Unit 2 - 2.4 The Pulley — English STD 10 — Question

My mother twisted through and through, groaning on a mat
My father, sceptic rationalist,
trying every curse and blessing. powder, mixture, herb and hybrid,
He even poured a little paraffin upon the bitten toe and put a match to it.
I watched the flame feeding on my mother.
I watched the holy man perform his rites to tame
the poison with an incantation.
After twenty hours
it lost its sting.
My mother only said Thank God the scorpion picked on me
And spared my children.

Complete the following table:

Background/setting of the poem
Type	Evidence (Quote lines from the extract)
Rural

Explain why the poem begins with the poet remembering the night.

Write down in your own words the differences between the 2nd stage and the 4th stage of a man's life:

What did God's glass of blessings contain?

Poem
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by Thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. - Rabindranath Tagore

Read the poem carefully and complete the table after the discussion in pairs. One is done for you.

Concepts in the poem	Present situation	Expected/ideal situation
(1) mind	mind is full of fear	fearless mind
(2) head	____________	____________
(3) knowledge	____________	____________
(4) words	____________	____________
(5) habit	____________	____________
(6) thought and action	____________	____________

How can poverty keep you away from achieving your goals?

From what darkness of night should our nation awake?

I remember the night my mother
was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours
of steady rain had driven him
to crawl beneath a sack of rice.
Parting with his poison - flash
of diabolic tail in the dark room-
he risked the rain again
The peasants came like swarms of flies
and buzzed the name of God a hundred times
to paralyse the Evil One.
With candles and with lanterns
throwing glant scorpion shadows
on the mud-baked walls
They searched for him : he was not found.
they clicked their tongues.
With every movement that the scorpion made his poison
moved in Mother's blood, they said.

After reading the extract, complete the following table. What happens?

Lines	What is happening
1-17

What is the theme/central idea of the poem?

Who are the mighty dead? Why are they attributed with grandeur?