Gujarat Board GSEB Class 11 English Textbook Solutions Hornbill Poem 4 Childhood Textbook Exercise Important Questions and Answers, Notes Pdf.

Gujarat Board Textbook Solutions Class 11 English Hornbill Poem 4 Childhood

GSEB Class 11 English Childhood Text Book Questions and Answers

Think Out

Question 1.
Identify the stanza that talks of each of the following: individuality rationalism hypocrisy
Answer:
Individuality – Third stanza; Rationalism -First stanza; Hypocrisy – Second stanza

Question 2.
What according to the poem is involved in the process of growing up?
Answer:
According to the poem, the process of growing up involves the attainment of mental maturity. A person is said to be grown up when he has become logical, rational and is able to build his own thoughts. A grown-up has the power to distinguish between reality and fantasy.

A grown-up individual understands the actions of others just as the poet recognises the hiatus between the preaching and the practice of the adults. He realises the hypocrisy and the double standards maintained by the adults. A mature individual also asserts his thoughts and opinions.

Question 3.
What is the poet’s feeling towards childhood?
Answer:
The poet does not appear to feel sad or upset at the loss of his childhood. He only seems to be puzzled at the disappearance of childhood and the arrival of adulthood. He expresses his confusion when he asks the questions ‘When and Where did my childhood go’?

Question 4.
Which do you think are the most poetic lines? Why?
Answer:
The lines that seem to be the most poetic are: ‘It went to some forgotten place, That’s hidden in an infant’s face; That’s all I know. These lines sum up beautifully the process of growth and the disappearance of a particular stage of life. These lines express metaphorically that an infant’s innocent face hides many things behind its smiles. Perhaps the childhood also lies hidden somewhere in the child’s consciousness.

GSEB Class 11 English Childhood Additional Important Questions and Answers

Answer the following questions in three to four sentences each :

Question 1.
How does the poem expose man and presents him in true colours ?
Answer:
Childhood symbolizes innocence, purity, softness and love. As a child grows, these qualities start receding. Man becomes impure, cunning, shrewd and hypocrite. Grown-ups become blatant liars. They talk of love but practice hatred. They preach brother hood of mankind but perpetuate hatred and killing. Simplicity and honesty evaporate into thin air, the moment man crosses the threshold of innocent childhood.

Question 2.
What is the poet’s feeling towards the childhood?
Answer:
The poet regards childhood as a period of heavenly innocence. A child sincerely feels that there is god above. He is free from all earthly evils. He believes that there is really a Hell and a Heaven. He is truly religious in his soul. A child knows no hypocrisy. He always means what he says.

There is no difference between his thoughts and actions. A child is free from any sense of ego. He does not think himself to be different from or superior to others. In short, childhood is a state of heavenly innocence and purity of heart.

Question 3.
What according to the poem, is involved in the process of growing up?
Answer:
As a person grows up, he becomes a rationalist, an egoist and a hypocrite. He accepts nothing that is not logical. He loses faith in God. He does not believe in Hell and Heaven. He becomes very conscious of himself. He wants to follow his own desires and ideas. He becomes an egoist. He talks of love and preaches of love, but is not so loving in his actions. In short, he loses all his innocence of his childhood.

Question 4.
How does the poet describe the process of being a grown-up?
Answer:
The process of being grown-up develops the critical thinking and analytical point of view it the person. It makes the person rationalized and able to take his decision by virtue of his seat of reasoning.

Question 5.
How does the poet repent on his loss of childhood?
Answer:
He expresses concern over his childhood’s disappearance. Childhood cannot be regained. It keeps our life aloof from the world of hypocrisy, bitter reality and materialism.

Question 6.
The poet has asked two questions – one is about the time and other is about the place. Why has he used these questions?
Answer:
He has used these two questions to interpret the time and place of way of going his childhood away. ‘When’ points out the process of being rational at a particular time and ‘where’ states the place where the innocent world of childhood resides.

Question 7.
What does the Hell and Heaven stand for?
Answer:
It stands for the world of imagination that fascinates only small children. These are nothing but the product of our imaginative mind that helps the person to escape from reality.

Question 8.
Explain the theme of the poem.
Answer:
The poem, ‘Childhood’ focuses on the theme of the loss of innocence. Markus Natten, the poet wonders when and where he lost his childhood. He ponders over this question and highlights the loss of innocence and faith in the quest of growing up.

Adolescence or childhood is a puzzling time when a child is unable to settle with the physical, psychological and other changes in his personality. He becomes a ‘young adult’; he neither wants to call himself a child nor is he completely an adult. He finally finds his answers that he lost his childhood to some forgotten place and that his childhood has become a memory.

Question 9.
Explain the refrain of the poem ‘Childhood’.
Answer:
The repetition of the lines; usually at the end or the beginning of the poem is called the ‘refrain’. Refrains carries the central message of the poem. Here, the lines “When did my childhood go ?” and “was that day” are examples of refrain. The first refrain is the central theme of the poem as to when have the poet lost his childhood while the second refrain ends with an exclamation which brings out the poet’s realization.

Figures of Speech
Select the correct figures of speech from the options given below:

Question 1.
‘Was it the time I realised that Hell and Heaven’
A. Alliteration
B. Antithesis
C. Litotes
D. Both A’ and ‘B’
Answer:
D. Both A’ and ‘B’

Question 2.
‘Could not be found in Geography, And therefore could not be
A. Alliteration
B. Personification
C. Litotes
D. Both ‘A’ and ‘B’
Answer:
C. Litotes

Question 3.
‘Was that the day!
A. Repetition
B. Exclamation
C. Alliteration
D. Antithesis
Answer:
B. Exclamation

Question 4.
‘Was it the time I realised that adults were not, all they seemed to be’
A. interrogation
B. Litotes
C. Metaphor
D. Both’ ‘A’ and ‘B’
Answer:
D. Both’ ‘A’ and ‘B’

Question 5.
They talked of love and preached of love’
A. Alliteration
B. Antithesis
C. Litotes
D. Repetition
Answer:
D. Repetition

Question 6.
‘Was it when I found my mind was really mine’
A. Repetition
B. Metaphor
C. Alliteration
D. Antithesis
Answer:
C. Alliteration

Question 7.
‘Producing thoughts that were not those of other people’
A. Alliteration
B. Antithesis
C. Litotes
D. Repetition
Answer:
C. Litotes

Question 8.
‘It went to some forgotten place, That’s hidden in an infant’s face’
A. Paradox
B. Antithesis
C. Litotes
D. Repetition,
Answer:
A. Paradox

Reading Comprehension (Textual)
Read the verses (stanzas) and answer the questions given below them:

Question 1.
When did my childhood go? Was it the day I ceased to be eleven. Was it the time I realised that Hell and Heaven,
Could not be found in Geography, And therefore could not be, Was that the day!
Questions:
1. Why is the age of twelve so important for the poet?
2. When does the poet come to know that ‘Hell’ and ‘Heaven’ are imaginary concepts?
Answer:
1. The age of twelve is so important for the poet because, at this age, he can differentiate between fact and fiction.
2. The poet comes to know that ‘Hell’ and ‘Heaven’ are imaginary concepts when he cannot locate these places in his geography books.

Question 2.
When did my childhood go? Was it the time I realised that adults were not All they seemed to be, They talked of love and preached of love, But did not act so lovingly, Was that the day!
Questions :
1. Why does the poet not talk great of grown-up people?
2. Why is the poet confused?
Answer:
1. Poet feels that grown-up people do not act on what they preach.
2. Poet cannot understand whether he is a child or an adult.

Question 3.
When did, my childhood go? Was it when I found my mind was really mine, To use whichever way I choose Producing thoughts that were not those of other people But my own and mine alone, Was that the day!
Questions:
1. Explain ‘My mind was really mine’.
2. ‘Producing thoughts that were not these of other people’s means.
Answer:
1. It means that poet was completely in control of himself.
2. The poet has gained confidence to express his views independently.

Question 4.
Where did my childhood go? It went to some forgotten place, That is hidden in an infant’s face, That’s all I know.
Questions:
1. Why is the poet eager to know the lost place of his childhood?
2. Where is poet able to find his lost childhood?
Answer:
1.

• The poet cherishes childhood the most.
• The poet once again wishes to lead the innocent life of a child.
• The poet is eager to know where his childhood is hidden.

2. In the innocent face of the infant.

Childhood Summary in English

Childhood Introduction:
Markus Natten is a Norwegian poet. He wrote his first poem at the age of 12 ‘Childhood’. He tries to find out where he lost his childhood. Here he conveys the idea that people do not live the lives that they preach. It is unclear when and where he was born. ‘Childhood’ is was composed. According to the contents of the poem, it appears that his family gave him certain ideas but did not practise them. We can say in theory everything appeared to be very good but in practice he was confused as to what we should follow translated from the language in which the poem

Childhood Summary:
In the first stanza, the poet becomes pensive and want to know when he had lost his childhood. He feels that it may be the day when he had entered the twelfth year of his life. His parents must have given him the idea of Heaven and Hell.

He had conceived this idea in his early days. But as he gained understanding he was unable to trace these anywhere and so he doubted their existence. All the same, he is unsure if he had lost his childhood on that particular day. His parents often told him to follow certain modes of behaviour.

The adults in his neighbourhood also instructed him to follow a set path of life. But he observed that they themselves did not pursue the same objectives. They were far from what they preached. They preached love but did not practise it.

The poet questions himself, if it was, (the day when this realization dawned upon him that he ceased to be a child and became a grown-up. The poet wants know If he had lost his childhood when he began take his own decisions and practise his own thinking and not depend on the thinking of others.

It was perhaps on this day that he lost his childhood. The poet has now changed his mode of questioning. Now he wants to know where he has lost his childhood. The answer Is easy. He says that it has gone hiding into some Infant’s face.

Towards the end of he poem the poet expresses that the childhood is a lost memory. The fantasies and the moments associated with the childhood are recalled by us. All the same the Innocence of the childhood is irrevocably lost. We can conclude that childhood has gone Into oblivion.