Father to Son | Question Solutions
Father to Son Question Solutions
Father to Son Question Solutions
– Elizabth Jennings
Father to Son Question Solutions
TEXTUAL QUESTION SOLUTIONS
Think It Out:
Q.1. Does the poem talk of an exclusively personal experience or is it fairly universal?
Ans: Though the poem seems to be an expression of a personal experience yet it is fairly universal. It displays the communication gap between father and son. The son lives in a world of fantasy and the father lives in a world of reality. So what the son likes, the father can not approve of and vice versa. The differences of idea and values pursued by fathers and son alienate them from each other. This feeling holds good to every father and son.
Q.2. How is the father’s helplessness brought out in the poem?
Ans: The poem deals with the complexities faced by father and son for the generation gap. Because of this gap, a father does not understand his son though they live in the same house for years. The son is a stranger to his father and so is his father to him. Then the father feels very sad and forlorn. He longs for building the same relationship with his son that he had when the son was a little child. But he fails. Thus the poet has brought out the father’s helplessness in the poem.
Q.3. Identify the phrases and lines that indicate the distance between father and son.
Ans: The following lines and phrases indicate the distance between father and son:
(i) I do not understand this child.
(ii) I know nothing of him.
(iii) We speak like strangers.
(iv) What he loves I cannot share.
(v) Silence surrounds us.
(vi)We put out an empty hand.
Q.5. Does the poem have a consistent rhyme scheme?
Ans: Yes, the poem has a consistent rhyme scheme as- ‘a b b a b a’ in each stanza.
ADDITIONAL QUE SOLUTIONS
- Short Answer Type Questions:
(Each Bearing 2 Marks)
Q.1. What does a father want his child to do?
Ans: Father wants his child to return to his father and to be a good child again as he was while he was young. He does not want him to move into a fanciful and extravagant world. Father says that if the son amends himself then the father would forgive him.
Q.2. Why is there no sign of understanding between the father and the son?
Ans: There is no sign between the father and son because the father tries to impose his own outlook towards life upon him. But the child does not like it. He wants to live in his own way. This leads to misunderstanding between the two.
Q.3. What does the father think of his prodigal son?
Ans: The father is annoyed at his son’s behaviour His son turns wayward against his father’s wishes. But the father is ready to forgive him, in case he returns to his father. Father wants that his son would understand his fault and return to him.
Q.4. What does the father mean when he says, ‘Silence surrounds us’?
Ans: By the phrase ‘Silence surrounds us’ the father means that complete silence prevails when the father and the son are together. They do not talk with each other. No conversation takes place between them. It is because the son is rebellious against his father’s wishes.
Q.5. The father wants his son to return home and live with him. What does the son desire?
Ans: The son also wants to live with his father. Both extend their hands to forgive each other. Both have the same kind of feeling towards each other. But in spite of their attempts, they fail to come to a mutual understanding.
- Question- Answers from the Extracts of the Poem (Each bearing 5 Marks)
Q.1. Read the following extracts and answer the questions that follow:
(a) ‘I do not understand this child
Though we have lived together now
In the same house for years. I know
Nothing of him, so try to build
Up a relationship from how
He was when small, Yet I have killed.’
Questions:
(i) Name the poem from which the quoted lines are taken off? 1
(ii) For how long and where have they live together? 1
(iii) What does he know of him? 1
(iv) What does he want? 1
(v)Who is the speaker of the above lines? 1
Ans: (i) The name of the poem from where the above-quoted lines are taken off is ‘Father to Son’.
(ii) They lived in the same house for years.
(iii) He knows nothing of him.
(iv) the father wants to build a relationship with his son.
(v) The father is the speaker of the above lines.
(b) ‘Father and son, we both must live
On the same globe and the same land,
He speaks: I cannot understand
Myself, why anger grows from grief.
We each put out an empty hand,
Longing for something to forgive.
Questions:
(i) Who must live together? 1
(ii) Where must they live? 1
(iii) What makes the father angry? 1
(iv) Why do they put an empty hand to each other? 1
(v) Who is the poet of these lines? 1
Ans: (i) The father and the son must live together.
(ii) They must live together on the same globe and the same land.
(iii) Grief makes the father angry.
(iv) They put an empty hand to each other longing for something to forgive.
(v) The poet of these lines is Elizabeth Jennings. 0 0 0.
Father to Son Question Solutions
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