Class 10 English Poem 7 Animals Questions and answers
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Question 1:
Notice the
use of the word ‘turn’ in the first line, “I think
I could turn and live with animals…” What is the poet turning
from?
Answer:
The poet
is turning away from living with other humans as he finds them
complicated and false. He would rather live with animals that are
self-contained and non-complaining.
Page No 84:
Question 2:
Mention
three things that humans do and animals don’t.
Answer:
The poet
has drawn three comparisons between humans and animals. Humans sweat
and work to make a living and later whine and sulk about the amount
of work they have to do to survive. Animals, on the other hand, do
not whine about their condition. Humans lie awake at night and cry
for the wrongs they have done. Animals do not weep for anything they
do and sleep peacefully. Finally, humans make each other sick by
discussing their duties to God. However, animals do not have any god
and they live and survive without any prayers or fasts.
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Question 3:
Do humans
kneel to other humans who lived thousands of years ago? Discuss this
in groups.
Answer:
Yes,
humans kneel to other humans who lived thousands of years ago. They
worship their ancestors and pray by kneeling in front of their
portraits. They hold religious sermons and ceremonies in their
memory.
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Question 4:
What are
the ‘tokens’ that the poet says he may have dropped long
ago, and which the animals have kept for him? Discuss this in class.
(Hint: Whitman belongs to the Romantic tradition that includes
Rousseau and Wordsworth, which holds that civilisation has made
humans false to their own true nature. What could be the basic
aspects of our nature as living beings that humans choose to ignore
or deny?
Answer:
The token
that the poet says he might have dropped long ago, and which the
animals have kept for him, is his true nature as a human. While
humans came close to civilisation, they gradually moved away from
their true nature. The natural instincts that humans had and the
innocence with which they lived and helped each other have been left
behind somewhere. As they got near civilisation, they chose to leave
behind the virtues of kindness, sincerity, unselfishness, joy,
satisfaction, respectability, and sharing. They took to vices such as
greed, selfishness, desire to capture everything, and other such
inhuman characteristics. Animals have carried forward the real
instincts and characteristics, which the poet looks at and tries to
remember where he had negligently lost his true nature.
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