Class 11 English Chapter 2 A Photograph Question Answer As Per New Syllabus to each Chapter is provided in the list of SCERT, NCERT, AHSEC Class 11 English Unit 2 Question Answer/Class English Unit 2 Question Answer are given so that you can easily search through the different Chapters and select the needs Notes of AHSEC Class 11 English Lesson 2 Question Answer English Medium. covers all the exercise questions in NCERT, SCERT.
Class 11 English Chapter 2 A Photograph
Class 11 English Chapter 2 A Photograph Question Answer | Guide for Class 11th English Unit 2 English Medium Also Same NCERT Solutions for Class 11 English In this post we will explain to you what to try If you are a Student of English Medium then it will be very helpfull for you. NCERT/SCERT, AHSEC Class 11 English Chapter 2.
Chapter 2 A Photograph
PART – A Hornbill
Textual Questions & Answers:
1. What does the word ‘Cardboard’ denote in the poem? Why has this word been used?
Ans: In this poem the word ‘cardboard’ has been used to refer to the photograph of the poet’s mother. The word has been used so because she is dead and hence her photograph remains a mere cardboard.
2. What has the camera captured?
Ans: The camera has captured the images of three young girls. One of them is the poet’s mother of about twelve years. With her are two girl cousins each of whom is holding one hand of the mother of the poet. They are standing on the sea beach and their feet are being washed by the water. Their smiles are visible even amid their flying hairs.
3. What has not changed over the years? Does this suggest something to you?
Ans: It is the sea which has not changed over the years. Whereas a huge change has come to those little girls who had once enjoyed themselves on that beach. This suggests that human life and the human body are physically destructible but nature and its components are eternal and never changes.
4. The poet’ mother laughed at the snapshot. What did this laugh indicate?
Ans: The poet’s mother laughed to see the snapshot because she feels amused to look at her childhood joys in that photograph. She recalls those memories back. This indicates her happy childhood full of carefree enjoyment and lots of smiles.
5. What is the meaning of the line “Both very with the laboured case of loss”?
Ans: The line expresses the similarity between the facial expressions of her mother and herself. Both the faces had turned very owing to the terrible feeling of loss in their respective lives. The mother was sad for the absence of the happy and cheerful childhood. The poet had turned sad at the loss of her mother’s laughter as the latter was dead.
6. What does “this circumstance” refer to?
Ans: The poet talks about her mental condition at present. The situation is very lonely and she feels unbearably sad without her mother’s presence.
7. The three stanzas depict three different phases. What are they?
Ans: The first stanza describes the stage when the poet’s mother was a little child of twelve years. The second phase portrays the happiest moments when the poet and her mother were together and the mother was in her thirties or forties. The third and the last part of the poem refers to the poet’s dejection of the present situation. She is terribly lonely and sad without her mother who has been dead for more than a decade.
Additional Questions & Answers:
1. “Each one holding one of my mother’s hands. And she is a big girl – some twelve years or so.”
(i) What is the name of the poem and who is the poet?
Ans: The poem is “A photograph”, Shirley Toulson is the poet.
(ii) What is meant by ‘each one’?
Ans: ‘Each one’ means each of the two girl cousins of the poet’s mother.
(iii) Who is the ‘big girls’?
Ans: The poet’s mother is referred to by the ‘big girl’.
(iv) If she was only twelve years old, why is she called big?
Ans: The poet’s mother was herself a small girl, but she was older than the two other girls. So, in the photograph, she is the ‘biggest of them.
2. “…………. A sweet face,
My mother’s, that was before I was born.”
(i) How does the poet feel to call her mother’s face sweet?
Ans: The poet feels happy to see her mother’s cute face in the photograph. There is a special affection as her mother is no more alive when she writes this.
(ii) The photograph was much before the poet was born imagine her emotions when she says so?
Ans: The sweet face in the snapshot was a small girl and it was her mother. But when she looks at it now the poet is a grown-up woman. So, she comments on her mother as if she were like her child.
3. “…………….. the sea holiday
Was her past, mine is her laughter.”
(i) Which is ‘the’ sea holiday?
Ans: It is the sea holiday enjoyed by the poet’s mother in her cheerful childhood period.
(ii) What was the difference in their pasts?
Ans: The poet remembers her mother’s laughter on looking at her own childhood photograph which is called ‘her past’ i.e. the mother’s. Now talking, the poet’s mother is dead and therefore, her laughter is a past for the poet.
4. “It silences the silence”.
What is the poem’s name, who is the poet?
Ans: The poem is “A photograph” Shirley Toulson is the poet.
(ii) What is meant by ‘Its’?
Ans: ‘Its’ refers to the unbearable feeling of the loss of her mother.
(iii) ‘Silence’-why ‘silence’?
Ans: The death of the mother has made the poet very lonely and sad, this emptiness has turned her speeches, so, she says ‘silences’.
Short Types Questions & Answers:
1. Why does the poet call the photograph a ‘cardboard’?
Ans: The photograph displays the lively being of her mother as a small girl, this loving existence was there when she saw her mother as a middle aged woman laughing at the sight of that picture. But now she is dead and without her presence, the photograph is nothing but cardboard for the poet.
2. Why do you think were the girls smiling through the hair?
Ans: The three girls were very happy to enjoy their beach holiday together, they were really excited and they wanted to make their smiles longlasting by capturing them in their uncle’s camera through the snaps.
3. What is the reason that the sea has not changed?
Ans: The sea and its huge body of water is a natural object. Unlike human life it is not a subject to death, decay old age or destruction etc. It remains forever and therefore has hardly changed at all.
4. What were the feelings of the poet’s mother when she laughed at the snapshot after twenty or thirty years later?
Ans: After twenty or thirty years the poet’s mother was a woman in her thirties or forties with the poet as her daughter. So, she felt amused and nostalgic to look at her happy childhood in the photograph and laughed every time she saw it.
5. What is meant by “laboured ease of loss”?
Ans: The poet talks about the situations faced by her mother and herself. The mother was very cheerful in her childhood days and missed the joys in her later life. But since she knew those times could never come back, she made herself used to the reality and learnt to live with that loss.
In the same way the poet had a sweet and a very special bond with her mother. She was happy to watch her mother smile and remain jolly. Now her mother is no more and she feels the loss and emptiness in her life, yet she is fully aware that her mother’s laughter can never return. So, she starts to learn to live without that absence as it is irreversible. Both of them had tried to live with their losses with great efforts. They had to acquire that ease in their minds with endless labour. So, she calls it “the laboured ease of loss.”
6. Why is there nothing to say at all?
Ans: While talking about the emptiness created by the death of her mother, the poet becomes very sad and sentimental. She feels the pain of her mother’s presence and loses the power of expression, she becomes unable to talk about her exact emotions. That is why she feels and says that there is absolutely nothing to say at all.
Reference to the Context:
(i). “And the sea, which appears to have changed less, Washed their terribly transient feet.”
Ans: These lines have been taken from the poem “A photograph” by Shirley Toulson. She talks about the difference between the sea and the human beings.
The poet says that in the photograph the sea water washes the feet of the three young girls. Over the years, the sea water has remained just the same but great changes have overcome the people whose feet were being touched by that water.
So, the sea water denotes its eternal nature of existence and the transitory being of man.
(ii) “……………..the sea holiday
Was her past, mine is her laughter.”
Ans: The above line has been taken from the poem “A photograph” composed by Shirley Joulson. She talks about the two stages of past of herself and that of her mothers She says that when her mother looked at her own childhood photograph on the beach, she would laugh to see her past image, and the poet loved to sea her mother’s happiness at the sight of past joys. But now, that laughter of her mother has become a thing of past for the poet as the mother is dead.
Thus, the poet rightly and beautifully portrays the sense of past for both of them.
(iii) “………. Both very
With the laboured ease of loss.”
Ans: This line has been taken from the poem “A photograph” by Shirley Toulson. The poet remarks at the sadness of both her mother and herself to feel their losses.
She says that both her mother and herself had learnt to live without their happy memories and with their senses of loss. They had to put too much effort to gain their comfort to digest their separation from the past joys. Both have wry expressions on their faces with their hard earned ease.
So, the pain is evident in both the mother and the daughter.
(iv) “…………. And of this circumstance
There is nothing to say at all.
Its silence silences.”
Ans: These lines have been taken from the poem “A Photograph” by Shirley Toulson. She remarks this while saying that her sadness has made her speechless.
The poet feels the loss of her mother to such an extent that the loneliness and desolation of this situation (i.e. to live without her mother) makes her unable to speak anything. The grief has choked all words of expression and she has been turned almost silent by the speechlessness of the moment.
So, this is the height of the poet’s sadness felt at the death of her mother.
Notes of AHSEC Class 11 English Chapter 2 | English Medium Class 11 English Notes In this post we will explain to you Class 11 English Chapter 2 Question Answer | AHSEC Class 11 English Question Answer Unit 2 If you are a Student of English Medium then it will be very helpfull for you.
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