Class 10 English Chapter 2 The Thief’s Story Questions and answers
Page No 8:
Question 1:
Who does ‘I’ refer to in
this story?
Answer:
In this story, ‘I’
refers to the thief.
Page No 8:
Question 2:
What is he “a fairly successful
hand” at?
Answer:
He was “a fairly
successful hand” at stealing and robbing people.
Page No 8:
Question 3:
What does he get from Anil in return
for his work?
Answer:
When Hari asked Anil if
he could work for him, Anil said that he could not pay him. Finally,
the agreement was that if he would cook, then Anil would feed him.
However, Anil soon found out that he did not know how to cook.
Therefore, he taught him how to cook and later, how to write his
name. He promised he would teach him how to write whole sentences and
how to add numbers. Apart from this, when Hari went out to buy the
day’s supplies, he would make a profit of a rupee a day.
Page No 10:
Question 1:
How does the thief
think Anil will react to the theft?
Answer:
The thief thought that
on discovering the theft, Anil’s face would show a touch of
sadness. The sadness would not be for the loss of money, but for the
loss of trust.
Page No 10:
Question 2:
What does he say about
the different reactions of people when they are robbed?
Answer:
In his short career as
a thief, he had made a study of men’s faces when they lost
their goods. He said that the greedy men showed fear; the rich men
showed anger and the poor men showed acceptance.
Page No 10:
Question 3:
Does Anil realize that
he has been robbed?
Answer:
Yes, Anil had realized
that he had been robbed. He knew this probably because all the notes
were wet and damp from the rain. However, he did not say anything to
the thief and behaved normally.
Page No 13:
Question 1:
What are Hari Singh’s
reactions to the prospect of receiving an education? Do they change
over time? (Hint: compare, for example, the thought: “I knew
that once I could write like an educated man there would be no limit
to what I could achieve” with these later thoughts: ‘Whole
sentences, I knew, cloud one day bring me more than a few hundred
rupees. It was a simple matter to steal − and sometimes just as
simple to be caught. But to be a really big man, a clever and
respected man, was something else.”) What makes him return to
Anil?
Answer:
Initially, when Anil
offered to educate him, he thought of it as a bright prospect for
himself. He knew that once he could write such as an educated man,
there would be no limit to what he could achieve in his field. For
him, the motivation behind getting educated was robbing people.
However, later, when he had stolen Anil’s money and then missed
his train in which he would have escaped, he realized that he had
completely forgotten about the whole sentences that Anil had promised
to teach him to write. He thought about getting educated in a
different light. He thought that it was a simple matter to steal and
be caught, but to be a really big, clever and respected man was
something else. He was inspired by the trusting and simple nature of
Anil. This motivation to earn someone’s trust and be
respectable made him return to Anil.
Page No 13:
Question 2:
Why does not Anil hand
the thief over to the police? Do you think most people would have
done so? In what ways is Anil different from such employers?
Answer:
Anil does not hand over
the thief to the police because he realized that Hari had learnt his
lesson and had changed for the better. Otherwise, he would never have
come back and kept the money at the same place from where he had
stolen it. Anil even knew how Hari cheated him of a rupee a day while
buying the day’s supplies. But he never said anything to him.
This is such a case where most people would have handed him over to
the police. Anil was different from such employers because he was a
modest and trusting man. He had offered to teach Hari how to cook and
also to educate him. When he found out that Hari had stolen the
money, but had kept it back, he knew that it was Hari’s
conscience that had made him do so. Hari could have easily run off
with the money, but he did not. This made Anil give him another
chance and build him into a better person that he could already see
him becoming.
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