XII - 2.5 - Father Returning Home ( ICE BREAKERS & BRAINSTORMING )

Features –

 

-      It is an autobiographical poem.

-      Poet draws a portrait of a suburban commuter.

-      The poem consists of two stanzas of 12 lines each.

-      It is free verse type poem.

-      It is in first person narration.

-      It is a dramatic monologue.

-      The poet used fine imaginary to express his loneliness.

-      The theme of the poem is alienation or estrangement experienced by the aged people of the cities from man-made world.

 BRAINSTORMING

 

(A1) (i) Discuss with your friend the difficulties faced by the father in the poem.

(a)           He is old, but is has to earn bread for his family.

(b)           He has to travel in a crowded train. Other commuters are silent    and here he has to face the feelings of isolation.

(c)           He has to travel standing and without getting any seat for resting   in the train.

(d)           He has to face rough monsoon weather. Many times his clothes gets soggy and raincoat muddy.

(e)           At home he is not welcomed warmly. His children neglect him. They do not share jokes and secrets with him.

(f)  He does not get fresh food. On the other hand he has to drink weak tea and eat stale chapati.

(g)          In short at home also he is lonely.

 

 

ii) Discuss the character sketch of the father with the help of the given points.

  

       (His pathetic condition, the treatment he receives at home, his solitude, the way he tries to overcome it)

(a)       He is old, but is has to earn bread for his family. In the crowded world he is lonely. He has face rough weather. In family he is neglected, has to eat stale foods.

(b)       At home he is not welcomed warmly. His children neglect him. They do not share jokes and secrets with him.

(c)       In crowded train he suffers isolation. He does not have interest in the outside beauty. At home he is neglected and suffers solitude. His only companion is radio.

(d)  The father tries to overcome his loneliness by listening to the radio. He goes to sleep dreaming about his ancestors and grandchildren.

  (A2) (1) Given below are the ideas conveyed through the poem.

       Match the pairs and draw out the hidden meaning from those expressions.

       

Expressions	Meaning
(a) Children avoid expressing themselves.	(1)      Father is so eager to meet family members that he even doesn’t bother about his safety.
(b) Father was deprived of refreshing hot beverages of nourishing diet.	(2)      Hostility of children
(c) The father hurries home crossing           railway line	(3)      Indulge into his past and future.
(d) The father was destined to listen only to the cracking sounds on media.	(4)      Uncomfortable journey
(e) His sordid present is devoid of any hope.	(5)      His basic daily requirements were also not catered to.
(f)  The father’s endless commuting distance him from his children	(6)      Father is not less than any tribal wanderer, a modern nomad.
(g) Suburban area, visible through the train, is past unnoticed.	(7)      Has least value in the society where his presence or absence might hardly make any difference.
(h) He is just as a small word, dropping from a sentence.	(8)      Because there is hardly anything enchanting / interesting in the monotonous routine journey to look out of the window
(i)   He doesn’t get a place in a crowded train.	(9)      The father couldn’t even fulfil the least expectation of entertaining himself.

  

ANSWERS-

Expressions	Meaning
(a)  Children avoid expressing themselves.	- Hostility of children
(b)  Father was deprived of refreshing hot beverages of nourishing diet.	-His basic daily requirements were also not catered to.
(c) The father hurries home crossing           railway line	-Father is so eager to meet family members that he even doesn’t bother about his safety.
(d) The father was destined to listen only to the cracking sounds on media.	-The father couldn’t even fulfil the least expectation of entertaining himself.
(e) His sordid present is devoid of any hope.	-Indulge into his past and future.
(f)  The father’s endless commuting distance him from his children	- Father is not less than any tribal wanderer, a modern nomad.
(g) Suburban area, visible through the train, is past unnoticed.	-Because there is hardly anything enchanting / interesting in the monotonous routine journey to look out of the window.
(h) He is just as a small word, dropping from a sentence.	- Has least value in the society where his presence or absence might hardly make any difference
(i)   He doesn’t get a place in a crowded train.	-Uncomfortable journey

 

(ii) Find the lines to prove the following facts from the poem.

 

(a)  Father is deprived of good food.

-      Home again, I see him drinking weak tea,

Eating a stale chapati,  reading a book.

 

 

(b)Children did not have a healthy relation with the father.

-      His sullen children have often refused to share

Jokes and secrets with him.

  (iii) The poet deals with the theme of man’s estrangement from a man-made world. Analyze it with the help of the poem

 Modern man is lonely in the crowd of people. This estrangement is reflected through different experiences that the father gets in this poem. The poet has depicted a picture of his own father returning home from work. The father is hard worker & earner; still he suffers loneliness and monotonous life in a man-made world. In the first stanza poet depicts how the father has been neglected by the society or the commuters & in the second stanza how father is neglected by the family members also. So the only way to escape from this estrangement and loneliness is to think about his ancestors and grandchildren.

  

 

(iv)The father contemplates about his past and peeps into his future.

      Give reasons.

 -      The father is old but has to work for his family. He returns home weary and tried but he is not welcomed warmly by his family. On the other hand he is ignored and neglected. So the only way to escape from this boring, mundane, monotonous life and to find some peace of mind is to think about his ancestors and grandchildren. His dreaming of his ancestors and grandchildren gives the impression that he finds some solace/happiness in thinking about his past and future generation. It is an attempt to escape from his mundane, routine life devoid of human contact. Again his thought of the Aryans indicate that he is thinking of how the society has changed since the ancient times when they had come here. Now this modern world has no place for the elderly people, has no one to think about their loneliness or care for them.

 

(A3) Complete the following using suitable describing words as appeared in the poem with the help of the words given in the brackets :

         (Weak, dim, muddy, soggy, stale)

     

(a)  Father’s attire – soggy

(b) Father’s tea     - weak

(c)  Father’s footware – muddy

(d) Father’s food      - stale

(e)  Father’s eyesight – dim

 

(A4) (i) ‘Fade homeward through the humid monsoon night’.

             In the above line the weather is humid, not the night. The epithet or

             adjective is transferred from the weather to the night. This figure of

             speech is Transferred Epithet.

                 Find out such other expressions from the poem.

1)    Suburbs slide past his unseeing eyes

2)   Home again, I see him drinking weak tea.

               

  (ii) Identify and write the lines from the poem which express the       following  figures of speech.

Figures of speech	Lines
1.   Simile	1-  Like a word dropped form a long sentence
2.   Alliteration	2- Crosses the railway line, enters the lane,
3.   Onomatopoeia	3- Listening to the static on the radio, dreaming.

       

       (iii)   I see him drinking weak tea, eating a stale chapati.

        Here ‘stale chapati’ stands for stale food/non-nourishing food or diet.

               where the part symbolizes the whole, i.e. food.  

               Guess the name of the figure of speech.

-      Synecdoche

 

(A5)  (IV) Compose a short poem in about 4-6 lines on your father.

     -      To make my future golden bright,

   You work hard for day and night,

   Without you I would be a zero,

   O my father you are my hero.