Q3 of 15 Page 145

According to the author, nature prompts action as a way of ending thought. Do we tacitly assume that ‘men of action are men who don’t think’?

Woolf assumed that nature is creating distractions to end the mental process that is making her think. She takes this as challenge and does not give in her temptation to stand up and solve the mystery behind the mark on the wall in less than a minute. Instead she chooses to take her own time and solve the mystery with her powerful mental process. This leads to a flood of thoughts in vast directions. For the narrator, knowledge is all about the ability to think and nature sets hurdles for us. Those who act, don’t think according to the narrator and therefore in the context of the story it is right to say that, ’Men of actions are men who don’t think’.


More from this chapter

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1

‘In order to fix a date, it is necessary to remember what one saw’. Have you experienced this at any time? Describe one such incident and the non-chronological details that helped you remember a particular date.

 2

‘Tablecloths of a different kind were not real tablecloths’. Does this sentence embody the idea of blind adherence to rules and tradition? Discuss with reference to ‘Understanding Freedom and Discipline’ by J. Krishnamurti that you’ve already read.

 1

Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of narration: one, where the reader would remain aware of some outside voice telling him/her what’s going on; two, a narration that seeks to reproduce, without the narrator’s intervention, the full spectrum and continuous flow of a character’s mental process. Which of these is exemplified in this essay? Illustrate.

 2

This essay frequently uses the non-periodic or loose sentence structure: the component members are continuous, but so loosely joined, that the sentence could have easily been broken without damage to or break in thought. Locate a few such sentences, and discuss how they contribute to the relaxed and conversational effect of the narration.