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Question
Sketch the character of Ray in about 80 words. What qualities of Ray do you admire most?
Solution
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Irony is when we say one thing but mean another, usually the opposite of what we say. When someone makes a mistake and you say, Oh! That was clever!” that is irony. You’re saying ‘clever’ to mean ‘not clever’.
Expressions we often use in an ironic fashion are:
• Oh, wasn’t that clever!/Oh that was clever!
• You have been a great help, I must say!
• You’ve got yourself into a lovely mess, haven’t you?
• Oh, very funny!/How funny!
We use a slightly different tone of voice when we use these words ironically.
Read the play carefully and find the words and expressions Gerrard uses in an ironic way.
Then say what these expressions really mean. Two examples have been given below.
Write down three such expressions along with what they really mean.
| What the author says | What he means |
| Why, this is a surprise, Mr – er – |
He pretends that the intruder is a social visitor whom he is welcoming. In this way he hides his fear. |
| At last a sympathetic audience! | He pretends that the intruder wants to listen to him, whereas actually the intruder wants to find out information for his own use. |
Do you think Prashant is good leader? Do you think young people can get together to help people during natural calamities?
On the basis of your understanding of the poem, answer the following question
by ticking the correct option.
The tone and mood of the rain in the poem reflects its_________.
Is it possible to make accurate guesses about the people you have never met? Read the poem, to see how conclusions can be drawn about people.
Abandoned Farmhouse
He was a big man, says the size of his shoes On a pile of broken dishes by the house; A tall man too, says the length of the bed In an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man, Says the Bible with a broken back On the floor below a window, bright with sun; But not a man for farming, say the fields Cluttered with boulders and a leaky barn.
A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall Papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves Covered with oilcloth, and they had a child Says the sandbox made from a tractor tyre. Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves And canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar-hole, And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames. It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.
Something went wrong, says the empty house In the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields Say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars In the cellar say she left in a nervous haste. And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard Like branches after a storm - a rubber cow, a rusty tractor and a broken plow, a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say. Ted Kooser
Six humans trapped by happenstance
In black and bitter cold.
Each one possessed a stick of wood,
Or so the story's told.
Their dying fire in need of logs;
The first man held his back.
For on the faces around the fire,
He noticed one was black.
Read the lines given above and answer the question that follow:
Why does the poet use this diction?
When there was a strong wind, the pine trees made sad, eerie sounds that kept most people to the main road. But Mr. Oliver was not a nervous or imaginative man. He carried a torch – and on the night I write of, its pale gleam, the batteries were running down – moved fitfully over the narrow forest path. When its flickering light fell on the figure of a boy, who was sitting alone on a rock, Mr. Oliver stopped.
Boys were not supposed to be out of school after seven P.M. and it was now well past nine. What are you doing out here, boy, asked Mr. Oliver sharply, moving closer so that he could recognize the miscreant.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
What was Mr Oliver’s reaction?
Mr. Oliver, an Anglo-Indian teacher, was returning to his school late one night on the outskirts of the hill station of Shimla. The school was conducted on English public school lines and the boys – most of them from well-to-do Indian families – wore blazers, caps and ties. “Life” magazine, in a feature on India, had once called this school the Eton of the East.
Mr. Oliver had been teaching in this school for several years. He’s no longer there. The Shimla Bazaar, with its cinemas and restaurants, was about two miles from the school; and Mr. Oliver, a bachelor, usually strolled into the town in the evening returning after dark, when he would take short cut through a pine forest.
Read the extract given below and answer the question that follow.
What did Mr Oliver generally do in the evening?
Which race does De Levis mention later? What is his opinion about society?
Answer the following question.
What is “the master call”? Why is it the most important signal for an elephant to learn?
Answer the following questions.
Why is it not good to be a rebel oneself?
The king helped the hermit in digging the beds. He even slept on the floor of the hut and lived like a simple man in the hermit’s hut. What lesson we learn from this?
Describe the change the cherry tree underwent after the kind old poured a pinch of ash over it.
What was the farmer’s comment on his wife’s fears?
This story has a lot of rhyming words, as a poem does. Can you write out some parts of it like a poem, so that the rhymes come at the end of separate lines?
For example:
Patrick never did homework. “Too boring,” he said. He played baseball and hockey and Nintendo instead.
Answer the following question:
What abilities must an astronaut have, according to the journalist?
Why does Mary O’ Neill call English “a wonderful game’?
Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow:
| Portia: The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath : it is twice blessed : It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown: |
- Where does this scene take place? Why Is Portia here? [2]
- To what is mercy compared in these lines? [2]
- Why does Portia call mercy ‘twice blessed’?
Explain the lines:
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
the throned monarch better than his crown: [3] - Later in her speech Portia mentions a sceptre. What is a sceptre?
How, according to Portia, is mercy above the ‘sceptred sway’? [3]
Read the following extract from H.W. Longfellow’s poem, ‘Haunted Houses' and answer the questions that follow:
| The stranger at my fireside cannot see The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear; He but perceives what is; while unto me All that has been is visible and clear. |
- What makes the poet-narrator different from the stranger at his fireside? [3]
- What, according to the poet, turns a house into a ‘haunted’ house? [3]
- Where is one likely to meet the ‘phantoms’ in a haunted house? [3]
- What are the poet-narrator’s views on owning property? [3]
- How do the poet’s views of ghosts differ from the traditional perception of ghosts? How would you describe the mood that the poem evokes? Give ONE reason for your answer. [4]
