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Question
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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Solution
(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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RELATED QUESTIONS
Find the words in the text which show Ustad Bismillah Khan’s feelings about the items listed below. Then mark a tick (✓ ) in the correct column. Discuss your answers in class.
| Bismillah Khan’s Feelings about | Positive | Negative | Neutral |
|
1. teaching children music |
|||
| 2. the film world | |||
| 3. migrating to the U.S.A | |||
| 4. playing at temples | |||
| 5. getting the Bharat Ratna | |||
| 6. the banks of the Ganga | |||
| 7. leaving Benaras and Dumraon |
Explain what the reason for the following is .
Einstein leaving the school in Munich for good.
Its a cruel thing to leave her so.”
“Then take her to the poorhouse: she’ll have to go there,” answered the blacksmith’s wife, springing away, and leaving Joe behind.
For a little while the man stood with a puzzled air; then he turned back, and went into the hovel again. Maggie with painful effort, had raised herself to an upright position and was sitting on the bed, straining her eyes upon the door out of which all had just departed, A vague terror had come into her thin white face.
“O, Mr. Thompson!” she cried out, catching her suspended breath, “don’t leave me here all alone!” ,
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What assurance did Joe Thompson give Maggie? What did he do?
She again rubbed a match on the wall, and the light shone round her; in the brightness stood her old grandmother, clear and shining, yet mild and loving in her appearance. “Grandmother,” cried the little one, “O take me with you; I know you will go away when the match burns out; you will vanish like the warm stove, the roast goose, and the large, glorious Christmas-tree.” And she made haste to light the whole bundle of matches, for she wished to keep her grandmother there. And the matches glowed with a light that was brighter than the noon-day, and her grandmother had never appeared so large or so beautiful. She took the little girl in her arms, and they both flew upwards in brightness and joy far above the earth, where there was neither cold nor hunger nor pain, for they were with God.
In the dawn of morning there lay the poor little one, with pale cheeks and smiling mouth, leaning against the wall; she had been frozen to death on the last evening of the year; and the New-year’s sun rose and shone upon a little corpse! The child still sat, in the stiffness of death, holding the matches in her hand, one bundle of which was burnt. “She tried to warm herself,” said some. No one imagined what beautiful things she had seen, nor into what glory she had entered with her grandmother, on New-year’s day.
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Velvet grass
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| I | II |
|
1. Jumman and Algu were the best of friends. |
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Sheela: We walk to the school. It is nearby.
