The day the cat was killed, maddy watched her mother wind that old clock with her same little smile, cracking the gold key into its funny hole, as grandma wandered around the dining table in her dressing gown while her nurse read a pulp fiction on the front step, while her brothers scrapped their forks against the table and dripped the bits of potatoes and corn from their open, awful mouths, that clock sat heavy on the white carpet, at the end of the hall, mom humming along to that terrible ticking. it made maddy's teeth clench. truly, there was no point to these silly, endless family dinners. always being six o'clock sharp and never over until that clock was wound, thirteen years of her life wasted for this nonsense so far, burnt up in bedroom, when all the while she had some very important matters to attend to back in her bedroom. the long case clock had been left by the previous owner, or maybe the one before that, no one was sure. cloaked in pine wood and always counting, no birds printed around the clock face, no farm scenes or flowers, just back numbers and wiry hands and that was that. then near the bottom, along silver pendulum behind a square of smokey glass. it was too heavy to tip, too tal to place anything on top, old and faded and always suspect. her brothers avoided it at night and the cat avoided it entirely ( or used to). the clock face glowing round and white, over the wooden suit, like a pale face ghost or a porcelain reaper, feetless and shadows for arms. and mom would sing along with the pendulum while the boy knocked over kitchen chairs wrestling and playing tag, and grandmother would nap by the television and the nurse would paints her nails. all the time, her nails, her mom would smile and hum.
Answers
1. The clock was “always suspect”. The subject thought :
a. Ans. It broke down periodically
2. “It made Maddy’s teeth clench.” The idiom “to clench one’s teeth” can be introduced in an EBL class by
a. Ans. Giving worksheet where the students use the idiom in a number of situation
3. “The clock face was glowing round and white”. This observation is further enhanced by the observation that it was like
a. Ans. Ceramic
4. The use of word “cranking” conveys the meaning that
a. Ans; The key did not fit the lock properly
5. From the given alternative, choose the one which best expresses the given sentence in Direct/Indirect speech
a. Ans. Aman said that the girl had been singing
6. The tone of the given passage is
a. Ans. Narrative
7. The sibilings where “awful mouths” is the following figure of speech.
a. Ans: Transferred epithet
8. “Truly there was no point….”
a. Ans. Her mother forced her to sit through a lengthy dinner ritual
9. The word ____”incline”
a. Ans. Tip
10. “All the time her mother……”
a. Ans.: Admired her mother’s calmness