Read the poem sleepless night and answer the following questions in your notebook.
a. Answer the following questions in one sentence.
i What is the speaker afraid of?
ii. What does the speaker like to study?
m. What was keeping the speaker awake at night?
iv. What made the speaker suddenly feel alright?
v. Find the antonym for loose from the poem.
vi. You look white as a sheet! Why do you think the speaker's mother is comparing
the speaker to a white sheet?
vi. If you had to give an advice to the speaker in the poem to feel less scared of
Math, what would it be?
b. What do you think is the purpose of the poem? Give evidence from the poem.
C. Tick (~) the correct answer for the given questions.
i. What is the main idea of the poem?
• The poem is about how loving the speaker's mother is.
• The poem is about life in a school.
• The poem is about the night that kept the speaker awake.
i. Who is the speaker in the poem? Give evidence from the poem.
• a mother
• a student
• a river8
Answers
Answer:
The speaker in the poem seems to be a little boy who talks about a shed, which is at the bottom of his garden.
(ii) He/she is both afraid and curious. Whenever he passes by the window of the shed, he feels that somebody is staring at him. This suggests that he is afraid to go inside. However, after describing each part of the shed with its strange sounds and other descriptions, he says that he would go inside the shed one day. This shows his curiosity. He wants to know if all the things his brother had told him are true or not and whether there is any ghost inside the shed or not. That is why he is a little afraid, but a lot more curious.
(iii) She/he is planning to go inside the shed soon.
(iv) “But not just yet…” suggests the speaker’s hesitation. He is confident that there is no ghost in the shed and that the stories of ghosts that his brother makes up are all lies. There is nobody staring or making strange noises. Also, there is no more a spider on that web on the main door. However, there is some fear inside him as he still cannot muster enough courage to set foot inside the shed even though he listens to the noises coming from the shed every night and has also passed by the shed many times. This shows that his curiosity is mixed with a certain amount of fear and therefore, he hesitates to go inside the shed as yet.