Gujarat Board GSEB Class 12 English Textbook Solutions Vistas Chapter 4 The Enemy Textbook Exercise Important Questions and Answers, Notes Pdf.

Gujarat Board Textbook Solutions Class 12 English Vistas Chapter 4 The Enemy

GSEB Class 12 English The Enemy Text Book Questions and Answers

Read and Find Out (Textbook Page No. 24)

Question 1.
Who was Dr Sadao? Where was his house?
Answer:
Dr Sadao Hoki was an eminent Japanese surgeon and scientist. He had spent eight valuable years of his youth in America to learn all that could be learnt of surgery and medicine there. He was perfecting a discovery which would render wounds entirely clean. Dr Sadao’s house was built on rocks well above a narrow beach that was outlined with bent pines. It was built on a spot of the Japanese coast.

Read and Find Out (Textbook Page No. 27)

Question 1.
Will Dr Sadao be arrested on the charge of harbouring an enemy?
Answer:
Dr Sadao knew that they would be arrested if they sheltered a white man in their house. The wounded man was a prisoner of war who had escaped with a bullet on his back. Since Japan was at war with America, harbouring an enemy meant being a traitor to Japan. Dr Sadao could be arrested if anyone complained against him and accused him of harbouring an enemy.

Read and Find Out (Textbook Page No. 31)

Question 1.
Will Hana help the wounded man and wash him herself?
Answer:
The wounded American was in a very bad state and needed to be washed before being operated on. Hana did not want Dr Sadao to clean the dirty and unconscious prisoner, and so asked their servant, Yumi, to do so. However, Yumi defied her master’s order and opted out of it. As a result, Hana had no other option but to wash him herself. Although this act was impulsive and dipped in a sense of superiority over her servant, Yumi, she did it with sincerity.

Read and Find Out (Textbook Page No. 35)

Question 1.
What will Dr Sadao and his wife do with the man?
Answer:
Dr Sadao and Hana found an unconscious wounded war prisoner who posed a huge threat to their own safety. However, Dr Sadao decided to go with his gut feeling and operate on him. He saved his life even though it was for the time being. Though half-heartedly, both took good care of the patient’s health and other needs. Hana even washed and fed him with her own hands. Although they knew that they would have to hand him over to the army sooner or later, they did their best to help the injured man.

Read and Find Out (Textbook Page No. 39)

(As the question gets repeated as on Page 27, the answer is avoided here.)

Read and Find Out (Textbook Page No. 43)

Question 1.
What will Dr Sadao do to get rid of the man?
Answer:
With the injured American’s health gradually improving, Dr Sadao and Hana were in a fix as to what should be done with him. Their loyal servants had left them and keeping him in their house could pose a threat to their lives. As Hana’s impatience and distress grew, Dr Sadao revealed the matter to the General who decided to send assassins to kill the young American in his sleep. Keen on getting rid of the escaped war prisoner, Dr Sadao agreed. However, the matter could not be resolved because the assassins never came.

Dr Sadao then planned another way to get rid of him which was overpowered with sympathy and a distant gratitude towards the people he had been linked to in America. He decided to save his patient one more time. He secretly sent him to an isolated island with food, bottled water, clothes, blanket and his own flashlight on a boat from where he boarded a Korean ship to freedom and safety.

Reading with Insight
Answer the following questions in about six to seven sentences each:

Question 1.
There are moments in life when we have to make hard choices between our roles as private individuals and as citizens with a sense of national loyalty. Discuss with reference to the story you have just read.
Answer:
Dr Sadao is trapped in a dilemma. On one hand, being a doctor having moral and ethical responsibility to save the wounded soldier and on the other hand, being a patriot, to let the enemy die or hand him over to the army. He fulfils his ethical responsibility, saves the man, risks his own life, his family, reputation and then later, as a patriot plans to get him killed with the help of the army general. Later on again, he helps him escape which reflects his true personality.

Question 2.
Dr Sadao was compelled by his duty as a doctor to help the enemy soldier. What made Hana, his wife, sympathetic to him in the face of open defiance from the domestic staff?
Answer:
Hana firmly follows her husband’s sense of duty although she knows that her husband’s decision is being questioned by everyone. She is humanitarian and compassionate and goes beyond her duty to perform the tasks which she is not supposed to. It is her care that helps the man recover quickly. She respects her husband and has a sense of duty towards him.

Question 3.
How would you explain the reluctance of the soldier to leave the shelter of the doctor’s home even when he knew he couldn’t stay there without risk to the doctor and himself?
Answer:
Sadao and Hana had treated the American man with a lot of kindness and warmth. The man had suffered severely at the hands of the Japanese army as he had been made a prisoner of war. This warm attitude of Sadao and Hana gave him so much relief that he did not want to leave their house. The man felt at home – safe and warm. So, even though they were at risk at the hands of the army and the people of Japan, the man was reluctant to leave them.

Question 4.
What explains the attitude of the General in the matter of the enemy soldier? Was it human consideration, lack of national loyalty, dereliction of duty or simply self-absorption?
Answer:
All his life the General had performed his duties with utmost sincerity. He realized that killing innocent men had become a burden on his soul. He understood Sadao’s mindset which indicated that he wanted to save a life irrespective of the fact that he was from an enemy country. The General also considered him to be a human being and so, excused Sadao to save his life.

Question 5.
While hatred against a member of the enemy race is justifiable, especially during wartime, what makes a human being rise above narrow prejudices?
Answer:
News of war is fast becoming a way of life. The moment one picks up a newspaper, one is bombarded with news of wars between different countries, directly or indirectly. It is obvious that the countries at war are enemies and hatred is a part of this enmity. However, the success of humanity comes when we rise above this enmity and show our love towards the civilization as a whole. Dr Sadao did the same.

He did whatever he could to save the life of a man whom he kney was a prisoner of war. The instant he saw the injured man, he was filled with concern. Ignoring the fact that he was the enemy of his country and must have killed so many Japanese and may kill even more, if alive, he saved him.

Question 6.
Do you think the doctor’s final solution to the problem was the best possible one in the circumstances?
Answer:
The doctor tried his best to save the injured soldier as a part of his duty. But the ultimate question was what to do next. It cannot be said that he betrayed his country as he told the truth to the General. However when he noticed that the soldier was to be killed not for the benefit of the country but only to save the doctor’s life, he decided to help him flee. In such a situation, the doctor’s final solution to the problem was the best possible one.

Question 7.
Does the story remind you of ‘Birth’ by A. J. Cronin that you read in Snapshots last year? What are the similarities?
Answer:
The story definitely reminds one of ‘Birth’ by A. J. Cronin. There is a striking similarity between both the stories. Both revolve around doctors who try their level best to save the lives of nearly dead human beings. In the story ‘Birth’, Dr Andrew saves the life of an almost stillborn baby boy with lot of effort, while ‘The Enemy’ deals with the story of Dr Sadao who saves an American soldier from the enemy troops during the times of war. Both the stories deal with humanity, love, affection, selflessness and a strong sense of duty.

Question 8.
Is there any film you have seen or- novel you have read with a similar theme?
Answer:
The story ‘The Enemy’ is built on the pillars of selflessness, sense of duty, kindness and generosity. There have been many films and novels based on this theme. One such example is the film ‘My Name is Khan’, where the protagonist, with a sense of duty and generosity, goes to the flooded Georgia to save the lives of his friends, Mama Jenny, Joel and other natives. He selflessly works to save the town without thinking twice about the possible dangers to his own life.

The Enemy Summary in English

The Enemy Summary:
Sadao was a Japanese surgeon. He studied in America and returned with Hana, a Japanese girl whom he met there, and married her in Japan and settled down comfortably. While most of the doctors were sent to serve the Japanese army in the World War II, Sadao was allowed to stay home because he was wanted by the old General who was dying.

But one night into his uneventful life came an American Navy-man, shot, wounded and dying. Though unwilling to help his enemy, Sadao took the young soldier into his house and provided him with medical aid. He was in danger from that moment. Soon his servants left him. Dr Sadao saw that the soldier was getting well and absolutely alright. Once his patient was no more in need of him, the doctor turned out to be his assassin, conspiring to kill him in his sleep.

He informed the General of the American and the General promised, he would send his private men to kill the American. Sadao awaited the American’s death every morning but to his gloom, the man was still alive, healthier and posing danger to him. At this point, Sadao becomes the real man in him, a true human being who realizes the essential worth of human life and universal brotherhood.

He thinks beyond countries and continents and races and wars. He finds no reason to believe that the American is his enemy. Sadao rescues the American. Thus, Sadao rises above narrow prejudices and acts in a truly humanitarian way.