Rising Sun text book – 2

RISING SUN BOOK – II

An Anthology of Prose, Poetry and Fiction

MRS. ASRA TABASSUM

SUN INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TOURISM & MANAGEMENT

VISAKHAPATNAM    /         RUSHIKONDA  /         HYDERABAD

PREFACE

“Rising Sun Book – II” is an anthology of prose, Poetry, Short Stories and one act plays for the students of Foundation English at the undergraduate level. The book contains three preparatory essays, six poems, three short stories and two one act plays. It deals with everyday concerns and are simple and linguistically not very demanding. At the same time they pose searching questions and can stimulate critical and positive thinking.

Glossary is deliberately kept in minimal, extensive exercises provided at the end of each lesson.

Suggestions for improvement are welcome and will be incorporated, whenever feasible.

                                                                   Mrs. Asra Tabassum

                                        M.A(English); M.Ed; MBA (HR & Marketing)

Language – II English – II

(Common to all UG Programmes)

CONTENTS

Unit – I

1. Ecology                                   – A.K. Ramanujan
2. Gift                                          – Alice Walker
3. The First Meeting                     – Sujata Bhatt

Unit – II

• Fueled                                      – Marcie Hans
• Asleep                                      – Ernst Jandl
• Buying and selling                   – Khalil Gibran

Unit – III

• The End of living and The Beginning of Survival          – Chief Seattle
• My Wood                                                             – E.M. Forster
• The Meeting of Races                                           – Rabindranath Tagore

Unit- IV

1. The Refugee                                      – K.A.Abbas
2. I Have a Dream                        – Martin Luther King
3. Those People Next Door                   – A.G. Gardiner

Unit – V

1. Marriage is a private Affair       – Chinua Achebe
2. The Fortune                                       – Teller – Karel Capek
3. Proposal                                   – Anton Chekov

Lesson No :1                                                                            Unit  -I

Ecology

A.K. Ramanujan

The day after the first rain,

For years, I would come home

In a rage,

for I could see from a mile away

our three Red Champak trees

had done it again,

had burst into flower and given Mother

her first blinding migraine

of the season

with their street-long heavy-hung

yellow pollen fog of a fragrance

no wind could sift,

no door could shut out from our black-

pillared house whose walls had ears

and eyes,

scales, smells, bone-creaks, nightly

visiting voices, and were porous

like us,

but Mother, flashing her temper

like her mother’s twisted silver,

grandchildren’s knickers

wet as the cold pack on her head,

would not let us cut down

a flowering tree

Introduction

A.K. Ramanujan (1929 -1993) was born in Mysore, educated at Mysore and Indiana Universities and till his death taught at the University of Chicago. Apart from being a teacher, he was also a poet, linguist, translator and folklorist. He has to his credit The striders (1966), The Interior Landscape (1967), Relations (1971), Selected Poems, speaking of Siva and Samskara(1976). Hymns for the Drowing (1981). Poems of Love and War (1985), Second Sight (1986) and Folk Tales from India (1993).

            In this poem, the overpowering fragrance of the Champak flowers is describe throughout the first 6 stanzas of the poem. It is well balanced with the rest of the five because, the Champak will remain mother’s blessing. There is plenty and prosperity only because of Champak. Ramanujan also points out that the trees are the continuation of human beings.

Glossary

Rage            : extreme anger, tempest, fury

Champak    : a kind of fragrant Indian flower

Blinding      : unseeable, sightless

Migraine      : severe headache

Pollen                   : pollen grains. Yellow dust of flowers

Fog             : mist, vapour

Fragrance    : delicate scent, smell

Sift              : to separate by passing through a sieve or filter, distil

Porous        : absorbent, spongy

Silver          : articles and utensils made of silver

Knickers      : half-drawers

Seeded        : germinated, grown

Providential : fortunate, lucky

Dower         : dowry

Comprehension

1. Answer the following questions in a paragraph each.
2. Why did the poet come home in a rage?
3. Why did mother get migraine?
4. Describe the street
5. What was it like, inside the house?
6. What is mother’s temper compared with?
7. How did the Champak trees come into existence?
8. Why didn’t Mother want those trees cut off?
9. Essay
10. What are the gifts given to Mother?
11. In what way is ecology’s balance maintained?

Lesson No :2                                                                            Unit  -I

GIFT

-Alice Walker

He said: Here is my soul.
I did not want his soul
but I am a Southerner
and very polite.
I took it lightly
as it was offered. But did not
chain it down.
I loved it and tended
it. I would hand it back
as good as new.

He said: How dare you want
my soul! Give it back!
How greedy you are!
It is a trait
I had not noticed
before!

I said: But your soul
never left you. It was only
a heavy thought from
your childhood
passed to me for safekeeping.

But he never believed me.
Until the end
he called me possessive
and held his soul
so tightly
it shrank
to fit his hand.

Introduction

          Alice Walker is one of the most acclaimed Afro-American writers of modern times. She was born in 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia, she was educated at Spelman and Sara Lawrebec Colleges. She became famous for works in Love and Trouble (1973), You Cant’t Keep a Good Woman Down (1981) which are both collections of short fiction, in search Our Mother Gardens (1983) a collection of critical essays and reviews and a novel entitled The Colour Purple for she was given the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1983. She is also a poet who addresses a number of problems.

            A gift is generally thought of a symbol of affection or love or goodwill. What is given as gift is not so important as the intention and emotion with which it is given. In this poem, the lover believes that his lady has appropriated his soul. The lady is more shocked than surprised upon hearing this. She believes that the man has not given his soul but has only guarded it safely.

Glossary

Southerner                   : a person coming from the south of the country

Lightly                                    : softly, not seriously

Chain (v)                     : tie down, bind

Greedy                        : jealous

Trait                             : quality

Possessive                   : claiming things as one’s own

Shrank (shrink)            : reduce in size

Comprehension

1. Answer the following questions in a paragraph each.
2. What makes the lady think that the man is in love with her?
3. What was the reason for her taking it lightly?
4. Why could she not chain it down?
5. Is the woman guilty of the accusation?
6. Is’ the man ready to accept his mistake?
7. Are women really ‘possessive’?
8. What is the significance of the sentence ‘it shrank to fit his hand’?
9. Essay
10. How does the poet bring out the pathos of lost-love being not so painful as the accusation charged against her?
11. In what why is the man punished for refusing to love correctly?

Lesson No :3                                                                            Unit  -I

THE FIRST MEETING

-Sujata Bhatt

When I run past the uncounted trees,

groves of mango, eucalyptus –

how the grass slips beneath my feet,

how the wind circles up my legs,

              (invisible snake I can’t escape)                                        5

How the kingfisher-blue sky grows

Sunnier each second as I run

              Up the hill almost blinded,

              Run down the other side, my tongue dry,

              To the lake where the sky is trapped, tamed blue.            10

But closer, it is clear water. As I drink

Green snakes swim up to the surface,

I recoil amazed, run back faster, faster.

When I get home

he’s there: King Cobra

tightly curled up in a corner.

He looks tired.                                                                              15

     ‘Come inside, close the door,

     Don’t run away,’ he seems to smile.

     ‘I live in your garden                                                                20

I chose it because of the huge purple-golden dahlias.

I’ve never seen such tall stalks,

Such plump flowers, and the mice!’

‘What do you want?’ I ask afraid

His sunken hood will expand.                                                       25

‘Oh you needn’t worry, you needn’t worship me

as all the rest do. Please don’t change.

Everywhere I go people pester me

with their prayers,

their hundred bowls of milk a day.                                                         30

There’s only so much milk I can drink.

I won’t be caught

and have my teeth pulled out.

I won’t be stuffed in a basket

and commanded to rise, wave after wave,

to ripple around the straw rim.                                                      35

As if their baskets could move me.

Oh I am sooo tired …’ he sighs.

‘What do you want?’ I ask.                                                           40

‘I want to live in your garden,

to visit you, especially those nights you sing,

let me join you,

And once in a while, let me lie around your neck

and share a bowl of milk.’                                                            45

Introduction

     Sujata Bhatt was born in Ahmedabad in 1956. At present, she lives with her family in Bremen, Germany. Even with her first collection of poems, Brunizem, Bhatt won the Alice Hunt Barlett Prize and the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asia). She has travelled widely and her poem reflect the influences upon her. Many of her poems do reflects aspects of her life in Gujarat and have a telling effect on the reader.

      ‘The First Meeting’ is a drama reflecting the myriad changing colours of man’s relationship with nature. What begins as excitement and wonder goes on to become fear and anxiety. This ultimately condenses into total understanding and explicit sympathy thus building up a close bond with nature.

Glossary

Trapped           : caught

Tanned            : turned dark due to exposure to the sun

Recoil              : turn back suddenly; withdraw

Dahlias             : flowers

Plump              : fat

Sunken            : embedded deeply

Hood               : the expanded head of the snake

Pester               : trouble

Stuffed             : filled completely

Ripple              : wave on the surface going in circles

Rim                 : edge

Comprehension

1. Answer the following questions in a paragraph each.
2. Where does the speaker run?
3. Describe the flora and fauna.
4. What has happened to the lake?
5. What is there at home?
6. Describe the cobra. Does he really talk?
7. What do people generally do to the cobra?
8. What do the charmers believe?
9. What is the irony in the situation?
10. What does the snake want to do?
11. Will the poet be able to share her life with the cobra?
12. Essay
13. What are the two different experiences that the poet feels outside and inside the house?
14. Can man reconcile his life with nature? substantiate.

Lesson No :4                                                                            Unit  -II

FUELED

• Marcie Hans

Fueled
by a million
man-made
wings of fire-
the rocket tore a tunnel
through the sky-
and everybody cheered.
Fueled
only by a thought from God-
the seedling
urged its way
through thicknesses of black-
and as it pierced
the heavy ceiling of the soil-
and launched itself
up into outer space –
no
one
even
clapped.

Introduction

          The poem seems to be simple but it incorporates a whole thesis in a nutshell. In this short poem, Marcie Hans talks about creation and invention. It also balances the invention of man and God’s creation. But the imbalance is pointed out succinctly because petty man cheers himself by paltry exhibitions of his achievement. But no one seems to appreciate the silent success of God who by a mere thought, made an insentient seeding fight against hard earth and grow up into a tree.

             The Graphic representation of the words show the image of a rocket or even a tree but only one half of it.

            The two sections being with the word fueled but the poet has brought out the vast difference between the two kinds of fuelling.

Glossary

Fueled                  : driven with fuel

Cheered                : shouting encouragement

Seedling                : young  plant, just grown out of a seed

Comprehension

1. Answer the following questions in a paragraph each.
2. Describe the rocket launching.
3. Describe the growth of the seedling.
4. Comment on the way in which the varying lengths of the lines representing the balance or imbalance of ideas.
5. Comment on the use of the words:
6. Tore
7. Pierced
8. Launched
9. Why has the poet used the word ‘launched’ for the seeed and not for the rocket as it is customarily done?
10. Essay
11. In what way does Marcie Hans explicate the idea that is greater than man and that man is silly?
12. How do the words and lines in the poem contribute to these of the poem?
13. How does the seed grow?

Lesson No :5                                                                            Unit  -II

Asleep

• Ernst Jandl

Translated from German by Michael Hamburger

He came across a tree.

He built his house beneath it.

Out of the tree he cut

himself a stick.

The stick became his lance.

The lance became his rifle.

The rifle became a gun.

The gun became a bomb.

The bomb hit his house and ripped

up the tree by the roots.

He stood there wondering

But he didn’t wake up.

Introduction:

          In this poem, Ernst Jandl shows that man is selfish. Man will destroy everything but he will still not realize that he himself is responsible for all the destruction. The poet uses the word ‘asleep’ as the title in order to make people think that man is sleeping but at the end of the poem, after all the man has done with his eyes wide open, he still has not woken up to the realization that he himself is responsible for the destruction he has caused. The poet points out that not only has man made use of nature but he has also plundered it and destroyed it. The pathos of it is that he is not even aware of it but stands wondering.

Glossary

Lance              : sharp, pointed, elongated weapon

Ripped            : cut open

Wondering      : appreciating

Comprehension

1. Answer the following questions in a paragraph each.
2. What did man do at the beginning?
3. Does ‘He’ which occurs initially and that which occurs in the penultimate line refer to the same person? Substantiate.
4. Describe the development of man’s ‘arms’.
5. Man made many other things out of wood. Why does the poet not mention any of them?
6. Why did the man not wake up?
7. How can the man be made to come awake?
8. Essay
9. What is the theme of the poem? Substantiate your answer with examples from the text?
10. Apart from the development of civilization towards total destruction, what other interpretations can you give to the poem?
    
    

Lesson No :6                                                                       Unit  -II

BUYING AND SELLING

• Khalil Gibran

And a merchant said, ‘Speak to us of Buying and Selling.’ 

And he answered and said: 

To you the earth yields her fruit, and you shall not want if you but know how to fill your hands. 

It is in exchanging the gifts of the earth that you shall find abundance and be satisfied. 

Yet unless the exchange be in love and kindly justice, it will but lead some to greed and others to hunger. 

When in the market place you toilers of the sea and fields and vineyards meet the weavers and the potters and the gatherers of spices, – 

Invoke then the master spirit of the earth, to come into your midst and sanctify the scales and the reckoning that weighs value against value. 

And suffer not the barren-handed to take part in your transactions, who would sell their words for your labour. 

To such men you should say, 

‘Come with us to the field, or go with our brothers to the sea and cast your net; 

For the land and the sea shall be bountiful to you even as to us.’ 

And if there come the singers and the dancers and the flute players, – buy of their gifts also. 

For they too are gatherers of fruit and frankincense, and that which they bring, though fashioned of dreams, is raiment and food for your soul. 

And before you leave the marketplace, see that no one has gone his way with empty hands. 

For the master spirit of the earth shall not sleep peacefully upon the wind till the needs of the least of you are satisfied.

Introduction:

          Khalil Gibran (1883 -1931) poet, philosopher, and artist, was born in Lebanon, a land that has produced many prophets. The millions of Arabic-speaking people familiar with his writings consider him the genius of his age. His poetry has been translated into more than twenty languages. His drawings and paintings have been exhibited in the great capitals of the world and the united states, which he made his home. The Prophet, the Wanderer, The Earth’s God  and the Broken Wings are some of his well known works.

            ‘Buying and Selling’ is an extract form The Prophet,  which is in the form of a poetic discourse. Almustafa, the prophet has sojourned for twelve long years in Orphalese and was about to return to his native land. At the point of departure, he answeres the questions of the people on vital concerns like freedom , laws, education, crime and punishment, trading and many other important aspects of life. His words of wisdom are the treasure which the people promise to bequeath to their children.

Glossary

The master spirit of the earth              : the spirit of justice, the spirit of nature

Sanctify the scales and the reckoning : to be fair in transactions, fix the right      

                                                               value for somebody’s labour.

Weights value against value                : to realize the true worth of an object as

   different from its monetary value.

Raiment                                                           : clothes

Suffer not the barren-handed             : not to permit the empty handed merchants

                                                                          And the non-labouring class to buy the 

  fruits of labour.

Fruit and frankincense                                    : here, refers to the creative works of the

    artists.

Shall not sleep peacefully upon the wind : the spirit of justice will not be satisfied

Comprehension

1. Answer the following questions in a paragraph each.
2. What are the gifts of earth and how should be exchanged?
3. Who are the people who participate in the transactions in the market place?
4. What gifts do the artists offer? Why should we buy them?
5. How should the toilers of the earth ensure that they are not exploited by the barren-handed merchants?
6. When shall the master spirit of the earth be satisfied?
7. Is it possible to practice ethics in matters of business? Discuss with reference to your everyday experience.
8. Why has the poem been given the title ‘Buying and Selling’?
9. How should we buy and how should we sell?
10. Essay
11. Substantiate with example from the poem that it is a natural law for the spirit of the earth to see to it that everyone is satisfied.
12. Who are those who come to the market to buy and sell? Do they do it properly?
13. How should buying and selling be done?

Lesson No :7                                                                            Unit  -III

THE END OF LIVING

AND

THE BEGINNING OF SURVIVAL

• Chief Seattle

In 1854, the government of United States made an offer for a large area of Indian land and promised a ‘reservation’ for the Indian people. Chief Seattle’s reply is a most beautiful and profound statement on environment…

How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us.

If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. The sap which courses through the trees carries the memories of the red man…

The White man’s dead forget the country of their birth when they go to walk among the stars. Our dead never forget this beautiful earth, for it is the mother of the red man.

We are part of the earth and it is part of us.

The perfumed flowers are out sisters; the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers.

 The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man – all belong to the same family.

So, when the Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land, he asks much of us. The Great Chief sends word he will reserve us a place so that we can live comfortably to ourselves.

He will be our father and we will be his children. So we will consider your offer to buy our land.

But it will but be easy. For this land is sacred to us.

This shining water that moves in the stream and rivers is not just water but the blood of our ancestors.

If we sell you land, you must remember that it is sacred and you must teach your children that it is sacred and that each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water’s murmur is the voice of my father’s father.

The rivers are our brothers, they quench our thirst. The rivers carry our canoes, and feed our children. If we sell you our land, you must remember and teach your children, that the rivers are our brothers, and yours; and you must henceforth give the rivers the kindness you would give any brother.

We know that the White man does not understand our ways. One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs.

The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on.

He leaves his father’s grave behind, and he does not care. He kidnaps the earth form his children, and he does not care.

His father’s grave, and his children’s birthright, are forgotten. He treats his mother, the earth, and his brother, the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads.

His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert.

I do not know. Our ways are different from your ways.

The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the red man. But perhaps it is because the red man is a savage and does not understand.

There is no quiet place in the white man’s cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring, or the rustle of an insect’s wings.

 But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand.

The clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is there to life if a man cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frogs around a pond at night? I am a red man and do not understand.

The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of a pond, and the smell of the wind itself, cleansed by a mid-day rain, or scented with the pinion pine.

The air is precious to the red man, for all things share the same breath – the beast, the tree, the man, they all share the same breath.

The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes. Like a man dying for many days, he is numb to the stench.

But if we sell you our land, you must remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit will all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh.

 And if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where even the white man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow’s flowers.

So we will consider your offer to buy our land. If we decide to accept, I will make one condition: The white man must treat the beasts of this land as his brother.

I am a savage and I do not understand any other way.

I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train.

I am a savage and I do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be more important than the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive.

What is man without the beast? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit.

For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected.

You may teach to your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of our grandfather’s. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin.

Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother.

            Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.

This we know: the earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know.

All things are connected like blood which unites one family. All things are connected.

 Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life: he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

Even the white man, whose God walks and talks with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny.

We may be brothers after all.

We shall see.

One thing we know, which the white man may one day discover – our God is the same God.

You may think now that you own Him as you wish to own our land; but you cannot. He is the God of man, and His compassion is equal for the red man and the white.

This earth is precious to Him, and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its Creator.

The white too shall pass; perhaps sooner than all other tribes. Contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste. But in you perishing you will shine brightly, fired by the strength of the God who brought you to this land and for some special purpose gave you dominion over this land and over the red man.

That destiny is a mystery to us, for we do not understand when the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses are tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires.

 Where is the thicket? Gone.

Where is the eagle? Gone.

 The end of living and the beginning of survival.

Introduction:

In 1845, the ‘Great White Chief’ in Washington made an office for a large area of Indian land and promised a ‘reservation’ for the Indian people. Chief Seattle’s reply, published here in full, has been described as the most beautiful and profound statement on the environment ever made.

Chief Seattle wants the white buyer to understand the concern that the earth is sacred. The white people have to teach their children to respect the earth and the sky. They should stop shooting beasts for sport and start treating them as brothers. The main thrust of the speech is that man can survive only if he takes good care of and respects the environment.

Glossary

Sparkle            : shine, glitter

Pine needle      : sharp needles of the pine needles

Clearing           : a space from where trees & thickets have been removed\

Sap                  : juice; liquid

Courses (v)      : goes through; pass

Crests              : peaks; crowns

Sacred             : holy; blessed

Plundered        : stole; robbed

Devour                        : eat greedily

Unfurling        : opening our; unfolding

Rustle              : crackle; crunch

Clatter             : clang; bang

Scented           : perfumed; fragrant

Pinion pine      : pine that comes bowing down with its own weight

Precious           : costly; valuable

Stench             : stink; unpleasant smell

Sigh                 : exhale noisily; groan

Savage             : brutal; uncivilized

Rotting            : decaying; decomposing

Prairie              : grassland

Kin                  : relations

Befalls             : happens; occurs

Strand             : thread; fiber

Exempt            : excused; let off

Compassion     : sympathy; kindness

Contempt        : dislike; hatred

Pass                 : go by; exceed; get ahead of

Contaminate    : pollute; infect

Suffocate        : smother; choke; stifle

Dominion        : power; authority; command

Thicket            : wood; undergrowth

Comprehension

1. Answer the following questions in a paragraph each.
2. Why is the idea of buying and selling the land, strange to Chief Seattle?
3. What are all the things that are sacred to his people?
4. What does the white man generally forget?
5. Who are the red man’s brothers and sisters?
6. What should the white buyer remember?
7. What is the importance of rivers?
8. What is the different between the ways of the white man and that of the red man?
9. What is the condition put forth by the chief?
10. What must the white man teach his children?
11. What is the connection between man and earth?

• Essay
• Comment on the salient features of Chief Seattle’s reply to the great white chief’s offer.
• Earth and sky are extensions of man. Substantiate.

Lesson No :8                                                                            Unit  -III

My Wood

E. M. Forster (1879-1970)

A few years ago I wrote a book which dealt in part with the difficulties of the English in India. Feeling that they would have had no difficulties in India themselves, the Americans read the book freely. The more they read it the better it made them feel, and a check to the author was the result. I bought a wood with the check. It is not a large wood–it contains scarcely any trees, and it is intersected, blast it, by a public foot-path. Still, it is the first property that I have owned, so it is right that other people should participate in my shame, and should ask themselves, in accents that will vary in horror, this very important question: What is the effect of property upon the character? Don’t let’s touch economics; the effect of private ownership upon the community as a whole is another question–a more important question, perhaps, but another one. Let’s keep to psychology. If you own things, what’s their effect on you? What’s the effect on me of my wood?

 In the first place, it makes me feel heavy. Property does have this effect. Property produces men of weight, and it was a man of weight who failed to get into the Kingdom of Heaven. He was not wicked, that unfortunate millionaire in the parable, he was only stout; he stuck out in front, not to mention behind, and as he wedged himself this way and that in the crystalline entrance and bruised his well-fed flanks, he saw beneath him a comparatively slim camel passing through the eye of a needle and being woven into the robe of God.

The Gospels all through couple stoutness and slowness. They point out what is perfectly obvious, yet seldom realized: that if you have a lot of things you cannot move about a lot, that furniture requires dusting, dusters require servants, servants require insurance stamps, and the whole tangle of them makes you think twice before you accept an invitation to dinner or go for a bathe I                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      n the Jordan. Sometimes the Gospels proceed further and say with Tolstoy that property is sinful; they approach the difficult ground of asceticism here, where I cannot follow them. But as to the immediate effects of property on people, they just show straightforward logic. It produces men of weight. Men of weight cannot, by definition, move like the lightning from the East unto the West, and the ascent of a fourteen-stone bishop into a pulpit is thus the exact antithesis of the coming of the Son of Man. My wood makes me feel heavy.

In the second place, it makes me feel it ought to be larger.

The other day I heard a twig snap in it. I was annoyed at first, for I thought that someone was blackberrying, and depreciating the value of the undergrowth. On coming nearer, I saw it was not a man who had trodden on the twig and snapped it, but a bird, and I felt pleased. My bird. The bird was not equally pleased. Ignoring the relation between us, it took flight as soon as it saw the shape of my face, and flew straight over the boundary hedge into a field, the property of Mrs. Henessy, where it sat down with a loud squawk. It had become Mrs. Henessy’s bird. Something seemed grossly amiss here, something that would not have occurred had the wood been larger. I could not afford to buy Mrs. Henessy out, I dared not murder her, and limitations of this sort beset me on every side. Ahab did not want that vineyard–he only needed it to round off his property, preparatory to plotting a new curve–and all the land around my wood has become necessary to me in order to round off the wood. A boundary protects. But–poor little thing–the boundary ought in its turn to be protected. Noises on the edge of it. Children throw stones. A little more, and then a little more, until we reach the sea. Happy Canute! Happier Alexander! And after all, why should even the world be the limit of possession? A rocket containing a Union Jack, will, it is hoped, be shortly fired at the moon. Mars. Sirius. Beyond which . . . But these immensities ended by saddening me. I could not suppose that my wood was the destined nucleus of universal dominion–it is so small and contains no mineral wealth beyond the blackberries. Nor was I comforted when Mrs. Henessy’s bird took alarm for the second time and flew clean away from us all, under the belief that it belonged to itself.

In the third place, property makes its owner feel that he ought to do something to it. Yes he isn’t sure what. A restlessness comes over him, a vague sense that he has a personality to express – the same sense which, without any vagueness, leads the artist to an act of creation. Sometimes I think I will cut down such trees as remain in the wood, at other times I want to fill up the gaps between them with new trees. Both impulses are pretentious and empty. They are not honest movements towards money-making or beauty. They spring from a foolish desire to express myself and from an inability to enjoy what I have got. Creation, property, enjoyment form a sinister trinity in the human mind. Creation and enjoyment are both very very good, yet they are often unattainable without a material basis, and at such movements property pushes itself in as a substitute, saying, ‘Accept me instead – I’m good enough for all three. ‘It is not enough. It is, as Shakespeare said of lust, ‘The expense of spirit in a waste of shame’: it is ‘Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.’ Yet we don’t know how to shun it. It is forced on us by our economic system as the alternative to starvation. It is also forced on us by an internal defect in the soul, by the feeling that in property most of the germs of self-development and of exquisite or heroic deeds. Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly; they are still entangled with the desire for ownership, where (in the words of Dante) ‘Possession is one with loss’.

And this brings us to our fourth and final point; the blackberries.

Blackberries are not plentiful in this meager grove, but they are easily seen form the public footpath which traverses it, and all too easily gathered. Foxgloves, too – people will pull up the foxgloves, and ladies of an educational tendency even grub for toadstools to show them on the Monday in class. Other ladies, less educated, roll down the bracken in the arms of their gentlemen friends. There is paper, there are tins. Pray, does my wood belong to me or doesn’t it? And, if it does, should I not own it best by allowing no one else to walk there? There is a wood near Lyme Regis, also cursed by a public footpath, where the owner has no hesitated on this point. He has built high stone walls each side of the path, and has spanned it by bridges, so that the public circulate like termites while he gorges on the blackberries unseen. He really does own his wood, this able chap. Dives in Hell did pretty well, but the gulf dividing him from Lazarus could be traversed by vision, and nothing traverses it here. And perhaps I shall come to this in time. I shall wall in and fence out until really taste the sweets of property. Enormously stout, endlessly avaricious, pseudo-creative, intensely selfish, I shall weave upon my forehead the quadruple crown of possession until those nasty Bolshies come and take it off again and thrust me aside into the outer darkness.

Introduction:

Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1910) the British novelist, short story writer, essayist and biographer is no stranger to India. In fact, he is best recognized for his A Passage to India. He started his writing career as a story writer and a novelist and then turned to writing essays. He is the recipient of Benson Medal of the Royal Society of Literature in 1937 and Companion of honor in 1953. Several Universities honored his scholarship conferring honorary degrees. During his literary career he wrote four novels, two short story volumes, three biographies, two volume of essays, a critical treatise and several travelogues and pamphlets.

            The essay focuses on the human’s desire to own property and the effect it has on one’s psyche. Forster uses himself as an example. The property, which he buys makes him ‘heavy’ and ‘static’ and in the process deprives him of his freedom. This possession makes him greedy enough to pine for his neighbor’s property. Lastly the obsession he develops over the property averts him from any resourceful and productive activity.

Glossary

Canute             : Canute (995-1035) a great king who ruled Norway Denmark and England

Alexander       : Alexander the Great (356-323) conquered several countries

Mars                : a planet nearest to the earth

Sirius   : the brightest star, also known as Dog-star

The expense of time: Shakespeare’s sonnet no.129

Dante              : great Italian poet. (1265-1321). He is the author of ‘The Divine

   Comedy’

Bracken           : a long fern which grows in open land

Load stool       : a kind of mushroom

Foxgloves        : a long stalked plant. Its flowers are bell shaped.

Lyme Regis     : a seaport in Dorset, England

Dives in Hell Vision: St. Luke XVI 19-31. According to the fable, Lazarus. A

   beggar begs in vain for breadcrumbs at the gate of Davis, a   wealthy man. After death Lazarus reaches heaven and Davis reaches hell. Davis pleads with Abharam to send Lazarus to hell so that ‘he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame’. But his request is not conceded.

Traverses                     : pass through

Avaricious                   : greedy

Bolshies                       : communists, here despicable reference

The outer darkness: hell. Biblical reference

Comprehension

1. Answer the following questions in a paragraph each.
2. Why are men of weight not able to reach heaven?
3. What is greatly apparent but never realized?
4. Why did Ahab not want the Vineyard?
5. What according to E.M. Forster causes pseudo creativity?
6. What happens when one wants to do something to one’s property?
7. What forms the ‘trinity in the human mind’?
8. In what way is the author’s wood different from the wood near Lyme Regis?

• Essay
• Write short notes on :
• My Woods makes me feel heavy.
• It makes me feel it ought to be larger.
• Accept me instead – I am good enough for all three.
• Write an essay on how Forster examines the psychological effects of owing property upon character.

Lesson No : 9                                                                                      Unit  -III

THE MEETING OF RACES

Rabindranath Tagore

            Our great prophets in all ages did truly realize in themselves the freedom of the soul in their consciousness of the spiritual kinship of man which is universal. And yet human races, owing to their external geographical condition, developed in their individual isolation a mentality that is obnoxiously selfish. In their instinctive search for truth in religion either they dwarfed and deformed it in the mould of the primitive distortions of their own race mind, or else they shut their God within temple walls and scriptural texts safely away. They treated their God in the same way as in some forms of Government the King is treated, who has traditional honor but no effective authority. The true meaning of God has remained vague in our minds only because our consciousness of the spiritual unity has been thwarted.

            One of the potent reasons for this – our geographical separation – has now been nearly removed. Therefore the time has come when we must, for the sake of truth and for the sake of that peace which is the harvest of truth, refuse to allow the idea of our God to remain indistinct behind unrealities of formal rites and theological mistiness.

            The creature that lives its life screened and sheltered in a dark cave, finds its safety in the very narrowness of its own environment. The economical providence of Nature curtails and tones down its sensibilities to such a limited necessity. But if these cave-walls were to become suddenly removed by some catastrophe, then either it must accept the doom of extinction, or carry on satisfactory negotiations with its wider surroundings.

            The races of mankind will never again be able to go back to their citadels of high-walled exclusiveness. They are today exposed to one another, physically and intellectually. The shells which have so long given them full security within their individual enclosures have been broken, and by no artificial process can they be mended again. So we have to accept this fact, even though we have not fully adapted our minds to this changed environment of publicity, even though we may have to run all the risks entailed by the wider expansion of life’s freedom.

            A large part of our tradition is our code of adjustment which deals with the circumstances special to ourselves. These traditions, no doubt, variegate the several racial personalities with their distinctive colours – colours which have their poetry and also certain protective qualities suitable to each different environment. We may come to acquire a strong love for our own colourful race specialty; but if that gives us fitness only for a very narrow world, then at the slightest variation in our outward circumstances we may have to pay for this love with our life itself.

            In the animal world there are numerous instances of complete race-suicide overtaking those who fondly clung to some advantages which later on became a hindrance in an altered dispensation. In fact the superiority of man is proved by his adaptability to extreme surprises of chance- neither the torrid nor the frigid zone of his destiny offering him insuperable obstacles.

            The vastness of the race problem with which we are faced today will compel us to train ourselves to moral fitness in the place of merely external efficiency, or the complications arising out of it will fetter all our movements and drag us to our death.

            When our necessity becomes urgently insistent, when the recourses that have sustained us so long are exhausted, then our spirit puts forth all its force to discover some other source of sustenance deeper and more permanent. This leads us from the exterior to the interior of our store-house. When muscle does not fully serve us, we come to awaken intellect to ask for its help and are then surprised to find in it a greater source of strength for us than physical power. When, in their turn, our intellectual gifts grow perverse, and only help to render our suicide gorgeous and exhaustive, our soul must seek an alliance with some power which is still deeper, yet further removed from the rude stupidity of muscle.

            Hitherto the cultivation of intense race egotism is the one thing that has found its fullest scope at its meeting of men. In no period of human history has there been such an epidemic of moral perversity, such a universal churning up of jealousy, greed, hatred and mutual suspicion. Every people, weak or strong, is constantly indulging in a violent dream of rendering itself thoroughly hurtful to others. in this galloping competition of hurtfulness, on the slope of a bottomless pit, no nation dares to stop or slow down. Scarlet fever with a raging temperature has attacked the entire body of mankind and political passion has taken the place of creative personality in all departments of life.

            It is well known that when greed has for its object material gain then it can have no end. It is like the chasing of the horizon by a lunatic. To go on in a competition multiplying millions becomes a steeplechase of insensate futility that has obstacles but no goal. It has for its parallel the fight with material weapons- weapons which must perpetually be multiplied, opening up new vistas of destruction and evoking new forms of insanity in the forging of frightfulness. Thus seems now to have commenced the last fatal adventure of drunken passion riding on an intellect of prodigious power.

            Today, more than ever before in our history, the aid of spiritual power is needed. Therefore I believe its resources will surely be discovered in the hidden depths of our being. Pioneers will come to take up this adventure and suffer, and through suffering open out a path to that higher elevation of life in which lies our safety.

            Let me, in reference to this, give an instance from the history of ancient India. There was a noble period in the early days of India when, to a band of dreamers, agriculture appeared as a great idea and not merely useful fact. It not only made a settled life possible for a large number of men living in close proximity, but it claimed for its very purpose a life of peaceful co-operation.

            At the present time, as I have said, the human world has been overtaken by another vast change similar to that which had occurred in the epic age of India. So, long men had been cultivating, almost with a religious fervor, that mentality which is the product of religious isolation, poets proclaimed, in a loud pitch of bragging, the exploits of their popular fighters; money-makers felt neither pity nor shame in the unscrupulous dexterity of their pocket-picking; diplomats scattered lies in order to reap concessions, form the devastated future of their own victims. Suddenly the walls that separated the different races are seen to have given way, and we find ourselves standing face to face.

            This is a great fact of epic significance. Man, suckled at the wolf’s breast, sheltered in the brute’s den, brought up in the prowling habit of depredation, suddenly discovers that he is Man, and that his true power lies in yielding up his brute power for the freedom of the spirit.

            The God of Humanity has arrived at the gate of the ruined temple of the tribe. Though he has not yet found his altar, I ask the men of simple faith, wherever they may be  in the world, to bring their offering of sacrifice to him, and to believe that it is far better to be wise and worshipful than to be clever and supercilious. I ask them to claim the right of manhood to be friends of men, and the right of a particular proud race or nation which may boast of the fatal quality of being the rulers of men. We should know for certain that such rulers will no longer be tolerated in the new world, as it basks in the open sunlight of mind and breathes life’s free air.

            In the geological ages of the infant earth the demons of physical force had their full sway. The angry fire, the devouring flood, the fury of the storm, continually kicked the earth into frightful distortions. These titans have at last given way to the reign of life. Had there been spectators in those days who were clever and practical, they would have wagered their last penny on these titans and would have waxed hilariously witty at the expense of the helpless living speck taking its stand in the arena of the wrestling giants. Only a dreamer would have then declared with unwavering conviction that those titans were doomed because of their very exaggeration, as are, today, those formidable qualities which, in the parlance of schoolboy science, are termed Nordic.

            I ask once again, let us, the dreamers of the East and the West, keep our faith firm in the Life that creates and not in the Machine that constructs – in the power that hides its force and blossoms in beauty, and not in the power that bares its arms and chuckles at its capacity to make itself obnoxious. Let us know that the Machine is good when it helps, but now so when it exploits life; that Science is great when it destroys evil, but not when the two enter into unholy alliance.

Introduction:

            Rabindranath Tagore (1861 – 1942), poet, dramatist, novelist, short-writer, essayist and painter, was one of the makers of modern India. Educated mostly at home, he began writing poetry quire early in his life. In 1913, he was awarded the Noble Prize for Literature for his volume of devotional poems, Gitanjali. Rabindranath was also a social reformer and teacher, and he founded his own school at Santiniketan to translate his ideas of education into reality. The Vishwa-Bharati, or the Institute of World Culture, into which the school developed, is a practical expression of Tagore’s cosmopolitan spirit and outlook.

            Some of the books written by Tagore are, besides Gutabhaku, The Crescent Moon, The Gardener (both volumes of poetry), Chitra, The king of Dark Chamber, Red Oleanders (all plays), Hungry Stones, Broken Ties (both volumes of short stories) and a number of volumes of essays and addresses. His prose is essentially poetic in nature, and is characterized by grace of movement, pleasantness of sound and an interspersion of images which add a new dimension to the meaning.

            In this essay, Rabindranath Tagore discusses the external influences on the spirit of humanity. He says that violence creeps into humanity because of the cloistered nature of spirit. If the spirit can free itself and when man can adapt himself according to the changing time, he would be most suited to a happy existence. Everything outside man must function in order to help him live better and happily. Otherwise, there will only be chaos.

Glossary:

Obnoxious       : offensive, objectionable

Mistiness         : vagueness

Screened         : covered

Citadels           : fortresses

Variegate         : diversify in colour

Hindrance       : obstacle
fetter               : bind

Egotism           : self-conceit, selfishness

Gorgeous         : magnificent richly coloured

Churning up    : stirring about, agitating

Steeplechase    : furious race

Vistas              : long narrow views

Proximity        : nearness

Dexterity         : skill, adroitness

Supercilious     : contemptuous, assuming superiority

Titans              : persons of superhuman size, strength and intellect

Wagered          : offered as bet

Parlance           : way of speaking, vocabulary

Nordic             : of the tall race of men found in northern Europe; here, exceptional

Comprehension

1. Answer the following questions in a paragraph each.
2. What kind of mentality have the human races developed?
3. What is our opinion of God?
4. What is the one potent reason for the thwarting of the spiritual unity?
5. Describe the nature of the creature that lives in the dark cave. What will happen if the walls of the cave break away?
6. What is the fact we have to accept?
7. What will happen if we cannot adjust?
8. How does the human race survive and sustain itself?
9. What has replaced creative personality?
10. What do we need today?
11. Comment on the keeping of the human spirit.
12. What does the author ask the modern men to do?
13. What are the evils of exaggeration?
14. What does the author ask all of us to do?

• Essay
• What kind of orientation should be given to all races of humanity?
• How, according to Tagore, can the meeting of races take place?

Lesson No : 10                                                                                                Unit  -IV

THE REFUGEE

• K. A. ABBAS

The tragic storm of August-September, 1947, blew away nearly ten million people, like autumn leaves, from one end of the country to the other – from Delhi to Karachi, from Karachi to Bombay, from the Lahore to Delhi, from Rawalpindi to Agra, from Naokhali to Calcutta, from Calcutta to Dacca, from Lyallpur to Panipat, from Panipat to Montgomery! The thousand-year-old joint family system was shattered beyond repair. Age-old friends and neighbors were ruthlessly separated. Brother was torn away from brother. Uprooted from their ancestral homes million found themselves driven to strange and alien soil.

In October of that year of sorrowful memories, this very storm blew two weak old women into Bombay, hundreds of miles away from their respective home towns. One of them was my own mother and the other was the mother of a Sikh friend and neighbor of mine. One had come from the East Punjab and the other from the West Punjab, one from Panipat and the other from Rawalpindi. By a strange chance they reached Bombay on the same day. My mother, along with other women and children of my family, was evacuated from Panipat in a military truck and brought to Delhi. She stayed there for three weeks crowded in a small room with two other families, and then came to Bombay by plane because it was still unsafe to travel by train. My friend’s mother, along with her old husband, came in a refugee caravan from ‘Pindi Amritsar from there to a refugee camp in Delhi, and final from there to Bombay.

I called my mother Ammaan,  and my friend called his mother Maanji. When both of them arrived here, I discovered that, that was about the only difference between these two old women.

Maanji used to live in Rawalpindi in her own house. It was a double-storeyed building, she told me one day. She occupied the upper floor, while down below on the ground floor were shops, mostly tenanted by Muslim shopkeeper or artisans. Many of her neighbours, too, were Muslim. There was a close bond of good neighbourliness between any of them – Muslim or Hindu or Sikh. The Muslim women of the neighbourhood called the old Sardarni Behanji while the younger ones respectfully addressed her Maanji or Chacha. That was the pattern of living not only in that neighbourhood not only in Rawalpindi, but all over the Punjab.

The town of Rawalpindi was the whole world for Maanji. She had never been elsewhere. Her son worked first in Lahore then in Calcutta, and finally in Bombay. But to Maanji the cities belonged to another, far-off world. If she had her when she would never have allowed her son to go far from home. She often argued with him, ‘What’s the use of earning more my son, when in these cities you get neither pure milk and ghee, neither apricots nor peaches, neither grapes nor apple And baggoogoshas? Why, in the City what that is! At home they had a buffalo of their own, Giving no less than 10 Seer milk every day.  After crunching the curd to take out butter, she will distribute the butter into the whole neighborhood. Everyone thank her and say, ‘ May your son live a thousand years Maanji – but that would remind her of her son, eating hotel food in a city, and that would make her sad.

Not far from Pindi they had a bit of their own land least to some farmers. Twice a year, at Harvest Time, they would get their share of the produce – wheat or maize or bajra. Milk and butter and ghee were, of course, available at home.  Then there was a small but steady income from the rent of the shops.  And thus they lived – a contented old couple, at peace with themselves, their neighbors – and their God!

            When in June 1947, the newspapers published the news of the impending Partitions, alarm or even worry Maanji are the old Sardarji. Politics, they always thought, why is no concern of peaceful folk like them. Whether the country was called Hindustan or Pakistan, what did it matter? Their concern was only with the neighbors, and with them their relations had always been friendly, even cordial. There had been inter- communal riots in the past – ‘It fever of the mind, son, which seized the people now and then’ – but never had they been involved in any unpleasant incident. This time of fire of hate and violence raged more seriously than ever before, but even then Maanji was sure that it would soon cool off. Her Son wrote from Bombay asking them to come there, but Maanji would not agree to abandon her beloved Rawalpindi. Many of her relations and Sikhs and Hindu neighbors went away to East Punjab, but she stayed on in her house, whenever anyone said that it was dangerous for Sikhs to live in West Punjab, she would say, ‘Who will harass us here? After all the Muslims who lived around us are all like my own children – aren’t they?

But then came the Muslim refugees from the east Punjab, with bitter feeling of Revenge and hate. The situation in ‘Pindi became increasingly dangerous for Hindus and Sikhs, and some of Maanji’s own Muslim neighbors came to her and pleaded with her to go away to a place of safety. And yet there were some who reassured her and promised that they would protect her life, honour and property with their own lives. In particular, the old lady remembers the Loyal devotion of a Muslim tailor, a tenant of theirs, who kept watch night and day on their house. ‘May he live long’, she always blesses him, ‘ he truly helped us and saved us like a real son’.

Some of the refugees from the East Punjab where staying in their neighborhood. Maanji was so moved up by their pitiable condition that she voluntarily sent them donations of foodstuff, clothes, blankets, and bedding – and it never occurred to her that they were Muslims, supposed to be the Enemies of her people, and so she ought not to help them. Nor did she imagine that soon she, too, would be in a plight very similar to theirs.

Then something happened that snapped the last thread of her faith. On the road, in front of her house, a tonga-wallah was stabbed to death. This is how Maanji described the frightful incident and her own feelings to it. ‘Son, it was bad enough that the tonga wallah was killed. They killed him because he was a Hindu – but they did not spare even the horse. You know a horse has neither religion nor caste. And yet they went on stabbing the poor animal with their daggers till the poor, dumb creature bled to death. Then I knew the madness had gone too far, and human beings have become something else, something horrible and evil, that we could no longer feel safe in Rawalpindi.’

And so she is locked up her house, leaving everything behind just as it was. She still did not imagine that she was a bonding her hearth and home for ever. The prevalent Madness, she hoped, would blow over one day, and then she would return home. ‘But by the time we reached Delhi,’ she said with a sigh, ‘ my old I saw things- horrible things – both there and here, that told us that we could never again go to ‘Pindi’. By the time they reached Bombay, the memory of her home in Rowalpindi was only a pain in her aged heart.

In Rawalpindi she used to live in a house with six spacious rooms, white verandas, and a big courtyard. In Bombay she and her husband lived with the son, spinner single room tenement – with a dhobie occupying the rooms on one side, and a coal-shop on the other. There is a small kitchen which also serves a dining- room, bathroom and store- room. When my friend lived there alone the room was always in mess- books, newspapers, dirty linen and unvoiced tea cups line about everywhere. But anyone who visits the same place now finds it completely changed. Within its narrow limits, everything is Spotless clean, will- arranged. There where white sheets on the beds, with embroidered pillowcases, the floor shines with constant scrubbing, and there is not a particle of dust or dirt anywhere. In Rawalpindi Maanji had two male- servants and a maid – servant. Here she cooks with her own hands, washes the dishes, sweeps the floor. But she has a maternal smile and a pleasant smile for any friend of her son who happens to drop in and, of course, she would never let anyone go away without eating something or at least taking a cup of tea. Maanji has lost her hearth and home, all her life’s savings and positions. From a prosperous landlady in Rawalpindi, she has become a Refugee in Bombay; but her hospitality has not lost its North Indian flavour and fervour!

Maanji has a fair complexion, a rather short structure and Frail body, her hair which was already grey has turned almost completely white since after the partition, and her health is not so good. She gets attacks of asthma and neuralgia. But she never sits idle for a moment, never relaxes or sleep except for six hours at night. First to get up in the morning, last to go to sleep, throughout the day she is constantly working. Whether it is cooking for her son, or darning and mending her husband’s old clothes or making tea or lassi for a guest, she insists on doing everything with her own hands. Seeing her you would never imagine that she is a Refugee who lost and suffered so much. She never proclaims her tragedy. She never curses or abuses those who made her leave her home. She still remembers her Muslim neighbors with affection and brightens up whenever her husband read out a letter received from Rawalpindi. Only very occasionally or soft, cold sigh escaped her lips, as she says: ‘Your Bombay maybe a great and grand city, son. But we never forget our Rawalpindi- those pears and apricots an apples, grapes and melons and baggoogoshas but you never get in Bombay…..’

And suddenly she is silent, tears bubbling up in her tired, old Eyes. And it seems that in the intensely human heart of this Refugee there is neither and nor hatred, neither rancor no self-pity, but only memories- memories that are short like ripe apricots and like baggoogoshas…..

Introduction:

             Khwaja Ahmed Abbas (b. 1914), one of our outstanding journalists, has also made a name as a film director and as an Indo-Anglian writer. His political novel Inquilab (1955) has won wide acclaim. His short story collection include Rice and other Stories (1947) and Cage abd Other Stories (1952).

            ‘The Refugee’, like all the other stories written by Abbas, deals with a specific problem and focuses light on the human side of it. Abbas has also written a fairly comprehensive biography of Indira Gandhi.

            In this story, Abbas describes the life of Maanji first in Rawalpindi and then in Bombay. Even though she has turned into a refugee from being a landlady, she remains hospitable and has not lost the love of humanity in spite of having suffered much.

Glossary

Refugee           : a person who flees from his home or country to seek protection elsewhere.

The strom of August-September, 1947  : the communal hatred between the Hindus and the Muslims and the consequent persecution of the minorities, that followed the formation of Pakistan in 1947.

From Delhi to Karachi, etc     : the persecuted Muslims fled from India to Pakistan and under similar compulsion Hindus fled from Pakistan to India.

Refugee caravan         : a large number of refugees travelling together

Ammaan                      : (Handu) mother

Inquilab                       : (Urdu) revolution

Behanji                        : (Hindi) sister

Maanji                         : (Hindi) mother

Chachi                         : ( Hindi) paternal aunt

Baggoogoshas             : a variety of pears grown in Kashmir

Impending                   : about to happen (especially, something unwelcome)

Partition                      : the bifurcation of India into tow nations

Cordial                                    : warm and genuine

Cool off                      : (fig) calm down

Harass                         : trouble; vex through repeated attacks

Prevalent                     : existing or occurring at that time

Blow over                   : pass off

Tenement                    : a room or set of rooms used as a separate dwelling place

Was in a mess              : in a confused or jumbled state

Scrubbing                    : hard rubbing or brushing

Neuralgia                     : pain in a never or along the course of a nerve

Rancor                         : bitter hatred or ill-will

Comprehension

1. Answer the following questions in a paragraph each.

1. What does Abbas mean by the words ‘the tragic storm of August-September, 1947?
2. What happened to the minority communities in the wake of partition?
3. What was the ‘pattern of living’ in the Punjab before the partition?
4. How did Abbas’s mother win the respect and affection of all her neighbors?
5. What was Mannji’s reaction to the ‘impending partition’?
6. What did Maanji’s says when she heard about the hatred of Muslims for the Hindus living in Rawalpindi?
7. How did the Muslim neighbors show their affection for Maanji?
8. What snapped the last thread of Maanji’s faith?
9. What did Maanji’s thoughts when she moved out of Rawalpindi?
10. How did Maanji’s describe the murder of the tonga-wallah?
11. How did Maanji take the loss she had suffered?

• Essay
• How does Abbas succeed in arousing the conscience of all his readers through the story, ‘The Refugee’?
• Comment on Maanji’s character, especially her hospitality and her love of old memories of  Rawalpindi.

Lesson – 11                                                                                                    UNIT – IV

I HAVE A DREAM

-Martin Luther King

On August 28, 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. gave one of the most recognized speeches in the world. When someone says ‘Martin Luther King Jr.’, the first thing that will probably come to your head is ‘I have a dream…’. That is most likely because during this speech Dr. King really laid out what he wanted for not just himself, but for the world.

 ‘I Have a Dream’

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.

One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the ‘unalienable Rights’ of ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’

 It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.

There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds.

 Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, ‘When will you be satisfied?’ We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.

We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: ‘For Whites only. ‘We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until ‘justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.’

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest — quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

 Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

 I say to you, my friends that even though we must face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of ‘interposition’ and ‘nullification’ — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; ‘and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.’

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning – ‘My country ’tis of thee: sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing; land where my father died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride; From every mountainside, let freedom ring!.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: ‘Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Introduction:

A stout champion of the rights and privileges of the Negroes in America, Martin Luther King (1939-1968) remained a freedom fighter throughout his life. Deeply distressed at the slavery and misery of his fellow men on the hand, poverty and hardship on the other, he dedicated his life for the emancipation of the Negroes. The prescribed lesson is a powerful speech characterized by candid and outspoken expression, patriotic fervour and poetic eloquence. His name has gone down in the history of the United State of America as a great leader, who laid his life for the removal of racial discrimination and injustice which expressed the Negroes for more than a century. This speech, delivered in 1963, was attended by a mammoth gathering of 2,50,000 Americans of many faiths, races and creeds. Notwithstanding the harrowing conditions and police atrocities, he followed, as Gandhi did, a path of non-violence and peace. And for his peace efforts, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Incidentally, he was the youngest among the recipients of the Nobel Prize.

Glossary

Proclamation   : declaration; public statement

Decree             : ruling; verdict

Beacon                        : fire; bonfire; guiding light

Seared             : burned; charred

Withering        : drying up; willing

Manacles         : chains; shackles

Segregation     : separation; isolation

Discrimination : bias; prejudice

Languishing    : pining away; suffering

Magnificent     : superb; wonderful; splendid

Promissory      : assuring; making a promise

Defaulted        : non-payment; fail to pay

Obligation       : compulsion; responsibility

Bankrupt         : penniless’ insolvent

Hollowed        : sacred; holy

Desolate          : deserted; isolated

Fatal                : deadly; terminal

Sweltering       : boiling; scorching

Invigorating    : stimulating; refreshing

Degenerate      : worsen; deteriorate

Militancy         : aggressive; revolutionary; rebellious

Inextricably     : not able to free or get out

Biracial            : of two races

Motels             : hotels on the highway

Ghetto             : prisons of Jews

Righteousness : virtuous; morality; uprightness

Excessive        : extreme; too much

Tribulation       : misfortune; suffering

Staggered        : swayed; walked unsteadily

Veterans          : experienced persons

Redemptive     : giving salvation or liberation

Wallow            : flounder; stumble

Creed              : faith; doctrine

Vicious            : cruel; nasty; brutal

Hew                : cut; chop

Hamlet                        : village; rural community

Comprehension

1. Answer the following questions in a paragraph each.
2. What does the author mean by emancipation proclamination?
3. Is the Negro free from the bonds of slavery even after a hundred years?
4. Explain the terms ‘cash a cheque’ and ‘promissory note’ in the context?
5. Till what time will the whirlwind of revolt continue?
6. State whether the following statement is true or false:

This is not the time to engage in the luxury of cooling off.

• What path does he want his people follow in attaining freedom?
• When will the Negro be satisfied?
• How many times does the author repeat ‘I have a dream’?
• What does the author say in the concluding part of the speech?

• Essay
• What was King’s dream and how was it to be realized?
• What is King’s message to the whites and to the blacks?

Lesson – 12                                                                             UNIT – IV

THOSE PEOPLE NEXT DOOR

• A. G. Gardiner

The case which has occupied the courts recently of the man who beat a tin can a way of retaliating upon a neighbour who strummed the piano touches one of the most difficult problems of urban life. We who live in the cities all have neighbours, and for the most part, ‘thin partitions do our realms divine.’ It is true that, however thin the walls, we seldom know our neighbours. If the man who has lives next door to me in the Northern suburb for the last half-dozen years stopped me in the strand or came and sat down beside me in a restaurant I should not, as the saying is, known him from Adam. In this vast whirlpool of London he goes his way and I go mine, and I dare say our paths will not cross though we go on living beside each until one or other of us takes up a more permanent abode.

I do not know whether he is short or tall, old or young, or anything about him, and I dare say he is in the same state of contented ignorance about me. I hear him when he pokes the fire on his side late at night, and I suppose he hears me when I poke the fire on my side. Our intercourse is limited to the respective noises we make with fire-irons, the piano, and so on. When he has friends to visit him we learn something about him from the sounds they make, the music they affect, and the time they go way (often unconscionably late) .But apart from the vague intimation, my neighbour might be living in Mars and I might be living in Sirius, for all we know, or care, about each other .Perhaps someday his house (or mine) will be on fire, and then I dare say we shall become acquainted. But apart from some such catastrophe as this there seems no reason why we should ever exchange a word on this side of grave.

It is not pride or incivility on either side that keeps us remote from each other. It is simply our London way. People are so plentiful that they lose their identity. By the Whitestone Pond at Hampstead not long ago I met my old friend John O’Connor—‘Long John’, as he was affectionately called in the of Commons, of which he was for  so long one of the most popular members—and he said, in reply to inquires, that he was living Frognal, had lived there for years,’ next door to Robertson- Nicoll-not that I should know him,’ he added,’ for I don’t think  I have ever set eyes on him.’ And I should have expected to find that Sir William was no better informed about his neighbour than his neighbour was an bout him. In London men are as lonely as oysters, each living in his own shell. We go out in the country to find neighbours. if the man next door took a cottage a mile away from me in the country I should probably know all about him, his affairs, his family, his calling, and his habits inside a week, and be intimate enough with him in a fortnight to  borrow his garden shears or his billhook. This is not always so idyllic as it seems. Village life can be poisoned by neighbours until the victim pines for the solitude of a London street, where neighbours are so  plentiful that you are no more conscious of their individual existence than if they were blackberries on a hedgerow.

On the occasions on which we become acutely conscious of our neighbours, the temptation is to think ill of them. For example, we were all late the other morning, and Matilda, whose function it is to keep us on to time, explained that she had overslept herself because of those people next door. ‘Four o’ clock it was, before the din ended.’ Some of us had lost count of the hours at two and others at three, but Matilda, was emphatic. She had heard the last of the reveler go away in a car, and had looked at last of the exactly four. No one disputed her word .It was gratifying to know that the hour was four rather than three. If it had been five we should doubtless have been still more gratified. It would have made the case against those people next door still blacker. And it can never be too black for their deserts. Our neighbours are at once too near to us and too deserts. Our neighbours are under at once too near to us and too far away from us. If they were under our own roof we might be able to make something of them. But they are just far away from us .If they were under our own roof we might be able to make something of them; if they were only in the next street we could forget all about them. But they are just enough away to escape our celestial influence and quite close enough to be a nuisance.

They are always in the wrong. Consider the hours they keep entirely different from our hours and therefore entirely reprehensible. If they do not offend by their extravagant piety they shock you by their levity. Perhaps they play tennis on Sunday, or perhaps they don’t and in either case they are vulnerable to criticism. They always manage to be gay when you are sleepy. They take a delight in going away for more holidays than you can possibly have, or perhaps they don’t go away for holidays at all, in which case their inferiority is clearly established. If they are not guilty of criminal waste they can be convicted of shabby parsimony. They either dress too luxuriously or do not dress luxuriously enough for the decencies of the neighbourhood. We suspect that they are no better than they should be. Observe the frequency with which their servants come and go. Depend upon, they fine those people next door impossible. Their habits are that friends the music they play, the pets that they keep, the politics they affect, the newspapers they read – all these things confirm our darkest fears.

It is possible to believe anything about them – especially the worst. What are those strange sounds that penetrate the wall in the small hours? Surely that is the chink of coin! And those sudden shrieks and gusts of laughter? It there not an alcoholic suggestion about such undisciplined hilarity? We know too much about them, and do not know enough. They are revealed to us in fragments, and in putting the fragments together we do not spare them. There is nothing so misleading as half-heart and half understood scraps. And the curious thing about those people next door is that, if  you ever come to know them, you find they are not a bit like what you thought they were. You find, to you astonishment, that they have redeeming features. Perhaps they find that we have redeeming futures too. For the chastening truth is that we all play the role of those people next door to somebody. We are all being judged, and generally very unfavorably judged to describe which. If we know it, would greatly astonish us. It might help us to be a little more charitable about those people next door if we occasionally remembered that we are those people next door ourselves.

But the St.John’s Wood case illustrates the frail term on which immunity from annoyance by neighbours is enjoyed. Two musicians dwelling in one house gave lessons to pupils on the piano, and the man next door, who objected to peace being disturbed in this way, took his revenge by banging on tin cans, and otherwise make things unpleasant for the musicians. I do not know what the law said on the subject. It may be admitted that the annoyances were equal in effect, but they were not the same in motive. In the one case the motive was the reasonble one of earning an honest living.: there was no deliberate intention of being offensive to the neighbours. In the other case, the motive was admittedly to make a demonstration against the neighbours. What  is to be done in such circumstances? It is  nt an offence to play the piano in one’s own house even for a living. On theother hand, it is hard, especially if you don’t like music, or perhaps even more if you do, to hear the scales going on, on the piano next door, all day.

The question of motives does not seem to be relevant. If  my neighbour make noises which rfender my life intolerable it is no answer to say that  he makes them for a living and wouthout intnding to destroy my peace. He does destroy my peace, and it is no confort to be assured that he does not mena to. Hazlitt insisted that a man might play the trombone in his own house all day if he took reasonble measures to limit the annoynace to his neighbours: but Hazlitt had probably never lived beside a trombone. I found the argument is leadig me on to the side of the tin-can gentleman, and I don’t want it to do that, for my sympathies are with the musicians. And yet –

              Well, let us avoid a definite conclusion altogether and leave the incident to make us generally alittle more sensitive about the feelings of our neighbours. They are  cannot expect us nevr to play the paiano, neverto sit up late, never to be a little hilarious, any more than we can expect never to be disturbed by them. But the amenities of neighbourliness require that we should mutually avoiid being a nuisance to each other as much as we can. And if our calling compels us to be a little noisy, we should bear that in ming when we choose a house and when we choose the room in which we make our noises. The perfect neighour is one whom we never see and whom we never hear except when he pokes the fire.

Notes and Exercises

Introduction

              Alfred George Gardiner(1865 -1946) who wrote under the pen-name’Alpha of  the polugh’ was one othe the most famous essayists of the first half of the twentieth century. He could produce an eminently readable essay on anything under the sun. In the range of his subjects and in the humorous treatment he gives them and in his witty runs of expression he reminds us of the great masters of the English. Eassy like Charles Lamb, Oliver Goldsmith and Joseph Addson.

              All his eassys are  thought – provoking though on the surfeace they appear to be designed merely to entertain the readers. Those people Next Door is typical in this respect Pebbles on the shore: leaves in the wind: and Many Furrows are collections of his essays. Pillars of society : Propets, Priests and kings. The War Lords and certain people of Importance contain brilliant sketches of some importance people.

Glossary :

Retaliating	:	Palying back injury or evil for evil
Strummed the piano		Plucked the strings of the piano Carelessly or unskilfully
Thin paritions…. divide	:	An adaptation of line 164 (thin partitions do their bounds divide) from John Dryden’s poem ‘absalom and Achitophel’.
Suburb The Stand Not know….Adam	:	A residential district on the outskirs of a city A locality in London Not know him at all. Accouring to the ‘Genesis’ Adam wasthe first man created by God in His own image.
Whirlpool of Londong	:	Extremely busy life of London. Literally, a whirlpool is a violent circular movement of water current often causing suction at the centre.
Affect	:	Here, like
Unconscionably	:	Ndersponably and excessively
Marks	:	Of the plents, Mars is the one closest to the earth.
Sirius	:	The brightest star in the heavens, also called Dog Star.
Catastrophe	:	A disaster, a calamity.
‘Long John’	:	Reminscent of Long John Silver, a characte in Stevenshon’s Treasure Island.
Nicoll	:	Sir wWillam Robertson-Nicoll(1851-1923) Scottish author and critic.
His calling	:	His occupation or profession
Billhook	:	A curved or hooked tool for pruning and cutting
Idyllic	:	Pleasing and simple.
Celestial	:	Divine (used humourously here)
They….wrong	:	This is ironic
Reprehensible	:	Deserving censure
Vulnerable	:	Open to criticism
Parsimony	:	Stinginess
Chink	:	Metallic sound produced by striking coins together
Chink coin	:	Coin used in tossing – suggestive of gambling
Hilarity	:	Noisy merrimet
redeeming	:	Compensating
St.John’s Wood	:	A locality in London
Immunity	:	Security
The scales	:	(in music) a series of tones arranged in a sequence
Hazlitt	:	William Hazlitt(1778 – 1830), English essayist and critic.
Trombone	:	A wind instrument.

Comprehension

1. Answer the following questions in a paragraph each.
2. Why are Londoners strangers even to their neighbours?
3. What did John O’Connor say about his neighbour Robertson Nicoll?
4. Where can we expect people to know their neighbours?
5. When do we think ill of our neighours most?
6. ‘Our neighbours are at once too near to us and too far away from us.’ Explain.
7. ‘They are always in the wrong.’Comment on the tone of this remarks.
8. How does Gardiner emphasise the fact that we are always unsympathetic to our neighbours?
9. What is the meassage of the eassy?
10. What is the point of the St.Jphn’s Wood Case reported by the author?
11. What was Hazlin’s attitude to neighbours who played the trombone?
12. Who,according to Gardiner, is he perfect neighbour?

B.Essay

1. Bring out the humour in ‘Those People Next Dood’.
2. How does Gardiner show that urban life requires greater sympahy and understanding on the part of all people?
3. What is the meassage of the eassy? How is this meassage enforced?

lesson- 13                                         unit – v

Marriage is A private Affair

– Chinua Achebe

‘Have you written to your dad yet?’ asked Nene one afternoon as she sat with Nnaemeka in her room at 16 Kasanga Street, Lagos.

‘ No,  I’ve been thinking about it. I think it’s better to tell him when I get home on leave!’

 ‘But why? Your leave is such a long way off yet—six whole weeks. He should be let into our happiness now.’

 Nnaemeka was silent for a while, and then began very slowly as if he groped for his words: ‘I wish I were sure it would be happiness to him.’

‘Of course it must,’ replied Nene, a little surprised. ‘Why shouldn’t it?’

‘You have lived in Lagos all your life, and you know very little about people in remote parts of the country.’

 ‘That’s what you always say. But I don’t believe anybody will be so unlike other people that they will be unhappy when their sons are engaged to marry.’

 ‘Yes. They are most unhappy if the engagement is not arranged by them. In our case it’s worse—you are not even an Ibo.’

This was said so seriously and so bluntly that Nene could not find speech immediately. In the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the city it had always seemed to her something of a joke that a person’s tribe could determine whom he married.

At last she said, ‘You don’t really mean that he will object to your marrying me simply on that account? I had always thought you Ibos were kindly disposed to other people.’

 ‘So we are. But when it comes to marriage, well, it’s not quite so simple. And this,’ he added, ‘is not peculiar to the Ibos. If your father were alive and lived in the heart of Ibibio-land he would be exactly like my father.’

 ‘I don’t know. But anyway, as your father is so fond of you, I’m sure he will forgive you soon enough. Come on then, be a good boy and send him a nice lovely letter . . .’

‘It would not be wise to break the news to him by writing. A letter will bring it upon him with a shock. I’m quite sure about that.’

 ‘All right, honey, suit yourself. You know your father.’

As Nnaemeka walked home that evening he turned over in his mind different ways of overcoming his father’s opposition, especially now that he had gone and found a girl for him. He had thought of showing his letter to Nene but decided on second thoughts not to, at least for the moment. He read it again when he got home and couldn’t help smiling to himself. He remembered Ugoye quite well, an Amazon of a girl who used to beat up all the boys, himself included, on the way to the stream, a complete dunce at school.

 I have found a girl who will suit you admirably—Ugoye Nweke, the eldest daughter of our neighbor, Jacob Nweke. She has a proper Christian upbringing. When she stopped schooling some years ago her father (a man of sound judgment) sent her to live in the house of a pastor where she has received all the training a wife could need. Her Sunday school teacher has told me that she reads her Bible very fluently. I hope we shall begin negotiations when you come home in December.

 On the second evening of his return from Lagos, Nnaemeka sat with his father under a cassia tree. This was the old man’s retreat where he went to read his Bible when the parching December sun had set and a fresh, reviving wind blew on the leaves.

‘Father,’ began Nnaemeka suddenly, ‘I have come to ask for forgiveness.’

‘Forgiveness? For what, my son?’ he asked in amazement.

‘It’s about this marriage question.’

‘Which marriage question?’

 ‘I can’t—we must—I mean it is impossible for me to marry Nweke’s daughter.’

‘Impossible? Why?’ asked his father.

 ‘I don’t love her.’

‘Nobody said you did. Why should you?’ he asked.

‘Marriage today is different . . .’

‘Look here, my son,’ interrupted his father, ‘nothing is different. What one looks for in a wife are a good character and a Christian background.’

 Nnaemeka saw there was no hope along the present line of argument.

‘Moreover,’ he said, ‘I am engaged to marry another girl who has all of Ugoye’s good qualities, and who . . .’

His father did not believe his ears. ‘What did you say?’ he asked slowly and disconcertingly.

‘She is a good Christian,’ his son went on, ‘and a teacher in a girls’ school in Lagos.’

 ‘Teacher, did you say? If you consider that a qualification for a good wife I should like to point out to you, Emeka, that no Christian woman should teach. St. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians says that women should keep silence.’ He rose slowly from his seat and paced forward and backward. This was his pet subject, and he condemned vehemently those church leaders who encouraged women to teach in their schools. After he had spent his emotion on a long homily he at last came back to his son’s engagement, in a seemingly milder tone.

 ‘Whose daughter is she, anyway?’

 ‘She is Nene Atang.’

‘What!’ All the mildness was gone again. ‘Did you say Neneataga, what does that mean?’

 ‘Nene Atang from Calabar. She is the only girl I can marry.’ This was a very rash reply and Nnaemeka expected the storm to burst. But it did not. His father merely walked away into his room. This was most unexpected and perplexed Nnaemeka. His father’s silence was infinitely more menacing than a flood of threatening speech. That night the old man did not eat.

 When he sent for Nnaemeka a day later he applied all possible ways of dissuasion. But the young man’s heart was hardened, and his father eventually gave him up as lost.

‘I owe it to you, my son, as a duty to show you what is right and what is wrong. Whoever put this idea into your head might as well have cut your throat. It is Satan’s work.’ He waved his son away.

 ‘You will change your mind, Father, when you know Nene.’

 ‘I shall never see her,’ was the reply. From that night the father scarcely spoke to his son. He did not, however, cease hoping that he would realize how serious was the danger he was heading for. Day and night he put him in his prayers.

Nnaemeka, for his own part, was very deeply affected by his father’s grief. But he kept hoping that it would pass away. If it had occurred to him that never in the history of his people had a man married a woman who spoke a different tongue, he might have been less optimistic. ‘It has never been heard,’ was the verdict of an old man speaking a few weeks later. In that short sentence he spoke for all of his people. This man had come with others to commiserate with Okeke when news went round about his son’s behavior. By that time the son had gone back to Lagos.

 ‘It has never been heard,’ said the old man again with a sad shake of his head.

 ‘What did Our Lord say?’ asked another gentleman. ‘Sons shall rise against their Fathers; it is there in the Holy Book.’

 ‘It is the beginning of the end,’ said another.

 The discussion thus tending to become theological, Madubogwu, a highly practical man, brought it down once more to the ordinary level.

 ‘Have you thought of consulting a native doctor about your son?’ he asked Nnaemeka’s father.

 ‘He isn’t sick,’ was the reply.

 ‘What is he then? The boy’s mind is diseased and only a good herbalist can bring him back to his right senses. The medicine he requires is Amalile, the same that women apply with success to recapture their husbands’ straying affection.’

 ‘Madubogwu is right,’ said another gentleman. ‘This thing calls for medicine.’

 ‘I shall not call in a native doctor.’ Nnaemeka’s father was known to be obstinately ahead of his more superstitious neighbors in these matters. ‘I will not be another Mrs. Ochuba. If my son wants to kill himself let him do it with his own hands. It is not for me to help him.’

‘But it was her fault,’ said Madubogwu. ‘She ought to have gone to an honest herbalist. She was a clever woman, nevertheless.’

‘She was a wicked murderess,’ said Jonathan, who rarely argued with his neighbors because, he often said, they were incapable of reasoning. ‘The medicine was prepared for her husband, it was his name they called in its preparation, and I am sure it would have been perfectly beneficial to him. It was wicked to put it into the herbalist’s food, and say you were only trying it out.’

 Six months later, Nnaemeka was showing his young wife a short letter from his father:

 It amazes me that you could be so unfeeling as to send me your wedding picture. I would have sent it back. But on further thought I decided just to cut off your wife and send it back to you because I have nothing to do with her. How I wish that I had nothing to do with you either.

When Nene read through this letter and looked at the mutilated picture her eyes filled with tears, and she began to sob.

‘Don’t cry, my darling,’ said her husband. ‘He is essentially good-natured and will one day look more kindly on our marriage.’ But years passed and that one day did not come.

For eight years, Okeke would have nothing to do with his son, Nnaemeka. Only three times (when Nnaemeka asked to come home and spend his leave) did he write to him.

 ‘I can’t have you in my house,’ he replied on one occasion. ‘It can be of no interest to me where or how you spend your leave—or your life, for that matter.’

The prejudice against Nnaemeka’s marriage was not confined to his little village. In Lagos, especially among his people who worked there, it showed itself in a different way. Their women, when they met at their village meeting, were not hostile to Nene. Rather, they paid her such excessive deference as to make her feel she was not one of them. But as time went on, Nene gradually broke through some of this prejudice and even began to make friends among them. Slowly and grudgingly they began to admit that she kept her home much better than most of them.

 The story eventually got to the little village in the heart of the Ibo country that Nnaemeka and his young wife were a most happy couple. But his father was one of the few people in the village who knew nothing about this. He always displayed so much temper whenever his son’s name was mentioned that everyone avoided it in his presence. By a tremendous effort of will he had succeeded in pushing his son to the back of his mind. The strain had nearly killed him but he had persevered, and won.

Then one day he received a letter from Nene, and in spite of himself he began to glance through it perfunctorily until all of a sudden the expression on his face changed and he began to read more carefully.

. . . Our two sons, from the day they learnt that they have a grandfather, have insisted on being taken to him. I find it impossible to tell them that you will not see them. I implore you to allow Nnaemeka to bring them home for a short time during his leave next month. I shall remain here in Lagos . . .

The old man at once felt the resolution he had built up over so many years falling in. He was telling himself that he must not give in. He tried to steel his heart against all emotional appeals. It was a reenactment of that other struggle. He leaned against a window and looked out. The sky was overcast with heavy black clouds and a high wind began to blow, filling the air with dust and dry leaves. It was one of those rare occasions when even Nature takes a hand in a human fight. Very soon it began to rain, the first rain in the year. It came down in large sharp drops and was accompanied by the lightning and thunder which mark a change of season. Okeke was trying hard not to think of his two grandsons. But he knew he was now fighting a losing battle. He tried to hum a favorite hymn but the pattering of large raindrops on the roof broke up the tune. His mind immediately returned to the children. How could he shut his door against them? By a curious mental process he imagined them standing, sad and forsaken, under the harsh angry weather—shut out from his house.

That night he hardly slept, from remorse—and a vague fear that he might die without making it up to them.

Introduction:

          Chinua Achebe, the most prominent of contemporary African writers in English, was born in 1930 and educated at the University of Ibadan. He worked for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation and was senior Research Fellow at the Institute of African Studies, Nsukku. Now he lives in the United States. Achebe has written several novels and short stories. His novel Things Fall Apart was widely acclaimed. The present story is taken from the collection Girls at War and Other Stories. Achebe’s stories reflect the pains of the emerging African life.

            In ‘Marriage is a Private Affair’, Achebe portrays the conflict between the tradition bound African tribal society and the modern ideas of life with love triumphing over obstinacy in the end.

            Nnaemeka fell in love with Nene, a teacher in a girls’ school in Lagos. Nnaemeka’s father never gave his consent for the marriage. He did not even allow his son to come home during his leave time. But reconciliation is brought about when the old man learns of the two grandsons who wish to see him. That is when we wants to make up with them. He wishes not to die before that.

Glossary

Amazon of a girl         : a tall, vigorous girl

Disconcertingly           : without calmness and self-possession

St. Paul.. Corinthians : St. Paul, the apostle of Christ, wrote two letters to the Christian

Community he had founded at Corinth, Greece. In these letters St. Paul dealt with the practical applications of the principles of Christianity.

Homily                        : long and tedious moralizing talk

Satan                           : the Devil

Commiserate with       : say that one feels pity for

Holy book                   : the Bible

Perfunctorily               : without care or interest

Comprehension

1. Answer the following questions in a paragraph each.
2. Why was Nnaemeka afraid to write to his father about his engagement?
3. Why was Nene unable to understand Nnaemeka’s fear of his father’s reaction to the news of their engagement?
4. How did the ideas of the father and the son on an ideal wife differ?
5. Why was his father’s silence more menacing than a threatening speech?
6. What did the tribesmen suggest to make Nnaemeka change his mind?
7. What does the incident of Mrs. Ochuba signify?
8. How did Nnaemeka’s father react to his son’s marriage?
9. What made the old man finally relent?
10. What is the sifnificance of the rain near the end of the story?
11. What idea of Nene’s character do you get from the story?
12. Compare the Africian Society as seen in the story with the Indian society.

• Essay
• How do Nnaemeka and Nene win over Okeke’s heart?
• How does Achebe reconcile tradition and modernity is this story?

LESSON – 14                                                                                                UNIT – V

THE FORTUNE-TELLER

• Karel Capek

Everybody who knows anything about the subject will realize that this episode could not have happened in Czechoslovakia, or in France, or in Germany, for in all these countries, as you are aware, judges are bound to try offenders and to sentence them in accordance with the letter of the law and not in accordance with their shrewd common sense and the dictates of their consciences. And the fact that in this story there is a judge who, in passing sentence, was guided not by the statute-book but by sound common sense, is due to the circumstance that the incident which I am about to relate could have happened nowhere else than in England; in fact, it happened in London, or to be more precise, in Kensington; no wait a bit, it was in Brompton or Bayswater; anyway somewhere thereabouts. The judge was, as a matter of fact, a magistrate, and his mane was Mr. Kelly, J.P. Also there was a lady, and her name was plain Myers, Mrs. Edith  Mysers.

Well, I must tell you that this lady, who was otherwise a respectable person, came under the notice of Detective Inspector MacLeary.

‘My dear,’ said MacLeary to his wife one evening. “I can’t get that Mrs. Myers out of my head. What I’d like to know is, how the woman makes her living. Just fancy, here we are in the month of February and she’s sent her servant for asparagus. And I’ve discovered that she has between, twelve and twenty visitors every day, and they vary from charwomen to duchesses. I know, darling, you’ll say she’s probably a fortune-teller. Very likely, but that can only be a blind for something else, say, the white slave traffic or espionage. Look here, I’d rather like to get to the bottom of it.’

All right, Bob,’ said the excellent Mrs.MacLeary, ‘you leave it to me.’

And So it came about that on the following day, Mrs.MacLeary, of course without her wedding ring, but on the other hand very girlishly dressed, with a scared look on herbaby face, rang at Mrs. Myers,’s door in Bayswater or possible Marylebone. She had to wait quite a while before Mrs. Mysers received her.

‘Sit down, my dear,’ said the old lady, when she had very thoroughly inspected her shy visitor. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I… I…I…’ stammered Mrs .MacLeary. ‘I’d  like….. It’s my twentieth birthday tomorrow…. I’m awfully anxious to know about my future.’

‘But, Miss… er, what name, please?’ quoth Mrs. Myers and seized a pack of cards which she began to shuffle energetically.

‘Jones, sighned Mrs. MacLeary.

‘My dear Miss Jones,’ continued Mrs. Mysers, ‘don’t misunderstand me. I don’t tell fortunes by cards, except of course, just now and then, to oblige a friend, as every old woman does. Take the cards in your left hand and divide them into five heaps. Take the cards in your left hand and divide them into five heaps. That‘s right. Sometimes I read the cards as a pastime, but apart from that…. Dear me!’ she said, cutting the first heap ,That’s right. Something I read the cards as a pastime, but apart from that….dear me! She said, cutting the first heap ‘Diamonds! That means money. And the knave of  hearts. That’s a nice hand‘.

‘Ah, said Mrs.MacLeary, ‘and what else?

‘Knave of diamonds,’ proceeded Mrs. Myers, uncovering the second heap. ’Ten of spades, that’s journey. But here!’ she exclaimed. ‘I see clubs. Clubs always mean worry, but there’s a queen of hearts at the bottom.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Mrs. MacLeary, opening her eyes as wide as she could.

‘Diamonds again,’ meditated Mrs. Mysers over the third heap. ‘My dear, there’s lots of money in store for you! But I can’t tell yet whether you’re going on a long journey or whether it’s someone near and dear to you.

‘I’ve got to go Southamptom to see my aunt,’ remarked Mrs. MacLeary.

‘That must be the long journey , ‘said Mrs. Myers, cutting the fourth heap . ‘Somebody’s going to get in your way, some elderly man….’

‘Well, here we’ve got something and no mistake,’ declared Mrs. Myers over the fifth heap. ‘My dear Miss Jones, this is the nicest hand I’ve ever seen. There’ll be a wedding before the year’s out! A very rich young man is going to marry you….. he must be a millionaire or a business man, because he travels a lot! But before you are united, you’ll have to overcome great obstacles! There’s an elderly gentleman who’ll get in your way, but you must preserver. When you do get married you’ll move a long way off, most likely across the ocean. My fee’s a guinea, for the Christian mission to the poor negroes.’

‘I’m so grateful to you,’ declared Mrs. MacLeary , taking one pound and one shilling out of her handbag, awfully grateful. Mrs. Myers, what would it cost without any of those worries?’

‘The cards can’t be bribed,’ said the old lady with dignity.’ what is your uncle?’

‘He’s in the police,’ lied the young lady with and innocent face. ‘You know the secret service.’

‘Oh!’ said the old lady, and drew three cards out of the heap. ’That’s very nasty, very nasty. Tell him, my dear, that he’s threatened by a great danger. He ought to come and see me, to find out more about it. There’s lots of them from Scotland Yard come here and get me to read the cards for them and they all tell me what have on their minds. Yes, just you send him to me. You say he’s on secret service work? Mr. Jones? Tell him I’ll be expecting him. Good-by, dear Miss. Jones.  Next please!’

‘I don’t like the look of this,’ said Mr. MacLeary, scratching his neck reflectively. ‘I don’t like the look of this, Katie. That woman was too much interested in your late uncle. Besides that, her real name isn’t Myers, but Meierhofer, and she hails from Lubeck. A damned German!’ growled Mr.MacLeary. I wonder how we can stop her little game? I wouldn’t mind betting five to one that she worms things out of people that are no business of hers. I’ll tell you what I’ll pass the word on to the bosses’.

            And Mr. MaLeary did in good sooth, pass the word on to the bosses. Oddly enough, the bosses took a serious view of the matter, and so it come about that the worthy Mrs. Myers was summoned to appear before Mr.Kelly, J.P.

            ‘Well, Mrs. Myers,’ the magistrate said to her, ‘what’s all this I hear about this fortune –telling of yours with cards?

            ‘Good gracious, your worship,’ said the old lady, ‘I must do something for a living. At my age I can’t go on the music-hall and dance!’

            ‘Him,’ said Mr. Kelly. ‘But the charge against you is that you don’t read the cards properly. My dear good lady, that’s as bad as if you were to give people slabs of clay when they ask for cakes of chocolate. In return for a fee of one guinea people are entitle to a correct prophecy when you don’t know how to?’

            ‘It isn’t everyone who complains, ‘urged the old lady in her defence. ‘You see, I foretell the things they like, The  pleasure they get out of it is worth a few shillings, your worship and sometime I’m right. MrsMyers”, said one lady to me. “nobody’ every read the cards for me as well as you have given me such good advice. “She lives in St. John’s Wood and is getting a divorce from her husband’.

            ‘Look here, ‘the magistrate cut her short. ‘We‘ve got a witness against you. Mrs. Maleary, tell the court what happened’.

            ‘Mrs Myers told me from the cards,’ began Mrs. Macleary glibly’ that before the year was outI’d  be married, that my future  husband would be a rich young man and that I’d go with him across the ocean…..’

‘Why across the ocean particularly?’ inquired the magistrate.

“Because there was the nine of spades in the second heap!” Mrs. Myers said ‘that means journey.’

‘Rubbish!’ growled the magistrate. ‘ The nine of spades means hope. It’s the jack of spades that means journeys and when it turns up with the seven  of diamonds, that means long journeys that are likely to lead to something worthwhile. Mrs. Myers, you can’’ bamboozle me. You prophesied to the witness here that before the year was out she’d marry a rich young man. But Mrs. MacLeary has been married for the last three years to Detective Inspector Macleary, and a fine fellow he is too .Mrs. Mysers how do you explain that absurdity?’

My goodness me!’ said the old lady placidly, ‘That does happen now and then. When this young person called on me she was al dressed up, but her left glove was torn, So that looked as if she wasn’t too well off, but she wanted to make a good impression’. Then she said she was twenty, but now it turns out she’s twenty , but now it turns out she’s twenty-five…….’

‘Twenty –four,’ Mrs. MacLeary bust forth.

‘That’s all the same. Well, she wanted to get married, what I mean to say, she made out to me she wasn’t married. So I arranged a set of cards for her that’d mean a wedding and a rich husband. I thought that’d meet the case better than anything else.’

‘And what about the obstacles, the elderly gentleman and the journey across the ocean?’ asked Mrs. MacLeary.

‘That was to give you plenty for your money, said Mrs. Mysers artlessly.’ There’s quite a lost has to be told for a guinea.’

‘Well, that’s enough,’ said the magistrate. ‘Mrs. Myers, it’s no use. The way you tell fortunes by cards is a fraud, Cards take some understanding. Of course, there are various ideas about it, but if my memory serves me, the nine of spades never means journeys. You’ll pay a fine of fifty pounds, just the same as people who adulterate food or sell worthless goods. There’s a suspicion, too, Mrs. Myers, that you’re engaged in espionage as well . But I don’t expect you’ll admit that’.

‘As true as I’M standing here….’ exclaimed Mrs. Myers.

But Mr. Kelly interrupted her. ‘Well, we’ll say no more about that. But as you’re alien without any proper means of subsistence, the authorities will make use of the powers vested in them and will have you deported. Goodbye, Mrs. Myers, and thank you, Mrs. MacLeary. I must say that this inaccurate fortune-telling is a disgraceful and unscrupulous business. Just bear that in mind, Mrs. Myers.’

‘What am I to do now?’ signed the old lady, ‘Just when I was beginning to get a good connexion together….’

            About a year later Mr. Kelly met Detective Inspector MacLeary.

            ‘Fine weather,’ said the magistrate amiably. ‘By the way how is Mrs. MacLeary?’

            Mr. Macleary looked very glum. ‘Well …… you know Mr. Kelly,’ he said with a certain embarrassment. ‘Mr. Macleary…..well, the fact is ….she’s left me’.

            ‘You don’t so,’ said the magistrate in astonishment, ‘such a nice young lady, too !’.

            ‘That‘s just it,’ growled Mr. Macleary. ‘Some young whipper-snapper went crazy about her before I knew what was happening. He’s millionaire, or a businessman from Melbourne. I tried to stop her, but ……’ Mr. Macleary ad helpless gesture with his hand a week ago they sailed together for Australia.’   

Notes and Exercises.

Introduction

            Karel Caper (pronounced Chopek) 1890 – 1938), was a famous Czeck novelist, playwright and story writer. His novels war with News and Krakatit, and his play, R.U. R and The Insect Bay won for his international reputation. His short stories are marked by a gentle play of irony.   

            In this story a smart Detective Inspector called MacLeary employs his charming young wife to trap a fraudulent fortune –teller called Mrs. Myers. Mrs. MacLeary removes her wedding ring, dresses girlishly and visits Mrs. Myers. The latter predicts that her young client will marry a rich man and sail to distant place.

            Soon Mrs. Myers is summoned to a court a law and her fraud is exposed. The justice of the peace, Mr. Kelly rebukes Mrs. Myers and orders her deportation.

             A year later when Mr. Kelly and Mr. MacLeary meet, the latter confesses to the justice that his wife has run away with a rich businessman to Australia. Thus a freakish forecast comes true in the life of the smart Inspector.

Glossary

Statute-book	:	A record of laws passed by al legislative body
J.P.	:	Justice of the Peace; a magistrate with jurisdiction over a small district or part of a country
Asparagus	:	A  group or family of plants whose tender shoots are used as a vegetable
Charwomen	:	Women who earn money by cleaning offices, houses, ect,
A blind
The white slave	:	a cover ; something intended to hide reality.
Traffic	:	The business of trapping women and forcing them into prostitution.
Espionage	:	Spying; the use of spies especially for military purpose.
to shuffle	:	Here, to mix playing cards so as to change their order of arrangement.
Meditated	:	Here, thought deeply.
Get in your way Scotland Yard	:	Obstruct or hinder your plans.
Scotland Yard	:	The London police, especially the detective wing The name is derived from the small street in London where originally the London police had their headquarters.
Luber’s	:	A city in northern Germany.
Worms things out of people	:	Extracts information or secrets from people by subtle questioning.
Asic-halls	:	(IN Britain) theatres used for entertainments like music, dancing and acrobatic performances.
cut her short	:	Stopped her abruptly.
Placidly	:	Calmly.
Bamboozle	:	(colloq.) cheat; confuse or puzzle.
Deported	:	Sent Out of the country.
Whipper-snapper	:	An insignificant person who puts on airs

Comprehesion

A. Answer the following questions in a paragraph each.

1. How do judges in Britain differ from the juges in France or Germany?

2. Why did MacLeary begin to suspect Mrs. Mysers?

3. What did MacLeary suspect Mrs. Mysers to be engaged in?

4. What was Mrs. Myer’s prophecy about Miss Jones’s future?

5. What did MacLeary learn about Mrs. Myer’s nationality?

6. How did Mr. Kelly show that he knew the secret of reading the cards?

7. What sentence did Mr. Kelly J.P. pronounce on Mrs. Myers?

8. What is the irony in the story?

B. Essay

1. write a paragraph on each of the following:-

(a) How was MacLeary able to book Mrs. Myers?

(b) What did the magistrate consider to be disgraceful about Mrs. Myers’s conduct?

(c) How did Mrs. Myers’s prophecy turn out to be true in regard to Mrs. MacLeary?

2.  Write an essay on the irony in “The Fortune-teller.’

LESSON – 15                                                                         UNIT – 5

THE PROPOSAL

One-act play

– Anton Chekhov

CHARACTERS

STEPAN STEPANOVITCH CHUBUKOV, a landowner

NATALYA STEPANOVNA, his daughter, twenty-five years old

IVAN VASSILEVITCH LOMOV, a neighbour of Chubukov, a large and hearty, but very suspicious landowner

SETTING

CHUBUKOV’s country-house

A drawing-room in CHUBUKOV’S house.

[LOMOV enters, wearing a dress-jacket and white gloves. CHUBUKOV rises to meet him.]

CHUBUKOV: My dearest friend, fancy seeing you Ivan Vassilevitch! I am extremely glad! [Shakes hand] well, this is a surprise, dear old boy! … How are you?

LOMOV: Thank you. And how are you, pray?

CHUBUKOV: We’re getting on reasonable well, my cherub – thanks to your prayers and all that .. Please do sit down…. You know it’s bad of you to forget your neighbouts, old fellow. But my dear friend, why all this formality? Tails, gloves, and all the rest of it! Are you going visiting, or what, dear boy?  along somehow, my angel, to your prayers, and so on. Sit down, please do. … Now, you know,

LOMOV: No, I’ve come only to see you, my dear Stepan Stepanovitch.

CHUBUKOV: Then why wear tails, dear boy? As though you were making a formal call on New Year’s Day!

LOMOV: the fact is, you see… (take his arm). I’ve come to ask a favour of you, my dear Stepan Stepanovitch – If I’m not causing too much trouble. I’ve taken the liberty of seeking your help more than once in the past, and you’ve always, so to speak.. But forgive me, I’m in such a state … I’ll take a drink of water, my dear Stepan Stepanovitch (Drinks Water)

CHUBUKOV: [Aside] He’s come to borrow money! Shan’t give him any! [Aloud] What’sthe matter, my dear young fellow?

LOMOV: You see, my dear Stepanitch … forgive me, Stepan, my dear… I mean, I’m awfully excited, as you will please notice. … In short, you’re the only man who possible help me, though, of course , I haven’t done anything to deserve it, and…and I have no right to count on your assistance. …

CHUBUKOV: Oh, don’t  spin it out, dear boy! Out with it. Well?

LOMOV: yes, yes…I’ll tell you straight away… The fact is, I’ve come to ask for the hand of your daughter, Natalya Stepanovna, in marriage.

CHUBUKOV: [Joyfully]  Ivan Vassilevitch! My dearest friend! Say it again–I didn’t hear it all!

LOMOV: I have the honour to ask …

CHUBUKOV: [Interrupting] My dearest fellow … I’m so very glad, and so on. … Yes, indeed, and all that sort of thing. [Embraces and kisses LOMOV] I’ve been hoping for it for a long time. It’s been my continual desire. [Sheds a tear] And I’ve always loved you, my angel, as if you were my own son. May God give you both His help and His love and so on, and I did so much hope … What am I behaving in this idiotic way for? I’m off my balance with joy, absolutely off my balance! Oh, with all my heart… I’ll go and call Natasha, and so on….

LOMOV: [Greatly moved] my dear Stepan Stepanovitch, what do you think she’ll say?  May I count on her consenting?

CHUBUKOV: she not consent to it? – and you such a good-looker, too! I bet she’s up to her ears in love with you, and so forth. I’ll tell her straight away! (Goes out).

LOMOV: I am cold … I’m trembling all over, as if I were foing for an examination. Natalya Stepanovna is an excellent housekeeper, not bad-looking, well-educated. … What more do I want? But I’m in such a state that I’m beginning to have noises in my ears. [Drinks water] Yet I mustn’t stay single. in the first plae I’m thirty five already – a critical age, so to speak. Secondly, I must have an ordered, regular life… I’ve got a heart disease, with continual palpitations… I flare up so easily, and I’m always getting terribly agitated… Even now my lips are trembling and my right eyelid’s twitching….

[NATALYA STEPANOVNA comes in.]

NATALYA : Oh, so it’s you, And papa said: go along there’s customer come for his goods.’ How do you do, Ivan Vassilevitch?

LOMOV: How do you do, my dear Natalya stepanovna?

NATALYIA: Excuse my wearing this apron and not being properly dressed. We’re shelling peas for drying. Why haven’t you been to see us for such a long? Do sit down…. [They sit down.] 

Will you have some lunch?

LOMOV: No, thank you, I’ve  alreadyhad lunch.

NATALYIA: Won’t you, smoke?  Here are some matches….It’s a magnificent day, but yesterday it rained so hard that the men did nothing all day. But what’s all this? I believe you’re wearing tails! This is something new! Are you going to a ball or something? By the way, you’ve changed- you’re better looking!….. But really, why are you dressed up like this?

LOMOV (in agitation): You see, dear Natalyia Stepanovna ….. The fact is that I’ve decided to ask you to … listen to me ….. Naturally, you’ll be surprised, possibly even angry, but I …. (Aside). How dreadfully cold it is!

NATALYA: What is it then? [A Pause] Well?

LOMOV: I‘ll l try to be brief. You are aware, of course, my dear Natalyia Stepanovna, that I’ve had the honour of knowing your family a long time – from my childhood, in fact. My late husband- from whom, as you know, I inherited theestate- always entertained a profound respect for your father and your late mother. The family of the Lomovs and the family of the Choobukovs have always been on the friendliest and, one might almost say, on intimate terms. Besides, as you are aware, my land is in close proximity to yours. Perphaps you will recollect that my Volovji meadows lie alongside your birch wood.

NATALYIA: Excuse me, but I must interrupt you there. Your say ‘my Volovyi meadows… But  are they really yous?

LOMOV     : Yes, mine.

NATALYA : Well, what next! The Volovyi  meadows….are ours, not yours!

LOMOV: No,they’re mine, dear Natalyia  Stepanovna.

NATALYA: That’s news to me . How do they come to be your’s ?

LOMOV: What do you mean how?  I‘m speaking of the Volovyi meadows that lie like a wedge between your birch wook and Burnt Swamp.

NATALYIA: But yes, of course… they’re ours.

LOMOV: No, you’re mistaken, my dear Natalyia Stepanovna they are mine.

NATALYIA  : Do come to your senses, Ivan Vassilievich! How long have they been yours?

LOMOV: What do you mean  by  ‘how long’? As long as I can remember- they’ve always been ours.

NATALYA : Well,there you must excuse me for disagreeing.

LOMOV: You can see it in the  documents, my dear Natalyia Stepanovna.It’s true that  the Volovyi emeadows were a matter of dispute at one time, but now everyone knows that they’re mine. There’s really no need to argue about it. My aunt’s grandmother handed over those meadows to your great grandfather’s peasamts for their use, rent free, for an indefinite period, in return for their firing her bricks. Yours great grandfather’s peasants used the meadows rent free for forty years or so and got accustomed to looking upto them as their own…… and then when the settlement was made….

NATALYIA   : Grandfather, grandmother , aunt…. I don’t understand anything about it! The meadows are ours, that’s all!.

LOMOV: They’re mine!

NATALYIA : They’re ours! You can go on trying to prove it for two days, you can put  on fifteen dress suits if you like , but they’re still ours, ours!.

LOMOV: I don’t want the meadows, Natalyia Stepanovna, but it’s a matter of principle. If you wish, I’ll give them to you as a present.

NATALYIA: But I’m the one who could make a present of them to you- because they’re mine!.. All this is very strange, Ivan Vassilievch , to say the  least of it ! Till now we’ve always regarded you as a good neighbour, a friend of ours.  Forgive me, but this isn’t neighbourly coduct ! To my mind it’s almost impertinent, if you want to know…

LOMOV : You meanto say then that  I’m a usuper ? I’ve evrr stoled other people’s land, Madam, and I won’t allow anyone to accuse me of it…. (goes rapidly to the decanter and drinks water.) The Volvyi meadows are mine!.

NATALYIA : That’s not true, they’re ours !.

LOMOV : They’re mind!

NATALYIA : It isn’t  true I’ll prove it to you I’ll send my men to now those meadows today.

LOMOV : What’s that?

NATALYIA: My  men will be working there today!

LOMOV:  I’ll kick them out!

NATALYA :  You daren’t do that!

LOMOV( clutches at his heart) : The Volovyi meadows are mine !Don’t you understand that ? mine !

NATALIYA: Don’t shout, please!

LOMOV:  If it weren’t for these dreadful agonizing palpitations Madam – if it weren’t for the throbbing in my temples, I should speak to you very differently!(shouts).The Volovyi meadows are mine!

NATALYA   : Ours!

LOMOV: Mine!

NATALYA : Ours!

LOMOV: Mine! (Enter CHOOBUKOV)

CHUBUKOV: What’s all this? What are you shouting about?

NATALYA : Papa, please  explain to  this gentleman who whom do the Volvyi meadows belong—to him or to us?

CHUBUKOV [To LOMOV] : The Meadows are ours, dear cheap.

LOMOV: But forgive me, Stepan Stepanovic how do they come to be your’s? At least you might be reasonable!

CHUBUKOV: Pardon me, my dear friend…. You forget that it was just because there was a dispute and so on about these meadows that the peasants didn’t pay rent to your grandmother, and all the rest of it ….And now every dog knows that they’re ours—yes, really! You can’t have seen the plans! my precious. … You forget just this, that the peasants didn’t pay your grandmother and all that, because the Meadows were in dispute, and so on. And now everybody knows that they’re ours. It means that you haven’t seen the plans!

LOMOV: But I’ll prove to you in court that they’re mine!!

CHUBUKOV: You won’t prove it, my dear man.

LOMOV:  Yes, I will!

CHUBUKOV:  But why shout, my dear boy? You won’t prove anything by shouting!

LOMOV: No, you’re simply taking me for a fool and laughing at me! You call my land yours, and then you expect me to stay cool and talk to you in the ordinary way. Good neighbours don’t behave in this way, stepan Stepanvich! You’re not a neighbour, you’re usurper!

CHUBUKOV: And you’re just a malicious, double faced, mean fellow! Yes, you are!

LOMOV: My hat…My heart…. Which way do I go? Which way do I go? Where’s the door? Oh! I belive I’m dying….. I’ve lost the use of my leg…..

(Walks to the door.)

CHOOBUKOV: (calling after him): I forbid you to set foot in my house again!

NATALYIA : Take it to court! We shall see (LOMOV goes out staggering).

CHUOOBUKOV: And this ridiculous freak, this eyesore yes, he has the impertinence to come here and make a proposal and all the rest of it ! Would you believe it? A proposal!

NATALYA : What proposal?

CHUBUKOV: Yes, just fancy! He came to propose to you.

NATALYA :  To propose ? To me? But why didn’t you tell me that before?

CHUBUKOV: That’s why he got himself up in his tailcoat. The sausage! The shrimp!

NATALYA  : To me? A proposal? Oh! (Drops into a chair and moans.) Bring him back Oh, bring him back!

CHUBUKOV: Bring whom back?

NATALYA : Be quick, be quick! I feel faint! Bring him back!

( shrieks hysterically.)

CHUBUKOV:  What is it? What do you want? (Clutches at his head) what misery!I’ll shoot myself !I’ll hang myself! They’ve worn out!

NATALYA : I’m dying! Brinh him back!

CHUBUKOV: Phew! Directly. Don’t how. (Runs out.)

NATALYA (alone, moans): What have we done! Bring him back! Bring him back!

CHUBUKOV: (runs in): He’s coming directly, and all the rest of it. Damnation take him! Ugh! Youcan talk to him yourself: I don’t want to, and that’s that!

NATALYA(moans) : Bring him back!

CHUBUKOV(shouts) :  He’s coming ,I tell you I’ll cut my throat! We’ve abuse the man, we’ve insulted him, we’ve kicked him out, and it was all your doing         – your doing!

NATALYA  : No, it was your!

CHUBUKOV: So now it’s my fault! What next!(Enter LOMOV).

LOMOV(exhsaused): These dreadful palpitations…. My leg feels numb…. A shooting pain in my side….

NATALYA : Forgive us, we were rather hasty, Ivan Vassilievich…. Remember now: the Volovyi meadows really are yours.

LOMOV : My heart’s going at a terrific rate….. The meadows are mine…. Both my eyelids are twithching…..

NATALYIA : Yes, they’re yours, yours… Sit down….. (They sit down.) We were wrong.

LOMOV : To me, it’s a matter of principle… I don’t value the land, but I value the principle…

NATALYIA : That’s it, the principle… Let’s talk about something else.

LOMOV: Especially as I have proof. My aunt’s grand mother gave over to your father’s grandfather’s peasants…..

NATALYIA: Enough, enough about that ….(Aside) I don’t know how to begin…… (to him.) Will you soon be going shooting?

LOMOV: I expect to go grouse shooting after the harvest, dear Natalyia Stepanovna…. Oh ,did you hear ? Just fancy–  what bad luck I’ve had! My Tryer—you know him—he’s gone lame.

NATALYA : What  a pity! What was the cause of it?

LOMOV:  I don’t know….. (sighs) My best dog, to say nothing of the money You know him— I paid a hundred and twenty five roubles for him.

NATALYA : You paid too much, Ivan Vassilivich.

LOMOV: Well. I think it was very cheap. He’s a marvellous dog!

NATALYA : Papa  paid eighty-five roubles for his Flyer, and Flyer is better than your Tryer by far.

LOMOV:  Flyer better than Tryer ? Come, come! (Laughs) Flyer better than Tryer!

NATALYIA : Of course he’s better!

LOMOV:  Excuse me, Natalyia Stepanovna, but you forget that he’s got a pug-jaw, and a dog with pug-jaw can never grip properly.

NATALYIA : A pug- jaw? That’s the first I’ve heard of it.  

LOMOV:  I assure you, his lower jaw is shorter than the upper one.

NATALYA :  Why, did you measure it?

LOMOV: Yes, He’s all right for coursing of course, but when it comes to gripping, he’s hardly good enough.

NATALYA: In the first place our Flyer is a pedigree dog—whereas your Tryer’s coat has got such a mixture of colour that you’d never guess what king he is. Then he’s as old and ugly as an old hack….

LOMOV:  He’s old but I wouldn’t take five of your Flyers for him ….I wouldn’t think of it! Tryer is real, dog but Flyer..

NATALYIA:There’s some demon of contradiction in you today, Ivan Vassilievinch. First you pretend that the meadows are yours, and now you’re saying that Tryer is better than Flyer. I don’t like it when people say what they don’t really believe. After all, You know perfectly well that Flyer is a hundred times better than your …… Well, your stupid Tryer. So why say the opposite?

LOMOV: I  can see, Natalyia Stepanovna,that you think I’m either blind or a fool. Won’t you understand that your Flyer has a pug-jaw?

NATALYA : That isn’t true.

LOMOV: He has a pug-jaw.

NATALYIA : (Shouts) It’s not true!..

LOMOV: What are you shouting for, Madam? Please be silent…. My heart’s bursting…. (shouts). Be Quit!

NATALYIA:  I won’t be quiet till you admit that Flyer is a hundred times better than your Tryer.

LOMOV:  He’s hundred times worse! It’s time he was dead, your Flyer! Oh, my head…. My eyes….my shoulder!

NATALYIA: As for your idiot Tryer _I don’t need to wish him dead: he’s half-dead already!

LOMOV (weeping): Be  quiet ! My heart’s going to burst.

NATALYIA : I won’t be quiet! (Enter CHOOBUKOV)

 CHOOBUKOV : Now what is it?

NATALYA : Papa, tell us frankly, on your honour: which dog’s the better—our Flyer or his Tryer?

LOMOV: Stepan Stepanovich, I implore you, tell us just one thing has your Flyer got a pug-jaw, or hasn’t he? Yes or no?

CHOOBUKOV: Well, what if he has? As if it mattered! Anyway, there’s no better dog in the whole district, and all that.

LOMOV: But my Tryer is better, isn’t he? On your honour.

CHUBUKOV: Don’t get exited, my dear boy… he’s old and he’s snub-nosed.

LOMOV: Excuse  me, I’ve got palpitations…..

NATALYIA (mimics him): Palpitations…. What sort of a sportsman are you? You ought to be lying on the stove in the kitchen squashing black beetles instead of hunting foxes! Palpitations indeed!

CHUBUKOV: Yes, honestly, hunting’s not your line at all! With your palpitations and all that, you’d be better at home than sitting on horseback being jolted about.

LOMOV: What about you—are you a sportsman? You only go out hunting to make up to the Count, and intrigue against other people…Oh, my heart! You’re an intriguer.

CHOOBUKOV: What! I –an intiguer? (shouts).Be slient.

LOMOV:  Intriguer!

CHUOOBUKOV: Milkshop! Puppy!

LOMOV: You old rat! Hypocrite!

CHUBUKOV: Hold your tongue, or I’ll shoot you with a dirty gun like a partridge! Windbag!

LOMOV: Everyone knows – oh, my heart! – that your wife used to beat you!.. My leg.. my head.. glashes in front of my eyes… I’m going to fall down… I’m falling…

CHUBUKOV: And your housekeeper has got you under her thumb!

LOMOV: Oh! Oh! Oh!.. My heart’s burst! My shoulder gone… Where’s my shoulder? I’m dying! (drop into an armchair). A doctor! (faints).

NATALYA: He’s dead! (Shakes Lomov by the sleeve) Ivan Vassilevitch! Ivan Vassilevitch! What have you done! He’s dead. [drops into an armchair] A doctor, a doctor! [sobs and laughs hysterically.]

CHUBUKOV: What now? What’s the matter? What do you want?

NATALYA: [moans]  He’s dead … dead!

CHUBUKOV: Who’s dead? [Glancing at LOMOV]. He really is dead! My God! Water! Doctor! [holds a glass of water to LOMOV’S lips] Take a drink! … No, he won’t drink. … so he’s dead and all that. … What an unlucky man I am! Why don’t I put a bullet through my brain? Why didn’t I cut my throat long ago? What am I waiting for? Give me a knife! Give me a gun!

 [LOMOVmakes a  slight  movements]

 I believe he’s coming round. …Do have a drink some water! That’s right. …

LOMOV: Flashes before my eyes.. a sort of mist.. Where am I?

CHUBUKOV: You’d better get married as soon as possible and – go to the devil.. She consents. (joins their hands). She consents, and all the rest of it. I give you my blessing and so forth. Only leave me alone!

NOTES AND EXERCISES

Introduction

Anton Chekov (1860-1904) was, of modern writers, the dearest to the Russian people. His first story appeared in a Moscow paper in 1880 when he was a student.At the time appeared a very stirring and blood-and-thunder play The High Road, which was suppressed by the censor and only came to light again in 1915.

    A doctor of medicine by profession, Chekov was a hard worker and between his patients and his desk he led a life of ceaseless activity. His first collection of stories which appeared in 1887 brought him success. He began to write for the stage around 1889. Several plays such as Ivanoff, The Bear, uncle Vanya, The Seagull appeared one after another.

            The Proposal is almost a comedy of manners. Two youngsters get into quarrels almost on anything. The male member a hypochondriac feels that his diseases shoot up andthat he is dying. Still the quancel does not cease. The author is brilliant in making the character of Lomov, the hypochondriac.

Glossary

fancy(adv)	:	here, glad
cherub(n)	:	friend
tails(n)	:	tails of a coat (tailcoat)
spin(v)	:	go round and round
count on (v)	:	trust, hope
Palpitations (n)	:	Quick beats of heart
Flar	:	Get angry
Twitch(v)	:	More quickly
Shell(v)	:	Toremove the shell(from peas)
Ingerit(v)	:	Receive property as a descendant of a person at his death.
Proximity(n)	:	Nearness
Peasants(n)	:	Farmers
Decanter(n)	:	Filter
Mow (v)	:	Cut (grass)
Agonize (v)	:	Disturb, worry
Temple (n)	:	Part of the head just above and in front of the ear.
Usurper(n)	:	One who takes someone’s property by force and illegally.
Malicious(adj.)	:	Desiring to do harm to others
Forbid(v)	:	Prohibit, not allow
Freak(n)	:	Peculiar and awkward looking thing
Impertinence(n)	:	Not being polite
How(v)	:	Cry like a dog
Grouse(v)	:	Small wild bird
Squash (v)	:	Beat
Black beetles(n)	:	Small insects attracted by light
Intrigue(v)	:	make a secret plan
Profound(adj)	:	deep
Proposal(n)	:	offer of marriage
Rouble (n)	:	Russian moneny

Comprehension                                                                                                        

A. Answer the following questions in a paragraph each.

1. What brought Lomov to Choobukov’s house?

2. What drove him out of it?

3. Was Natalyia rally intrested in  marrying Lomov?

4. Sketch the characters of

a. Lomov

b. Natalyia,

c. Choobukov.

5. Comment on humour in

a. Conversation.

b. Situation

B. Essay

1. What are the characteristics of The proposal as a comedy of manners?

2. What are the things that make Lomov sure that Natalyia will marry him?           

Rising Sun – 1 Text Book

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RISING SUN BOOK – II

An Anthology of Prose, Poetry and Fiction

MRS. ASRA TABASSUM

SUN INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TOURISM & MANAGEMENT

VISAKHAPATNAM    /         RUSHIKONDA  /         HYDERABAD

PREFACE

“Rising Sun Book – II” is an anthology of prose, Poetry, Short Stories and one act plays for the students of Foundation English at the undergraduate level. The book contains three preparatory essays, six poems, three short stories and two one act plays. It deals with everyday concerns and are simple and linguistically not very demanding. At the same time they pose searching questions and can stimulate critical and positive thinking.

Glossary is deliberately kept in minimal, extensive exercises provided at the end of each lesson.

Suggestions for improvement are welcome and will be incorporated, whenever feasible.

                                                                   Mrs. Asra Tabassum

                                M.A(English); M.Ed; MBA (HR & Marketing)

READING

The Art of Reading

Lin Yutang

Reading or the enjoyment of books has always been regarded among the charms of a cultured life and is respected and envied by those who rarely give themselves that privilege. This is easy to understand when we compare the difference between the life of a man who does no reading and that of a man who does. The man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world, in respect to time and space. His life falls into a set routine; he is limited to contact and conversation with a few friends and acquaintances, and he sees only what happens in his immediate neighborhood. From this prison there is no escape. But the moment he takes up a book, he immediately enters a different world, and if it is a good book, he is immediately put in touch with one of the best talkers of the world. This talker leads him on and carries him into a different country or a different age, or unburdens to him some of his personal regrets, or discusses with him some special line or aspect of life that the reader knows nothing about. An ancient author puts him in communion with a dead spirit of long ago, and as he reads along, he begins to imagine what that ancient author looked like and what type of person he was. Both Mencius and Ssema Ch’ien, China’s greatest historian, have expressed the same idea. Now to be able to live two hours out of twelve in a different world and take one’s thoughts off the claims of the immediate present is, of course, a privilege to be envied by people shut up in their bodily prison. Such a change of environment is really similar to travel in its psychological effect.

But there is more to it than this. The reader is always carried away into a world of thought and reflection. Even if it is a book about physical events, there is a difference between seeing such events in person or living through them, and reading about them in books, for then the events always assume the quality of a spectacle and the reader becomes a detached spectator. The best reading is therefore that which leads us into this contemplative mood, and not that which is merely occupied with the report of events. The tremendous amount of time spent

on newspapers I regard as not reading at all, for the average readers of papers are mainly concerned with getting reports about events and happenings without contemplative value.

The best formula for the object of reading, in my opinion, was stated by Huang Shanku, a Sung poet and friend of Su Tungp’o. He said, “A scholar who hasn’t read anything for three days feels that his talk has no flavor (becomes insipid), and his own face becomes hateful to look at (in the mirror).” What he means, of course, is that reading gives a man a certain charm and flavor, which is the entire object of reading, and only reading with this object can be called an art. One doesn’t read to “improve one’s mind,” because when one begins to think of improving his mind, all the pleasure of reading is gone. He is the type of person who says to himself: “I must read Shakespeare, and I must read Sophocles, and I must read the entire Five Foot Shelf of Dr. Eliot, so I can become an educated man.” I am sure that man will never become educated. He will force himself one evening to read Shakespeare’s Hamlet and come away, as if from a bad dream, with no greater benefit than that he is able to say that he has “read” Hamlet. Anyone who reads a book with a sense of obligation does not understand the art of reading. This type of reading with a business purpose is in no way different from a senator’s reading up of files and reports before he makes a speech. It is asking for business advice and information, and not reading at all.

Reading for the cultivation of personal charm of appearance and flavor in speech is then, according to Huang, the only admissible kind of reading. This charm of appearance must evidently be interpreted as something other than physical beauty. What Huang means by “hateful to look at” is not physical ugliness. There are ugly faces that have a fascinating charm and beautiful faces that are insipid to look at. I have among my Chinese friends one whose head is shaped like a bomb and yet who is nevertheless always a pleasure to see. The most beautiful face among Western authors, so far as I have seen them in pictures, was that of

• K. Chesterton. There was such a diabolical conglomeration of mustache, glasses, fairly bushy eyebrows and knitted lines where the eyebrows met! One felt there were a vast number of ideas playing about inside that forehead, ready at any time

to burst out from those quizzically penetrating eyes. That is what Huang would call a beautiful face, a face not made up by powder and rouge, but by the sheer force of thinking. As for flavour of speech, it all depends on one’s way of reading. Whether one has “flavour” or not in his talk, depends on his method of reading. If a reader gets the flavour of books, he will show that favour in his conversations, he cannot help also having a flavour in his writing.

Hence I consider flavour or taste as the key to all reading. It necessarily follows that taste is selective and individual, like the taste for food. The most hygienic way of eating is, after all, eating what one likes, for then one is sure of his digestion. In reading as in eating, what is one man’s meat may be another’s poison. A teacher cannot force his pupils to like what he likes in reading, and a parent cannot expect his children to have the same taste as himself. And if the reader has no taste for what he reads, all the time is wasted. As Yuan Chuanglang says, “You can leave the books that you don’t like alone, and let other people read them.”

There can be, therefore, no books that one absolutely must read. For our intellectual interests grow like a tree or flow like a river. So long as there is proper sap, the tree will grow anyhow, and so long as there is fresh current from the spring, the water will flow. When water strikes a granite cliff, it just goes around it; when it finds itself in a pleasant low valley, it stops and meanders there a while; when it finds itself in a deep mountain pond, it is content to stay here; when it finds itself traveling over rapids, it hurries forward. Thus, without any effort or determined aim, it is sure of reaching the sea some day. There are no books in this world that everybody must read, but only books that a person must read at a certain time in a given place under given circumstances and a t a given period of his life. I rather think that reading, like matrimony, is determined by fate or yinyuan. Even if there is a certain book that everyone must read, like the Bible, there is a time for it. When one’s thoughts and experience have not reached a certain point for reading a masterpiece, the masterpiece will leave only a bad flavor on his palate. Confucius said, “When one is fifty, once may read the Book of Changes,” which means that one should not read it at forty-five. The extremely mild flavor of Confucius’ own sayings in the Analects and his mature wisdom cannot be appreciated until one becomes mature himself.

Furthermore, the same reader reading the same book at different periods, gets a different flavor out of it. For instance, we enjoy a book more after we have had a personal talk with the author himself, or even after having seen a picture of his face, and one gets again a different flavor sometimes after one has broken off friendship with the author. A person gets a kind of flavor form reading the Book of Changes at forty, and gets another kind of flavor reading it at fifty, after he has seen more changes in life. Therefore, all good books can be read with profit and renewed pleasure a second time. I was made to read Westward Ho! and Henry Esmond in my college days, but while I was capable of appreciating Westward Ho! in my ‘teens, the real flavor of Henry Esmond escaped me entirely until  I reflected about it later on, and suspected there was vastly more charm in that book than I had then been capable of appreciating.

Reading, therefore, is an act considering of two sides, the author and the reader. The net gain comes as much from the reader’s contribution through his own insight and experience as from the author’s own. In speaking about the Confucian Analacts, the Sung Confucianist Ch’eng Yich’uan said, “There are readers and readers. Some read the Analacts and feel that nothing has happened, some are pleased with one or two lines in it, and some begin to wave their hands and dance on their legs unconsciously.”

I regard the discovery of one’s favourite author as the most critical event in one’s intellectual development. There is such a thing as the affinity of spirits, and among the authors of ancient and modern times, one must try to find an author whose spirit is akin with his own. Only in this way can one get any real good out of reading. One has to be independent and search out his masters. Who is one’s favourite author, no one can tell, probably not even the man himself. It is like love at first sight. The reader cannot be told to love this one or that one, but when he has found the author he loves, he knows it himself by a kind of instinct. We have such famous cases of discoveries of authors. Scholars seem to have lived in different ages, separated by centuries, and yet their modes of thinking and feeling were so akin that their coming together across the pages of a book was like a person finding his own image…

Huang          :        Chinese  scholars have

several names: a personal name, a literary name

or courtesy name, and fancy name. Shanku (`Recluse

of the Valley’) is the fancy name of Huang Tingehien (1045 AD-1105 AD).

Luchih is his literary name.

Sung            :        the Sung dynasty which lasted

from 960 AD to 1279 AD

Su Tungp ‘o  :      the fancy name (‘Recluse of the

Eastern Hillside’) of Su Shill (1036 AD-1101 AD), one

of the `leisure – class intelligentsia’ for whom Lin Yutang had much admiration. Lin Yutang went through the correspondence between Su Tungp’o and Huang Shanku.

Insipid          :        weak, dull, lifeless

Shakespeare :       the most celebrated English

poet and dramatist (1564-1616) Author of 37 plays such as ‘Macbeth’, ‘Othello’,‘Julius Caesar’, ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ and ‘Romeo

and Juliet’.

Sophocles    :        the famous Greek tragedian

(496 BC to 406 BC). ‘Oedipus’ is his greatest work.

Eliot             :        T.S Eliot (1888 – 1965), a

major poet, dramatist and critic in English literature

G.K. Chesterton : a brilliant essayist (1874- 1936)

who became England’s philosopher’

diabolical    :        evil, devilish

conglomeration : of different things gathered

quizzical       :        expressing confusion and

amusement

Yuan Chunglang: one of the sixteenth century

Chinese writers whose `cult of idleness’ has influenced Lin Yutan thinking. One of the 3 Yuan brothers who started the school of self- expression.

Confucius     :        Chinese sage (551-478 BC).

Most revered teacher of moral and political wisdom. Reference for parents and ancestors was the important part of his teachings. Lin Yutang regards Confucius as ‘an art artist of life’.

Anaclets       :        the most important collection

of Confucius’ sayings

i)  Answer the following questions in a paragraph.

1. How does Lin Yutang bring out the difference between the life of a man who does no reading and that of a man who does?
   1. What is Lin Yutang’s concept of beauty?
   1. What does Lin Yutang comment on the relationship between the author and the reader?
   1. When can reading be called an art?
   1. Do you agree with all the points made by Yutang? If not, elaborate on the things you disagree with.

ii)  Answer the following questions in an essay.

1. How does Lin Yutang bring out the importance of the Art of Reading?
   1. Write a critical appreciation of Yutang’s the Art of Reading, keeping in mind your own reading habits.

READING

How I Argued While In England

A.S. Panchapakesa Ayyar

While in England, I was most surprised to see the appalling ignorance there of India and things of India. It was notorious that few people in England ever cared about India. The mere word ‘India’ was guaranteed to empty not only the House of Commons, but any decent lecture hall in Oxford or Cambridge. China and Japan interested the British more than India. That was but natural, for three reasons. Firstly, there was a disinclination on the part of many democratic Britons to think of this great dependency ruled by a bureaucracy from their democracy, although most of them felt, like H.G. Wells, that the ‘Semi-barbarous’ conditions of India, it was inevitable. Secondly, several felt India to be an ever-recurring nuisance, in the shape of agitators, round-tablers, etc. Lastly, millions felt that they could never show the real truth about India, and that it would be futile, and a sheer waste of time, to decide between the lurid accounts of missionaries, ex-bureaucrats and Miss Mayos, and the glowing accounts given by young Indians their midst and by the under statesmen of India who visited England for round-table conferences, league delegations etc, and often spoke contradictorily at different places, and, not unoften, denied making the speeches they did, or pretended to have made speeches they never did.

One English lady reporter told me about one of these statesmen, “Oh! Mr. Ayyar! What a man! So moderate and timid, a veritable lamb at the round- table conference, and so extremist and intransigent in his room when I went to interview! How can you explain it”? I said, “There is a story in our books of a certain donkey which used to appear itself in a lion’s skin and roar before private audience of friends in its stable, but used to appear in its own donkey’s skin and bray when lions were about.” She laughed, and said “Excuse me, the phenomenon is present in our land too.” How these old stories make the whole world kin! How stupid of me to think that man was the only donkey!

At a house party in London given by a Quaker lady who belonged to the ‘Friends of India’ society, when I was explaining our fitness for Swaraj, a lady who had finished reading Eleanor Rathbone’s book Child Marriage The Indian Minotaur asked me, “Is it true that Hindu girls marry at the age of twelve and bring forth children at the age of thirteen?” There was a roar of laughter from the rest. “Yes,” I replied. “and I am one of those children. How am I worse than any Englishman born to a lady of thirty? If a wheat crop, as good as the rest, can be raised in three months, instead of nine, why not save the six months.” All laughed again.

“You ought to kill away the millions of cows which crossed to give milk,” said an old man there to me, sipping his tea. “We shall do that once humanity has agreed to kill away the pensioners and the old and the sick who are unable to do any work,” said I, and there was general laughter.

“Don’t you think that the ablest people should rule a country, irrespective of whether they are natives or foreigners?” asked a conservatives party lady. “No, any more than I think that the ablest man should be accepted as her husband by woman ‘Irrespective of whether she likes him or not,” said I.

“Your restrictions on widow remarriage, how hideous they are,” said a man. “There is no legal bar to a widow’s marriage in India now. The system too is not so bad as it looks. Every woman gets her innings, owing to the system of compulsory marriage for women. She cannot complain if she is bowled out,” said I. “Here, in England, millions of women don’t get a chance at all and have to die as spinsters, having lived an incomplete and fractional existence.” “How so?” “Man or woman, when born, is one-third. When they marry they become two-thirds. When they get a child they complete.” “Our spinsters don’t consider that they become only one-third,” said he. “A born blind man will find it hard to estimate his loss,” said I. “But a man who becomes blind will realise it only too well, and cry out, like Milton:-

“Oh dark, dark, dark, Unutterably dark, Without all hope of day.”

An Indian, who was a fanatical advocate of the English language as the sole medium of instruction in Indian schools and colleges, said, at a meeting of Indians in London, “How can we manage without English? A Kashmiri, a Madrasi, a Bengali and a Mahratta, meeting a Nagpuri, how will they understand one another without English?” “As they understood one another in the days of Sankara, Ramanuja and Madhwa,” said I. “But we are so good at speaking English,” said he, “much better than any other non-English people.” “Yes,” said I, “because they don’t have to study English to get highest jobs in their country. Suppose a person by compulsion and constant practice has become an expert servant, should he always be a servant?”

Another day, an Indian friend was all excitement and indignation when he narrated a so-called ‘Insult’ to Indians at the air exhibition at Wembly. A man distributed notices in English. Seeing a group of Indians including Tambe Sastri, who speak English better than most Englishmen, he had the temerity to ask, “Any of you know English?” said excitedly. “Why, what is wrong in that”? asked I. “He wouldn’t have expected a group of Russians or Germany, Chinese, or even Persians, to know English, and might have taken the Indians too to be a similar nation knowing its own language.”

In this connection, I must mention a funny incident. An Indian politician gave a lecture about India’s right for freedom before a labour audience,      at Birmingham, in his most approved English style. There was tremendous applause at the end. Then a member of the audience got up, and said. “Now, one of you fellows translate for us into English what this gentleman has said so spiritedly in Indian.”

A Chinese gentleman said to me, “In old Chinese medicine, the ashes of three scorpions, dissolved in water given as a potion to cure people of stomach ache! Can you beat that?” “Oh, yes. Even in modern India, the crushed juice of crabs and earthworms is given as a cure for consumption. So too, the juice of sugarcanes grown with dead cobras and poisonous snakes as manure.”

“What are you three hundred millions of Indian doing, fighting with one another?” asked an Englishman of me one day, in 1921. At any rate, we are not murdering one another as you were doing in the Great War,” said I.

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At an East India Association gathering, an English friend said to me, “From the days of Queen Victoria’s proclamation Indians have been given equality with the English. Then why are you still dissatisfied”? “You send your viceroys and governors to us. Do we send our viceroys and governors to?” I asked. “What! You want to do that?” said he in astonishment. “Well, we must do that if there is real equality,” said I.

An Irish friend said to me at a Social, at the Irish Society in London, “Once, in the height of our fight for liberty, we issued an appeal, ‘All Irishmen must die for Ireland’, and sent a copy of it to Shaw. He replied, ‘Some few must live for Ireland. I mean to be one of them.’ ”

A communist was preaching in the Indian hostel about free love. “There is no woman who is at heart not hankering after a variety of lovers,” said he. A heckler asked him, “Do your mother, wife and sister hanker like this?” The communist shouted out, “Don’t be personal.” “Well,” said the heckler, “I am personal, and shall always be personal. There is no man or woman alive who is not personal. And I want a wife who will be personal to me.”

An Indian has become intimate with an English girl. He had no intention of marrying her. An Indian friend said to him, “What will be the ultimate result of all this? She will bear you a daughter who will be neglected by you and will grow up in degradation, and may, one day, be seduced by a Negro from West Africa. So, leave off this dishonourable connection at once.” The Indian shed tears at the very thought of his unborn daughter’s fate, and promised to break off. The affair shows, incidentally, that an Indian loves his children more than he does his wife. Dushyanta and Buddha both loved their children more than their wives. At the final parting, before the great renunciation, Buddha wanted to kiss his babe (not his wife!) and desisted lest the wife should wake up.

Once, Dr. Thomas, Dr. Burnett and other great Indologists came to the

• hostel to clear some doubts from a great Bengali scholar, a samnyasin, who had come there. They began reading some passages from an Upanishad. The samnyasin shut his ears with both his hands, crying out “Siva, Siva! What a horrible mispronunciation! It is equal to a thousand acts of child destruction!” It was perfectly true that the English savants murdered the Sanskrit pronunciation.

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But this samnyasin could not have produced a Vedic index, like Macdonnel and Keith, or even written critical essays like Thomas and Burnett.

“Did your Sanskrit poets always uphold a dead conservatism and invariably praise old things?” asked an Oxford Don of me.

“No,” said I. “The greatest of all Sanskrit poets, Kalidas has said, ‘All things old are not necessarily good: nor are things new necessarily bad: the wise enquire and decide themselves, whereas the fools blindly follow the opinion of others!”

“Remarkably wise that,” said he. “Tell me, had you in India, any conception of liberty for the subject, as against the king, fore the British came there?”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “There was a Tamil saint called Appar. He worshipped Siva. His king, Mahendra Varma Pallavan asked him to become a Buddhist like him, saying, ‘You are my subject, and must obey me. Else, I shall have you beheaded at once.” Quick came the reply, ‘I am no man’s subject. Nor do I fear death. So, your threat will not work.” “A very advanced conception that, almost Bolsheik,” said the don. “By the way, had you any conception of socialism or communism? Our doctrine of Lokasangraha, in the Gita, provide for the welfare of every single being in the world, and is the highest socialism imaginable,” said

1. “A Tamil poet, Kambar, writing eight f hundred years ago, has said that in Ramrajya, or the ideal state, there is no man who has not got enough, no man who has got more than enough, no man who is not a master of himself, no man who is a master of another.” “It is impossible to exceed that in any scheme of socialism or communism,” said the don. Then his interest in India being roused, he asked me to name the best history of India written by an Indian, so that he might read it. I replied, “Vincent Smith’s history is quite good.” “Oh no, I want to read a history written by an Indian,” said he. “No foreigner can interpret the spirit of a country truly. It applies all the more to a strange country with a unique civilisation like India.” “Unfortunately there is no good history of India written by an Indian yet,” said I. His face suddenly became red with anger and indignation. “You Indians are as brilliant as any Englishmen and you come in hordes to Oxford for the I.C.S., Bar, and what not. Yet, none of you have had enough love for your motherland to write her history. If only I had known that, I would never have admitted any of you here,” said he.

appalling     :         shocking

dependency  :       a state controlled by another

bureaucracy :       governance by ineffective

officials who follow rules and regulations in stupid manner

H.G. Wells   :        an English writer (1866-1946)

now best remembered for his scientific romances such as ‘The Invisible Man’ and for his ‘ The Outline of History’

lurid             :        shocking, unfavourable; dark

Miss Mayos  :        Miss Mayo and the likes

of her. Her ‘ Mother India’, dedicated to ‘the peoples

of India’, was a controversial work (1927). Under the caption ‘Drain Inspector’s Report’, Mahatma Gandhi published in his ‘Young India’, his reaction to Miss Mayo’s prejudiced views on Indian society. He described this English lady as “an avowed Indophobe and Anglophile refusing to see anything good about Indians and anything bad about the British and their rule.”

glowing        :        praise-worthy; colourful, bright

veritable       :        real; truthful

lamb            :        a young gentle person

intransigent :        uncompromising;

irreconcilable

Quaker         :        member of a Christian

religious group (opposes violence and preaches brotherly love simplicity of life), known as the Friends of Soc. founded by George Fox in 1647

Minotaur      :        a creature which had the body

of a man head of a bull, according to ancient Greek mythology

bowled out   :        forced to leave the field

Milton          :        an English poet (1608-74) who

became blind. The quote is from his ‘Samson Agonistes’, a tragedy.

Sankara       :        Born in 788 AD at Kaladi in

South India, Shankara-charya built a philosophical system, Advaita Vedanta (non-dualist Vedanta), and started religious orders for Hindu monks.

Ramanuja     :       Besides Adhi Sankara, Sri

Ramanuja and Sri Madhwa are revered as great preceptors (Archaryas) of Vedantic Hinduism. Born at Sriperumpudur in South

India, Ramanuja (1017-1137 AD) propagated the visishtadwaita philosophy, taught the path of surrender to reach God and denounced religious practices in the name of caste.

Madhwa       :        Born at Udipi in South India,

Madhwacharya (1238-1317 AD) preached the doctrine of Dwain’ (Dualism) which believes in the uniqueness and supremacy of Lord Narayana and prescribes

Devotion (Bhakti) as the only means to attain the Ultimate Reality.

temerity        :        rashness; foolish boldness

spiritedly      :        forcefully

the Great      :        the First World War (1914-

War                       1918). The author here reminds a European of the tremendous casualties (about 2 crore) in the War in which Europeans killed their own brethren.

Victoria’s     :        an official public

proclamation          statement by Victoria, Queen

of the United Kingdom (1819- 1901) when she took over

the reign of British India from the East India Company in 1858.

Shaw            :        George Bernard Shaw (1836-

1950), one of the most distinguished English dramatists. He won world-wide

reputation for his biting criticism and brilliant wit. Being an Irishman, he did not lose Irishmen’s pride, humour and self-esteem.

hankering     :        longing

heckler         :        one who interrupts a public

lecture with unfriendly remarks

Dushyanta   :       a king of the Puru dynasty,

who married Sakuntala. The legend is dramatised in Kalidasa’s `Sakuntala’ in Sanskrit literature.

Buddha        :        ‘The Enlightened’, the sage

of the Sakyas; founder of Buddhism; Siddhartha (563?

-.483? BC). When he left the palace for a holy life of an ascetic, his wife (Yasodhara) and their son (Rahul) were sleeping.

Renunciation :      formal act of giving up claim

to property or connections

YMCA           :        Young Men’s Christian

Association founded in 1844 by George Williams in London, seeking to analyse not only the spiritual but other talents of the youth.

the Upanishad:     While the contents of the

Upanishads, the gems of the Vedantic philosophy, appear to be simple narratives of profound truth, even great Indian authorities on Vedantic texts find there many ambiguities and offer different interpretations to the verses. Mispronunciations of the passages in the Upanishads

by Western scholars wil

l create a lot of confusion and misunderstanding, the author

		warns his friends interested in Indology.	Bolshevick :     Lokasangraha: the Gita         :           Kambar         :       Vincent Smith:	Marxist; socialist who fought for the establishment of Soviet Republic in 1917 world-union; welfare of humanity the Bhagavad Gita (Divine Song), an episode in Vyasa’s ‘Mahabharat’, a conversation (in 700 verses) dealing with the spiritual quest of man in the context of his practical worldly life “vanmai illai or varumai inmaiyal; thinmai illai ner cherunar inmaiyal” Kamba Ramayanam (Tamil) one of the early English historians (1843-1920). Vincent Smith who had great impact on the English-educated Indian readers, believed that once the British rule was withdrawn from India she would relapse into political chaos.
Appar	:	Born in a Saivite family, Appar (Navukkarasai ) became a Jain. When he had a chronic stomach-ache he was converted back to Saivism by his sister; he got relief and began to sing poems in honour of Lord Shiva. On the orders of Mahendravarman, the pallava ruler (580 – 630 AD) the Jains attempted in vain to torture him. Undaunted, Appar declared, “namarkkum kudiyallam namanai yanchoin”. (To none are we subject, Death we do not fear . . . ) This hymn was an oft-quoted poem by Tamils during the independence movement against British imperialism — a telling example by the author to establish his view that love of freedom is inherent in Indian ethos too.

i)  Answer the following questions in a paragraph.

1. Who do men love more? Whose example does Ayyar illustrate?
   1. What does Ayyar say about the family life and marriage in India?
   1. What is Ayyar’s concept of completeness? How complete are humans when they are born?
   1. What should Indians be able to do if they were really equal? Why?
   1. Do you agree with Ayyar when he says that it was not an ‘Insult’?

ii)  Answer the following questions in an essay.

1. How does Ayyar bring out his wit and scholarship in his discussion with Englishmen? Elucidate on the title.
   1. Summarise the important points the author was trying to convey.

READING

The Merchant Of Death

Nanda Kishore & John Kennet

It is a strange twist of history that a man who left a fortune to further the ends of peace should have earned his vast wealth by the invention and manufacture of explosives which killed millions of his fellow-men in war.

His name was Alfred Bernhard Nobel. He was born in Stockholm in 1833, the son of Immanuel Nobel, an architect who became bankrupt in the year of Alfred’s birth. Immanuel turned his attention to the manufacture of rubber, first in Finland, then in Russia. In 1842, when Alfred was nine years old, he moved his wife and four sons to St. Pertersburg —now called Leningrad.

In a foreign land, Alfred’s education was left in the hands of his mother. He was a sickly boy, pale and thin, with a high and bumpy forehead and pair of large, burning eyes. He grew into a man full of strange contradictions; one who could be sensitive and callous, sociable and aloof, idealistic and cynical. When an explosion wrecked his factory at Heleneborg in 1864, killing his brother Emil, he commented drily: ‘It was not my fault. It was inevitable. How can one expect a new explosive to be created without loss of life?’

The same man was capable of writing poetry… While Alfred was growing up, his father was growing rich, manufacturing explosive mines for use against shipping and selling them to the Russian Government. There were some who called Immanuel a ‘merchant of death’, but he had no care for that. Was he not rich? Did he not live in luxury and have powerful friends at Court? His only anxiety was Alfred’s ill-health. The boy was so frail that his mother had forbidden the usual rough games for children of his age. He spent a great deal of time in bed, devouring books on all manner of subjects and in several languages. By the time he was sixteen he was fluent in English, Russian and French.

A little longer and his father decided that it was time for young Alfred to see a bit of the world. Russia was making ready for war, business was booming, and

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he wanted his son to make contact with people abroad. Immanuel was proud of his son’s intelligence and learning. He provided the money and Alfred went off on a two-year tour of Europe and America. He returned to Russia in July, 1852, just before the outbreak of the Crimean War.

The defeat of Russia in that war brought Immanuel to the verge of ruin. His contract with Russian Government had expired; there was a new Tsar, who was not interested in re-armament, and the contract was not renewed. At this critical moment, a fire destroyed Immanuel’s factory.

If disaster was to be averted, money had to be raised by any means, outside Russia. Alfred was sent off w Europe where he had made business connections, to try his luck. He went first to London, but found the British unwilling to invest money in a Russian firm. He had some success in Paris and returned home but in spite of efforts the firm did not survive.

The journey had imposed a great strain on Alfred’s frail strength. He was seriously ill and when he recovered, his mother and father returned to Sweden, taking with them their youngest son, Emil. Alfred remained in St. Petersburg with his elder brothers.

As his health improved, ‘he spent many hours pondering over the problem of breathing new life into the business. It could be done, he thought, with the invention of a new explosive; the Governments of the world were always interested in that sort of thing. These ‘sea-mines’ his father had produced were tin-pot affairs, actually; what was wanted was something infinitely more destructive…

Then came a letter from his father, drawing his attention to something called ‘explosive oil’, discovered by Sobreo in 1847. Professor Sinin, an Italian, had placed a drop of it on an anvil and made it explode by hitting it with a hammer. He had called it `nitro-glycerine’, and experiments with it had caused injuries to many. It might be useful, Immanuel thought…

Alfred was not at all discouraged by the dangerous nature of this stuff. He began to experiment. It was made, he discovered, by treating glycerine with nitric and sulphuric acids: at the least shock it exploded with tremendous violence.

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This was just what he wanted. But first he must find a sure and simple method of exploding it. Why not use gunpowder? He filled a glass tube with nitro-glycerine, closed it with a stopper and put it in a tin can filled with gunpowder. A wick-fuse was easy to insert. He lit the fuse—a brief pause– a tremendous explosion, far more powerful than anything he had known before.

Excellent stuff! You may imagine how Alfred rubbed his hands in satisfaction. And he was not alone in appreciating, the qualities of this powerful explosive; the Government of Sweden was ready to advance money for more experiments.

Alfred built a factory at Heleneborg, but he was not yet satisfied with the explosive and fully aware of its limitations. It was dangerous to use and difficult to transport; the method of firing the stuff was too clumsy and complicated. Something would have to be done about that. Meanwhile, he would carry on manufacturing it.

He was away in Stockholm when the Heleneborg explosion occurred, reducing the factory to rubble, and killing his brother, Emil. Five other people were killed, and the Government withdrew Alfred’s licence for the manufacture of explosives.

He had to move. Within a month or two he had set up a new factory at Hamburg and, within eight years, he had become an international figure.  He had a world-wide market for nitro-glycerine, the most useful blasting agent yet discovered and used by the mining industry everywhere.

There were accidents with the stuff, of course, some of a rather terrible nature. The explosive was transported in shaped zinc containers, which were packed in wooden boxes filled with sawdust. Sometimes the oil ate into the zinc and oozed out of the holes; sometimes it was handled carelessly by people ignorant of its nature. There is even a story of a servant who used it to polish the boots of a Swedish Army officer…

The manufacturing of nitro-glycerine continued. There came a day when a large ship carrying cases of the explosive from Hamburg to Chile blew up at sea, without survivors. Soon after came the ‘New York Incident’. A German

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sales-representative left a box of nitro-glycerine in his hotel; the porter, finding that the box was giving off an unpleasant smell, threw it out into the street. There as a shattering explosion. Although there were no casualties, all the windows within a hundred yards of the hotel were broken. Public and Press were naturally indignant; there was an outcry that led to a ban being placed on the manufacture of the explosive in Sweden, Belgium and England. In America a Bill was passed declaring that, in the event of a fatal accident any manufacturer of nitro-glycerine would be charged with murder and liable to death by hanging. All this, of course was rather a nuisance to Alfred. His own factory in Hamburg was destroyed by an explosion and he found himself on the brink of ruin. He must do something to discover a method by which the explosive could be safely moved and stored.

He had a brilliant idea. The soil around Hamburg was rich in a special kind of clay called keiselguhr—earth mixed with remains fossil shells. Quantities of this clay were brought into his laboratory and Alfred poured some ‘explosive oil’ over it. He found that the clay absorbed nitro-glycerine without in any way lessening its explosive power. The clay was allowed to dry, and then powdered, losing nothing in the process, but becoming safe to manufacture and easy to transport. The mixture was patented by Alfred Nobel under two names: ‘Nobel Safety Powder’ and ‘Dynamite’. It remains, today, the safest and most widely-used of all explosives.

Dynamite came on to the market in 1867. Alfred was now on the road to becoming one of the world’s richest men. In America the ‘Atlantic Giant Powder Company’ was formed to manufacture dynamite, with Nobel as the principal shareholder. In Europe there was the ‘Latin Noble Trust’ to control manufacture of the explosive in seven countries. A Commission of Inquiry was held in England to discuss the problem of safety, and Nobel was’ called before it. He had, he stated, stopped the manufacture of nitro-glycerine as soon as the dangers became apparent; dynamite had eliminated most of the hazards, but he could not hold himself responsible for accidents which occurred due to circumstances beyond his control. Soon after this the British Dynamite Company was formed, and made a profit of one thousand per cent within six years. Other branches of the company were established in many parts of the world.

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Immanuel Nobel died in 1872. His last invention was an early-type machine-gun, which he wanted Alfred to manufacture. ‘It will make you     the master of mankind in war and peace all over the world’, he wrote in his last letter.

Alfred, however, had little interest in politics, though his inventions were beginning to play their part in the political life of Europe—seething, at this time, with unrest and revolutionary spirit. Nobel’s dynamite bomb was a useful aid fn the elimination of unpopular political figures; the first dynamite shells to be used in war were fired by the Germans in 1871 into a densely-populated area of Paris, during the Franco-Prussian War.

Alfred had created another difficulty for Governments by the ease with which dynamite could be obtained and transported. Any politically-minded brawler with a distaste for the reigning authority could walk into any of Alfred’s factories, buy a few sticks of dynamite, and walk off with it in his pocket—with unpleasant consequences for someone or other. Governments grew uneasy and passed laws restricting the possession and carriage of the explosive.

Alfred went on with his experiments, seeking an explosive more powerful than dynamite: He succeeded in producing `cordite’ and ‘gelignite’ — super- explosives which were used in blasting-out the great tunnels of Simplon, Arlberg and St. Gottard, which made possible rapid communication between the countries north and south of the Alps. This was his greatest contribution to the service of mankind. For most people, he was a “merchant of death”, the true son of his father. In 1888, he gave the world an explosive powder, smokeless and slow-burning, for use in fire-arms. He called it ‘ballistite’.

That is the sum total of Alfred’s ‘inventions’. But what of his life? What manner of man was he?

He was always delicate, and his health was poor. The nature of his researches subjected him to long hours of trial in the midst of noisome chemical fumes, often causing such dreadful headaches that he threw himself down and rolled about in agony. He had reserves of courage and strength of will which amazed everybody who met him. He would never ask his men to take risks which he would not

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face himself. Once, when a quantity of dynamite stuck inside a large cask and the workers were afraid to touch it, he crawled into the cask and calmly scraped out the explosive with a knife.

He had courage, yes. Did he enjoy happiness? Probably not. Was he capable of love? Perhaps… ‘There was a girl’, says Egon Larsen, ‘probably his first and last great love, who died a few months after he had met her. He never spoke about her, never courted another girl, and never married. And the woman who was to exert such a powerful influence on him in his last years was another man’s sweetheart and wife.’

And who was the woman who exerted such a powerful influence on him? She was the Countess Bertha von Kinsky, and came of a wealthy Austrian family which had fallen on bad times. Alfred first met her when he was living in a magnificent palace in Paris, the headquarters from which he controlled his far-flung interests. Bertha applied for a post as his secretary, a meeting was arranged, and proved a pleasant surprise for both parties. She was engaged as a secretary, but in a short time she had become something more. Alfred, for all his wealth, was one of the loneliest men in the world, Bertha, he discovered, was the first human being with whom he could discuss his private life.   Their friendship lasted only a short while, for Bertha went off to Vienna to marry young Arthur von Suttner, with whom she was deeply in love. She left at a time when Nobel was away on a business trip to Stockholm, but wrote to him, offering her apologies and telling of the telegram from Arthur which had drawn her  to Vienna.

Her husband found employment as the war-correspondent it a big Viennese newspaper, and was sent to cover the war which had broken out between Russia and Turkey. He took Bertha with him, and she saw many things which horrified her and left a lasting impression on her mind. After the war, the two left for Paris, where they called on Nobel. Bertha found him unchanged-a shy, polite little man, with greying hair-and he made them welcome. They talked about books, and Alfred remarked: ‘l like novels with a message-propaganda novels.’

That remark had its effect on Bertha. She thought deeply about the words. What message could exercise an influence over the mind of man, for the good of

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the world at large? Her husband had been a war-correspondent; she had direct knowledge of the suffering caused by war. Could she not write a book which should be a call for ‘a world war against war—for peace”?

She wrote a novel—a story which had passion and realism—set against the background of the Franco-Prussian War. It was written in German, and its title was Lay Down Arms! Within a month of publication, the book was translated into several European languages, and its authoress earned wide recognition. It won for her the love and respect of all peace-loving people, and when the Third World Peace Congress met at Rome it elected her its president. She was anxious to know the opinion of one man, however—the ‘Dynamite King,’ who was the most powerful ‘merchant of death’ the world had ever known. She sent a copy of the book to Nobel, and received these few words in reply: ‘I have just finished your admirable masterpiece.’

Bertha was not satisfied with this brief recognition. What a master-stroke it would be, she felt, if she could enlist the active support of the Dynamite King for the international movement whose aim was the outlawing of war. She must see Alfred and talk to him…

The Suttners and Alfred Nobel met at Zurich. ‘Inform me, convince me’, Alfred told Bertha, ‘and I will do something great for your movement.’

For a week she battled with Nobel, using every impassioned argument she could think of. He met every plea with one oft-repeated statement; the only way to establish peace was to go on inventing weapons, each more deadly than the last. He even spoke of aerial bombardment and bacteriological warfare. He was convinced that peace could only come through fear—-the tear of war when it had reached an ultimate in horror.

Bertha parted from Nobel without reaching an agreement with him. They were never to meet again. She was sure that she had failed in her task, but she had, in fact, made a great impression on Nobel. He had determined to do ‘something great for the movement’.

Early in January, 1893, the idea of forming a prize fund, out of which an award would be made ‘to the man or woman who had done most to advance the

idea of general peace in Europe’, was taking shape in his mind. Two years later he made his will. After his death, the greater part of his fortune, amounting to

£ 1,750,000, was to be placed in the hands of Swedish and Norwegian trustees. ‘The annual interest’, said Nobel, ‘shall be awarded as prizes to those persons who during the previous year have rendered the greatest services to mankind. The interest shall be divided into five equal parts, one of which shall be awarded to the person who has made the most important discovery or invention in the realm of physics, one to the person who has made the most important chemical discovery or improvement, one to the person who has made the most important physiological or medical discovery, one to the person who has produced the most outstanding work of literature, idealistic in character, and one to the person who has done the most or best work for the brotherhood of nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, as well as for the formation or popularization of Peace Congress.’

Merit and service to mankind were to be the sole considerations on which the awards were to be made. Race, nationality and sex were to be forgotten. The Nobel Prize was destined to become the most coveted for which any man of peace and learning might aspire.

Alfred Nobel died at his desk in November, 1896, of a heart attack. Nine years later, Bertha von Suttner was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. In our own time, the Nobel Prize has been awarded to such gallant men as Ralph Bunche, Albert Schweitzer and Dag Hammarskjoeld—who had some reward for their service to mankind out of the fortune left by the man who traded in death and destruction.

i)  Answer the following questions in a paragraph.

1. Describe Alfred Nobel’s childhood and youth.
   1. Bring out the significant traits in the personality of Nobel.
   1. What is ‘Lay Down Arms’? How did the book come about?
   1. What was your perception of Alfred Nobel before reading the essay? Has it changed in some way?
   1. Write a brief note on any two Nobel Laureates you are familiar with.

ii)  Answer the following questions in an essay.

1. Write about the influence of Bertha von Kinsky and Alfred Nobel on each other.
   1. How did the ‘merchant of death’ become a ‘messenger of peace’?

READING

She Spoke For All Nature

`Young World’

Ever since the UN Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972, June 5 is observed annually as the Environment Day. The day is celebrated with activities reaffirming concern for the preservation and enhancement of the environment.

Today the words ‘environment’, ‘ecology’ and ‘balance of nature’ are part of the vocabulary of both the laity and scholars. Until 1972 nobody took an ecologist seriously, especially those who had political or economic power nor was his views sought as he was considered an impractical visionary. But Rachel Carson’s book ‘Silent Spring’ made the government of her country sit up and listen to her ideas. Her hook shocked and disturbed many and to some others, it was clarification and revelation. The facts set out in the book were appalling.

Not many youngsters in this country are familiar with the book ‘Silent Spring’ or its author. Very few know the various facets of her personality. It is only appropriate that the younger generation in this country should know more about Rachel Carson who started an ecological revolution unknowingly.

Yes, Carson was not an environmentalist in the popular sense nor was she a crusader. Yet when she undertook to write her book ‘Silent Spring’ she never said that “here is an opportunity to write a world shaking book”. She was primarily a scientist and a writer. Through her writings she wanted to make the awesome totality of the natural world clear to all readers.

Carson was a woman well-versed in the life sciences. She was a gifted writer and the beauty of her language appealed to many. She became famous for her three books which explained the ocean’s mysteries. Combining scientific accuracy with vivid prose, she presents a fascinating picture of the water kingdom of curious creatures in these books. While receiving the National Book Award in 1952, she said:

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A Textbook

“If there is poetry in my book about the sea it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry”.

Rachel Carson who was born in Springdale, Pennsylvania, US, on May 27, 1907, grew up in the countryside which offered her a pleasant childhood and plenty of opportunities to observe little animals, birds, plants and flowers in their natural environment. During the summers, she would wander in the farm with her little dog Candy and watch the butterflies, grasshoppers, the daisies, buttercups and meet the little farm animals — chickens, pigs, rabbits and so on.

Reading aloud was a fairly common pastime in the Carson household. Het’ mother read beautifully and enjoyed doing so. These reading sessions stirred a book-hunger in Rachel and she became an independent reader at the tender age of six. As the years passed, her appetite for the printed word continued to grow. By the time she was ten and in the fourth grade, she was sure she wanted to be a professional writer. Opportunity to try her talent in writing came when ‘St. Nicholas’ a children’s magazine offered to publish writings of young readers. Rachel promptly sent her story ‘ A battle in the Clouds’ and it was published. She was only ten at that time. Rachel was thrilled with a cheque of $ 10 and so were the teachers at her school. The second story brought her a gold badge.

In high school, her writings were greatly appreciated by her teachers not only for their technical quality but also for their depth of thought and feeling. The assistant principal regarded her as a genius, so at college it was no wonder Rachel decided to major in literature. She entered the Pennsylvania College for Women (which later changed its name to Chatham College) and there she had doubts about retaining English as her major course of study. She found herself more interested in science, her favourite subject being biology.

A common notion in those days (which prevails even today) was that art and science were hostile to each other. While science was appreciated for the comfort it was bringing to mankind it was accused of taking the beauty and mystery of the natural world by explaining to them in precise cold blooded language. However, Rachel felt that beauty was integral to science and her later writings bore testimony to this fact.

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Rising Sun – I

She specialised in Marine Zoology at College, but obtaining a Master’s degree was an uphill task. The great depression and the death of her father made life extremely hard for her. She was in need of a full-time job to maintain her mother and herself. It was difficult to find employment. Added to this was the Male prejudice against women scientists. The male-dominated scientific world left few options for Rachel. But none of these would discourage young Rachel. Marine biology is what she wanted.

A rare opportunity turned up when the Bureau of Fisheries of America decided to broadcast 52 radio talks on fishery and marine life. Rachel got this assignment and completed it successfully.

When it was decided to issue the radio talks in the form of brochures, Rachel was asked to rewrite and edit the broadcast material and give it an attractive literary style. Thus began her scientific literary career.

In 1936, she got the job of junior aquatic biologist after passing the civil services examination: she was the only woman taking the examination. Work at the Fisheries Department made her dream come true. She not only combined both art and science but also wrote about the creatures of land and water. The publications of the department were meant for readers with little or no scientific knowledge. Carson’s talent for communicating science in simple but beautiful language came to the forefront. Soon she started writing for various newspapers which further enhanced her reputation as a science writer.

Her first book about the sea — ‘ Under the Sea Wind’, received rave reviews from various quarters. ‘The New York Herald Tribune’ wrote “There is drama in every sentence, she rouses our interest in this ocean world and we want to watch it.” The biologist and undersea explorer, William Beebe said, “Miss Carson’s science cannot be questioned.” He included two of her chapters in his “The Book of Naturalists”. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and the subsequent World War II diverted the attention of the public and her book was forgotten. However, these events gave a new twist to Rachel’s career. Shortage of meat due to war conditions forced the American government to popularise fish as a substitute for meat.

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The task of changing the food preferences of America’s meat-eating millions fell on Rachel. She came out with four pamphlets totalling 200 pages in which she described 65 fresh and a dozen kinds of shell fish. Included in these pamphlets were chapters on the nutritional value of fish and expert advice on how to buy, prepare and serve it. But the greater part of each guide was devoted to the life stories of the fishes themselves. “Before we can buy new foods, we must know what they are”, she wrote.

After the devastation caused by the war, the Fish and Wildlife Service turned its attention to wildlife conservation. Once again Rachel was on centre stage. Under the general title `Conservation in Action’ she planned a series of 12 books out of which she wrote four or five herself.

For a quarter of a century her introduction to this series was used by the Fish and Wildlife Service in its publications. It was a general plea for peaceful co-existence with nature:

“Wild creature like men, must have a place to live. As civilization creates cities, builds highways and drains marshes, it takes away, little by little, the land that is suitable for wildlife. And as their spaces for living dwindle, the wildlife populations themselves decline.”

Her second book ‘The Sea Around Us’ appeared in 1950. According to her biographer Philip Sterling, this second book, no less than her first, had a fine poetic quality ‘out quite a different one. If ‘ Under the Sea Wind’ was lyrical, ‘The Sea Around Us’ was in epic style. A well-known reviewer wrote, “Once again we have a book from a mind able to fuse poetry and science into that rare commodity known as literature.”

In her third book ‘The Edge of the Sea’ she tells the story of the creatures that live at the edge of the sea (that mysterious region where sea and shore meet); a world which mirrors the “spectacle of life in all its varied manifestations as it has appeared, evolved and died out.” She shows how these creatures shape their lives to the rhythm of the changing tides. Her interests range from “Lilliputian beings swimming through dark pools that lie between grains of sand” to the vast rays and huge turtles of the tropical beaches.

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Rising Sun – I

But it was ‘Silent Spring’ which brought Carson into the Iimelight. She was deeply disturbed by the damage that was being caused to the environment by the new kinds of chemical pesticides and wanted to do something about this. She tried to interest her colleagues and friends in undertaking the book that would be ‘Silent Spring’. When she could not find a suitable and willing person, she realised that she would have to do it. Her own sense of responsibility as a scientist made her undertake this venture. The positive side of the book was of great concern to her as she did not want to write a litany of doom. At the same time she wanted to bring home the fact how the humans can damage the world.

In a jargon-free, simple language that laymen can understand, she explains what is meant by ‘balance of nature’ and shows how disturbing the balance would do us more harm than good. She gives the public a good understanding of the natural order.

With the publication of ‘Silent Spring’ she started an ecological revolution which she had not intended. She found herself at loggerheads with the industrial world and became a target of attack by business interests. Attempts were made to discredit her and her book. The redeeming feature in the whole drama was that the weight of public opinion was on her side.

It should be understood that Carson was not opposed to the use of chemical control in appropriate situations. She criticised the present methods which according to her, were not scientific. She despised the narrow outlook of specialists who were more bothered with immediate problems and unable to see the whole picture of the intricate processes of nature and society. ‘Silent Spring’ showed that the general public, given the impetus, may have a greater ability to see the whole picture than do some highly trained experts.

Her colleagues and admirers considered her the greatest  biologist since Darwin. Like Darwin, she collected a vast range of information — spending four and a half years collecting data from all parts of the world — and processed it so as to give a broad concept of the natural world. She wanted the public to test it against their own observations and develop their own view of mankind’s place in nature.

environment :	the natural condition in which man lives; the surrounding conditions that influence organism’s growth and development	cold blooded language      :   testimony      :   uphill           : depression  :       Bureau         : Brochure      : rave              : William         : Beebe	showing complete lack of feeling any information in support of a fact; proof very difficult sadness; a sustained, long- term downturn in economic activity in one or more economies a government department thin booklet; pamphlet admirable a widely travelled American naturalist (1877-1962), who constructed a special bathysphere and descended, for the first time, to the deep waters of the Atlantic in 1934 and studied the marine life around the Burmuda Islands.
ecology        :	study of the effect of environment on living things
laity             :	persons without a professional training, as compared with those who have it
revelation     :	a (surprising) fact or truth that is made known
appalling     :	shocking
crusader       :	one who started a struggle for advancement of an idea
daisies, buttercup      :	attractive, showy, flowers
St. Nicholas :	a patron (Christian) saint of Russia; also Santa Claus
Hostile         :	unfriendly

i)  Answer the following questions in a paragraph.

1. Write a note on Carson’s interests during her student days.
   1. How is Carson compared to Darwin? Write a note on both of them.
   1. What was the assignment given to Carson by the Bureau of Fisheries? What did she do?
   1. What was the impact of ‘Silent Spring’?
   1. Is there any Indian scientist who works on the same lines as Carson?

ii)  Answer the following questions in an essay.

1. Write about the current environmental scenario.
   1. Give an account of Rachel Carson’s life and her achievements.

READING

Because I could not Stop for Death

Emily Dickinson

Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me –

The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste And I had put away

My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess – in the Ring –

We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain – We passed the Setting Sun –

Or rather – He passed Us –

The Dews drew quivering and Chill – For only Gossamer, my Gown –

My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground –

The Roof was scarcely visible – The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – ‘tis Centuries – and yet Feels shorter than the Day

I first surmised the Horses’ Heads Were toward Eternity –

Introduction

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was a prolific private poet; fewer than a dozen of her nearly 1,800 poems were published during her lifetime. Among the ranks of other such acclaimed poets as Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson is considered one of the most original 19th Century American poets. She is noted for her unconventional broken rhyming meter and use of dashes and random capitalisation as well as her creative use of metaphor and overall innovative style.

She was a deeply sensitive woman who questioned the puritanical background of her Calvinist family and soulfully explored her own spirituality, often in poignant, deeply personal poetry. She admired the works of John Keats and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but avoided the florid and romantic style of her time, creating poems of pure and concise imagery, at times witty and sardonic, often boldly frank and illuminating the keen insight she had into the human condition. At times characterised as a semi-invalid, a hermit, a heartbroken introvert, or a neurotic agoraphobic, her poetry is sometimes brooding and sometimes joyous and celebratory. Her sophistication and profound intellect has been lauded by laymen and scholars alike and influenced many other authors and poets into the 21st Century.

haste           :	hurry; urgency; speed formal politeness and courtesy in behaviour or speech make great efforts to achieve or obtain something a break (between school classes) tremble or shake with a rapid motion a fine, filmy substance consisting of cobwebs spun			by small spiders tippet : a long fur scarf or shawl worn around the neck and shoulders, especially by women and the clergy a soft, fine silk, cotton, or nylon material like net, used for making veils and dresses an ornamental moulding round the wall of a room just below the ceiling guess; conclude that something is true without having evidence to confirm it
civility        :
strove (past : tense of strive)	tulle	:
recess         :	cornice	:
quivering       : slight	surmised	:
gossamer       :

i)  Answer the following questions in a paragraph.

1. What is the central theme of the poem? Elaborate.
   1. How is death portrayed in Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”?
   1. Write a note on Dickinson’s use of language, syntax and punctuation.
   1. Write a note of personifications in the poem.
   1. Describe the setting, atmosphere and tone of the poem.

ii)  Answer the following questions in an essay.

1. Write a critical appreciation of the poem.
   1. Attempt to write a short poem, either in your own style or in imitation of Dickinson’s style.

READING

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

Woods	:	forest	Some            : mistake       Sweep          : Downy        :   Flake           : Lovely          : Promises : Miles to go : Before I sleep:	the horse thinks that it is wrong to stand in the snow in the darkening evening when one should go home and sleep. movement soft as down (the underfeathers of a bird) a thin piece (of snow) beautiful responsibilities; commitments. discharge many duties before I die.
He will not : … with snow		The owner of the woods has no aesthetic sense. So he has huddled up in his house.
Queer	:	strange. The horse does not understand the narrator’s love of beautiful natural scenery.
Harness	:	a set of leather straps and metal pieces that is put around a horse’s head and body so that the horse can be controlled and fastened to a carriage.

i)  Answer the following questions in a paragraph.

1. What is the literal meaning of the poem “Stopping by Woods?”
   1. How are the narrator, the owner and the horse contrasted with one another?
   1. What is the allegorical significance of the woods and sleep?
   1. What does the rider do in the poem ‘Stopping by Woods on a snowy evening?
   1. What Symbols are used by Frost?

ii)  Answer the following questions in an essay.

1. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”. Contrasts the world of beauty with the world of human obligation. – Discuss.
   1. Attempt an appreciation of Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”.

READING

It started as a pilgrimage

Enterprise

Nissim Ezekiel

Exalting minds and making all

The burdens light, The second stage Explored but did not test the call.

The sun beat down to match our rage.

We stood it very well, I thought, Observed and put down copious notes On things the peasants sold and bought The way of serpents and of goats.

Three cities where a sage had taught

But when the differences arose On how to cross a desert patch,

We lost a friend whose stylish prose Was quite the best of all our batch. A shadow falls on us and grows.

Another phase was reached when we Were twice attacked, and lost our way. A section claimed its liberty

To leave the group. I tried to prey. Our leader said he smelt the sea

We noticed nothing as we went, A straggling crowd of little hope, Ignoring what the thunder meant,

Deprived of common needs like soap. Some were broken, some merely bent.

When, finally, we reached the place, We hardly know why we were there. The trip had darkened every face,

Our deeds were neither great nor rare. Home is where we have to gather grace.

Enterprise	:	bold undertaking	Goats           :     Stylish prose:     A shadow     : Tried to pray:   The sea         :   Straggling   :   Little hope    :	goats noted for their sensuality. A symbol of lustful men. Ezekiel had nothing but contempt for writers who were incapable of action an enervating feeling the author does not pray but only tries to do so! this is in contrast to the desert patch mentioned in line -12 scattered; wandering from the main path hopeless
Pilgrimage	:	going to holy place
Exalting	:	Raising
Light	:	not heavy
Explored	:	examined carefully
Stood it	:	withstood it, bore it, endure
		it, tolerated it
Our rage	:	our passion (here, rage does
		not mean anger)
Put down	:	wrote down
Copious	:	plentiful, a lot of, abundant
Serpents	:	an image of poisonous-ness.
		Satan took the shape of a
		serpent and spoiled Eve.

What the      : thunder meant	an allusion to ‘what the thunder said’ form T. S. Eliot’s “the waste land”	every face         Grace	:	darkened not only the faces but also the minds of the questers. They did not attain any enlightenment. the grace of God. ‘Grace’ reminds us of the ‘pilgrimage’ mentioned in the first line of the poem.
Broken	:	broken-hearted
Bent	:	so very exhausted as incapable of standing erect
Hardly knew :	did not know
Darkened	:	the journey has

i)  Answer the following questions in a paragraph.

1. How does Nissim Ezekiel bring out the difficulties of the journey?
   1. Write a brief note on what happened after the desertion of a fellow traveler?
   1. How do the pilgrims realize that home is the place where they can have grace?
   1. List out the devices used by the poet.
   1. Bring out the aptness of the title of the poem.

ii)  Answer the following questions in an essay.

1. Attempt a critical appreciation of the poem ‘Enterprise’.
   1. Critically evaluate the attitude to life that the poem ‘Enterprise’ embodies.

Notes Towards a Poem that Can Never be Written

Margaret Atwood

READING

I

This is the place

you would rather not know about, this is the place that will inhabit you, this is the place you cannot imagine,

this is the place that will finally defeat you where the word why shrivels and empties itself. This is famine.

II

There is no poem you can write about it, the sandpits

where so many were buried

& unearthed, the unendurable pain still traced on their skins.

This did not happen last year

or forty years ago but last week. This has been happening,

this happens.

We make wreaths of adjectives for them, we count them like beads,

we turn them into statistics & litanies and into poems like this one.

Nothing works.

They remain what they are.

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Rising Sun – I

III

The woman lies on the west cement floor under the unending light,

needle marks on her arms put there to kill the brain

and wonders why she is dying.

She is dying because she said.

She is dying for the sake of the word.

It is her body, silent

and fingerless, writing this poem.

IV

It resembles an operation but it is not one

nor despite the spread legs, grunts & blood, is it a birth.

Partly it’s a job

partly it’s a display of skill like a concerto.

It can be done badly

or well, they tell themselves. Partly it’s an art.

V

The facts of this world seen clearly are seen through tears;

why tell me then

there is something wrong with my eyes?

To see clearly and without flinching, without turning away,

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this is agony, the eyes taped open two inches from the sun.

What is it you see then?

Is it a bad dream, a hallucination? Is it a vision?

What is it you hear?

The razor across the eyeball is a detail from an old film. It is also a truth.

Witness is what you must bear.

VI

In this country you can say what you like because no one will listen to you anyway,

it’s safe enough, in this country you can try to write the poem that can never be written,

the poem that  invents nothing and excuses nothing,

because you invent and excuse yourself each day.

Elsewhere, this poem is not invention. Elsewhere, this poem takes courage. Elsewhere, this poem must be written because the poets are already dead.

Elsewhere, this poem must be written as if you are already dead,

as if nothing more can be done or said to save you.

Elsewhere you must write this poem because there is nothing more to do.

Introduction

Margaret Atwood (1939 – present) is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. Considered as one of the most prominent literary figures of modern times, Atwood Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, inventor, teacher and environmental activist. Atwood and her writing have won numerous awards and honours including the Man Booker Prize, Arthur

C. Clarke Award, Governor General’s Award, and the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards. Atwood is also the inventor and developer of the LongPen and associated technologies that facilitate the remote robotic writing of documents.

As a novelist and poet, Atwood’s works encompass a variety of themes including the power of language, gender and identity, religion and myth, climate change, and “power politics.” Many of her poems are inspired by myths and fairy tales which interested her from a very early age. Among her contributions to Canadian literature, Atwood is a founder of the Griffin Poetry Prize and Writers’ Trust of Canada.

shrivels	:	wither; shrink; dry up	concerto       :	a musical composition for a solo instrument or instruments accompanied by an orchestra, especially one conceived on a relatively large scale make a quick, nervous movement of the face or body as an instinctive reaction to fear or pain extreme physical or mental suffering; anguish; pain an experience in which you see, hear, feel, or smell something that does not exist, usually because you are ill or have taken a drug
sandpits	:	a shallow box or hollow in the ground, partly filled with sand
wreaths	:	an arrangement of flowers, leaves, or stems fastened in a ring and used for decoration or for laying on a grave	flinching      :
litanies	:	a form of prayer in the church in which the priest a k and the devotees reply, always in the same words; continuous repetition of something	agony           :   hallucination:
grunts	:	a low, short guttural sound

i)  Answer the following questions in a paragraph.

1. Write a note on the title of the poem.
   1. What is the central theme of the poem?
   1. Who do you think could be the narrator/speaker in the poem?
   1. List out the devices used by the poet.
   1. Write a note on the repetitions in the poem.

ii)  Answer the following questions in an essay.

1. Attempt a critical appreciation of the poem ‘Notes Towards a Poem that Can Never be Written’.
   1. Can you identify with the poem? Does it really reflect the situation of the world?

Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

Born In A “Workhouse”

There was trouble in England in the early nineteenth century. The rich people were afraid of a Revolution similar to the one that had happened in France. And they were afraid that some of their own money would be used to feed the hungry and homeless.

They invented the “Workhouse”, and built them in all the small towns. From now on, if the poor wanted help, they would have to have to live in the Workhouse. The meals were tiny, men were separated from women, and every one had to work at boring, unhealthy tasks. Life was bad and many people died. Beggars were thrown in Prison.

Oliver’s mother had been found lying in a street of a small town. She was taken to the Workhouse. That same night, she gave birth, looked at her newborn son, and died. So, Oliver Twist was born in a Workhouse.

“One less mouth to feed!” said the doctor, looking at the dead mother as he washed his hands. Then he went to eat a fine dinner.

A Lonely Childhood

On Oliver’s ninth birthday, something happened which changed his life. He had finished his tiny bowl of thin soup. He went to stand in front of the master, and said,

“Please, sir, I want some more.”

“What!” cried the man who served up the food. He grabbed Oliver, and hit him with a large spoon.

The boy’s name was Oliver Twist. He did not get that name from his father.

Nobody knew who his father was.

Nor from his mother. Nobody knew her name either. She had been found on the street, sick and starving. A kind stranger brought her to a public workshop. She gave birth to the boy. And died there soon after.

Mr. Bumble gave Oliver his name. Mr. Bumble ran the nearby orphans’ home where Oliver was sent. Mr. Bumble was happy to take care of Oliver and all the other orphans. He had good reason to be.

The state paid to clothe and feed each child. Mr. Bumble got the money. And the orphans got rags on their backs and slop in their bellies.

No wonder Mr. Bumble was angry at Oliver. The very thought of a child asking for more to eat! Mr. Bumble saw his money being eaten up. Children’s appetites were too big. Much too big for creatures so small.

So Oliver did not get any more greasy soup that night. He did not really expect to. He had asked for more only because of the other starving orphans. They decided one of them had to speak up for all of them. They drew straws. Oliver lost.

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Rising Sun – I

Now it was Oliver alone who had to pay for this terrible crime.

“The boy will be hung someday,” Mr. Bumble said sourly. But Mr. Bumble did not want to wait that long. He wanted Oliver out of the orphans’ home quickly. Before others followed Oliver’s evil ways.

First he locked Oliver away in a dark room. Then he went to Mr.Sowerberry, the local undertaker. He asked Mr. Sowerberry to take Oliver on as a helper.

Both gentlemen were pleased. Mr. Bumble would win praise. He had taken this ten-year-old burden off public welfare. And Mr. Sowerberry had the best kind of helper. A boy he could tell to do anything. And pay nothing.

As for Oliver, the boy had to be grateful. He would learn a good trade. People would need undertakers as long as they kept on dying.

But again Oliver proved to be ungrateful.

First he dared steal scraps from Mrs.Sowerberry’s dear dog. Just because Oliver was close to starving.

Then Oliver did even worse. He punched Mr. Sowerberry’s other helper, Noah Claypole. Right on the Noah’s large red nose. Noah was older than Oliver. Bigger and stronger. And thus worth more to Mr. Sowerberry.

And why did Oliver attack such a fine fellow? Only because Noah was clever enough to make a joke. But Oliver didn’t find the joke funny. It was a joke about Oliver’s mother. Oliver never knew his mother yet insisted on loving her.

Noah’s nose was redder than ever when he went to the Sowerberrys. He told them about Oliver’s brutal attack. They all agreed: next, Oliver would murder them in their beds.

Mr. Bumble was called. Mr. Bumble. came. Mr. Bumble said the Sowerberrys had made a bad mistake. They had fed Oliver meat.

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Meat made children dangerous.

“Keep him a few days without food,” Mr. Bumble advised. “Then feed him as I did. I Promise you, that will teach him to be good.”

Whether or not Mr. Bumble was right, no one would ever know. Oliver decided not to wait and find out.

That night Oliver made a bundle of all his spare clothes. A coarse shirt and two stockings. He put a stale crust of bread in his pocket which he got as a tip at a funeral.

He crept out of the house into the cold. Then he started walking on the highway. The highway to the great city of London.

Surely Mr. Bumble and Mr. Sowerberry would never find him there. Not among so many people. London was such a big city. Surely there could be a place for Oliver.

Indeed there was. But Oliver did not dream what kind of place it would be.

Chapter 3

Oliver Goes To London

London was sixty-five miles away It an easy trip by coach and horses. But not for a cold and hungry boy on foot. It took Oliver six days. Six days of fearing he might be caught. Six days of trying to nap in fields. Six days of begging for water. Six days of farmer’s dogs chasing him. Six days of doors slamming in his face.

Only bread bought with his one penny kept Oliver going. That, and food from a few kind souls along the way.

By the seventh day Oliver still had not reached London. He was in a village a mile from the city. Too tired to go farther, he sat huddled in a doorway. But it gave no shelter. The bitter cold cut into him like a knife.

Then he found what he wanted most in all the world. A friend.

Or rather, the friend found him. This friend was the strangest boy Oliver had ever seen. He was no more than twelve, small for his age. Yet he wore a man’s coat. That coat reached almost to his heels. A man’s hat sat on his head. That hat seemed ready to fall over his not-very-clean ears. The boy found Oliver interesting-looking too. He glanced at Oliver while walking past him. Then he stopped. He came back and looked at Oliver more closely.

“Hello. What’s the problem?” he asked. “I am very hungry and tired,” said Oliver. “I have been walking these seven days.”

“Seven days?” said the boy. “On the run from the beak, eh?” “The beak?” asked Oliver.

“The law,” explained the boy. “You been in the mill?” “The mill?” asked Oliver.

“Jail,” explained the boy. He grinned. “You’re a green one. You got to learn the rope. And I’m the one to teach you.”

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“I’d like it if you would,” said Oliver.

“But first things first,” the boy said. “Bet you wouldn’t mind some eats, would you?”

“I… I wouldn’t ,” Oliver admitted.

“Come on, then,” said the boy. He led Oliver to a nearby eating place. There he ordered ham, cheese, bread and something to drink. He paid the bill with a silver coin.

“Plenty more where that come from,” he told Oliver. “Now tell me, what’s your name?”

“Oliver, sir. Oliver Twist.”

“I’m Jack Dawkins,” the boy said. “But them that knows me calls me the Artful Dodger. Dodger, for short.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Dodger,” Oliver said.

“You should be,” said the Artful Dodge. “You’re going to London, right?” “I am,” said Oliver.

“And you don’t got nowhere to stay,” the Artful Dodger said. “I don’t,” agreed Oliver.

“No job, either,” the Artful Dodger added. “No job,” said Oliver.

“Just so happens I know a gentleman,” the Artful Dodger said. “A kind gentleman who loves to help out boys like you. And I am going to do you a great favor. I am taking you to that very same gentleman.”

The Artful Dodger got to his feet. He burped and patted his stomach.

“Look sharp now, Oliver,” said the Artful Dodger. “We’re off to London town.”

Chapter 4

Oliver Meets Fagin and His Boys

Oliver had thought London was a city of beautiful houses and wide avenues. But the Artful Dodger led him through narrow dirt streets lined with filthy buildings.

“This is London?” Oliver asked.

“Part of it,” the Artful Dodger said. “Welcome to Saffron Hill.”

It was night. The shutters of the shops were closed. But drinking places were open everywhere. People who had had too much to drink lay out side them. Or maybe they had nowhere but the streets to sleep.

“Makes you grateful for a good roof.” said the Artful Dodger. He stopped at the most run-down block. He banged on the door.

A voice shouted down, “Who’s there?” “Me,” the Artful Dodger shouted back. “Who is with you?”

“A new one,” the Artful Dodger replied. “Come on up,” the voice said.

“Got to give them warning,” the Artful Dodger told Oliver. “They don’t trust strangers. Lot of nasty fellows around here.”

The Artful Dodger opened the peeling door. Oliver followed him up a shaky stairway. They went down a dark hallway to another door, a steel door. The Artful Dodger opened it.

“Oliver, meet the kind gentleman I told you about,” the Artful Dodger said.

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The kind gentleman was standing by a fireplace. He was toasting sausages on a long fork. He turned. His smile showed yellow teeth above a matted red beard.

“Just cooking supper for my lads,” he said. “You’re welcome to join in, my dear boy.”

There were four boys in the dark, dirty room. None was older than the Artful Dodger. Oliver already could see how kind the gentleman was. It had to cost him a pretty penny to care for these boys. Clearly he spent no money on himself. He wore a stained bathrobe and torn slippers.

“Oliver, meet Fagin,” the Artful Dodger said. “Fagin, this is Oliver Twist.” Fagin made a low bow.

“Charmed to meet you, my dear,” he said. He wrapped a sausage in a piece of black bread, then gave it to Oliver.

“Thank you, sir,” said Oliver.

“A polite boy, a grateful boy,” said Fagin. He turned to the others. “You all can take a lesson from him.” Then he said to Oliver, “And you can learn a lot from them.”

Supper was very greasy but very good.

“Before bed, we play a game,” Fagin told Oliver after supper. “Watch a while.

Then you can join in.”

Fagin dressed himself in a fancy suit. In the pockets he put wallets, watches, and silk handkerchiefs. Then he started walking in a circle. He looked up at the ceiling and hummed to himself.

One by one the boys crept up behind him. The first slipped his hand into Fagin’s pocket. He took out a watch. The next got a wallet. The third reached for a handkerchief. And got his hand slapped by Fagin.

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“Clumsy, clumsy,” Fagin said. “Won’t do at all. Try harder.”

Fagin began walking again. This time the boy did better and won a fond pinch on his cheek.

“Very, very good,” Fagin said. “You’ll make your fortune yet.”

When it was the Artful Dodger’s turn, he managed to grab a wallet and a watch and a handkerchief.

“You’re a clever one,” said Fagin. “Always said it, always will.”

At last Oliver was allowed to share the fun. Fagin let a handkerchief hang halfway out of his pocket. “See if you can take it without me feeling it.”

Oliver crept up. Holding his breath, he slid the handkerchief out lightly.

Fagin clapped his hand to his empty pocket.

“You got it! Wonderful. Here’s a prize for you.” He gave Oliver a coin. “Keep on this way,” said Fagin. “Someday you’ll be a great man.”

Oliver wondered how. Could playing this game really make him a great man? But he was sure the kind gentleman knew more than a boy.

“Bedtime, my dears,” Fagin declared. “Tomorrow’s a working day.” “Please, sir, what do they work at?” Oliver asked.

“Oh, they fix watches,” said Fagin, holding up one. “And mend wallets, handkerchiefs, too. Of course, young boys make mistakes. These handkerchiefs, for instance. Charley Bates over there sewed on the wrong initials. Tomorrow Oliver, perhaps you can help take them off.”

“Oh yes, sir,” said Oliver. “I do want to earn my keep.” Then Oliver turned to the Artful Dodger. “Thank you so much for bringing me there.”

“I thank you too, Dodger,” Fagin said. He rubbed his hands together. “You’ve brought us a real treasure.”

Chapter 5

Oliver Among Thieves

During the next few days, Oliver saw how much Fagin cared about his boys. Fagin wanted to bring them up right. When they came back with watches, wallets, and handkerchiefs, Fagin patted their heads. And gave them extra sausage.

But sometimes they came back empty- handed. Then Fagin got angry at them. He sent them to bed without supper.

“Hurts me more than you,” he said. “But you must learn not to be lazy.” Oliver saw more of Fagin’s kindness when two visitors arrived.

One was a tall man with a bad temper and big muscles. His name was Bill Sikes. The strong young woman with him was called Nancy. She was mess-looking but nice. Oliver liked her.

“Nancy grew up with me,” Fagin said. “Now she devotes herself to helping Bill. Bill makes a fine living as a salesman. And Nancy is all set to be his wife someday.”

“Yeah, someday,” Nancy said.

“Enough gab,” Bill said. “How much for this?” He took silverware and silver candlesticks from his sack.

Fagin dropped a gold piece on the table. Bill’s fist made the coin jump. Slowly Fagin let a few copper coins clink down.

“My limit,” Fagin said.

Bill growled. Then he scooped up the money and left with Nancy.

“Lovely couple,” Fagin said. “Wish I could help them more. But you boys are such a burden for a poor man.”

“I know,” said Oliver. “I’d like to do my full share. Please, sir, can I go out to work like the others?”

“A fine boy, a willing boy,” said Fagin. He smiled at Oliver fondly.

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When the Artful Dodger heard the news, he said, “Knew you had the right stuff, Oliver. Come with me and Charley. We’ll start you off right.”

Oliver followed them through the streets to a nicer part of London. Well-dressed men and women strolled on clean sidewalks. Then sun was bright. The air was sweet.

The Artful Dodger stopped suddenly. He pointed to a bookstall across the street.

“See that old man with the white hair?” he asked quietly. “Yes,” said Oliver.

“Perfect!” said Charley Bates.

The man was reading a book with great interest. The Artful Dodger and Charley nodded to each other.

Oliver saw the Artful Dodger slink up to the gentleman. The Artful Dodger’s hand dipped into the gentlemen’s pocket. It pulled out a handkerchief.

For the first time Oliver knew what the “work” of Fagin’ boys really was! The bookstall owner shouted. “Thief!”

The Artful Dodger and Charley raced around a corner. Oliver saw only one thing he could do. Run!

Oliver ran right into a good citizen. That good citizen stopped Oliver. With the first thing that came to hand. A fist.

Oliver saw stars. Then blackness.

Finally that blackness brightened. Oliver opened his eyes. Yet he was sure he was dreaming.

Either that, or he had died and gone to heaven.

Chapter 6

Oliver In Trouble But Saves

Oliver woke up in a soft feather bed. A white-haired gentleman stood nearby. The gentleman whom the Artful Dodger had robbed. But he did not look angry. He looked very pleased.

The gentleman spoke to his gray haired housekeeper. “Mrs. Bedwin, the boy is awake.”

“The doctor said he would get better, Mr. Brownlow,” Mrs. Bedwin said. Her voice was happy.

“Have I been sick?” Oliver asked.

“You remember nothing?” asked Mr. Brownlow “Only running,” Oliver said.

‘’Just as Well,” Mr. Brownlow said. “The memory would be painful. People saw you running. They thought you were a thief.”

“Your were sent before a judge,” Mr. Brownlow continued. “The meanest judge in London. Judge Fang himself. He was ready to send you to prison.”

Mr. Brownlow smiled. “But the bookseller came in the nick of time. He said it was another boy who stole it. He looked as angry as a dog robbed of a bone.”

“A dog has more human kindness than him,” Mrs. Bedwin declared. “He didn’t care that you were skin and bones. And burning up with fever. Thank heaven Mr. Brownlow could bring you home to be cared for.”

“How long have I been here?” Oliver asked. “Ten days,” said Mr. Brownlow.

“Have I been sleeping all that time?” asked Oliver.

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“Sleeping…and almost worse,” said Mr. Brownlow, “But you’re better.

And you will get better still.”

“With good food inside you,” said Mrs. Bedwin.

“And with good clothes to wear. Good books to read. A good school to go to,” Mr. Brownlow said.

“But that cost’s money,” Oliver. “I have none. Just as I have no place to live.

Or father or mother. Or even a real name. Just Oliver Twist.”

“I have more than enough money,” Mr. Brownlow said. “And I have more than enough room for you                                                in this house. I live here alone.”

“Alone?” said Oliver. “But what about her?” He pointed to a picture hanging on the wall. A picture of a beautiful young woman.

“That Picture was given to me by an old friend,” said Mr. Brownlow.

A shadow crossed his face. “I never knew the woman.”

“It’s odd,” said Oliver. “I feel as if I know her. I feel as if she’s trying to speak to me. Yet I can’t make out a word.”

“You’re still weak from fever,” said Mrs. Bedwin. She put a cool hand on his forehead. Her kind eyes studied his face. “Strange, you look a bit like her.”

Mr. Brownlow looked carefully at him too. “And from another angle, you look like – ” He shook head. It does not matter.

“It is a small world,” said Mr. Brownlow. “We are all related in a way. It is enough that you are you. And I will be like a father to you.”

Oliver spent the next few weeks in a new world. A world of love and kindness. He began to forget Fagin’s den of thieves.

Mr. Brownlow’s good friend Mr. Grimwig did not forget.

“That boy came from the underworld,” Grimwig said.  “And  he’ll go back to it.”

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“Never,” said Mr. Brownlow.

“Then why does he not say whom he lived with?” Grimwig demanded. “He doesn’t want to get that person in trouble,” Mr. Brownlow said. “That person housed and fed the boy.”

“You believe that?” Grimwig said.

“You must believe in Father Christmas too. Why not test the boy?”

Just then Mrs. Bedwin brought in some books. Mr. Brownlow had bought from the bookstall that morning. The same bookstall where the Artful Dodger had stolen his handkerchief.

Mr. Brownlow wanted to return two books and pay his monthly bill. But the boy who delivered them to Mrs. Bedwin had left.

“Here is a perfect test,” said Grimwig. “Send Oliver to pay your bill and return the books. I bet he will not come back.”

“And if you’re wrong?” said Mr. Brownlow, smiling. He knew how tough his friend liked to talk. He also knew how soft Grimwig’s heart really was.

“Why, I will eat my own head,” Grimwig declared. Mr. Brownlow chuckled.

Oliver was very happy to be of any use. Mr. Brownlow gave him the money and the books. Off he rushed to the bookstall. And the two men waited for him to return. They waited and waited. Hours passed. Darkness came. And gloom fell on the two old friends. Sadly they wondered what had become of Oliver.

Chapter 7

Oliver is Kidnapped

Oliver was back at Fagin’s. Thanks to Nancy. She had tracked Oliver from the courtroom to Mr. Brownlow’s home. Day after day she waited for Oliver to go out by himself. Then she grabbed him.

“Did he give you any trouble?” Fagin asked.

“He tried to,” Nancy said. “A crowd gathered. But I pretended to be    his sister.

I said he had run away from home. People believed me, not him.” “Good girl,” Fagin said. “I trained you well.”

“Yes, you trained me,” Nancy said. “You trained me to lie and steal and worse. I was no older than him.”

“And here’s the reward I promised,” said Fagin. He gave her a gold piece.

“Keep your other promise, too,” Nancy said. She grabbed his wrist and squeezed it.

“Don’t harm the boy.”

“Of course no, my dear,” said Fagin. “You women. So tender when it comes to children.”

“What about your feeling for Bill Sikes?” said Fagin.

“That ain’t tenderness. That’s weakness,” said Nancy with a shrug.

“Well, my weakness is for lads like Oliver,” said Fagin. He patted Oliver on the head. “In fact, I have a special weakness for Oliver.”

“Why him?” asked Nancy.

“That’s for me to know. And no one else to find out,” said Fagin.

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Nancy’s eyes narrowed. “Does it have to do with that stranger? The one who came to see you last week? After his visit, you promised gold for finding the kid. Before, it was just silver.”

Oliver saw his chance to speak up. “Sir, I never said a word. Please, let me go back to Mr. Brownlow. I’ll keep quiet. I swear I will.” Oliver swallowed hard. “I swear on my poor mother’s grave.”

“Very touching, my dear boy,” Fagin said “But you know too much. I will never let you go.”

“Then let me send Mr. Brownlow the money he gave me,” said Oliver. “Or else he will think I stole it.”

This made Fagin laugh. “What a clever boy to think of that. I’m glad you know you are now a thief. In the eyes of Mr. Brownlow. In the eyes of the law. In the eyes of all the world.”

Oliver had to bite his lip to keep from crying. Fagin pinched Oliver’s cheek.

“Thank you for the money. And your nice new clothes. Still, you must earn your keep. Learn your trade.”

Fagin smiled. “If you are a thief, you had better be a good one. But you’re in luck. We have a fine teacher for you. The best. Bill Sikes himself.”

“Did I hear my name?” a voice roared.

It was Bill Sikes. His big body filled the doorway. He stomped into the room.

He glared at Fagin.

“I don’t like to hear my name spoke. Can be dangerous,” he snarled.

Bill had his big, flea-bitten white dog with him. The dog snarled too. Bill gave it a kick that sent it whimpering into a corner.

“Hear that, Oliver,” Fagin said. “You don’t want to say Bill Sikes’s name to anybody.”

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Bill put his huge hands on Oliver’s neck.

“You do,” he growled, “and I’ll rip your head clean off.” “Go easy on him, Bill,” Nancy begged.

“He ain’t done nothing to you.”

“Stay out of this, Nancy. Or I’ll beat the stuffing out of you,” said Bill.

He turned to Fagin. “This the kid you promised me?”

“The perfect one for the job,” Fagin assured him. “Sent by heaven, you might say.” Fagin rubbed his hands together. “You owe me a little something for his help. As agreed.”

“You’ll get your cut after the job,” said Bill. His hand closed on Oliver’s thin shoulder. “Time to go to work. Our time. Night-time.”

“Your new life is starting, Oliver,” Fagin. said. “Get used to it. It’s the only life you’ll have. Until the day you die.”

Chapter 8

Oliver Meets Rose

“Here’s a lesson for you,” said Bill Sikes once they left. He pressed a gun against Oliver’s head. “Obey me or else.”

Then Bill dragged Oliver to a big house outside of London. The night was dark and damp. Bill opened a small high window.

“You’re going in that window and straight ahead,” said Bill. “Unlock the front door and let me in. If you get any ideas, remember this.” He tapped his gun against the boy’s head.

Oliver knew Bill was going to rob the house. Or worse. Bill lifted him up and lowered him through the window. He gave Oliver a lantern.

Oliver crept through the hall. He heard footsteps upstairs. And Bill  Sikes hollering,

“Come back! Back!” The lantern crashed.

The last thing Oliver remembered the sound of a gun. And pain.

At last Oliver opened his eyes. He saw an angel. Or a young woman as beautiful as angel.

“I’m Rose,” she said. “And this is my aunt, Mrs. Maylie.” Oliver saw an older woman with a sweet face. “And this is our friend, Dr. Losberne. He saved your life after our servant shot you.”

“I don’t think you’ll be robbing people for quite a while,” said the doctor.

“Please, sir,” said Oliver. He was still pale and weak. But he could not bear being taken as a thief. He told his sad story.

Everyone who heard him knew he was telling the truth. “He is so young,” said the doctor.

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“Young enough for a better life,” Rose said. “We must show him a better way.”

And Rose and Mrs. Maylie knew a better way. Love and kindness. They nursed Oliver back to health in their country house. There was good food to eat and milk to drink. Dr. Losberne brought Oliver all the books he could read. There were days of play in the sunshine. And evenings, when Rose played the piano.

Only one thing was worrying Oliver. He wanted Mr. Brownlow to know he was not a thief. He asked Dr. Losberne to find him. But Mr. Brownlow and his housekeeper had moved. So had his friend Grimwig. No one knew how or why.

But that was the only cloud in Oliver’s life. The only cloud, for months and months. Until one late summer evening.

The sun was setting. Oliver was in a room facing the garden. He was reading a long book and was getting drowsy. The printed words blurred. He began to half-dream. He saw Fagin again and the Artful Dodger. Bill Sikes and Nancy. Mr. Bumble and Mr. Sowerberry. The dream was getting worse and worse. He forced his eyes open.

Fagin’s face was right outside the window! Another man was with Fagin. Oliver did not know that man. But he knew the look in the man’s eyes. Burning with hate.

“Who?” asked Rose.

“A girl, but more than a girl. I think Nancy about your age,” Oliver said. Then it was Rose’s turn to show fear.

“A young woman just knocked on the door,” Rose said. “I let her in and asked her name. Her name is—Nancy.”

Chapter 9

Nancy Helps Oliver

Don’t t believe Nancy,” Oliver begged Rose. “She’ll tell you lies. Anything to take me back to Fagin.”

“It’s you that I believe,” Rose promised him. “We’ll face her together. We’ll make short work of her lies.”

But Nancy had not come to tell lies. Her face was pale and frightened.

“Listen to what I say. I risk my life to say it,” she said. “But better my life than the boy’s. He has some hope of a better life. I have none.”

“But you are still so young,” Rose said.

She was shocked by the sadness in Nancy’s voice.

“Young in years,” Nancy said. “But old in every other way. Too old to tell you about Oliver. While there is still something there to save him.”

“I’m listening,” said Rose.

“Listen closely. As closely as I did at Fagin’s,” Nancy said. “I was there when a man came to see him. A young, well-dressed young man.”

Nancy paused. “I had seen him once before. When Oliver was gone the first time. This time I wanted to find out who the man was. And what he wanted.”

“Did you?” Rose asked.

“I did,” Nancy said. “I pretended to be sound asleep in the corner. They thought I had had too much to drink. So they talked freely. And what I heard made me come here.”

“Please, what did you hear?” asked Oliver. Why should a well-dressed man visit Fagin? What could his visit have to do with Oliver?

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“Fagin called him Mr. Monks,” Nancy said. “He and Fagin come from different worlds. I could see that. But they’re birds of a feather!”

Nancy sighed. “Monks said it was his good luck to spot Oliver with the Artful Dodger. It was that day at the book-stall. He guessed who Oliver was, right away. And he could tell the Artful Dodger was a thief. Then the police grabbed Oliver.”

Nancy’s voice was sad. “Monks paid the Artful Dodger to lead him to Fagin. He wanted Fagin to turn the boy into a thief. Imagine that! A thief who would end his life in jail.

“But,” continued Nancy, “that nice gentleman came along to spoil Monks’ plan. So Monks paid Fagin to get Oliver back. Next Monks went to an orphans’ home run by a Mr. Bumble. Monks wanted to make sure he was right about Oliver.”

“He knew who I was?” Oliver asked eagerly. “Tell me, who am I?”

“Monks didn’t say,” said Nancy. “He just gave a nasty laugh. And called you his ‘little brother.”’

“What did he mean?” Rose wondered.

“I have no idea, miss,” said Nancy. “But he did say something strange. That you’d give the world to know who Oliver is.”

“Me,” Rose said.

“That’s right, “ said Nancy. “Monks thought it a big joke that Oliver was with you. That it was your house where Bill left Oliver for dead.”

“A joke?” Rose shuddered. “How terrible.” “Worse is to come,” said Nancy.

“Worse?” said Oliver.

“Monks had bought a locket from Mr. Bumble,” Nancy said. “That locket was the last hope of anyone saving Oliver. Monks dumped it in the river. Now

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Fagin could feel safe in doing what he wanted with Oliver. Nancy wiped away some tears and continued. “Monks stood by the offer he had made. He would pay Fagin for making Oliver a thief. Monks wanted the pleasure of seeing Oliver in jail. Or on the gallows.”

“Fagin agreed?” said Rose. “I can’t believe anyone is that evil.”

“You don’t know Fagin,” Nancy said. “He’ll do anything for money.” “Did you find out anything more about the locket?” Oliver asked. “Nothing,” Nancy said.

“Nothing?” said Oliver. His heart sank. He had felt so close to finding out who he was. Now he was back in the dark.

“But there is someone who may tell you more,” Nancy said. “Who?” asked Oliver.

“I do not know his name. And he does not know mine,” said Nancy. “That was our agreement. But I can take you to him.”

“Please do!” Oliver exclaimed. “Yes, please!” Rose echoed.

Rose’s aunt was napping upstairs. They left her a note saying that they would be back soon. Then they found a cab. Nancy gave the driver an address. The man cracked his whip. His horse trotted smartly to a hotel in the heart of the city.

Nancy led them to a room on the third floor. She knocked on the door.

It opened. And Oliver thought his heart would burst with joy. “Mr. Brownlow!” he said.

Chapter 10

Who is Monks?

Oliver and Mr. Brownlow hugged each other. Then Oliver introduced Rose.

First to Mr. Brownlow. Then to Grimwig, who was also there.

“Grimwig thought Oliver was a thief when he did not come back,” Mr.

Brownlow said.

Grimwig coughed. “I did not want to. But I am a lawyer. I go by evidence.” “I had different evidence,” Mr. Brownlow said. “The evidence of my heart.

The evidence of my eyes.”

“Of course,” Rose said. “Anyone can see Oliver is no thief.”

“I saw even more than that,” Mr. Brownlow said. “When I saw Oliver’s face, I saw another face as well. The face of a man who was my dear friend years ago. And I saw another, too. The woman my friend loved. The woman whose picture he had left with me.”

“The picture of that beautiful lady in my room at your house?” Oliver asked. “The same,” said Mr. Brownlow.

“I felt as if I somehow knew her,” Oliver said. “Please, sir, what is her name?”

“My friend would not tell me,” Mr. Brownlow said. “He wanted to protect her. You see, his family had pushed him to marry. He was very young. It was a mistake. When he and his wife parted, she went to Europe with their son. A terrible young man. A great disappointment to his father.”

Mr. Brownlow sighed. “My friend stayed here and met the girl he loved. Love made him lie. He told her that he was single and married her. But when she was expecting a baby, he had to stop living that life. He went to Europe to end his first marriage.”

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“But first,” continued Mr. Brownlow “he made a will. It gave his first wife and their son half his fortune when he died. The rest would go to the woman he loved and their child.”

“He left me the painting of his love before he sailed. He painted it himself. A surprise for her when he returned.”

“What became of him?” asked Oliver.

“A month later I read in the paper that he had died,” Mr. Brownlow said. “I wrote to his wife in Europe for more news. She did not answer. I tried to find out who the woman he loved was. But I failed.”

“That is all you know?” asked Oliver. He could not hide his disappointment.

“That is all I knew then,” Mr. Brownlow said. “I know more now. After you vanished, Oliver, I again searched for that missing woman. I sensed a bond between her and you. By finding her, I might find you.”

“Did you? Find her…I mean?” Oliver asked eagerly.

“Yes, did you?” Rose asked. She seemed as interested as Oliver.

“Yes and no,” said Mr. Brownlow. “I again tried to Contact my friend’s first wife. She had died. The only person left to ask her son. But he had moved to the West Indies. I shut up my house in London and sailed there. Grimwig came with me. He wanted to find Oliver as much as I did.”

Grimwig’s ears grew pink. “I wanted evidence, that’s all.” “Did you find it, Mr. Grimwig?” asked Oliver.

Mr. Brownlow shook his head. “No, he didn’t. My friend’s son was gone. His business had failed. He had come back here. We came back too and found him. But he would not talk about his father. He said he wanted to cut all ties with the past. He had even changed his name. Now he calls himself Monks.”

“Monks!” Nancy said.

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“Do you know him?” Mr. Brownlow demanded. “I know you do not want to betray the people you live among.”

“We agreed on that when you answered my poster. My poster asking about Oliver and offering a reward. But things have changed.”

“They have,” Nancy agreed. “That is why I went to Miss Maylie. That is why I brought her and Oliver to you.”

Nancy’s eyes turned nervously to the clock. “Miss Maylie can tell you the rest,” she said “I have stayed away too long alreadv. I will be missed.”

“Before you go…” Mr. Brownlow said. He pulled out his wallet.

“No,” Nancy said. “Once in my life, I want to do something not for money.

Just once before I die.”

Chapter 11

Oliver Learns The Truth

Nancy left. Grimwig went to the window. “I’ll see where she is heading,” he

said.

“Do not spy on her,” Mr. Brownlow said. “We cannot use her to go after her friends. We promised not to.” He turned to Rose. “Please, tell me what you have learned.”

Rose told him Nancy’s story. Mr. Brownlow nodded.

“I know most of it already,” he said. “You see, I hired a detective to follow Monks. Monks led him to Fagin’s door. Then to the orphans’ home. So I went and questioned that same Mr. Bumble. I paid him to give me answers. He told about selling Monks the locket. The locket belonged to a lovely young woman who had died. She had come to the workhouse. It was next door to the orphans’ home. The young woman gave birth to a baby before she died.”

“A baby?” said Oliver.

“A baby boy,” said Mr. Brownlow.

“Did Mr. Bumble tell you that name?” asked Oliver.

“He did. When I gave him still some more money,” Mr. Brownlow said. He put his hand, on Oliver’s shoulder, “I think you can guess that name. The name Bumble gave that boy.”

“My name,” gasped Oliver. “The lovely young woman was my mother. The woman with the locket.”

“Did Bumble tell you more about the locket he sold to Monks?” Rose asked.

Her voice was excited.

“He did, for more money. I have never seen a man so greedy,” said  Mr. Brownlow. He smiled. “Bumble will need every penny I gave him. I reported what he did, Mr. Bumble no longer has a job.”

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“But what did he say about the locket?” Rose asked again.

“Only that it was gold. And had a single name on it, Mr. Brownlow said. “What was that name?” asked Rose.

“Agnes,” Mr. Brownlow answered.

Rose’s face became pale. Her voice shook. “And Monks’s real name?” “Edward Leeford,” Mr. Brownlow answered. “Why do you ask?”

”My only sister was named Agnes.” Rose said. “She had such a locket.

And she married a man named Leeford.”

“The man who was my friend,” said Mr. Brownlow. “Monks’s father.”

“He took Agnes to live in another town,” said Rose. “She wrote me that she was going to have a child. Then I heard no more. I went to see her. She was gone. No one knew where. But now I know.”

“Does that mean—” Oliver began to ask. He could not finish his question.

His heart was beating too hard.

“It means my sister was your mother,” Rose said. She gave Oliver a giant hug. “I am your aunt. And I will be like a mother to you.”

“Amazing,” said Mr. Brownlow. He shook his head in wonder.

“Sir, you once told me it is a small world,” Oliver said. “You had said that we are all related.”

“I did not know how true that was,” said Mr. Brownlow. He wiped tears from his eyes. Tears of joy.

“True indeed. Very true,” Mr. Grimwig said. He wiped his eyes too. “Must have gotten a speck in them,” he said. He used his handkerchief to polish his glasses. Then Mr. Grimwig cleared his throat. “This evidence is true enough to stand up in court. Monks will have to pay Oliver what he owes him. Half his

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father’s fortune.” He smiled at Oliver. “What will you do with your money? Buy toys? Sweets?”

“I’ll give most of it to Nancy,” Oliver said. “She needs it more than I do, I have all of you. But she has only mean Bill Sikes and evil Fagin.”

“She has another friend, too.” Mr. Grimwig said. “I saw him when I looked out the window. His eyes lit up when he saw Nancy.”

“What did he look like?” asked Oliver fear was in his voice.

Mr. Grimwig smiled. “Don’t worry Oliver. He was little more than a child. He looked as if he was going to a costume party. All dressed up in grown-up clothes.”

“The Artful Dodger,” said Oliver. “The Artful Dodger?” said Brownlow.

“He is one of Fagin’s boys,” said Oliver. “The one who stole your handkerchief. Fagin must have had him follow Nancy. Now he’ll tell Fagin that Nancy came here. Fagin won’t like it. Bill will like it even less. We must save her.” Oliver was already at the door.

“Surely,we do not need to rush so,” Mr. Grimwig said. “We’ll go to the police.

Let them take over.”

“You don’t know how fast the Artful Dodger moves,” Oliver said. “Or how quick-tempered Bill is. Hurry!”

Chapter 12

The Murder of Nancy

They rushed out of the hotel.

Brownlow hailed a cab. “Hurry,” Mr. Brownlow told the driver. He gave him an extra gold piece.

The cab moved through the traffic. But it stopped when it reached the slums.

The driver said, “This is as far as I go. The streets are too narrow here. Too dangerous.”

Oliver, Mr. Brownlow, Grimwig, and Rose went on by foot.

“I’ll go first,” said Oliver. He led them through the twisting streets to the building where Nancy and Bill Sikes lived.

A crowd was in front of the building, and police, too.

“What happened, Officer?” Mr. Brownlow asked of the policemen. “A murder,” he said.

Oliver’s heart sank. His voice shook. “Whose murder, sir?”

“A girl. Nancy something,” the policeman said, “The killer was waiting for her. Beat her to death on the spot. Who knows why. These people are animals.”

“Not animals. All too human,” said Mr. Brownlow. “That poor girl. Have you caught the killer?”

“He got clean away,” said the policeman. “It’ll be a job to hunt him down.

This place is a jungle. “

“A reward for finding the killer!” Mr. Brownlow shouted to the crowd. “And I’ll add something to it!” Grimwig shouted.

“We’d do it for nothing,” a man in the crowd said. “Nancy was a good sort. But it was Bill Sikes who done it. Bill is clever as a fox. Lord only knows where he’s hiding out.”

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Just then a dog came running out of the building. A big white dog.

A policeman came running after it. “It got out of the girl’s room,” he said. “Must have belonged to her.”

“Not to her. To Bill Sikes,” said Oliver. “Quick! Follow it!”

The dog ran yelping through the streets. It knew where it was going. The crowd ran after it. The number of people kept growing. Everyone wanted to catch Nancy’s killer. The dog stopped at a building. It howled and clawed at the front door.

“Fagin’s place,” Oliver said.

“Break the door down!” shouted a man in the crowd. “Get a battering ram!” shouted a woman.

Someone found a large beam of wood.

Five strong men bashed it against the door. The door caved in.

The crowd started to pour through it.

Then Oliver shouted, “Look! Up there! At Fagin’s window!”

The people stopped in their tracks. They looked up at the high-window. Bill Sikes stood on the ledge.

“Give yourself up!” a policeman called to him. “You’ll never catch me!” Bill shouted back.

He leaped to the roof of the next building. An amazing jump for someone so big. Bill ran over the rooftops, leaping from one to another. On the streets below, the crowd followed him.

He reached the last building before the river. But that did not stop him. He was carrying a coil of rope. He tied one end around a chimney. He made the other end into a loop. He put the loop over his head.

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Rising Sun – I

Oliver heard a man in the crowd ask, “What the devil is he doing?”

“Can’t you see?” another answered. “He’ll put the loop around his waist. He’ll lower himself down to the river. And he’ll swim for it. That fox. He’ll cheat the hangman yet.”

But suddenly Bill froze. His eyes grew big. He screamed, “Nancy! What are you doing here. Take your eyes off me! Your eyes!”

Nobody could see what Bill was staring at.

But everyone saw him take a step backward. Right off the roof.

He fell through empty air. Until his fall was stopped by the rope around his neck.

The crowd was quiet for a moment They watched the dead man swinging on the rope.

Then someone said, “It was like he saw a ghost.”

Another added, “I said he’d cheat the hangman. He did the job himself.”

The crowd broke up. But the police were still on the job. And Oliver and his friends still had work to do.

They all headed for Fagin’s place.

Oliver Finds Happiness at Last

The police pounded on Fagin’s door. It was made of steel. Too hard to break open.

“Open in the name of the law!” a policeman shouted.

“You’re wanted for hiding a killer!” shouted another. “You won’t get away from us. Not this time.”

They heard Fagin’s voice from inside. “I’ll never give myself up! Unless we make a deal.”

“What kind of a deal?” one policeman replied.

“I’ll hand over a gang of thieves to you,” said Fagin. “I’ll give evidence against them. It’s a good trade. You get five evil boys. You just have to let one poor, harmless old man go free.”

“Forget it,” the policeman called back. “You’re coming with us.”

“Nev…” Fagin started to shout. Then his voice was cut off. A moment later the door swung open.

Charley Bates stood there. Behind him the Artful Dogder was sitting on Fagin’s chest. The other boys held down Fagin’s arms and legs.

“After all that I’ve done for you, “ Fagin screamed.

“And what you wanted to do to us,” the Artful Dodger replied. He looked at the police. “Give us a break for helping nab Fagin. How about it?”

“Tell it to the judge,” one policeman said. He pulled Fagin to his feet and put handcuffs on him.

“Oliver!” Fagin cried. “Tell them. I meant no harm, my dear. I Was like a father to you. To all the boys.”

Oliver looked right into Fagin’s eyes. He said not a word.

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Rising Sun – I

“Why, you little—” screamed Fagin. He tried to leap at Oliver. But the policemen were holding him tightly.

“Time to get what’s coming to you,” the head policeman said. “Take them away, fellows.”

Police surrounded Fagin and the boys. They left for jail.

Only Oliver and his friends remained. Plus one other person. A well- dressed young man. A young man in the corner. A young man who shrank from Mr. Brownlow’s eyes.

“So this is where I find you, Edward Leeford,” Mr. Brownlow said.     “Or should I call you Monks?”

“I can explain everything,” Monks said.

“We already know everything,” Mr. Brownlow said. “Except one thing,” said Mr. Grimwig. “Where is the will?” “What will?” asked Monks.

“Your father’s will,” said Mr. Grimwig. “The will that left half his fortune to your half-brother Oliver.”

“There is no such will,” said Monks.

“There is one,” Mr. Brownlow said. There was iron in his voice. “Your father told me of it. I will swear to that in court. If you make us take you ther.”

“I was afraid someone knew about it,” Monks said in a broken voice. But it said that if Oliver ever broke the law, he’d get nothing. Then I’d be safe.”

“Talk, talk,” Grimwig said impatiently. “Answer my question. Where is the will?”

“My mother destroyed it,” Monks said.

“Then she wrote to Oliver’s mother, Agnes. She said that my father was already married. And wanted nothing more to do with Agnes.”

“How hurt poor Agnes must have been,” said Rose. “How ashamed. No wonder she ran away.”

“Well, it seems you are a wealthy young man,” Mr. Brownlow told Oliver. “You have half of Leeford’s fortune.”

“But that is all that is left,” Monks protested. “I have had bad luck in business.

And even worse luck gambling. I will be left without a penny.”

“Then learn from Oliver,” said Grimwig, “He did not have a penny. And he has come far in the world.”

“A fortune,” said Oliver. “What will I do with it?”

“I will watch over it until you are grown up,” said Mr. Brownlow. “Then you can do what you want with it.”

“And I will take care of you while you grow up,” said Rose. She held him close. “I will be your second mother.”

“It all seems too good to be true,” said Oliver. But it was true.

Then and in the years to come. For Oliver and all who loved him.

Introduction

Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world’s most memorable fictional characters and is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period. During his lifetime, his works enjoyed unprecedented fame, and by the twentieth century his literary genius was broadly acknowledged by critics and scholars. His novels and short stories continue to be widely popular.

‘The Pickwick Papers’, ‘Oliver Twist’, ‘A Christmas Carol’, ‘Davis Copperfield’, ‘Great Expectations’ and ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ are some of his notable works.

‘Oliver Twist’, also known as ‘The Parish Boy’s Progress’, is the second novel by Dickens, published by Richard Bentley in 1837. The book is notable for Dicken’s unromantic portrayal of criminals and their sordid lives. An early example of the social novel, the book calls the public’s attention to various contemporary evils, including the Poor Law, child labour, recruitment of children as criminals and the plight of orphans. Dickens mocks the hypocrisies of his time by surrounding the novel’s serious themes with sarcasm and dark humour.

appetite        :        a natural desire to satisfy a

bodily need, especially for food

undertaker   :        a person whose business is

preparing dead bodies for burial or cremation and making arrangements for funerals

brutal           :        savagely violent; cruel

coarse          :        rough or harsh in texture

(usually cloth)

huddled        :        curl one’s body into a small

space; crowd together; nestle closely

the beak       :        (commonly used in Dicken’s

time) a policeman or magistrate

the mill         :        jail or prison

learn the       :        explain to somebody/learn how

ropes                     to do a particular job, task, etc. correctly

look sharp    :        be quick

avenue         :        a broad road in a town or city,

typically having trees at regular intervals along its sides

run-down     :        gradually deteriorate (or cause

to deteriorate) in quality

matted          :        (especially of hair, wool, or

fur) tangled into a thick mass, usually unclean

earn my        :        work in return for food and

keep                      accommodation

gab              :        talk; chatter

nick of time  :       just in time; at the last moment

stomp           :        tread heavily and noisily,

typically in order to show anger

whimpering  :       make low, feeble sounds

expressive of fear, pain, or unhappiness

hollering      :        give a loud shout or cry

drowsy         :        sleepy and lethargic

make short   :        to finish or deal with

work of                 something quickly

gallows        :        a structure, typically of two

uprights and a crosspiece, for the hanging of

criminals

trot               :        proceed at a pace faster than a

walk

speck            :        a tiny spot; a small particle of a substance

battering      :        a heavy beam; a heavy object

ram                       swung or rammed against a door to break it down

pounded      :        strike or hit heavily and

repeatedly

nab              :        catch (someone) doing something wrong or criminal; grab or steal

i)  Answer the following questions in a paragraph.

1. What is the central theme of ‘Oliver Twist’?
   1. Attempt a character sketch of Oliver.
   1. Write a note on the conditions of the Workhouse and orphanages.
   1. Give an account of Oliver’s experience working for the undertaker.
   1. What is poetic justice? Is there poetic justice in ‘Oliver Twist’?

ii)  Answer the following questions in an essay.

1. Write on Oliver’s family, contrasting the beginning and the end of the story.
   1. Compare the characters and behaviour of Mr. Brownlow, Fagin and Mr. Bumble.

IMPORTANT QUESTION FOR  SEMESTER EXAMINATION

Essay questions from all 5 Units(5*16M=80)

1. How does the Lin Yutang bring out the importance of the Art of Reading?
2. Describe the does Lin Yutang bring out the difference between the life of the man who reads and the man who does not read.
3. How does Ayyar bring out his wit and scholarship in his discussion with Englishmen? Elucidate the title.
4. Bring out the important points the author was trying to convey in ‘How I Argued while in England.’
5. How did the ‘Merchant of Death’ become a ‘Messenger of Peace’?
6. Explain the significant traits in the character and personality of Alfred Nobel.
7. Give an account of Rachel Carson’s life and her achievements.
8. What were the different assignments given by the American Government to Carson. Explain.
9. How is death portrayed in Dickinson’s ‘Because I could not stop for Death’.
10. Describe the relationship between Emily Dickinson’s and her companion in the carriage.
11. ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ Contrasts the world of beauty with the world of human obligation. – Discuss.
12. Critically evaluate the journey in “Enterprise”.
13. Explain how the mystery of Oliver’s parentage is solved?
14. “Oliver Twist” portrays child Labour – Evaluate.
15. Discuss the characters of Nancy, Fagin and Mr. Brownlow.

Short Questions From All 5 Units (10*2M=20)

1. What is the key to all reading?
2. When can reading be called an art?
3. What is Lin Yutang’s concept of beauty?
4. What should Indians be able to do if they were really equal?
5. What is Ayya’s concept of completeness? How complete are humans when they are born?
6. How does Alfred Noble ‘a merchant of death’ turn to be ‘a messenger of peace’?
7. Name the title of the book written by Bertha and presented to Noble.
8. List out the different inventions/ discoveries done by Alfred Noble.
9. What was the assignment given to Carson by the Bureau of Fisheries? What did she do?
10. What was the impact of ‘Silent Spring’?
11. Name the occupants in the carriage.
12. What were the places which Emily passed in the poem ‘Because I could not stop for Death?
13. Where does Robert Frost stand?
14. What did the little horse think about Robert?
15. How do the pilgrims realize that home is the place where they can have grace?
16. What is an enterprise?
17. Which place the poet describes in ‘Notes Towards a poem that can never be written’.
18. Where is Oliver Twist born?
19. Write a short note on the death of Fagin.
20. Write a note on the conditions of the Workhouse and orphanages.

PRIST UNIVERSITY

ENGLISH MODEL QUESTION PAPER

SECTION – A

Short Answers: (10*2M=20)

1. what is the key to all reading?
2. what is Lin Yutang’s concept of beauty?
3. what is Ayyar’s concept of completeness? How complete are humans when they are born?
4. Name the title of the book written by Bertha and presented to Noble.
5. what was the assignment given to Carson by the Bureau of Fisheries? What did she do?
6. Name the occupants in the carriage.
7. where does Robert Frost Stand?
8. How do the pilgrims realize that home is the place where they can have grace?
9. which place the poet describes in ‘Notes towards a poem that can never be written’.
10. Write a note on the conditions of the Workhouse and Orphanages.

SECTION – B

Essay Answers: (5*16M=80)

1. a). Describe the does Lin Yutang bring out the difference between the life of the man who reads and the man who does not read.

OR

11.b). How does Ayyar bring out his wit and scholarship in his discussion with English Men ? Elucidate the title.

1. a). Bring out the important point the author was trying to convey in ‘How I Argued while in England.’

OR

12.b). How did ‘Merchant of Death’ become a ‘Messenger of Peace’?

1. a). Explain the significant traits in the character and personality of Alfred Nobel.

OR

13.b). What were the different assignments given by the American Government to Carson. Explain.

1. a). Describe the relationship between Emily Dickinson’s and her companion in the carriage.

OR

14.b). Critically evaluate the journey in “Enterprise”.

1. a). “Oliver Twist” portrays child Labour – Evaluate.

OR

15.b). Discuss the characters of Nancy, Fagin and Mr. Brownlow.