Sample Question Paper 8 1

Sample Question Paper 8

English Literature
ICSE Class 12th
1. (i) (b) He accepts their love
(ii) (c) They are all in trance
(iii) (a) If Ferdinand dishonours Miranda’s virtue
(iv) (d) He is worried and grief-stricken.
(v) (c) He’s a typical husband in the late 19th-century.
(vi) (b) A harmless man
(vii) (c) She becomes cheerful
(viii) (b) The final call of death
(ix) (d) All of these
(x) (b) Suffering and hopelessness
2. (i) he is overwhelmed by Ariel’s words and sympathy for the men and he gets his dukedom back
(ii) he wanted to thwart their plan of killing him. He sent spirits in the form of dogs and hounds to hunt
them and pinch them
(iii) Caliban thinks that without the books Prospero will also be a fool like him and will lose control over the
spirits of the island.
(iv) Stephano thinks that he will get the music for free
(v) she wants to sell his poetry
(vi) he realised that his companion would have build a fire for them to stay warm and they would have
survived.
(vii) she wanted to hide her true feeling’s regarding her husband’s death.
(viii) they have the power to create as well as destroy civilisations.
(ix) for him death is not the end but a return back to the place of our existence.
(x) he knows that he cannot escape and he does not want to escape the responsibilities that he has as an adult.
3. (i) The similarities between Prospero and Shakespeare are easy to notice – both of them are artists,
magician and writer respectively, both of them say goodbye to their art (Prospero to magic and
Shakespeare to writing as The Tempest is the last play he wrote himself). Both of them use their art to
make things happen and the soliloquy in the Epilogue, where Prospero bids the audience goodbye and
asks them for an applause for his work in the following way.
The reference to the Globe Theatre in Act IV –
‘‘The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,’’
Both of these seem to portray Prospero as a spokesperson for Shakespeare. Prospero’s goodbye is
symbolic to that of Shakespeare to his audience, saying that he is taking leave from the imaginary
world of the stage.
(ii) The Tempest is a male-dominated play, created in a male-dominated culture and society. It has only one
female character, Miranda (apart from the mention of the evil witch, Sycorax and Alonso’s daughter
Claribel). Feminism, which was a significant movement in seventeenth century England, led to many
attempts by the male population to suppress women’s attempt to create a condition of equality.
The only woman in the play seems subservient to her overbearing father. Miranda is seen as a
commodity as was her mother, whose value is emphasised by Prospero in respect to her purity and
nobility. She is represented as a woman of compliant nature, familiar to a captive princess rescued by
the prince in fairy tales. Her marriage to Ferdinand is Prospero’s biggest success at the end of the play.
It ensures that Prospero’s heir will inherit the throne of Naples.
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Through her marriage to Ferdinand, Shakespeare is also focusing on the political use of women and
their role in forming alliances, as can be seen happening between Prospero and Alonso.
(iii) (a) The plot of the play The Tempest relies heavily on the supernatural elements present in the play. Even
the survival of the protagonist and his daughter is dependent on the mystical figures that they
encounter when they first stepped on the island. Prospero, Ariel and other inhabitants of the island
all have magical powers. For instance, Prospero uses his magic to turn the spirits into dogs and hound
to scare and hunt Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo in Act IV Scene I, right after having Ariel make the
spirits perform a masque for Miranda and Ferdinand.
This magic gives Prospero an almost divine status as Shakespeare gives him power to interfere in
things around him. Several events have been manipulated through magic in order to control what
happens and ensure a happy ending. The supernatural elements in The Tempest comprise spirits of the
island and a half-man, half-monster Caliban, begotten of the evil witch, Sycorax, and the devil.
The spirits and most importantly, Ariel, help Prospero perform magic, with the help of which he is
able to create the storm which wrecks Alonso’s ship and brings him and his men to the island to face
the consequences of betraying Prospero. Thus, his magic continually helps him in getting his will,
revenge and ensuring justice and evidently, furthers and strengthens the plot of the play.
Or
(b) Caliban is Prospero’s slave, mostly referred to as ‘monster’, owing to the fact that he is begot by the
devil and the evil witch, Sycorax. He is a native of the island that Prospero and Miranda come to, after
Prospero’s dukedom is taken by his brother through an act of betrayal. Prospero makes Caliban his
slave and in an attempt to ‘civilise’ him, tries to educate him, which only results in Caliban learning
to curse him more.
Caliban, throughout the play, insists that his island was stolen by Prospero and thus, he revolts
against the colonial act of Prospero to control the island. In an attempt to free himself, Caliban
conspires with Stephano and Trinculo to kill Prospero, but fails as his plan is thwarted by Prospero
and Ariel. In a following monologue, he also gives a poetic depiction of his home, the island, which
shows his passionate love for the island. Thus, he can be seen as a victim of colonisation, who is in a
perpetual battle to free himself from his oppressor.
However, he can’t only be seen as a victim as he attempts to molest Miranda, which he sees as a
natural behaviour and which results in his enslavement. This behaviour can be seen as animalistic
and violent, but he doesn’t see anything wrong with it and is further enraged to kill Prospero to free
himself.
Thus, he cannot be categorised as just evil or innocent. He is a complex character created by
Shakespeare to show that human nature is more complex than what it may be judged as at first sight.
Caliban is a character that aims to challenge the audience and reader’s notions about what is
monstrous and what is natural in the world.
4. (i) B. Wordsworth told the narrator that white Wordsworth (William Wordsworth) was his soul brother
and shared his heart. This showed that B. Wordsworth thinks of W. Wordsworth as an inspiration for
him. Just like W. Wordsworth was a lover of nature, B. Wordsworth was also fond of nature. Both of
them find peace and tranquility in the lap of nature. W. Wordsworth used to see the life even in the
smallest of the things and B. Wordsworth also tried to do the same. He said to the boy:
“I can watch a small flower like the morning glory and cry.”
He liked to watch a variety of objects in nature be it the bees or a small flower. He was fond of natural
surroundings, that’s why he kept his yard all green and bushy. In his yard, he had a big mango tree, and
coconut tree and a plum tree. The place, where B. Wordsworth lived looked wild as though it wasn’t in
the city. B. Wordsworth had a poetic sensibility and he liked to lie on the grass and watch the stars in
the sky. Like his brother W. Wordsworth, he was romantic at heart.
(ii) The sound machine in the story is symbolic of Klausner’s connection to objective reality. Klausner
invents the scientific instrument in order to bridge the gap between his theoretical understanding of
the sound waves inaudible to human ears and an observable, measurable reality, i.e., conversion of
those vibrations into audible sounds. In this way, Klausner attempts to turn his subjective experience
of objective reality by using the sound machine to prove that the world is full of sounds too high or low
for the human ear to comprehend.
At the end of the story, when the tree branch falls and smashes the sound machine, Klausner loses
more than his invention; he loses his bridge to objective reality. Without the sound machine to confirm
what he heard, Klausner forces the doctor to apply iodine to the wounded tree. With this gesture,
Klausner underscores his break with reality and reveals that he has decided to believe in his subjective
experience of the tree making a pained sound even if he can’t prove it as an observable fact.
Sample Question Paper 8 3

(iii) (a) The Singing Lesson written by Katherine Mansfield’s revolves around a spinster music teacher,
Miss Meadows, who experiences harrowing gloom and unspoken mental anguish due to a split in
her relationship with her fiancé. This particular slice of life is chosen to capture our gripping attention
towards the agony of an ordinary single woman. It mainly centres round a particular singing lesson
class held at a girls’ school. And the protagonist’s activity in the class is used to show the changes in
human behaviour brought by particular events in life.
The writer presents a profound psychological study of human psyche as is evident in the character of
Miss Meadows who got a letter from her fiancé offhandedly informing her the break-up of their
marriage. This is certainly a drastic and shocking incident in her life. It does have but a pervasive
after-effect on her feminine sensibility. The effect of the troubled relationship is abruptly noticeable
in her behaviour in school where she had to take the singing lesson.
The high-strung emotional personality of a music teacher and her subsequent behaviour are studied
as minutely as a studious observer would do. This is the bare essential of the plot of the story. The
action of the story is confined to a particular class of singing lesson. Wherein the perspective of an
all-knowing narrator presents the protagonist’s inner turmoil.
Herein, The Singing Lesson as the setting assumes a significant role. A class of singing lesson reflects
the inner consciousness of Miss Meadows as if it were a monologue expressing the mental anguish
and utter torment of her soul. Her innermost agony and heavy-hearted state of mind peep through
her interaction with her students.
That day Miss Meadows enters the classroom sorrowful and utterly hopeless. She is every inch
opposite to her usual self. A plethora of changes are noticeable in her conversation with the science
teacher. She is in an irritable temper and sulky humour. Her obsessive gloom makes her hardly
capable to communicate cordially with the science teacher.
She even appears to be rather cold when her favourite student, Mary Beasley accosts her with the
chrysanthemum that she usually does. Basil’s letter thus precipitates a steady onrush of changes
intensifying her inner storm of mind. She expresses her thanks in an offhand manner. It is
comprehensible to what extent Miss Meadows is distraught and to what extent her professional life
gets entangled with her emotional turmoil.
Whether knowingly or not she selects ‘A Lament’ that day as a piece of lesson and she is also
emphatic about expressionless singing style of her students. Her staggering emotional state runs
parallel to the theme of music selected as the lesson of the particular class. It is really a classroom
interaction through which the plot of ‘The Singing Lesson’ is developed with the change in the
emotions afflicting Miss Meadows.
While the class was in progress, Miss Meadows got a telegram from Basil informing her that the
letter was a mistake; now he was able to marry her. On getting the good news she gets carried away
by rosy hopes of life. Now she is no longer melancholic and hopeless. She changes her mood within a
second. She returns to her classroom and changes the topic of the lesson. Picking up chrysanthemum
she holds it to her lips to hide her smile. A spurt of excitement comes over her. Now she urges the girls
to put in emotion in full-throated ease in her characteristic manner. It is actually the return of her
former usual self. She persuades them not to become ‘doleful’.
Such is the backdrop of a singing lesson that is fraught with significance and the psychological
revelation of her character. Music goes hand-in-hand with the step-by-step revelation of the central
character. The singing lesson forms not only the setting of the story but also the dramatic device
which reflects Miss Meadows emotions. This is why, I feel and opine forthrightly that the title ‘The
Singing Lesson’ is indicative and an apt one.
Or
(b) The title of the story To Build a Fire is appropriate as it was only a roaring fire that could have saved the
man from the trembling cold of the Yukon Valley. The story is set in the wilderness of the frozen
Yukon river, in Klondike region, during the harsh winter months when ‘there was no sun nor hint of
sun’ in the sky. In such an extreme region the life and death of a man depends on his ability to build a
Fire and be warm. In this light, we come across the unnamed man- the protagonist of the story who
resists any need of building a fire or seeking a warm shelter to survive the cold.
The man was a newcomer in the land but he knew it was cold but he could not imagine the level of
cold present in the Yukon valley. Thus, he takes a lone journey despite the several warning of people at
the Sulphur Creek. His knowledge, pride and faulty human judgement makes him indifferent to the
fact that man can only live withing certain narrow limits of heat and cold. He thinks that he can bear
the cold. However, soon he realises that travelling alone at temperature of seventy-five degrees below
zero, he could have survived only by building a fire. Not only the man, but also the dog was aware of
the importance of fire in Klondike’s harsh weather conditions. The dog seemed to ‘‘question eagerly
4 Sample Question Papers ISC Literature in English Class XII

every unwanted movement of the man as if expecting him to go into camp or to seek shelter
somewhere and build a fire, the dog had learned fire and it wanted fire.’’
However, the man does not build a fire. His pride in his knowledge does not make him follow his
instincts and as a result, he moves forward towards the camp.
Throughout his trek he ignored the numbness the cold was afflicting upon him. He beat his arms,
walked and even shook his arms to remove the numbness. However, he only builds a fire when he
feels convenient. It was half past twelve when the man stopped to eat his lunch that he realised that
his feet went numb almost as soon as he sat still, his nose and cheeks were already frozen, a fact that
finally began to frighten him. It was then that he built the fire for the first time. However, yet again he left
the burning fire to continue his journey. This disappointed the dog as if longed to remain near the fire.
Soon after resuming the trek, the man fell into an icy spring. Now, again he has to built a fire out of
compulsion. He knew it was imperative and he worked methodically. He collected dry leaves,
branches, twigs, fire woods, sticks and with the help of a match he got the flame successfully. The
man ‘worked slowly and carefully’ because he was aware of his danger and there must be no failure.
He built a fire “snapping and cracking and promising life with every dancing flame”. But it was
momentary, the ‘treacherous tree’ under which he had built the fire, blotted out the fire. “The man
was shocked . It was as though he had just heard his own sentence of death.”
He decided to build another fire to survive but he failed. His confidence, that he would survive the harsh
Klondike’s winter, did not serve him. In his desperate attempt to build the fire for the third time that he
burned his flesh and the blazing matches fell into the snow. Falling to build fire again he ran about
frantically to restore some warmth. But soon he realised its ineffectiveness and resigned to its fate.
Unable to build a third fire in the brutal cold, the man slipped into frozen sleep and died. Thus
building a fire is a central anotif in the story which makes To Build a Fire an appropriate title for the
story.
5. (i) The poem We are the Music Makers talks about the role and powers held by art and artists all around the
world irrespective of all distinctions. The artists of Arthur O’Shaughnessy are world-changers,
prophets who sing of the future and bring it for the better world. To be one of these ‘music makers’ is to
have the power to predict what’s to come—and bring that change about. Artists grant the people of the
present a glorious vision they can strive towards allowing for the progress of the society.
The collective speakers of the poem survey the whole sweep of human history, finding world-shaking
artistry in all eras. In doing so, they connect art to human progress. They find that the work of an artist
had been found to be both the ‘glory’ of empires and the downfall of rulers, marking the rise and fall of
entire civilisations. Part of being an artist, then, is to foresee huge shifts in the very fabric of
civilisation: the destruction of the current way of doing things and the rise of something totally new.
The artists of this poem are always predicting change, and the change they predict is always a glorious
renewal as old, outdated systems.
With their visions of brilliant change, artists light the way for the rest of the world, bringing about the
very change they predict through the power of imagination. By presenting beautiful visions of what
could be, artists light revolutionary ‘flames’ in the minds and hearts of others. Artists are thus both
prophets and enactors of change, the poem insists, people who dream up and create the world itself.
(ii) Dover Beach by Mathew Arnold is a beautiful lyric poem which highlights the loss of religious and moral
faith in the modern industrialised Victorian age. In its composition, the poet had employed various
senses that appeals to the reader. The poem opens with the description of moonlit scene at Dover
Beach. The sea is calm and the tide is full. The moon shines brightly on the Dover Strait, while the light
on the French coast becomes dimmer and dimmer and then disappears totally. On the English side the
rocky cliffs stand firm, bathed in the moonlight. A long line of water drops rises up where the sea
touches the land and creates a rhythmic sound. This is a part wherein one gets a visual treat. The
description is such that little by little the reader forms the vision of the scene as described by the poet.
The focus suddenly shifts with the ‘Listen!’. The scene has moved from visual to aural imagery wherein
the ‘grating sound’ and the ‘tremulous cadence’ fill the poet with sorrow and dejection. The journey
from the descriptive had taken off and is now building up towards the entrance into the reflective. The
melancholic note of the sea reminds the poet of a similar sad note that Sophocles, a Greek dramatist,
must have heard on the shore of the Aegean Sea. He also must have found the meaning of human
misery in the sad music ‘roar’ of the sea and expressed it in his tragic plays.
Sample Question Paper 8 5

(iii) (a) Robert Frost Birches is simply a nostalgic celebration of youthful joy while also juxtaposing childish
spontaneity with the more serious, mundane realities of adulthood. Consisting of 59 lines of blank
verse, the poem revolves around the theme of ‘imagination vs. reality’. Frost has used his poetic
imagination to surpass the limits of the real world. The poem, essentially, features a speaker who likes
to imagine that the reason ice-covered birch trees are stooped is that a young boy has been climbing
them and swinging to the ground while holding onto the flexible treetops. Frost says,
“When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.‘‘
However, the reality is soon realised by the poet when he understands that it is in fact that ice-storms
that have bent the birch trees. The poet observes the dismal images of an ice - storm that made the
birches bend. The birches are bent down under the weight of ice and snow until they reach the dried
up ferns and shrubs on the ground. The speaker says that though the trees ‘seem not to break’ but can
‘never right themselves’. This means that when the trees are bent down for quite a long time, they
cannot straighten out afterwards and are in a sense of broken.
Further, Frost gives a fantastic account of how the birches were bent by a boy. The boy ‘subdued’ all
his father’s birches into bent - over arches until ‘not one was left / for him to conquer’. In doing so the
boy has to carefully reach the top of each tree suggesting a method required to reach to a realm
beyond the real. Here the boy’s action in climbing the trees is parallel to the poet’s act of creating the
poem. The boy’s conquest of the trees mirrors the victory of poet’s imagination over the real world,
for now his vision has completely replaced the ice -storm as the cause of the trees condition.
However, the theme has been deeply delved in with the key action which consists of swinging, up
towards heaven and then landing on the ground again. The speaker takes the reader through a series
of swings back and forth between earthbound realities and imaginative possibilities.
Going up by swinging then is the action of escape- a fanciful flight into the world of imagination. This
world symbolises the higher world of human ideals, the human desire to withdraw from harsh
realities of life into the happy world of imagination. It is suggestive of escaping from harsh realities of
the world into the world of fancy, human ideals and aspirations. Coming down on the earth with
birch means accepting the reality as it is and doing all earthly duties.
The natural movement of the swing implies that one can take flights of fancy but one has to return.
Frost states that he does not want complete escape from the earth, into an imaginary world.
Complete escape into the world of imagination is not possible and not desirable. He wants to come
back to earth because the earth is ‘the right place for love’. Instead, he imagines the milder pleasures
of gradually climbing up the tree, ‘Toward heaven’ and of the gentle descent as the tree would place
him down on the ground.
Giving a solution to the conflict, the poet suggests that one must attain a balance between his earthly
duties on earth and his spiritual aspirations because both are desirable. Only then can one lead a
happy, balanced life.
Or
(b) O’Shaughnessy’s We are the Music Makers is a tribute to artists, poets, musicians and writers - all the
artists of various forms who have fashioned the world through their art. Through his poem
O’ Shaughnessy has depicted the artists as an integral part of the society, rejecting the famous idea of
aestheticism that emphasised on pure beauty and ‘art for art’s sake’. For the poet, art is essential for
life’s sake and is central to the progress of the world. Through the importance of art, the poem also
emphasised on the active role of the artists in social, political and even religious matter.
The poem opens up with depicting the active participation of artists and their art in shaping the
world. Speaking through the collective voice ‘we’ of all the musicians, poets, painters etc. the poet
calls them ‘music makers’ and ‘dreamers of dreams’. Here he symbolically uses ‘music makers’ for all
artist or the creator of the revolutionary ideas and ‘dreamers of dreams’ to state that they are the ones
who put the dreams of a perfect ideal world into your eyes.
According to the poet these artists are ‘lone sea breakers’ who stay by the ‘desolate streams’. In other
words, they remain aloof from the society. But they do so for the sake of their art, to get new ideas,
imagination and fantasy for their creation. But the world regards them as,
“World loser and world forsakers,
Upon whom the pale moon gleam."
6 Sample Question Papers ISC Literature in English Class XII

In other words, they are branded as escapists, ‘loser’, ‘forsakers’ and even madman by the society. But
they are not so. They are the real leader of the society. As the real ‘movers and shakers’ they play an
important role in shaping the world as their art and ideas inspire the society. Though art doesn’t
directly cause any physical change, it acts as a catalyst to cause that change with a rebellion against
the existing order.
The poet also emphasises on the timelessness of art and the power of any art work. According to him,
a poet or a musician can ‘build up the world’s great cities’ in his wonderful everlasting songs.
Similarly a writer’s story can fabulously give shape to an empire and its glory. All of these works of art
cannot be completely destroyed. The fantasy that comes to an artist’s mind can shape up things he
builds; it is their art that marks the glory of a civilisation. The actual cities which provide the subject
for the songs have been ruined long ago but their glory and fame is still alive by their everlasting
creations.
The poet further depicts the historical role of the artist and divinity of their creations. He says that
thousands of years ago, the ancient cities of Nineveh and Babel were built by the varying moods of
the artists.
The poet believes that in ancient times that now lie hidden in the history of the earth, when the
artists were distressed they built a ‘Nineveh’ and when they were filled with joy they rose up a
‘Babel’. Nineveh and Babel are the symbols of human rise and subsequent fall. They reflect the
artists’ power to create and destroy the same piece of art.
“And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth‘‘
The utopia of the old world is then deconstructed by ‘prophesying’ the new world’s worth. It is only
an artist - a musician, a painter, a poet, a writer, who can create something to destroy it for better and
worthy future. The old and new each age is result of dream of these artists. Thus, overthrew the old
one with new dream, so their dream is capable of replacing themselves, to give birth to a new dream -
a dream of a new modern world.