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A Photograph Summary in English by Shirley Toulson
A Photograph by Shirley Toulson About the Poet
Name
Shirley Toulson
Born
20 May 1924, Henley-on-Thames, United Kingdom
Died
15th May 2014
Education
B.A Literature from Brockenhurst College in London
Books
The Drovers, The Celtic Year a Celebration of Celtic Christian Saints Sites and Festivals More
A Photograph Summary by Shirley Toulson
A Photograph Summary in English
The poet views the photograph, taken before she was bom, of her mother and her two cousins. It was of the three girls, when they went to the beach. The two cousins were younger than the narrator’s mother, who was about twelve years old then. Both the cousins were on either side of the mother holding her hands. The three of them smiled at the camera as the uncle clicked the photograph. The camera had caught them smiling as the breeze ruffled their hair.
The poet notices her mother’s sweet face of a time before she was bom. Her face had changed much, unlike the sea which had remained unchanged. The sea washed their unbearably short-lived feet. The mother is now dead. The poet recalls how twenty or thirty years later her mother would look at the photograph and recall with amusement how, as young girls, they had been dressed for the beach. She had been out for a holiday to the beach years ago and felt nostalgic about it, just as the poet felt when she relived the memories of her mother. She recalled with pain the memories of her mother’s laughter. She found it difficult to come to terms with her mother’s death. She remembers her mother who died a long time ago: she has now lived without her for almost half of her life; and this fact overwhelms her into silence.
A Photograph Summary Questions and Answers
Read the lines and answer the questions that follow.
Question 1. The cardboard shows me how it was When the two girl cousins went paddling, Each one holding one of my mother’s hands, And she the big girl—some twelve years or so. All three stood still to smile through their hair At the uncle with the camera….
a. What does the ‘cardboard’ denote? Answer: It is a photograph.
b. What is seen on the cardboard? Answer: On the ‘cardboard’ three girls can be seen—one of whom is the poet’s mother.
c. What were they doing? Answer: They were playing in water near the seashore.
d. Why were the girls holding the poet’s mother’s hand? Answer: The poet’s mother was a little older than the two of her cousins, around twelve years old, and was thus holding on to their hands.
e. What was the uncle doing? Answer: The uncle was clicking their photograph.
f. Where is the mother now? Answer: The poet’s mother is dead.
g. “All three stood still to smile through their hair.” What does this suggest? Answer: They were smiling with tousled hair over their faces because of the breeze.
h. Who were the other two girls? Answer: The two girls were the poet’s mother’s cousins—Betty and Dolly.
2. A sweet face, My mother’s, that was before I was born. And the sea, which appears to have changed less, Washed their terribly transient feet.
a. Who is the ‘I’ in these lines? Answer: The poet is the ‘I’ in these lines.
b. What did she feel about her mother? Answer: The poet thought her mother had a sweet face.
c. What has not changed? Answer: The sea has remained unchanged over the years.
d. What has changed? Answer: The faces of the people have changed. They are older. The poet’s mother is dead.
e. What is suggested by the words ‘transient feet’? Answer: The words suggest the transience of life.
f. Name the poetic device used in the line: “Washed their terribly transient feet.” Answer: (a) transferred epithet (b) synecdoche
3. Some twenty—thirty—years later She ’d laugh at the snapshot. ‘See Betty And Dolly, ’ she ’d say, ‘and look how they Dressed us for the beach. ’ The sea holiday Was her past, mine is her laughter, Both wry With the laboured ease of loss.
a. Who is the ‘she’ in these lines? Answer: The poet’s mother is referred to as ‘she’ in these lines.
b. What was she looking at? Answer: She was looking at her photograph that was clicked twenty to thirty years back.
c. Who were Betty and Dolly? Answer: Betty and Dolly were cousins of the poet’s mother.
d. Why was she amused? Answer: She was amused at the way she and her cousins were dressed for the beach.
e. What are the two things that are ‘a matter of the past’? Answer: (a) To the poet’s mother, her childhood is a thing of the past. (b) To the poet, her mother’s laughter was a thing of the past.
f. What is suggested by ‘the laboured ease of loss’? Name the poetic device used. Answer: It was a painful effort to recall the time that has so easily slipped away. The poetic device used is oxymoron.
4. Now she’s been dead nearly as many years As that girl lived. And of this circumstance There is nothing to say at all. Its silence silences
a. Who had been dead many years? Answer: The mother has been dead for many years.
b. Who is that girl? Answer: The young girl is the mother, aged twelve.
c. Why does the poet say “As that girl lived”? Answer: To the mother, the little girl was the past that was true a long time back just as the mother was a living reality to the poet years back.
d. Explain: “Its silence silences”. Name the poetic device used. Answer: The stillness of the photograph and the overwhelming sense of her mother’s loss mutes the poet. The poetic device used is paradox.
We have decided to create the most comprehensive English Summary that will help students with learning and understanding. in this article we are covered Silk Road Summary.
Silk Road Summary in English by Nick Middleton
Silk Road by Nick Middleton About the Author
Author Name
Nick Middleton
Born
1960 (age 60 years), London, United Kingdom
Books
Going to Extremes, Global Casino, Rivers: A Very Short Introduction
Awards
The Royal Geographical Society’s Ness
Silk Road Summary by Nick Middleton
Silk Road Summary in English
The narrator was leaving Ravu and heading towards Mount Kailash to complete the kora. It was in the early hours of the morning that they were set to leave. Lhamo gave the narrator a long-sleeved sheepskin coat, which all the men wore, as a farewell present. Tsetan assessed him as they got into his car. They took a short cut to get off the Changtang. Tsetan knew a route that would take them south-west, almost directly towards Mount Kailash. It involved crossing several fairly high mountain passes, he said. Going that way would not be a problem if there was no snow but that one could never know till one reached there.
From the gently rising and falling hills of Ravu, the short cut took them across vast open plains, dry grazing land, with nothing in them except a few small antelopes. Moving ahead they noticed that the plains became more stony than grassy. Here they saw a herd of wild ass that were racing around and of which Tsetan had told them even before they appeared.
The drive again became steep. They crossed drokbas tending their flocks. Thickly clad men and women stared at their car and at times waved at them while the sheep would turn away from the vehicle. They passed nomads’ dark tents pitched in the isolated places usually with a huge black dog, a Tibetan big, smooth-haired dog guarding them. These dogs would observe them from a distance and as they drew closer, they would rush towards them and chase them for about a hundred metres. These hairy dogs were pitch black and usually wore bright red collars and barked angrily with enormous jaws. They were absolutely fearless of their vehicle and would run straight onto their way. Tsetan had to brake and turn sharply to avoid them. It was because of their ferocity that these Tibetan mastiffs were brought from Tibet to China’s imperial courts as hunting dogs.
As they entered a valley, they could see snow-capped mountains and the wide river but mostly blocked with ice that was sparkling in the sunshine. As they moved ahead, on their upward track, the turns became sharper and the ride bumpier. The rocks around were covered with patches of bright orange lichen. Under the rocks, seemed unending shade. The narrator felt the pressure building up in his ears so he held his nose, snorted and cleared them. Just then Tsetan stopped and the three of them—Tsetan, Daniel and the narrator walked out of the car.
It continued to snow. The snow that had collected was too steep for their vehicle to scale, so there was no way of going around the snow patch. The narrator looked at his wristwatch and realized that they were at 5,210 metres above sea level.
The snow didn’t look too deep, but the danger was that if the car slipped it could turn over. Tsetan grabbed handfuls of soil and threw it across the frozen surface of ice. Daniel and the narrator stayed out of the vehicle to lessen Tsetan’s load. He backed and drove towards the dirty snow, and with no difficulty the car moved on. But after ten minutes of driving, there was another obstruction. Tsetan assessed the scene and this time he decided to drive round the snow. It was a steep slope scattered with big rocks, but Tsetan got past them. The narrator checked his watch again; they were 5,400 metres above sea level and his head began to ache terribly. He gulped a little water for relief.
When they reached the top of the pass at 5,515 metres, they noticed large rocks decorated with white silk scarves and ragged prayer flags. All of them took a clockwise round them as is the tradition and Tsetan checked the tyres on his vehicle. He stopped at the petrol tank. The lower atmospheric pressure was allowing the fuel to expand.
The narrator was soon relieved of headache as they went to the other side of the pass. At two o’clock, they stopped for lunch and ate hot noodles inside a long canvas work tent, put up beside a dry salt lake. The plateau was covered with spots of salty desert area and salt lakes, leftovers of the Tethys Ocean, which surrounded Tibet before the steep climb. Here there was a lot of activity, men with pickaxes and shovels were moving around wearing long sheepskin coats and salt-covered boots. All of them were wearing sunglasses against the bright light of the trucks as they came laden with piles of salt.
By late afternoon they reached a small town, Hor, back on the main east-west highway that followed the old trade route from Lhasa to Kashmir. Daniel took a ride in a truck and went to Lhasa. Tsetan and the narrator bade him farewell.
Hor was a gloomy place covered with dust and rocks and devoid of vegetation. It was scattered with a lot of refuse that had gathered over the years. It was regrettable as this town was on the shore of Lake Manasarovar, Tibet’s most honoured lake. Ancient Hindu and Buddhist study of the universe pinpoints Manasarovar as the source of four great Indian rivers: the Indus, the Ganges, the Sutlej and the Brahmaputra. Actually, only the Sutlej flows from this lake, but the headwaters of the others all rise nearby on the sides of Mount Kailash. They had tea in Hor’s only cafe which, like all the other buildings in town, was built from badly painted concrete and had three broken windows but they had a good view of the lake through one of the windows.
After half an hour’s stop, they drove westwards out of the town towards Mount Kailash.
The narrator was surprised to see Hor because it was absolutely different from what he had read about it. Ekai Kawaguchi, a Japanese monk who had been there in 1900, was so stirred by the holiness of the lake that he burst into tears. A few years later, the place had a similar effect on Sven Hedin, a Swede visitor.
They reached a guesthouse in Darchen after 10.30 p.m. They were 4,760 metres above the sea level. It was a disturbed night. The narrator had terrible cold because of the open-air rubbish dump in Hor. With his nostrils blocked he found it difficult to breathe. He was tired and hungry and thus started breathing through his mouth.
But barely had he slept when he woke up abruptly. His felt a peculiar heaviness in his chest; he sat up and cleared his nasal passages. He felt relieved but the moment he lay down he intuitively felt that something was wrong. He was not breathless but simply could not sleep. The fear of dying in his sleep kept him awake.
The next morning Tsetan took him to the Darchen Medical College. It was a new building that looked like a monastery from the outside. It had a very solid door that opened into a large courtyard. In the consulting room was a Tibetan doctor who did not have the equipment that a doctor would have. Clad in a thick pullover and a woolly hat, he listened to the narrator’s symptoms and said it was because of the altitude and cold. He assured the narrator that he would be fine and gave him a brown envelope stuffed with fifteen screws of paper that contained brown powder that tasted like cinnamon. He was asked to take them with hot water. The narrator did not like the look of the contents but took them anyway. He slept very soundly.
When Tsetan was assured that the narrator was going to be well, he left him and returned to Lhasa. As a Buddhist, it didn’t really matter if the narrator died but he thought it would be bad for business. After the narrator got his rest and a good night’s sleep, Darchen didn’t look so awful. It was still dusty, and had heaps of rubble and refuse, but the bright sun gave him a view of the Himalayas. He saw the snow-capped mountain, Gurla Mandhata, with a small cloud hanging over its peak.
The town had a few general stores selling Chinese cigarettes, soap and other basic provisions, as well as the usual strings of prayer flags. In front of one, men collected in the afternoon for a game of pool on a strange table in the open air, while nearby women washed their long hair in the icy water of a narrow brook near the guesthouse. Darchen felt stress-free and slow but for the narrator this was a major disadvantage. There were no pilgrims. He had been told that in the peak of the pilgrimage season, the town was full of visitors. That was the reason for his being there in the beginning of the season, but it seemed that he was too early.
One afternoon he sat with a glass of tea in Darchen’s only cafe thinking about the paucity of pilgrims and the fact that he hadn’t made much progress with his self-help programme on positive thinking. After some contemplation, he felt he could only wait. He did not like the idea of going alone on a pilgrimage.
The kora was seasonal because parts of the road were likely to be blocked by snow. He had no idea if the snow had cleared, but he saw the large pieces of dirty ice on the banks of Darchen’s stream. From the time when Tsetan had left, he had not met anyone in Darchen who could answer even the basic questions in English till he met Norbu.
The narrator was in a small, dark cafe with a long metal stove that ran down the middle. The walls and roofs were covered with multi-coloured sheets of plastic that is made into shopping bags in many countries. Plastic is one of China’s most successful exports along the Silk Road today. He sat beside a window so that he could see the pages of his notebook. He also had a novel with him. Norbu saw the book, came to him, sat opposite and asked the narrator if he was ‘English’. They stated a conversation. The narrator could make out that he did not belong to that place as he was wearing a windcheater and metal-rimmed spectacles of Western style. He told the narrator that he was a Tibetan, but worked in Beijing at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in the Institute of Ethnic Literature. He, too, had come to do the kora.
Norbu had been writing academic papers about the Kailash kora and its importance in various works of Buddhist literature for many years, but he had never actually done it himself. When the narrator told him what brought him to Darchen, he was excited and wanted to work with him as a team. He soon realized that Norbu was as ill-equipped as him for the pilgrimage. He kept telling the narrator how fat he was and how tough it was going to be for him to walk. He wasn’t really a practising Buddhist, it became known, but he had enthusiasm and he was a Tibetan.
Although at first the narrator had thought that he would make the trek in the company of religious people but then felt that Norbu would turn out to be the ideal companion. Norbu suggested that they hire some yaks to carry the luggage, as he said it was not possible for him to prostrate himself all round the mountain as that was not his style, and anyway his tummy was too big.
Silk Road Summary Questions and Answers
Question 1. Why did the narrator undertake the journey to Mount Kailash? Describe his memories of the day when they set out on their journey. Answer: The narrator was moving towards Mount Kailash to complete the kora. He recalls the day, when they set out from Ravu, with nostalgia. It was a ‘perfect’ early morning to start a journey. The clouds looked like long French loaves glimmering pink as the rising sun shone on them. The far-away mountain peaks glowed with a rose-tinted colour. Lhamo presented him with one of the long-sleeved sheepskin coats that all the men there wore, for protection against cold.
Question 2. Describe the initial phase of their journey. Answer: As they set out, they took a shorter route to get off the Changtang. It was a road that would take them south¬west, almost directly towards Mount Kailash. It required crossing several quite high mountain passes. Tsetan was confident that if there was no snow they would have a comfortable journey but that they would not know till they got there.
From the gently sloping hills of Ravu, the short cut took them across vast open plains with nothing in them except a few antelopes grazing in the arid pastures. As they moved ahead, the plains became more stony than grassy. There, the antelopes were replaced by herds of wild ass.
Question 3. What did the narrator notice about the ‘drokbas’? Answer: As the narrator went further up the hills from the rocky wasteland, he noticed the solitary drokbas tending their flocks. Sometimes these well-wrapped figures would halt briefly and stare at their car. They seldom waved as they crossed. When the road took them close to the sheep, the animals would swerve away from the speeding car.
Question 4. The narrator was fascinated by the awesome mastiffs. Why? Answer: Crossing the nomads’ dark tents pitched in remoteness, the narrator noticed that a huge black dog, a Tibetan mastiffs, guarded most of the tents. These monstrous creatures would tilt their great big heads when someone moved towards them. As they drew closer, these dogs would race straight towards them, like a bullet from a gun. These dogs were pitch black and usually wore bright red collars. They barked furiously with their gigantic jaws and were so fearless that they ran straight into the path of their vehicle. They would chase them for about a hundred metres. The narrator could understand why Tibetan mastiffs became popular in China’s imperial courts as hunting dogs.
Question 5. How did Tsetan manoeuvre across the first patch of snow that they came across? Answer: Tsetan stopped at a tight bend and got out because the snow had covered the path in front of them. This unexpected-depository was too steep for their vehicle to mount. Tsetan stepped on to the covered snow, and stamped his foot to determine how sturdy it was. The snow was not deep but the car could turn over. Tsetan took handfuls of dirt and threw them across the frozen surface. Daniel and the narrator, too, joined in. When the snow was spread with soil, Tsetan backed up the vehicle and drove towards the dirty snow. The car moved across the icy surface without noticeable difficulty.
Question 6. When did the narrator feel unwell or the first time? What did he do? Answer: When they went further up the trail and were 5,400 metres above the sea level, the narrator got an awful headache. He took gulps from his water bottle, which is supposed to help during a speedy uphill journey. His headache soon cleared as they went down the other side of the pass.
Question 7. What was the sight on the plateau ruins of the Tethys Ocean? Answer: The narrator and his friends stopped for lunch in a long canvas tent, part of a work camp erected beside a dry salt lake. The plateau was covered with salty desert area and salty lakes that were remnants of the Tethys Ocean. This place was bustling with activity.
Men with pickaxes and shovels were moving back and forth in their long sheepskin coats and salt-covered boots. All wore sunglasses as protection against the dazzling light of blue trucks that energed from the lake with piles of salt.
Question 8. Why was the narrator sorry to see the miserable plight of Hor? Answer: Hor was a dismal place with no vegetation. It only had dust and rocks coupled with years of accumulated refuse. He found this unfortunate because this town was on the banks of Lake Manasarovar, Tibet’s most venerated stretch of water.
Question 9. What is the belief about Lake Manasarovar? What is the fact? Answer: According to ancient Hindu and Buddhist cosmology Manasarovar is the source of four great Indian rivers: the Indus, the Ganges, the Sutlej and the Brahmaputra. In actuality only the Sutlej flows from the lake, but the headwaters of the all others rise nearby on the flanks of Mount Kailash.
Question 10. The narrator ‘slept very soundly. Like a log, not a dead man’. Explain. Answer: After going to the Tibetan doctor the narrator soon recovered. Unpalatable as it seemed, the medicine led him to a quick recovery. Hence the narrator had a healthy and sound sleep unlike when he was ailing and restless. He slept undisturbed. He was not tossing and turning because he was sound a sleep, not because he felt lifeless.
Gulliver’s Travels recounts the adventures of an Englishman, Lemuel Gulliver, who trained as a surgeon, but took to the seas when his business failed. In an unemotional first-person narrative, that rarely shows any signs of self-reflection or deep emotional response, Gulliver narrates the adventures that befall him on his travels.
Gulliver’s adventure in Lilliput begins when he wakes, after his shipwreck, to find himself bound by innumerable tiny threads and addressed by tiny captors who are in awe of him but fiercely protective of their kingdom. They are not afraid to use violence against Gulliver, though their arrows are little more than pinpricks. But overall, they are hospitable, risking famine in their land by feeding Gulliver, who consumes more food than a thousand Lilliputians combined could.
Gulliver is taken into the capital city by a vast wagon the Lilliputians have specially built. He is presented to the emperor, who is entertained by Gulliver, just as Gulliver is flattered by the attention of royalty. Eventually, Gulliver becomes a national resource, used by the army in its war against the people of Blefuscu, whom the Lilliputians hate for doctrinal differences concerning the proper way of cracking eggs. However, things change when Gulliver is convicted of treason for putting out a fire in the royal palace with his urine and is condemned to be shot in the eyes and starved to death. Gulliver escapes to Blefuscu, where he is able to find and repair a boat and set sail for England.
After staying in England with his wife and family for two months, Gulliver undertakes his next sea voyage, which takes him to Brobdingnag, a land of giants. Here, a field worker discovers him. The farmer treats him as little more than an animal, keeping him for amusement, and eventually, selling him to the queen, who looks upon him as a diversion and is entertained by his musical talents. Social life is easy for Gulliver after his discovery by the court, but not particularly enjoyable.
Gulliver is often repulsed by the physicality of the Brobdingnagians, whose ordinary flaws are many times magnified by their huge size. He is generally startled by the ignorance of the people here—even the king knows nothing about politics. More unsettling findings in Brobdingnag come in the form of various animals of the realm that endanger his life. Even Brobdingnagian insects leave slimy trails on his food that make eating difficult. On a trip to the frontier, accompanying the royal couple, Gulliver leaves Brobdingnag when his cage is plucked by an eagle and dropped into the sea.
Next, Gulliver sets sail again and, after an attack by pirates, ends up in Laputa, where a floating island, inhabited by theoreticians and academics, oppresses Balnibarbi, the land below. The scientific research undertaken in Laputa and in Balnibarbi seems totally inane and impractical, and its residents, too, appear wholly out of touch with reality. Taking a short side trip to Glubbdubdrib, Gulliver is able to witness the conjuring up of figures from history, such as Julius Caesar and other military leaders, whom he finds much less impressive than in books. After visiting the Luggnaggians and the Struldbrugs, the latter of which are senile immortals who prove that age does not bring wisdom, he is able to sail to Japan and from there, back to England.
Finally, on his fourth journey, Gulliver sets out as captain of a ship, but after the mutiny of his crew and a long confinement in his cabin, he arrives in an unknown land. This land is populated by Houyhnhnms, rational-thinking horses who rule, and by Yahoos, brutish humanlike creatures who serve the Houyhnhnms. Gulliver sets about learning their language and when he masters it, he narrates his voyages to them and explains the constitution of England. He is treated with great courtesy and kindness by the horses and is enlightened by his many conversations with them and by his exposure to their noble culture.
He wants to stay with the Houyhnhnms, but his bared body reveals to the horses that he is very much like a Yahoo and he is banished. Gulliver is grief-stricken but agrees to leave. He fashions a canoe and makes his way to a nearby island, where he is picked up by a Portuguese ship captain who treats him well, though now, Gulliver cannot help but see the captain—and all humans—as shamefully Yahoo-like. Gulliver then concludes his narrative with the claim that the lands he has visited belong, by rights, to England, as her colonies, even though he questions the whole idea of colonialism.
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Summary of Novel The Story of My Life Summary by Helen Keller
The Story of My Life Summary: The story is an inspirational account of the world of a blind and deaf girl, and how she triumphs over her disabilities, going to school and college, facing exams and learning to enjoy the simple things in life. Some of her concerns are common to all young people of her age, but other concerns arose exclusively out of her desire to triumph over her disabilities. The book shows us the perception of a person who has been denied sight and sound and struggles to understand the world and interact with those around her. It also shows us how normal people can help to aid those with disabilities.
Helen Adams Keller was born on 27 June 1880, in the north-west Alabama city of Tuscumbia. Her father was a retired confederate army captain and editor of a local newspaper The North Alabamian, while her mother, Kate, was an educated young woman from Memphis. Helen had a younger brother, Phillips Brooks and a sister, Mildred.
When Helen was nineteen months old, she was afflicted by an unknown illness, possibly scarlet fever or meningitis, which left her deaf and blind. Helen, who was an extremely intelligent child, tried to understand her surroundings through touch, smell and taste; and by the age of seven, Helen had developed nearly sixty hand gestures to communicate with her parents and ask for things.
However, she was often frustrated by her inability to express herself. With the help of her teacher, Anne Sullivan, Helen learned the manual alphabet and started communicating by finger spelling. Within a few months of working with Anne, Helen’s vocabulary increased to hundreds of words and simple sentences. Anne also taught Helen how to read braille and raised type, and to print block letters. By the age of nine, Helen began to learn to speak and read lips.
Helen attended Perkins School for the Blind for four years. She then spent a year at the Cambridge School for Young Ladies to prepare for Radcliffe College. In 1904, she graduated cum laude from Radcliffe and became the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
While in college, Keller undertook an essay assignment that eventually took the shape of her autobiography The Story of My Life in 1903. In this book, Helen chronicled her education and the first twenty-three years with her teacher and friend, Anne Sullivan providing supplementary accounts of the teaching process. The autobiography went on to become an almost unparalleled bestseller in multiple languages and laid the foundation of Keller’s literary career.
Chapter Wise Summary of Novel The Story of My Life by Helen Keller Chapter 1 to 23
The Story of My Life Summary Questions and Answers
Question 1. What does Helen mean by saying that “the shadows of the prison house are on the rest.. “? Answer: The expression means that Helen is not able to remember a large part of her childhood.
Question 2. When and where was Helen born? Answer: Helen was born on 27 June 1880 in Tuscumbia, a town in northern Alabama.
Question 3. What does Helen mean when she makes the statement, “it is true there is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors and no slave who has not had a king among his”? Answer: The author means that if one researches one’s lineage, the person will find all kinds of people who were their ancestors. That is, no family can have only powerful and rich people as their ancestors.
Question 4. Who were Caspar Keller, Arthur H Keller and Kate Adams? Answer: Caspar was Helen’s grandfather, Arthur was her father and Kate her mother.
Question 5. How do we know that the house in which Helen lived was very beautiful? Answer: Though the house was not very big, it was completely covered with vines, climbing roses and honeysuckle. From the garden, it looked like an arbour. The porch of the house was covered by a screen of yellow roses and southern smilax and it was always buzzing with hummingbirds and bees.
Question 6. How did Helen enjoy the beauties of her garden in spite of her blindness? Answer: Helen would feel the hedges and find different flowers by her sense of smell. She would find comfort in hiding her face in the cool leaves and grass. She wandered in the garden touching, feeling and smelling the various flowers, bushes and trees and could identify them accurately.
Question 7. What does Helen, want to express through the statement “I came, I saw, I conquered”? Answer: Helen wants to express the fact that she was a much loved child especially as she was the first born in the family.
Question 8. How did Helen get her name? Answer: Helen’s father had wanted to name her Mildred Campbell after an ancestor whom he had a high regard for, while her mother wanted to name her after her mother, whose maiden name was Helen Everett. However, by the time they reached the church for the ceremony, her father lost the name and when the minister asked him, he gave the name Helen Adams.
Question 9. Give two examples to show that Helen was an intelligent baby. Answer: When she was six months old, Helen could say “How d’ye?” and one day she started saying “Tea” very clearly. Even after her illness, she could recollect many of the words that she had learnt as a baby, like “water”.
Question 10. What motivated Helen to take her first steps as a baby? Answer: One day, when Helen’s mother was giving her a bath, she was attracted by the flickering shadows of the leaves that were reflected on the bathroom floor. She got up from her mother’s lap and walked towards the reflection to try and catch it.
Question 11. Why does Helen call February a dreary month? Answer: It was the month in which Helen was struck by an illness that left her deaf and blind. For her, it was a nightmarish experience.
Question 12. For how long had Helen been able to see and hear? Answer: Helen was able to see and hear for the first 19 months of her life.
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The Story of My Life Summary Chapter 23
In this chapter, Helen writes about her feelings of gratitude to the people who had touched her life in different ways, sometimes positively, sometimes otherwise. She acknowledges the immense contribution of her friends in her life.
In this chapter, Helen expresses her gratitude to a number of people, some famous and some unknown, who enriched her life over the years. The hands of people whom she met were ‘dumbly eloquent’ to her, she could understand their moods and emotions just by the feel of their hands as they clasped hers. Some people with their ‘frosty finger tips’ were empty of joys while some hands had ‘sunbeams in them’ which warmed her heart.
She expresses her love and gratitude to Bishop Brooks, who helped her to connect with the spiritual side of life and to understand that behind all religions runs the same message of brotherhood of man and fatherhood of God. He also taught her that the greatest of all is love. She mentions friends from far and near, who showered her with love and warmth. She shares that she would distinguish between a warm, caring person and an indifferent one by the way they would clasp her hand.
She also reveals her irritation at people who tried to patronise her by doubting her intelligence and trying to talk down to her. She then makes a list of all the great literary figures she met and the impact they had on her life. She mentions Dr Alexander Graham Bell and the time spent with him. She mentions her appreciation of his work to improve the lives of deaf children. She makes a special mention of Mr Lawrence Hutton, and literary greats Dean Howells, Mark Twain, Richard Watson Gilder etc.
She reveals her struggle to keep up with their conversations and the delightful experience of reading the lips of Mark Twain as he read out his stories to her. Helen ends her autobiography by acknowledging the fact that it is her friends who have made the story of her life remarkable and turned her limitations into beautiful privileges.
The Story of My Life Summary Chapter 23 Questions and Answers
Question 1. How was Helen impacted by people who were warm and sympathetic towards her? Answer: The warmth and sympathetic nature of some of the people in Helen’s life made her feel restful and helped dissolve her confusion, irritation and worries. It gave her the feeling that everything was fine.
Question 2. Who were the people Helen tried to avoid? Answer: Helen tried to avoid people who asked her silly questions, like news reporters, and people who looked down on her, talking to her in a patronising and condescending manner.
Question 3. What did Helen mean by calling the hands of people “dumbly eloquent”? Answer: Helen tried to make her readers aware that though hands cannot talk, they can still say a lot about the personality of a person. On shaking hands with people, Helen could differentiate between a warm, loving person and a cold, aloof person.
Question 4. Why did Helen apologise to her “far-off friends”? Answer: Helen apologised to her “far-off friends” because she had never met them, yet they wrote to her from far-off places. She was grateful to them for reaching out to her. However, she was apologetic because she was not able to write back and thank them.
Question 5. What did she learn from Bishop Brooks? Answer: Helen leamt a lot about the spiritual side of life from Bishop Brooks. The most important thing she learnt was that the underlying message of all religions was the same: the brotherhood of man and the importance of love.
Question 6. Why did Dr Oliver Wendell Holmes cry during his meeting with Helen? Answer: When Helen recited a few lines from Tennyson’s poem, Dr Oliver Wendell Holmes was so moved that tears streamed down his cheeks and fell on Helen’s hand.
Question 7. Why did Whittier call Miss Sullivan Helen’s “spiritual liberator”? Answer: Whittier recognised the great work done by Miss Sullivan in exposing Helen to the world of literature, and helping her to develop the passion to understand and appreciate it. Therefore, though she was blind she had a deep understanding of the classics, which enriched her soul.
Question 8. Why did Helen feel indebted to Dr Edward Everett Hale? Answer: Helen was grateful to Dr Edward Everett Hale for his support and sympathy to her own self and Miss Sullivan, when they were disheartened and upset during their great struggle.
Question 9. Why did Helen think that Dr Bell was not only a great scientist but an even greater human being? Answer: Dr Bell had many revolutionary inventions to his credit, but Helen felt, that his scientific ability was dwarfed by his human goodness, as he spent a lot of time with deaf children and made great contributions towards making their life easier.
Question 10. What did Helen enjoy about her meetings with the literary giants of her time? Answer: Helen loved being part of the literary discussions with the great literary minds of her time, even though she was not able to understand everything they said. However, it was extremely enlightening for her to spend time listening to such conversations.
Question 11. How did Helen describe Mark Twain? Answer: Helen found Mark Twain to be extremely positive and bright and imagined him to have a twinkle in his eye. He had the compassion and patience to read out his stories to Helen, who lip-read them. She felt that behind his cynical, droll sense of humour, lay a tender-hearted and sympathetic man.
Question 12. Was Helen able to mention the names of all her friends? Why? Answer: Helen expressed her inability to mention all her friends because firstly, there were too many people she felt indebted to and there were many others who did not want their contributions to be made public.
