Answer any four of the following in 30-40 words each. (a) What news about Sebastian Shultz did Michael see in the newspaper? (b) How did the mariners escape from the South Pole? (c) How did Brutus win the heart of the Roman mob? (d) What was the role offered to Patol Babu? (e) Bring out the irony in the poem ‘Ozymandias’.
Answers
Answer:
(a) The newspaper reported that Sebastian Shultz, a fourteen-year-old school boy had been seriously injured in a motorway accident six weeks ago. When he had arrived at the General Hospital his condition was described as critical though stable. Despite doctors’ hopes he had not regained consciousness and had slipped into a coma.
(b) An albatross came to the sailor's rescue when their ship was stuck in the South Pole. They hailed the bird in God’s name considering it a good Christian soul. It hovered over the ship and as the ice berg split the helmsman was able to steer the ship through the gap and thus the Mariners escaped from the land of ice and snow. The albatross was really an angel in the lives of the Mariners during the time of hardship.
c) Brutus, as a real true patriot and much-respected nobleman of Rome, won the heart of the Roman mob by justifying that he was forced to murder Caesar because they were opposed to dictatorship and in favour of liberty. He declared that Caesar was becoming an autocratic ruler who wanted to enslave the people of Rome, so he had to be killed to liberate the Romans from enslavement. Brutus won the minds of the people with his words and his words against Caesar made the people believe that Caesar was an autocratic ruler.
(d) Patol Babu was offered a small role in a film to be directed by Baren Mullick. The role was that of an absent-minded, short-tempered pedestrian in his fifties. His role was to collide with the hero on “the sidewalk and exclaim the word ‘oh’. His role was very small and not of any consequence to the storyline of the film. Even though the role was small he accepted it with great happiness and rehersed a lot to complete his role with perfection.
(e) On the one hand, Ozymandias tells the ‘mighty to despair’ because their achievements can never equal his own and on the other hand he also warns them not to get their hopes too high as their statues and political regimes will eventually be destroyed. There will be nothing to
Recall the memory of great warriors after the death statues and other memorandum built in favour of them will be destroyed by the