Aunt Polly entered in time to see him throw a few double summersaults, deliver a final mighty hurrah, and sail through the open window, carrying the rest of the flower-pots with him. The old lady stood petrified with astonishment, peering over her glasses; Tom lay on the floor hysterical with laughter.
"Tom, what on earth ails that cat?"
"I don't know, aunt," gasped the boy.
7. The old lady was bending down, Tom watching, with interest emphasized by anxiety. Too late he divined her 'drift'. The handle of the telltale teaspoon was visible under the sofa. Aunt Polly took it, held it up. Tom winced, and dropped his eyes. Aunt Polly raised him by the usual handle - his ear - and cracked his head soundly with her thimble.
"Now, sir, what did you want to treat that poor dumb beast so, for?"
"I done it out of pity for him - because he hadn't any aunt."
"Hadn't any aunt! -you numskull. What has that got to do with it?"
"Heaps. Because if he'd had one, she'd a burnt him out herself! She'd a roasted his bowels out of him 'thout any more feeling than if he was a human!"
Tom looked up in her face with just a perceptible twinkle peeping through his gravity.
"I know you was meaning for the best, aunty, and so was I with Peter. It done him good, too. I never see him get around so-"
Some are Purple and gold flecked grey
For she who has journeyed through life midway,
Whose hands have cherished , whose love has blest,
And cradled fair sons on her faithful breast,
And serves her household in fruitful pride,
And worship the gods at her husband's side.
Read the lines given above and answer the question that follow:
What hues of bangles are cherished by a bride ? What are they symbolic of?
The village consisted of less than thirty houses, only one of them built with brick and cement. Painted a brilliant yellow and blue all over with gorgeous carvings of gods and gargoyles on its balustrade, it was known as the Big House. The other houses, distributed in four streets, were generally of bamboo thatch, straw, mud, and other unspecified material. Muni’s was the last house in the fourth street, beyond which stretched the fields. In his prosperous days Muni had owned a flock of forty sheep and goats and sallied forth every morning driving the flock to the highway a couple of miles away.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
What did Muni’s wife cook for him in the morning? How did she cook it?
“So that is what you are doing out here? A marshal!” “My dear Miss Fairchild,” said ’ Easton, calmly, “I had to do something. Money has & way of taking wings unto itself, and
you know it takes money to keep step with our crowd in Washington. I saw this opening in the West, and—well, a marshalship isn’t quite as high a position as that of ambassador, but—” “The ambassador,” said the girl, warmly, “doesn’t call any more. He needn’t ever have done so. You ought to know that. And so now you are one of these dashing Western heroes, and you ride and shoot and go into all kinds of dangers. That’s different from the Washington life. You have been missed from the old crowd.” The girl’s eyes, fascinated, went back, widening a little, to rest upon the glittering handcuffs. “Don’t you worry about them, miss,” said the other man. “All marshals handcuff themselves to their prisoners to keep them from getting away. Mr. Easton knows his business.” “Will we see you again soon in Washington?” asked the girl. “Not soon, I think,” said Easton. “My butterfly days are over, I fear.”
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
What does Mr Easton mean by the phrase, “My butterfly days are over, I fear.”
Most terribly cold it was; it snowed, and was nearly quite dark, and evening— the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness there went along the street a poor little girl, bareheaded, and with naked feet. When she left home she had slippers on, it is true; but what was the good of that? They were very large slippers, which her mother had hitherto worn; so large were they; and the poor little thing lost them as she scuffled away across the street, because of two carriages that rolled by dreadfully fast.
One slipper was nowhere to be found; the other had been laid hold of by an urchin, and off he ran with it; he thought it would do capitally for a cradle when he some day or other should have children himself. So the little maiden walked on with her tiny naked feet, that were quite red and blue from cold. She carried a quantity of matches in an old apron, and she held a bundle of them in her hand. Nobody had bought anything of her the whole livelong day; no one had given her a single farthing. She crept along trembling with cold and hunger—a very picture of sorrow, the poor little thing!
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
Describe the condition of the girl.
Beside him in the shoals as he lay waiting glimmered a blue gem. It was not a gem, though: it was sand—?worn glass that had been rolling about in the river for a long time. By chance, it was perforated right through—the neck of a bottle perhaps?—a blue bead. In the shrill noisy village above the ford, out of a mud house the same colour as the ground came a little girl, a thin starveling child dressed in an earth—?coloured rag. She had torn the rag in two to make skirt and sari. Sibia was eating the last of her meal, chupatti wrapped round a smear of green chilli and rancid butter; and she divided this also, to make
it seem more, and bit it, showing straight white teeth. With her ebony hair and great eyes, and her skin of oiled brown cream, she was a happy immature child—?woman about twelve years old. Bare foot, of course, and often goosey—?cold on a winter morning, and born to toil. In all her life, she had never owned anything but a rag. She had never owned even one anna—not a pice.
Why does the writer mention the blue bead at the same time that the crocodile is introduced?
Ans. The author mentions the blue bead at the same time that the crocodile is introduced to create suspense and a foreshadowing of the events’to happen.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
What was Sibia’s life like?
Sibia sprang.
From boulder to boulder she came leaping like a rock goat. Sometimes it had seemed difficult to cross these stones, especially the big gap in the middle where the river coursed through like a bulge of glass. But now she came on wings, choosing her footing in midair without even thinking about it, and in one moment she was beside the shrieking woman. In the boiling bloody water, the face of the crocodile, fastened round her leg, was tugging to and fro, and smiling. His eyes rolled on to Sibia. One slap of the tail could kill her. He struck. Up shot the water, twenty feet, and fell like a silver chain. Again! The rock jumped under the blow. But in the daily heroism of the jungle, as common as a thorn tree, Sibia did not hesitate. She aimed at the reptile’s eyes. With all the force of her little body, she drove the hayfork at the eyes, and one prong went in—right in— while its pair scratched past on the horny cheek. The crocodile reared up in convulsion, till half his lizard body was out of the river, the tail and nose nearly meeting over his stony back. Then he crashed back, exploding the water, and in an uproar of bloody foam he disappeared. He would die. Not yet, but presently, though his death would not be known for days; not till his stomach, blown with gas, floated him. Then perhaps he would be found upside down among the logs at the timber boom, with pus in his eye. Sibia got arms round the fainting woman, and somehow dragged her from the water.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
Describe how Sibia flew to save the woman.
What does Canynge do soon after and what does he find? What was his reaction? What does the discovery; prove?
When Mabel Dancy later requests De Levis to withdraw the charge, how does he respond? What declaration does Dancy wish De Levis to sign?
What is meant by 'dead habit'? What is 'dead habits' compared to and why?
Mark the right item.
The old farmer and his wife loved the dog
The author felt sorry for complaining about his boots. What made him feel so?
Where did the old flea collected by Mr Wonka live?
Why did Akbar ask Tansen to join his court?
Make noun from the word given below by adding –ness, ity, ty or y
calm ___________.
How did the villagers come to know of the magic waterfall?
Multiple Choice Question:
When does the kite look bright?
Find these sentences in the story and fill in the blanks.
Find these sentences in the story and fill in the blanks.
(i) This made Taro ___________________ than ever. (3)
(ii) He decided to work ___________________ than before. (3)
(iii) Next morning, Taro jumped out of bed ___________________ than usual. (4)
(iv) He began to chop even ____________________. (4)
(v) Next morning, Taro started for work even _______________ than the morning before. (10)
Answer the question.
What are the things normal people do that the poet talks about?
Talk to your partner and say whether the following statement is true or false.
Camels store water in their humps.
Based on the following points write a story.
- Your aunt has gone to her mother’s house.
- Your uncle does his cooking.
- He is absent-minded.
- He puts vegetables on stove
- He begins to clean his bicycle outside.
- The neighbour calls out saying something is burning.
- Your uncle rushes to the kitchen.
- To save vegetables, he puts some oil in them.
- Unfortunately, it’s machine oil, not cooking oil.
- What do you think happens to the vegetables?
Begin like this: Last month my aunt decided to visit her parents...
“When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease - of joy that kills."
Which one of the following explains why the short story, The Story of an Hour ends with the phrase "...of joy that kills"?
- To convey a sense of irony.
- To make the readers judge Mrs. Mallard.
- To convey Mrs. Mallard’s sheer sense of shock.
- To explain Brently Mallard’s shock at the incident.
