Answer any four of the following questions in 30-40 words each: 3x4=12

(a) What does the reference to chappals in ‘Lost Spring’ tell us about the economic condition of the rag pickers?

(b) What do we learn about the crofter’s nature from the story, ‘The Rattrap’?

(c) How is ‘Shakespeare wicked and the map a bad example’ for the children of the school in a slum?

(d) What picture of male chauvinism (tyranny) do we find in the poem, ‘Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers’?

(e) How did the Governor, Oxford Prison describe Evans to the Secretary Examination Board?

(f) At the dining table why did Zitkala-Ca begin to cry when others started eating?

(a) In the ‘Lost Spring’, the reference to the chappals presents the grim condition of poverty and absence of basic facilities in the lives of the rag pickers. The author describes how when he asks one of the children why he doesn’t wear chappals or footwear, he replies that his mother hadn’t brought them down the shelf for him to wear. The author has tried to represent the malice of poverty in the streets of India, where wearing footwear on the roads is considered a luxury by the poor.

(b) From the story, ‘The Rattrap’, it is clear that the crofter, a man who was enshrouded in loneliness as he was forced to stay away from his family, was a kind and open-hearted man, and relished the opportunity of talking to someone to get rid of his loneliness. He even entertained a random unknown vagabond who sells rattraps, and was immensely generous about his confidences, as he told the vagabond all about the thirty kroners he had earned, without thinking of the consequences.

(c) Shakespeare has been called wicked, because his romantic and idealistic literature can provoke the children of the school in a slum to break away from their mundane lives. Similarly, the map on the wall is a bad example, because the children would then wish to run away to see those places, and give them an unattainable idea of escape and travel.

(d) Male chauvinism is one of the underlying messages the poem ‘Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers’ attempts at conveying. The ‘tigers’ represent the dominance of the males over the females. Aunt Jennifer is almost controlled entirely by her husband, including following the rules laid down by him. Her freedom is imaginable only in dreams. In some subtle descriptions, like the heaviness of the ring and the fluttering of fingers in fear while knitting the sweater, the picture of male chauvinism and tyranny have been clearly painted.

(e) The Governor at the Oxford prison described Evans as a constant kleptomaniac to the Secretary Examination Board, that is a person who is unable to refrain from the urge to steal, and who steals for reasons other than financial gains. He goes on to describe Evans further as not dangerous at all, and that he has no record of violence.

(f) Zitkala-Sa was not accustomed to so many restrictions and the discipline imposed on the timing, mannerisms and even way of eating. The idea of assembling to eat only when the bell rang, and then eating after a second bell, along with the compulsion to eat with a knife and fork were things she wasn’t used to before. This is the reason why she began to cry when others started eating.