St. Joseph’s College of Commerce (Autonomous)
End Semester Examination – ApRil 2015
B.B.M. –II Semester
ADDITIONAL ENGLISH
Duration: 3 Hours Max. Marks: 100
Note: Read the questions carefully and answer.
Do not exceed the paragraph limit.
Each paragraph should contain at least four sentences.
SECTION – A
Below are the opening paragraphs of two major novels. Read them carefully and answer the questions.
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
At the beginning of July, during an extremely hot spell, towards evening, a young man left the closet he rented from tenants in S——y Lane, walked out to the street, and slowly, as if indecisively, headed for the K——n Bridge.
He had safely avoided meeting his landlady on the stairs. His closet was located just under the roof of a tall, five-storied house, and was more like a cupboard than a room. As for the landlady, from whom he rented this closet with dinner and maid-service included, she lived one flight below, in separate rooms, and every time he went out he could not fail to pass by the landlady’s kitchen, the door of which almost always stood wide open to the stairs. And each time he passed by, the young man felt some painful and cowardly sensation, which made him wince with shame. He was over his head in debt to the landlady and was afraid of meeting her.
It was not that he was so cowardly and downtrodden, even quite the contrary; but for some time he had been in an irritable and tense state, resembling hypochondria. He was so immersed in himself and had isolated himself so much from everyone that he was afraid not only of meeting his landlady but of meeting anyone at all. He was crushed by poverty; but even his strained circumstances had lately ceased to burden him. He had entirely given up attending to his daily affairs and did not want to attend to them. As a matter of fact, he was not afraid of any landlady, whatever she might be plotting against him. But to stop on the stairs, to listen to all sorts of nonsense about this commonplace rubbish, which he could not care less about, all this badgering for payment, these threats and complaints, and to have to dodge all the while, make excuses, lie—oh, no, better to steal catlike down the stairs somehow and slip away unseen by anyone.
This time, however, as he walked out to the street, even he was struck by his fear of meeting his creditor.
“I want to attempt such a thing, and at the same time I’m afraid of such trifles!” he thought with a strange smile. “Hm . . . yes . . . man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice . . . That is an axiom . . . I wonder, what are people most afraid of? A new step, their own new word, that’s what they’re most afraid of . . . I babble too much, however. That’s why I don’t do anything, because I babble. However, maybe it’s like this: I babble because I don’t do anything. I’ve learned to babble over this past month, lying in a corner day in and day out, thinking about . . . cuckooland. Why on earth am I going now? Am I really capable of that? Is that something serious? No, not serious at all. I’m just toying with it, for the sake of fantasy. A plaything! Yes, a plaything, if you like!”
It was terribly hot out, and moreover it was close, crowded; lime, scaffolding, bricks, dust everywhere, and that special summer stench known so well to every Petersburger who cannot afford to rent a summer house—all at once these things unpleasantly shook the young man’s already overwrought nerves. The intolerable stench from the taverns, especially numerous in that part of the city, and the drunkards he kept running into even though it was a weekday, completed the loathsome and melancholy coloring of the picture. A feeling of the deepest revulsion flashed for a moment in the young man’s fine features. Incidentally, he was remarkably good-looking, taller than average, slender and trim, with beautiful dark eyes and dark blond hair. But soon he lapsed as if into deep-thought, or even, more precisely, into some sort of oblivion, and walked on no longer noticing what was around him, and not wishing to notice. He only muttered something to himself from time to time, out of that habit of monologues he had just confessed to himself. And at the same moment he was aware that his thoughts sometimes became muddled and that he was very weak: it was the second day that he had had almost nothing to eat…
War of the End of the World – Mario Vargas Llosa
The man was tall and so thin he seemed to be always in profile. He was dark-skinned and rawboned, and his eyes burned with perpetual fire. He wore shepherd’s sandals and the dark purple tunic draped over his body called to mind the cassocks of those missionaries who every so often visited the villages of the backlands, baptizing hordes of children and marrying men and women who were cohabiting. It was impossible to learn what his age, his background, his life story were, but there was something about his quiet manner, his frugal habits, his imperturbable gravity that attracted people even before he offered counsel.
He would appear all of a sudden, alone in the beginning, invariably on foot, covered with the dust of the road, every so many weeks, every so many months. His tall figure was silhouetted against the light of dusk or dawn as he walked down the one street of the town, in great strides, with a sort of urgency. He would make his way along determinedly, amid nanny goats with tinkling bells, amid dogs and children who stepped aside and stared at him inquisitively, not returning the greetings of the women who already knew him and were nodding to him and hastening to bring him jugs of goat’s milk and dishes of manioc and black beans. But he neither ate nor drank until he had gone as far as the church of the town and seen, once more, a hundred times over, that it was dilapidated, its paint faded, its towers unfinished and its walls full of holes and its floors buckling and its altars worm-eaten. A sad look would come over his face, with all the grief of a migrant from the Northeast whose children and animals have been killed by the drought, who has nothing left and must abandon his house, the bones of his dead, and flee, flee somewhere, not knowing where. Sometimes he would weep, and as he did so the black fire in his eyes would flare up in awesome flashes. He would immediately begin to pray. But not the way other men or women pray: he would stretch out face downward on the ground or the stones or the chipped tiles, in front of where the altar was or had been or would be, and would lie there praying, at times in silence, at times aloud, for an hour, two hours, observed with respect and admiration by the townspeople. He recited the Credo, the Our Father, and the Hail Marys that everyone was familiar with, and also other prayers that nobody had heard before but that, as the days, the months, the years went by, people gradually learned by heart. Where is the parish priest? they would hear him ask. Why isn’t there a pastor for the flock here? And each time he discovered that there was no priest in the village it made him as sad at heart as the ruin of the Lord’s dwelling place.
Only after having asked the Blessed Jesus’ pardon for the state in which they had allowed His house to fall did he agree to eat and drink something, barely a sample of what the villagers hastened to offer him even in years of scarcity. He was willing to sleep indoors with a roof over his head, in one or another of the dwellings where the people of the backlands offered him hospitality, but those who gave him lodging rarely saw him take his rest in the hammock or makeshift bed or on the mattress placed at his disposal. He would lie down on the floor, without even a blanket, and, leaning his head with its wild mane of jet-black hair on one arm, would sleep for a few hours. Always so few that he was the last one to retire at night and yet when the cowherds and shepherds who were up earliest left for the fields they would catch sight of him, already at work mending the walls and roof of the church.
He gave his counsel when dusk was falling, when the men had come back from the fields and the women had finished their household tasks and the children were already asleep. He gave it in those stony, treeless, open spots to be found in all the villages of the backlands at the main crossroads, which might have been called public squares if they had had benches, tree-lined walks, gardens, or had kept those that they had once had and that little by little had been destroyed by drought, pestilence, indolence. He gave it at that hour when the sky of the North of Brazil, before becoming completely dark and studded with stars, blazes amid tufted white, gray, or bluish clouds and there is a sort of vast fireworks display overhead, above the vastness of the world. He gave it at that hour when fires are lighted to chase away the insects and prepare the evening meal, when the steamy air grows less stifling and a breeze rises that puts people in better spirits to endure the sickness, the hunger, and the sufferings of life.
He spoke of simple and important things, not looking at any person in particular among those who surrounded him, or rather looking with his incandescent eyes beyond the circle of oldsters, men and women, children, at something or someone only he could see. Things that were understandable because they had been vaguely known since time immemorial, things taken in along with the milk of one’s mother’s breast. Present, tangible, everyday, inevitable things, such as the end of the world and the Last Judgment, which might well occur before the time it would take for the town to set the chapel with drooping wings upright again. What would happen when the Blessed Jesus looked down upon the sorry state in which they had left His house? What would He say of the behavior of pastors who, instead of helping the poor, emptied their pockets by charging them money for the succor of religion? Could the words of God be sold? Shouldn’t they be given freely, with no price tag attached? What excuse would be offered to the Father by priests who fornicated, despite their vows of chastity? Could they invent lies that would be believed by a God who can read a person’s thoughts as easily as the tracker on earth reads the trail left by a jaguar? Practical, everyday, familiar things, such as death, which leads to happiness if one comes to it with a pure and joyous soul, as to a fiesta. Were men animals? If they were not, they should pass through that door dressed in their very best, as a sign of reverence for Him whom they were about to meet. He spoke to them of heaven, and of hell as well, the domain of the Dog, paved with burning-hot coals and infested with rattlesnakes, and of how Satan could manifest himself by way of seemingly harmless innovations…
- Answer ALL in about one paragraph each. Each carries 5 marks. (4×5 = 20)
- What is the kind of atmosphere or mood that the first novel creates in its beginning?
- Comment on the description offered in the first paragraph of the second novel. Does the description help you in imagining the character?
- With which character can you identify easily and immediately? Why so?
- Point out and comment on any one similarity and one difference between both the beginnings.
- Answer ALL in about three or four paragraphs. Each carries 15 marks. (2×15 = 30)
- Indecision and hunger seem to be linked very deeply in the beginnings of ‘Crime and Punishment’. What other emotional and physical states does it deal with? Do you think it is an arresting way of beginning a novel? Respond by quoting words or phrases from the passage.
- The character in ‘War of the End of the World’ seems to be a humble preacher. The narrator says nothing about his past and yet describes his present condition with clarity; doesn’t know his name and yet describes his behaviour; doesn’t know where he comes from and yet seems to know where he is headed. The narrator tracks the movement of this preacher as though he were one of his followers. Why do you think the narrator adopts this technique? How do you think the narrative may unfold further and what might be the fate of this character? Respond using your imagination.
SECTION – B
- Answer ANY FIVE questions in about two or three paragraphs. Each carries 10 marks. (5×10 = 50)
- In the story ‘Classmate’ what are the different techniques that Bhagavan uses to cure Basavegowda of his illness? What symbolic significance does it carry?
- Compare the story ‘The Overcoat’ with ‘Classmate’ and compare AkakiyAkakievitch with Shivappa. Do you think there are any parallels to both these stories and characters?
- The title of the prose poem ‘Let’s Beat Up The Poor!’ seems to be very provocative. The poem also aims for one particular thing: provocation. Whom do you think is the provocation intended: to the beggar in the poem or to the reader of the poem? And, is it successful in provoking?
- We seem to think of colonialism and racism as a thing of the past. Yet, traces of both are visible everywhere. How are they both dealt with in the story ‘India is a Strange Country’ and the poem ‘Telephone Conversation’?
- Write about any two vachanas that you have read in the class.
- Both ‘Like the Sun’ and ‘The Card-Sharper’s Daughter’ begin with an explicit message which the rest of the story would drive home. Compare both the stories and point out the similarities or differences in terms of the theme, style and structure of the writing.
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