Question

Answer the following questions in about

250 words each.

Read the following extract from ‘Hard Times’

written by Charles Dickens and answer the

questions that follow :


He was a rich man: banker, merchant,

manufacturer, and what not. A big, loud man, with

a stare and a metallic laugh. A man made out of a

coarse material, which seemed to have beenstretched to make so much of him. A man with a

great puffed head and forehead, swelled veins in

his temples, and such a strained skin to his face

that it seemed to hold his eyes open, and lift his

eyebrows up. A man with a pervading appearance

on him of being inflated like a balloon, and ready

to start. A man who could never sufficiently vaunt

himself a self-made man. A man who was always

proclaiming, through that brassy speakingtrumpet of a voice of his, his old ignorance and his

old poverty. A man who was the Bully of humility.

A year or two younger than his eminently

practical friend, Mr. Bounderby looked older; his

seven or eight and forty might have had the seven

or eight added to it again, without surprising

anybody. He had not much hair. One might have

fancied he had talked it off; and that what was

left, all standing up in disorder, was in that

condition from being constantly blown about by his

windy boastfulness.

In the formal drawing-room of Stone Lodge,

standing on the hearthrug, warming himself

before the fire, Mr Bounderby delivered some

observations to Mrs. Gradgrind on the

circumstance of its being his birthday. He stood

before the fire, partly because it was a cool spring

afternoon, though the sun shone; partly because

the shade of Stone Lodge was always haunted by the ghost of damp mortar; partly because he thus

took up a commanding position, from which to

subdue Mrs. Gradgrind.

“I hadn’t a shoe to my foot. As to a stocking, I

didn’t know such a thing by name. I passed the

day in a ditch, and the night in a pigsty. That’s the

way I spent my tenth birthday. Not that a ditch

was new to me, for I was born in a ditch”.


(a) Based on the passage, how old do you think

Mr. Bounderby is?


(b) In the above passage, choose four words or

phrases which suggest that Mr. Bounderby is

a very unpleasant man. Explain how the

expressions give that suggestion.


(c) Which line shows us that Mr. Bounderby is a

bully?


(d) What kind of childhood did Mr. Bounderby

have?


(e) Choose two phrases or expressions from the

passage that suggest that the author is making fun of Mr. Bounderby​

Answer 1

Answer:

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Explanation:

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