Textbook Questions & Answers Verbatim questions from NCERT
Understanding the Text / Talking about the Text / Appreciation pulled from NCERT pages. :contentReference[oaicite:12]{index=12} :contentReference[oaicite:13]{index=13}
Understanding the Text
1) An account of reflections is more important than a description of reality according to the author. Why? (Long Answer: 160–180 words)
Woolf shows that bare facts do not capture how experience actually forms within us. The narrator looks at a small spot and, before any “real” identification, her mind pours outward into images, memories, and questions about knowledge and authority. That meandering course is not a distraction from truth; it is the site where truth is felt, tested, and shaped. Lists of lost objects, musings on antiquaries, and satire of ranked tables reveal how generalisations harden into rules while private thought remains supple and alive. The final discovery—that the mark is only a snail—arrives almost as an afterthought and adds a gentle joke: the concrete answer is modest, but the inner journey it sparked was rich, humane, and revealing. By treating reflections as primary, Woolf urges readers to notice the flow of consciousness—pauses, leaps, returns—as a faithful record of life in time. Reality, she suggests, is not discarded; rather, it is understood more deeply when we honour the mind’s own way of moving. :contentReference[oaicite:14]{index=14} :contentReference[oaicite:15]{index=15}
2) Looking back at objects and habits of a bygone era can give one a feeling of phantom-like unreality. What examples does the author give to bring out this idea? (Short Answer: 50–60 words)
She recalls Sunday walks and luncheons, the habit of sitting together till a fixed hour, and decorative “standard things” such as tapestry tablecloths and Landseer prints. Once treated as absolute, these customs later seem half-real, like phantoms, showing how received standards lose authority and fade into mere images in memory. :contentReference[oaicite:16]{index=16}
3) How does the imagery of (i) the fish (ii) the tree, used almost poetically by the author, emphasise the idea of stillness of living, breathing thought? (Long Answer: 160–180 words)
Both images join motion to poise. The fish is “balanced against the stream,” suspended yet alive within current; it captures a mind held steady while ideas flow around it. The tree, imagined through seasons—storm grinding, sap oozing, winter bark enduring—suggests growth that is silent and composed. Woolf’s detailed scene, from beetles to moorhens and snapping fibres, lets the reader feel a calm centre within change. Thought, in this model, breathes: it is not fixed like a table of ranks, nor hurried like a timetable, but living, seasonal, and patient. The images slow attention so we sense the texture of consciousness—its pressure, rest, and quiet recoveries—without losing movement. They also oppose a noisy public world (war talk, newspapers) with an inward ecology of noticing. In short, fish and tree make inward stillness visible: they confirm that reflective life is neither idle nor inert, but a balanced activity that gathers the world without being swept away by it. :contentReference[oaicite:17]{index=17}
4) How does the author pin her reflections on a variety of subjects on the ‘mark on the wall’? What does this tell us about the way the human mind functions? (Long Answer: 160–180 words)
The mark works as a cue that repeatedly launches and resets associative thinking. Each time the narrator glances back—wondering if it is a nail, a crack, a rose leaf—her mind branches into linked scenes: lost possessions, imagined antiquaries, museum cases, and social hierarchies fixed by Whitaker’s. The returns to the mark keep the meditation coherent while allowing free movement. This rhythm—cue, departure, return—models a natural mental process in which small perceptions open into broad themes and then narrow again to the initial object. The essay shows that thought is recursive and layered: it loops, tests, and revises itself rather than marching in straight lines. When Nature finally nudges her to act (look at the mark), the chain is broken and the practical world enters, revealing the mark as a snail. Far from cancelling reflection, the reveal confirms how minds handle uncertainty: we imagine, compare, and question until a fact intervenes—and even then, the meaning of the journey remains. :contentReference[oaicite:18]{index=18} :contentReference[oaicite:19]{index=19}
5) Not seeing the obvious could lead a perceptive mind to reflect upon more philosophical issues. Discuss this with reference to the ‘snail on the wall’. (Very Short Answer: 30–40 words)
Delaying inspection lets thought range over knowledge, order, and habit. When another voice finally names the snail, the ordinary fact grounds the meditation without erasing it, showing how small uncertainties can trigger large, useful reflections. :contentReference[oaicite:20]{index=20}
Talking about the Text
1) ‘In order to fix a date, it is necessary to remember what one saw’. Have you experienced this at any time? Describe one such incident, and the non-chronological details that helped you remember a particular date. (Very Short Answer: 30–40 words)
Yes. I once recalled an exam date by picturing wet corridors, a flickering tube-light, and steam on my glasses after rain. Those vivid details revived the timetable entry and fixed the exact Tuesday in my memory. :contentReference[oaicite:21]{index=21}
2) ‘Tablecloths of a different kind were not real tablecloths’. Does this sentence embody the idea of blind adherence to rules and tradition? Discuss with reference to ‘Understanding Freedom and Discipline’ by J. Krishnamurti that you’ve already read. (Short Answer: 50–60 words)
The line satirises rigid norms that police taste. It echoes Krishnamurti’s warning that habit becomes authority when unexamined. Calling one pattern “real” and others false shows conditioning at work; true discipline, by contrast, grows from awake perception rather than obedience to inherited standards. :contentReference[oaicite:22]{index=22}
3) According to the author, nature prompts action as a way of ending thought. Do we tacitly assume that ‘men of action are men who don’t think’? (Short Answer: 50–60 words)
Woolf notes a “slight contempt” for action, yet shows action can kindly halt unhelpful rumination. Looking at the mark resets the mind. The point is balance: action may follow and clear thought, not replace it; doing and thinking can assist one another. :contentReference[oaicite:23]{index=23}
Appreciation
1) Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of narration… Which of these is exemplified in this essay? Illustrate. (Long Answer: 160–180 words)
The essay exemplifies the second: narration that reproduces a character’s mental process with minimal outside commentary. We move through associations triggered by a small visual cue, and the mind’s texture—hesitations, lists, leaps—supplies the structure. Woolf’s syntax extends like a thought breathing: clauses accrete, revise, and loop, while images (fish, tree, river) render inward stillness within motion. Social satire surfaces not as a lecturing voice but as drifted observations: antiquaries and colonels, museum cases, and ranked tables from Whitaker’s Almanack. Even time is remembered by recalling what was seen—firelight, chrysanthemums, cigarette smoke—rather than by calendar. Finally, the external “plot” arrives in a spoken interruption and a plain fact: the mark is a snail. The outside world, including war talk and newspapers, punctures the reverie without cancelling it. Thus the piece models stream-of-consciousness: meaning emerges from the living sequence of perceptions instead of a tidy, omniscient report. :contentReference[oaicite:24]{index=24} :contentReference[oaicite:25]{index=25}
2) This essay frequently uses the non-periodic or loose sentence structure… Locate a few such sentences, and discuss how they contribute to the relaxed and conversational effect of the narration. (Long Answer: 160–180 words)
Woolf’s loose sentences could pause earlier yet continue gathering clauses, mirroring thought as it pads forward. Consider the inventory of lost things that swells through commas to “the Tube at fifty miles an hour”, or the antiquary passage, which strings correspondences, breakfasts, arrow-heads, and museum cases before shrugging, “proving I really don’t know what.” The fish-and-tree paragraph similarly widens by accretion: moorhens, beetles, fibres “snapping,” each detail adding motion without closing cadence. Such sentences do not march to finality; they hover and qualify, keeping tone conversational and flexible. The effect is intimacy: we are inside a mind that revises itself in real time. Meaning condenses not at period’s end but along the path, so readers experience reflection as a lived sequence rather than a finished verdict. This style suits the essay’s claim that reflections matter more than bare description: the form enacts the argument. :contentReference[oaicite:26]{index=26} :contentReference[oaicite:27]{index=27}
