Walt Whitman All Brief Suggestion
Q.1. What is “Song of Myself”?
Ans. “Song of Myself”, written by Walt Whitman, is the longest and the most important poem in the volume of poems, The Leaves of Grass, published in 1855.
Q.2. What is the theme of “Song of Myself”?
Ans. In “Song of Myself” Walt Whitman sings of himself and in singing of himself he sings of America herself. He gives us a panoramic view of the American scene and expresses those ideals and values which constitute Americanism.
Q.3. How does the poet realize the immortality of the soul?
Ans. The grass grows over the graves of those who die and so to the poet, the smallest spear of grass shows that life continues. Death is not the end of life but a transformation into an eternal life.
Q.4. What does the spear of grass symbolize?
Ans. The “spear of grass” symbolizes the procreant power of Nature, the creative urge that is at work through all Nature.
Q.5. What is Walt Whitman’s idea of the immortality of the soul?
Ans. He believes that the souls merge with the Divine Soul after the release from death.
Q.6. What is Whitman’s attitude to sex or procreative ‘urge”?
Ans. The procreative urge that pervades all nature manifests itself as sex instinct in man. As sex is natural, it cannot be evil.
Q.7. In what sense does grass symbolize democracy?
Ans. The grass knows no discrimination by growing at all places, in broad as well as narrow zones, among black and also among white people. Thus it symbolizes democracy.
Q.8. What according to Whitman, is “the handkerchief of the lord”?
Ans. The grass, “woven out of hopeful green stuff, is called by the poet, the handkerchief of God because it is a gift full of scent which reminds us of His presence.
Q9. How does Whitman show the equality of the body and the soul?
Ans. By pointing out that both the body and the soul are equally important, Whitman says that he would not degrade the body for the sake of the soul, nor the soul for the body.
Q.10. How does Whitman become a believer in democracy?
Ans. Whitman becomes a believer in democracy by realizing that all men are his brothers and all women are either his sisters or his beloveds because the father of all is one and the same, the Supreme Being.
More Brief
Q.1. What does the lonely young woman of twenty-eight watch from her window?
Ans. From the window of her room, the young woman of twenty-eight watches twenty-eight handsome young men bathing near the seashore.
Q.2. What is the meaning of “unscrew the locks from the doors”?
Ans. The poet does not like those obstacles which come in the way of the union of souls.
Q.3. What is Whitman’s idea of ‘eternity’?
Ans. Whitman says that the clock indicates the passing of moments but Time is eternal. It has continued through trillions and trillions of years and will continue for trillions of years more. None can visualize the beginning or the end of time.
Q.4. Why is the poet not afraid of death?
Ans. The poet is not afraid of death but he welcomes it because he has realized the mystic truth that death is not the end of life; rather it is a birth into eternal life.
Q.5. What does the “spotted hawk” symbolize for the poet?
Ans. The “spotted hawk” symbolizes the poet’s soul which is as wild and untamed as that of the hawk. Like the hawk he, too, flies. swiftly high up in the sky during his mystic trance.
Q.6. What is the basic symbol in the poem ‘Song of Myself?
Ans. The “I” is the basic symbol in the poem ‘Song of Myself
Q.7. Where and when does Whitman behold God? Ans. Whitman feels the presence of God everywhere each hour of the twenty-four and each moment.
Q.8. What does Whitman mean by the word en masse?
Ans. The poet regards the modern word “en-masse” as most important for it signifies for him democracy, the concept of equality and brotherhood.
Q.9, How many sections are there in Song of Myself?
Ans. There are fifty-two sections in “Song of Myself”.
W B Yeats All Brief Suggestion
Q.1. What is the theme of the poem “When You Are Old”?
Ans. Fleeting nature of love is the theme of the poem “When You Are Old”.
Q.2. What do you mean by “the pilgrim soul”?
Ans. “The pilgrim soul” refers to a pure soul that comes to ear through human body only to undertake a very short holy journey,
Q.3. What is the theme of the poem “The Man Who Dreamed of Fairyland”?
Ans. The poem “The Man Who Dreamed of Fairyland” deals with an Irishman who could never reconcile himself to the realities of life and was always trying to escape from those realities into a world of imagination.
Q.4. What is the poem “No Second Troy” about?
Ans. “No Second Troy” is about Maud Gonne, the nationalist Irish politician with whom Yeats fell in love. The poem is partly tribute to Maud Gonne and partly a criticism of her.
Q.5. What kind of beauty, according to Yeats, does Maud Gonne possess?
Ans. Maud Gonne’s beauty is compared to a “tightened bow suggesting that her devotion to the cause of the people was intense and it naturally issued forth in violent activity as does an arrow from the bow.
Q.6. What is the theme of the poem “September 1913”?
Ans. “September 1913” is an expression of the poet’s anger and bitterness at the stupidity, meanness and pettiness of the Irish people, and his tribute to the Irish patriot O’Leary who died in 1907.
Q.7. How does the poet see present Ireland?
Ans. The poet deplores the fact that romantic rebellious Ireland has been replaced by a land of materialism and formalised religion at the present time.
Q.8. How does Yeats pay tribute to O’Leary?
Ans. W.B. Yeats felt a deep respect for O’Leary. He pays tribute to him saying, “Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone/ It’s with O’Leary in the grave”.
Q.9: What do you mean by “Kiltarton’s Cross”?
Ans. “Kiltarton’s Cross” refers to a village in West Ireland, crossroad near Robert Gregory’s home, Coole Park, County Galway,
Q.10. What is the name of W.B. Yeats’s daughter?
Ans. The name of WB. Yeats’s daughter is Anne Butler Yeats, born in 1919.
Q.11.What kind of husband does Yeats wish for his daughter?
Ans. W.B. Yeats wishes for his daughter an aristocratic husband who would take her to a home where life is traditional and lived according to the age-old customs, ceremonies and values,
Q:12. What were Yeats’s views on life-patterns?
Ans. W.B. Yeats was a great upholder of formal courtesy. etiquette, ceremonious behaviour, customary graces, etc, of the great aristocratic households. He did not believe in the crudity of the masses or the plebeian attitudes propagated by socialists.
Q.13.. What is the theme of the poem “The Tower”?
Ans. The poet’s raging against old age is the leading theme of the poem “The Tower”. He feels that he is physically becoming weaker everyday while his passions, political and personal, are getting stronger.
Q.14. What is the theme of the poem “Leda and the Swan”?
Ans. The theme of the poem “Leda and the Swan” is the birth of Homeric Greece, which according to Yeats, is the starting point of history
Q.15. What is the meaning of the phrase “Honey of generation”?
Ans. The phrase “Honey of generation” means the happy incident of birth.
More Brief
Q.1. What is Byzantium?
Ans. Byzantium was the old name of Constantinople or Istambul, the capital of the Eastern wing of the Holy Roman Empire. It was an ideal place of art, culture and wisdom.
Q.2. What is the theme of the poem “The Gyres”?
Ans. The theme of the poem “The Gyres” is the cyclical order of history or the rise and fall of civilization.
Q.3. What is the poet’s opinion about fine arts?
Ans. The poet thinks that the practice and study of fine arts is not
useless even in a time of crisis. Their study enables us to face the tragic realities of life courageously and heroically.
Q.4. Why, according to Yeats, is art useful?
Ans. Art, according to Yeats, is useful and helpful even under the shadow of tragedy because art generates the quality of self control.
Q.5. What is the poet’s view on the rise and fall of civilization?
Ans. The poet says that birth, death and rebirth, destruction and reconstruction are the eternal laws of nature. History testifies that civilizations have born, decayed and finally died out.
Q.6. What is “The Countess Cathleen”?
Ans. “The Countess Cathleen” is a play written by Yeats for Maud Gonne. In fact, Cathleen represents Maud Gonne.
Q.7. What does Yeats mean by “masterful images”?
Ans. The foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart formed out of the accumulated and confused heap of impressions and emotions which pass through imagination, grow completely in a pure mind, and thus become “masterful images’ ‘.
Q.8. Who does W.B. Yeats address in “When You are Old”?
Ans. Maud Gonne
0.9. Why is Maud Gonne compared with Helen?
Ans. Maud Gonne resembled Helen Classical beauty. She had RAD finely chiselled features and her personality was high and solitary and most stern like that of Helen.
Q.10. Whom does the poet address as he lands on the shore of Byzantium?
Ans. As the poet lands on the shore of Byzantium, he addresses the golden smithies of the Emperor.
Q.11. What does falcon symbolize in the poem The Second Coming?
Ans. The falcon symbolizes intellect.
Q:12. What does the ‘golden bird’ symbolize to Yeats?
Ans. The golden bird symbolizes the liberated soul which neither undergoes any change nor suffers from any conflict and confusion of which human beings are victims.
Q.13. What is “intellectual hatred”?
Ans. According to Yeats, intellectual hatred is the hatred of an educated and conscious person. It is the worst type of hatred because. It can destroy self-happiness as well as the happiness of others.
Q.14. What is “Spiritus Mundi”?
Ans. Spiritus Mundi is a Latin phrase that literally means “world spirit.” William Butler Yeats defines Spiritus Mundi as “a universal memory and a muse of sorts that provides inspiration to the poet or writer.”
Robert Frost All Brief Suggestion
Q.1. Why does the wife hate her husband in ‘Home Burial’?
Ans. The wife in “Home Burial” hates her husband because he had been unfeeling enough to dig his own baby’s grave and
intrude upon her grief with talk of common things.
Q.2. What does the poet assert in the poem ‘Fire and Ice’?
Ans. Fire, symbolizing the intensity of passion or desire, is as destructive as ice, symbolizing the cold of hatred.
Q.3. What is the moral of the poem ‘Mowing”?
Ans. The moral of the poem “Mowing” is that real life with all its hard labour, can give greater pleasure than all fanciful dreams of man.
Q.4. What is the meaning of the line, “The fact is the sweetest dream that labour knows”?
Ans. A labourer does not try to escape into a world of dream or fancy from hard reality. He finds the greatest pleasure in his work, honestly and sincerely.
Q5. What kind of poem is “Mending Wall”?
Ans. “Mending Wall” is a dramatic lyric or dramatic monologue.
Q6. Who is the speaker of “Mending Wall”?
Ans. The speaker of “Mending Wall” is a young man, presumably the poet himself held a liberal view of life.
Q.7. What is the issue of quarrel between the two neighbours in “Mending Wall”?
Ans. The speaker (the liberal minded poet) and his neighbour (an old New England conservative farmer) get together every spring to repair the stone wall between their respective properties and this issue leads to a quarrel between them.
Q.8. What kind of poem is “The Death of the Hired Man”?
Ans. “The Death of the Hired Man” is a dramatic lyric.
Q.9. Where is the dramatic action in “The Death of The Hired Man”?
Ans. The essence of a drama is action and in “The Death of the Hired Man” the action consists in the change of attitude of the husband towards the hired man.
Q.10. What is the central theme of the poem “The Death Of The Hired Man”?
Ans. The central theme of the poem is the transformation of the husband’s stubborn and impatient prejudice, through the deliberate and gentle persuasiveness of the wife.
Q.11. How does Mary define a home?
Ans. According to Mary, home is a place where one does not have to justify oneself as in the outside world, but where one is accepted lovingly for what one is. In other words, everyone needs at least one place of refuge where the demands of justice are tempered with a spirit of charity.
Q.12. What kind of poem is “Home Burial”?
Ans. “Home Burial” is a dramatic dialogue in which the action is developed through the dialogue between husband and wife.
q.13. What is the difference between husband and wife in “Home Burial” in the face of their griefs?
Ans. Amy, the wife, lets grief become her whole world, while her husband has strongly suppressed grief and immersed himself in the world.
Q.14. What philosophy of life does Frost give through his poem “After Apple-picking”?
Ans. Frost holds the opinion that the sleep of the apple-picker is not after apple-picking in the sense that the man must rise again to complete his tasks. But it is after apple-picking in the sense that, like Adam and Eve, the man must continue to work in his life.
Q.15: What is the theme of the poem “The Road Not Taken”?
Ans. The theme of the poem “The Road Not Taken” is the problem of making a choice in life.
More Brief
Q:1. What is the message of the poet in “The Oven Bird”?
Ans. The poet wants to convey a message to mankind through “The Oven Bird”. The literal Oven Bird sings of a diminished summer and a dusty fall, the symbolic Oven Bird sings of a diminished life, followed by death. sings of
Q.2. What is the theme of the poem “Birches”?
Ans. Beneath the extremely vivid and realistic description. “Birches” is a symbolic presentation of the relationship between the real and the ideal worlds, between fact and fancy.
Q.3. To which is life compared in “Birches”?
Ans. In “Birches” life has been compared to a pathless wood.
Q.4. What causes the fatal accident of the boy at the “buzz-saw”?
Ans. When the boy’s sister calls him for supper, his attention is diverted from his work for a split second, and in that fatal moment his hand was caught by the machine and chopped off by the saw.
Q.5. What is the theme of the poem “Fire and Ice” and how is it presented?
Ans. The theme of the poem, “Fire and Ice” is the destructive force of human passions, love and hatred, and it is expressed through the humble speech of ordinary, everyday life.
Q.6. What kind of poem is “Come In”?
Ans. “Come In” is a personal lyric in which Frost speaks in his own voice and recounts a personal experience.
Q.7. How did the poem “The Gift Outright” gain popularity?
Ans. “The Gift Outright” has become very popular since its recitation by the poet at the inaugural ceremony of the late President John F. Kennedy in 1961.
Q.8. What do the Americans feel now about their duties to the motherland?
Ans. Now the Americans feel that with courage and determination they could wage the war of independence, and fight for their motherland, for the noble ideals of liberty and equality for all.
Q.9. What is the name of the wife in the poem ‘Home Burial”?
Ans. The name of the wife is Amy.
Q.10. What is the central theme of the poem “Mowing”?
Ans. The central theme of the poem is the vision of New England.
Q.11. What does the wall stand for in “Mending Wall”?
Ans. The wall stands for barriers.
Q.12. How does Warren define a home?
Ans. Warren defines home as a place where one is forced to meet obligations, no matter how unwillingly. It is not a place where one has a sense of love and companionship.
W H Auden All Brief Suggestion
Q.1. What is the theme of the poem “Lullaby”?
Ans. “Lullaby” or “Lay Your Sleeping Head My Love” by W. H. Auden deals with the theme of love, points out the faithlessness of lovers, and emphasizes the need of love between lovers, in spite of all their faithlessness, evils and imperfections.
Q.2. Who is Venus?
Ans. Venus in Roman mythology is the goddess of love and beauty (Greek Aphrodite), daughter of Jupiter, wife of Vulcan, mother of Cupid, and lover of Mars.
Q.3. How does Auden show the permanence of art?
Ans. Auden says that W. B. Yeats died and his death was mourned by the world. But his poems, his art will live on because an is not affected by the death of the artist.
Q.4. How does Auden estimate Ireland?
Ans. Auden opines that the political conditions of Ireland, the movements of her people and the climatic condition are still the same as before because the poetry of W. B. Yeats could not alter the shape of things and events in the history of the land.
Q.5. What is intellectual disgrace?
Ans. ‘Intellectual disgrace’ refers to people’s hatred of one another because of the hostile feelings and atmosphere, created by ideological differences and conflicts.
Q.6. What is the underlying meaning of “a voice without a face”?
Ans. “A voice without a face” refers to the dictators or military commanders who speak to the people over radio or on the
loudspeakers. Only their voice is heard but their face is not seen.
Q.7. What is the theme of the poem, “Petition?”?
Ans. The main theme of “Petition” consists of a diagnosis of modern ills, an analysis of their symptoms and a prayer to God to cure them.
Q.8. What are the modern diseases for the cure of which Auden seeks ‘sovereign touch’?
Ans. According to Auden, modern people suffer from various psychological ills such as neurosis, and itching, nervous break-down, sore throat, and maladjustment caused by repressed emotion or desire for love and sex. Auden seeks sovereign touch to cure these diseases.
Q.9. How, according to Auden, is a change of society possible?
Ans. Auden believes that under God’s guidance the desired change in society or the world can be possible only through “a change of heart” or inner transformation.
Q.10. What is “Brueghel’s Icarus”?
Ans. “Brueghel’s Icarus” refers to a painting by Pieter Brueghel (1525-69), a landscape painter of Flanders. In this painting a major portion is occupied by the figure of a stout ploughman and in the distance is shown the tiny figure of Icarus, a boy falling into the sea.
Q.11. What is the theme of the poem “Musée des Beaux Arts”?
Ans. The theme of the poem “Musée des Beaux Arts” is the human position of suffering in this world. It is described with reference to Brueghel’s paintings, such as ‘Icarus’, how humanity remains indifferent to the suffering of a particular individual.
Q.12. Why are the limestone men “unable to conceive a god”?
Ans. The limestone men lack the faculty to imagine God. They think that God has no moral sense, and despite their moral failure, He can easily be pleased by a hymn or a line of poetry in His praise.
Q.13. Who are the best’ and ‘the worst”?
Ans. According to Auden, the best and the worst are the saints (good people) and the Caesars (the bad and ambitious people).
Q.14. What do the “granite wastes” symbolize?
Ans. “The granite wastes” are composed of hard rocks, representing Saints-to-be.
Q.15. What is “anti-mythological myth”?
Ans. The poet has created a myth out of the realities of life, and not out of the imaginary doings of gods and goddesses:
More Brief
Q.1. What lesson does Auden provide in his poem? “In Praise of Limestone”?
Ans. Auden provides a lesson in his poem “In Praise of Limestone”, saying that one should accept the reality of life and face it boldly and not run after empty dreams, the escape provided by religion or romantic love.
Q.2. What does the title “Lullaby” signify? Ans. Lullaby is a song for lulling a baby to sleep. As the title indicates it is a song of the poet to send his beloved to sleep with her head on his arm.
Q.3. Whom does Achilles refer to?
Ans. Achilles refers to the modern man who is unable to exist in a world of cruelty, violence and cowardice.
Q.4. What is Auden’s message in “Lullaby”?
Ans. Auden’s message in “Lullaby” is that Eros (Physical love) should be transformed into Agape (universal love and charity) which protect mankind from moral, spiritual crisis, cares and anxieties of the world
Q.5. Who ‘according to Auden’ die morally?
Ans. Auden thinks that people who fail to oppose the cruelty of the despotic rulers, face the worst of all disgraces and humiliations, and they die morally because of their cowardice, before they are physically dead.
Q.6. What is Auden’s message in Lullaby?
Ans. Auden’s message in “Lullaby” is that Eros (Physical love) should be transformed into Agape (universal love and charity) which protect mankind from moral, spiritual crisis, cares and anxieties of the world.
Q.7.Who is the mother of Achilles?
Ans. The mother of Achilles is Thetis, a sea-nymph, according to Greek mythology.
Q.8. What is the source of the title of the poem ‘Out, Out’?
Ans. The title “Out, Out-” has been taken from Shakespeare’s Macbeth in which Macbeth soliloquies, “out, out, brief candle!” The title is incomplete, as indicated by the dash, and in its incompleteness it suggests the many expressions that break the flow of sentence and verse.
Q.9. Why does Auden call the lover faithless?
Ans. Auden calls the lover faithless because he is a human being with necessary human imperfections and as such he is bound to be inconstant in his love.
Q.10. What does the title “The Shield of Achilles” signify?
Ans. The shield of Achilles was specially made for him by Hephaestus, the blacksmith of the gods. Auden has referred to the shield in terms of a symbol. It symbolizes art or image of the human condition in the contemporary world.
Dylan Thomas All Brief Suggestion
Q.1. What is the source of the poem “The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flowers”?
Ans. The poem “The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower” is a reworking and reshaping of material in the first two Swansea Notebooks which Dylan had begun at the age of 15 as a boy at school.
Q.2. What is “crooked rose”?
Ans. “Crooked rose” refers to Blake’s poem “The Sick Rose” in which the rose is withered or diseased because it is eaten away by canker.
Q.3. What does the ‘fountain-head’ symbolize?
Ans. The fountain-head” is the source of water or life. It symbolizes the womb, the fountain-head of life, from which Time sucks (dries up) the newly born.”
Q.4. What do you mean by “spittled eyes”?
Ans. The pretentious mourners were rubbing their eyes with spit to make them look as though they had been crying.
Q.5. How is the boy Dylan shaken with grief at the death of his aunt?
Ans. The boy Dylan is shaken with so much grief at the death of his aunt that he feels as if he should cut his throat and kill himself.
Q.6. How does Thomas estimate his aunt?
Ans. Ann Jones, Thomas’ aunt, was an epitome of love and generosity which flowed out like the spring of water gushing out of a fountain.
Q.7.What made Dylan Thomas a poet?
Ans. Dylan Thomas thinks that his love for his aunt, her death, and writing an elegy in memory of her, have made him a poet in the real sense.
Q.8. What is ‘Zion”?
Ans. ‘Zion’ means Jewish. It is also the name of a small hill in Jerusalem, the sacred city of the Jews.
Q.9. What is the poet’s idea of death in the poem “A Refusal to Mourn the Death By Fire of a Child in London”?
Ans. Death is not the end of life but a beginning, a renewal of life through eternity.
Q.10. What is the theme of the poem, “In My Craft or Sullen Art”?
Ans. In the poem, “In My Craft or Sullen Art” Thomas says about his poetic manifesto, giving an exposition of his artistic process.
More Brief
Q.1. When does Thomas exercise his poetic art?
Ans. Thomas exercises his poetic art in the calm and quiet night when only the moon shines bright and when the lovers lie in their beds in warm embrace.
Q.2. In what sense the poet’s art is unrewarding or sullen?
Ans. The poet thinks that he is doomed to a life of lonely seclusion, to hard labour, and to a work which brings in no reward or praise even from those for whom he writes.
Q.3. What is the meaning of green age?
Ans. By ‘green age’ the poet means boyhood or the youthful period of life.
Q.4: What does “The Force’ signify?
Ans. “The Force” refers to some powerful energy. It may be the “Life-Force” of Bernard Shaw or sexual urge or simply the process of Time. The poet means to say that some supreme power is at work in all Nature as well as in the human body.
Q.5. What does the poet mean by ‘Wintry fever”?
Ans. The phrase “wintry fever” refers to sickness of old age.
Q.6.What does Thomas mean by “Spindrift pages”?
Ans. By “spindrift pages” Thomas means the short-lived nature of his poems such as the spray blown off from the crest of waves is fleeting and short-lived.
Q.7. What does Dylan Thomas mean by Green fuse?
Ans. ‘Fuse’ suggests explosive force or energy or power. It is called ‘green’ because it is at work in Nature which is green.
Q.8. What kind of poem is After the Funeral?
Ans. “After the Funeral” is an elegy written in memory of Ann Jones, the poet’s maternal aunt who died in 1933. 931.
Q.9.What are “mule praises”?
Ans. The hypocritical mourners have no real love for Ann Jones, the poet’s aunt. Their expressions of grief are not only conventional but also stupid. So he calls their mourning ‘mule praises”.
Q.10. What are “stuffed foxes and stale fern”?
Ans. The stuffed fox and stale fern” refer to various articles of decoration in Aunt Jones’ room where the poet (the boy Dylan) is left alone.
Seamus Heaney All Brief Suggestion
Q.1. What is the theme of the poem “Death of a Naturalist”?
Ans. The poem “Death of a Naturalist” deals with the theme of the loss of childhood innocence and the initiation into adulthood.
Q.2. Who was Miss Walls? Ans. Miss Walls was the school teacher teaching the children about the frog’s reproductive system and also explained that frogs change colour with the weather.
Q.3. What is the theme of the poem “Follower”?
Ans. “Follower” deals with the theme of the parent-child relationship in which there is always a leader and a follower.
Q.4. What was the ambition of the poet in his boyhood?
Ans. Seamus Heaney frankly confesses that in his boyhood his ambition was to be as fine a ploughman as his father.
Q.5. What is the theme of the poem “Requiem For the Croppies”?
Ans. “Requiem For the Croppies” is a glowing tribute to the patriotic Irish rebels who gave their lives at the battle of Vinegar Hill in 1798 for the cause of their motherland.
Q.6. Who is the speaker in the poem “Requiem for the Croppies”?
Ans. The narrator in the poem “Requiem For the Croppies” is one of the rebels who fought against the English at the battle of Vinegar Hill in 1798.
Q.7. What does “Croppies” refer to?
Ans. “Croppies” refers to the ‘croppy boys’ who were so called because they cut their hair in the style of the peasants of the Industrial Revolution.
Q.8. Who is the Tollund Man?
Ans. The Tollund Man was the man who was sacrificed to the goddess of fertility in the early Iron Age and found preserved in a peat bog at Tollund in Denmark in 1950.
Q.9. What does the Seamus Heaney’s own Catholic ritual and the sacrifice of the victims’ fate of the Tollund Man represent?
Ans. The fate of the Tollund Man represents the pagan sacrifice, by the modern men of violence on the altar of nationalism.
Q.10. What is the theme of the poem “Punishment”?
Ans. In the poem “Punishment” Seamus Heaney makes a connection with the past to show the troubles of the present Ireland as well as the connection between mythology and logic.
Q.11. Who is the girl referred to in the poem “Punishment”?
Ans. In 1950 some Danish farmers discovered some bodies of women few thousand years old, preserved perfectly in the peat. The girl in the poem “Punishment” is one of them. She was brutally killed (punished) for adultery,
Q.12. What truth does the poet realize in “Punishment”?
Ans. The poet realizes the truth that he would have remained quiet when the little girl was punished in the long past, because he stands “dumb” now when the girls of his neighborhood are tortured for their friendship with British soldiers.
More Brief
Q.1. What kind of man was the fisherman in the poem “Casualty”?
Ans. The fisherman in the poem Casualty” was a solitary drinker who spoke little and cared little for the rules of society.
Q.2. How does the poet criticize the role of his society in “Casualty”?
Ans. The poet criticizes the role of his society saying that people obeyed the unofficial dictate from the IRA that they stay in doors.
Q.3. What is the message of the poem “Casualty”?
Ans. The message of the poem “Casualty is that the dead fisherman knew the solution to the problems of Ireland. He moved about his business quietly with absolute freedom.
Q.4.. What is the theme of the poem “Funeral Rites”?
Ans. In the poem “Funeral Rites” Heaney is desperately searching for a satisfactory burial for those who have been killed in the violence of Northern Ireland and he also demands an end to the cycle of murders and massacre.
Q.5. What is the message of the poet in “Funeral Rites”?
Ans. The poet in his poem “Funeral Rites” calls upon his countrymen (Irish people) to stop the feuds between Catholics and Protestants; turning to the pagan past for ceremony and learning from the noble saga of Gunnar whose unavenged death broke the cycle of vengeance.
Q.6. What is surrealism?
Ans. Surrealism is a style in art and literature in which ideas, images, and objects are combined in a strange way, like in a dream.
Q.7. What is the theme of the poem ‘Digging”?
Ans. The poem “Digging” states the poet’s choice of a career to dig up the perfect words with his pen in his quest for literary achievement in imitation of his forefathers who were digging their lands with spades.
Q.8. What does the girl in the poem ‘Punishment’ symbolize?
Ans. The girl in the poem, “Punishment” symbolizes Ireland as she, like Ireland, was murdered at the hand of a group of oppressors.
Q.9. How was young Heaney alienated from his father?
Ans. Young Heaney was alienated from his father because of his ineptitude and because he interfered with his serious work on the land.
Q.10. What kind of farm life does Heaney portray in the poem Digging?
Ans. Heaney in his poem “Digging” portrays the hard life of the farmers who have to work in an unfavourable situation in the field amongst the bad smell of rotten potatoes, coarse grounds and other disturbing elements.
