Answer any one of the following questions in 120 – 150 words:

(a) ‘A most remarkable story,’ commented Mr. Bunting. Which story was he referring to? Why was it so remarkable?

(b) Griffin allows the destructive desires to dominate his life. Substantiate the statement with reference to ‘The Invisible Man’.

(c) What is the most important internal conflict presented at the beginning of the story, ‘Silas Marner’?

(d) Narrate the unfortunate incident of the theft of Silas’ gold.

(a) ‘A most remarkable story’, commented Mr. Bunting in the lesson ‘The Invisible Man’. He says so when Cuss, the general practitioner at the village of Iping, comes running to him to share a most unconvincing story of meeting a stranger and seeing how he was invisible entirely except for his limbs.

Mr. Bunting had never heard anything like the story Dr Cuss depicted to him in panic and shock. It was justified of him to react that way on listening about a man who had limbs alone, the rest of the body being invisible. It was impossible for him to even imagine a sight like that in his dreams. This is why the story was so remarkable and he makes a comment like that.

(b) In the story, ‘The Invisible Man’, Griffin allows destructive desires to dominate his life to an extent that he ends up being a criminal. Griffin was a man who was overtaken by his own sinister ambitions, who had no conscience and was extremely selfish.

He went on to rob his father when he ended up his own money, so that he could continue with his experiments, without even feeling sorry for his actions even at the latter’s funeral. He experimented on a speechless cat and then threw it away without caring for the animal’s plight. He burnt down the house where his landlord and his sons stayed after they found out about his experiment. His brutalities didn’t stop even after being invisible. He began enjoying the atrocities he committed. He could have easily avoided doing all of that, but he didn’t because the destructive desires began dominating his life.

(c) The most important internal conflict presented at the beginning of the story, ‘Silas Marner’ is the conflict Silas faces after having lived for a long time without remaining in touch with other humans because of his dedication to god and the church. He hasn’t lived in the kind of community he later becomes a part of at Raveloe, and is constantly treated as an outsider.

The internal conflict the story presents comes in the form of this struggle for rediscovering one’s faith and purpose as far as a community life is concerned, and this is something the central character Silas faces. When he meets Eppie, his approach as well as attitude towards life changes and the long span of fifteen years that he had spent in isolation is given a new meaning.

(d) The unfortunate incident of the theft of Silas’ gold holds a lot of significance to the novel. Before in the story, there had been another theft where Silas was falsely accused of the crime. The theft of his own gold at Raveloe sends him in deep shock and grief at first for the gold was very dear to him. However, the theft brought about a number of events in turn, like the entrance of Eppie in Silas’ life and the change of attitude of the villagers for Silas. Silas even goes on to admit how Eppie’s golden hair was like a substitute of his own gold. Had it not been for the robbery, neither Silas nor the story would have been how they ended up as.