Question

Answer any four of the following question in 30 – 40 words each:         

(a) ''What a thunderclap these words were to me!'' (Franz). What were those words and what was their effect of Franz?

(b) Why did Douglas fail to come to the surface of the pool as he hoped to?

(c) What was Kamala Das's childhood fear?

(d) How is the Earth a source of life when all seems dead on it? Keeping Quiet)

(e) How does Mr. Lamb react when Derry enters his garden?

(f) Which problem did the Maharaja face when he had killed seventy tigers? How did he solve it?

Answer 1

(a) Franz was shocked when M. Hamel told the students about the order from Berlin and that it was their last French lesson. He forgot about his teacher’s ruler and crankiness. He developed a fondness for M. Hamel at the troubling idea of being separated from him forever. He understood the pain and agony his teacher was undergoing. And, he became more sympathetic towards his teacher.

(b) The sudden realization of being thrown into the pool did not make him lose his wits immediately. Although frightened, he thought of a trick to come up to the surface but couldn’t execute it successfully. He panicked and felt suffocated by the water. His sense-perceptions gave way, his heart pounded loudly, his limbs became paralyzed with fear, his mind became dizzy and his lungs ached as he gulped water while making desperate attempts to come out of the water. Finally, he lost all his strength and willingness to keep struggling and blacked out.

(c) The poet's childhood fear was that she would loose her mother some day. Like all other children she too had the fear of being apart from her mother and not being able to see her. While she sat behind her mother in the car and looked at her pale face, she could see her childhood fear turning into reality. She sensed that she might not be able to see her mother alive at her next visit and thus, she stood silently at the airport waving to her mother without uttering a word other than her only desire to see her soon in proper health.

(d) The poet tells us that the earth under apparent stillness is productive, i.e. it remains very still and yet it nurtures life into it. For example, in autumn all the trees and leaves are dead but when the spring starts, new trees and new flowers are seen around us, i.e. a new life begins.

(e) Unlike Derry's thought that Mr. Lamb would be angry on hime if he sees him entering stealthily into the garden, Mr. Lamb treated Derry very gently. Like a father, he even gave Derry advice to be carefully while fetching apples as he might slip which could harm him physically.

(f) The tiger population became extinct in the forest of Pratibandapuram after the king had killed seventy tigers. To find the population to kill the rest of the thirty tigers, the Maharaja married a girl from a kingdom having the biggest population of tigers. He used to kill five to six tigers every time he visited his father-in-law.