Grade 10.

Literature in English - 2010 September 23 to September 28, 2024

WEEK 5

SECTION A: POETRY

Answer one question from this section.

SONGS OF OURSELVES VOLUME 1: from Part 4

Remember to support your ideas with details from the writing.

1. Read this poem, and then answer the question that follows it:

Follower

My father worked with a horse-plough,

His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horses strained at his clicking tongue.

An expert. He would set the wing

And fit the bright steel-pointed sock.
The sod rolled over without breaking.
At the headrig, with a single pluck

Of reins, the sweating team turned round

And back into the land. His eye
Narrowed and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly.

I stumbled in his hobnailed wake,

Fell sometimes on the polished sod;
Sometimes he rode me on his back
Dipping and rising to his plod.

I wanted to grow up and plough,

To close one eye, stiffen my arm.
All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow round the farm.

I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,

Yapping always. But today
It is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away

Seamus Heaney

Q. Explore the ways in which Heaney makes this such a powerfully dramatic poem?

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#Rana R. Sherwani
 Grade 10. Literature in English - 2010 September 23 to September 28, 2024
WEEK 5

2. Read this poem, and then answer the question that follows it:

Storyteller

she sat down

at the scoured table
in the swept kitchen
beside the dresser with its cracked delft.
And every last crumb of daylight was salted away.

No one could say the stories were useless

for as the tongue clacked
five or forty fingers stitched
corn was grated from the husk
patchwork was pieced
or the darning was done.

Never the one to slander her shiftless.

Daily sloven or spotless no matter whether
Dishwater or tasty was her soup.
To tell the stories was her work.
It was like spinning,
gathering air to the single strongest
thread. Night in
she’d have us waiting, held
breath, for the ending we knew by heart.

And at first light

as the women stirred themselves to build the fire
as the peasant’s feet felt for clogs
as thin grey light washed over flat fields
the stories dissolved in the whorl of the ear
but they
hung themselves upside down
in the sleeping heads of the children
till they flew again
in the storytellers night.

Liz Lochead

Q. How does this poem movingly convey the speaker's thoughts and feelings in this poem?

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#Rana R. Sherwani
 Grade 10. Literature in English - 2010 September 23 to September 28, 2024
WEEK 5

From STORIES OF OURSELVES Volume 2

3. Read the following text and answer the question that follows:

How stupid. How stupid of his mother. Why hadn't she sewed the Union Jack on his raincoat in the
first place? She loved sewing. She was always mending and sewing, not even listening to his father
and Miss Pym scrapping away about politics, just looking across at them now and then, or looking
over, smiling at him. His socks were more darns than socks because she so loved darning. Loved
making things perfect. Loved making everything seem all right.

So when she sends him away with a rotten little Woolworth's Union Jack out of a cheap packet of
them, loose in a tin. And not waving either when she'd said goodbye. Not crying at all. he knew about
that crying-and-laughing-together she did. He'd never thought anything of it. He wondered if it had
been the laughing-and-crying and all the darning and soupy Miss Pym and her French that had killed
his father.

After all, she hadn't really seemed to mind his father dying. Gone off to bed for the funeral. Perhaps
she'd really wanted him to die. Wanted to be free of him so that she could have long, cosy chats with
Miss Pym. Horrible Miss Pym speaking her mind all the time. Not liking his father and showing it. Not
liking boys. Not liking him. Goopy-goo about his mother. Organising thee fosters. Very glad he was
going away. Making no secret of that.

Perhaps his mother also was glad that he was going away.

Philip when this thought arrived concentrated upon the colourless, hedgeless, straight edged fields.
Rattle-crash the train went over the level crossings that sliced the roads in half. Long poles hung with
metal aprons. Funny people. Lots of then on bicycles , clustered round, waiting to cross. Very
dangerous. Very daring. People full of - what? Different fromhome. Full of energy. No, not energy -
what? Fireworks. Explosives. Confidence. That was it. Not as if they needed to keep private their
secret thoughts.

If they suddenly discovered for instance that ther mothers did not love them they would not sit dumb
and numb in a corner.

People in the carriage were now getting out packets of food. One of the hand - shaking men offered
Philip a slanted slice of bread, orange and white. Somebody else offered him wine. He shook his head
at all of it and looked out of the window. When the talk in the carriage began to get lively he got up
and took down the raincoat and took from the paocket and the packet of lunch his mother had made
up for him herself., with her own fair hands. Ha ha. He sat with it on his knee. He was too sad, too shy
to open it.

Also he didn't really want it. His mother had packed it up so carefully. Like a work of art. Greaseproof
corners turned into triangles, like a beautifully-made bed. The package was fastened with two elastic
bands, criss cross making four neat squares. And even this name on it in clear black pencil, PHILIP.
How silly could you get? Who else would it be for? Madly careful, that's what she was. And then she
goes and leaves the Union Jack loose in the box.

And she knew how flimsy it was. She must have expected it to blow away. She expected everything.
She'd expect a wind. She'd gone on at breakfast - time about him getting seasick. ANd she knew that
he'd be more than likely to open the box.

Oh, she'd known what would happen all right. She'd gone off without even waving, her yellow fur arm
on the yellow fur arm of Pym. She did not love him, want him, know him and she never had. It was all
just darning and being perfect.

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#Rana R. Sherwani
 Grade 10. Literature in English - 2010 September 23 to September 28, 2024
WEEK 5

She wanted him lost.

All that about flags was just a blind. She wanted him to miss the Major, Wanted rid of the bother of
him. Wanted him to disappear. She was a wicked woman who had killed her husband. All that
laughing as she cried.

[Showing the Flag]

Q. Explore the ways in which we are made to sympathise with Philip?

4. Read the following text and answer the question that follows:

Through a porthole in a door he saw the young African helper spooning food into the mouth of an
elderly woman. Something about the scene stopped Attila: the hand at her back, which prevented her
from slumping, the infinite care in the way the young man wiped her slackened mouth with a napkin.
At one point the careworker looked up, straight at Attila. Their eyes met. The young man said nothing
but bent once more to his task. Attila turned away.

To Rosie he suggested a walk in the grounds and was relieved when she accepted. ‘How long have
you lived here?’
She misunderstood and replied: ‘Since I was a girl. In Hayward’s Heath. What about you?’
‘I went to university near here. It was a long time ago.’
But she was already distracted: ‘People say you can’t have two robins in the same garden, but there’s
no truth in it. Look!’ And then: ‘A wren. I do believe there are more of them than there were twenty
years ago.’

She held onto his arm, seemingly awash with the wonder of it all. She reached out to touch the drops
of rain on the leaves, tilted her head, gazed at the sky and closed her eyes. He waited and watched
her. She stretched out her arms. He had a memory of a photograph of her in the exact same pose.
Where was it now? She let her arms drop back to her sides. They completed a first tour of the garden.

Rosie said: ‘Shall we do another turn, Attlia? Another turn?’ It was a phrase she had used often in the
past: at the funfair, boating on a lake, on a dance floor. She teased him for being too serious.

Attila felt light-headed and – somewhat bizarrely – youthful. It was the effect of Rosie’s mood, her
enthusiasm for this unremarkable, chrysanthemum bordered square of lawn, also the fact of being the
youngest in the place by twenty years, excepting the staff. Fewer silver strands in Rosie’s dark hair
than in his own. He remembered she had no brothers and sisters.

They passed for the second time the woman on the bench, her daughter still speaking on the
telephone. Rosie bent forward, plucked a sweet from the box on the old woman’s lap and popped it
into her mouth. Rosie gave an impish giggle, the sweet bulged in her cheek. ‘She won’t miss one.
They’re my favourite.’ She gripped his arm and leaned her head against his shoulder. He inclined his
head to hers and smelt the faint brackish odour of her hair, resisted the urge to kiss it. Behind them
the old woman sat staring into the middle distance her hands curled limply around the box of sweets.
Attila could hear the daughter finish her call.

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#Rana R. Sherwani
 Grade 10. Literature in English - 2010 September 23 to September 28, 2024
WEEK 5

‘Promise you’ll come and visit me again, won’t you?’ Rosie said suddenly, raising her head. ‘It’s
deathly dull in here.’

He gave his promise and meant it. Perhaps if he kept coming she would eventually remember him, as
she almost had today. On this slender hope he hung his heart.
Two months later he returned carrying a box of Newbury Fruits. The sweets had not been especially
easy to find and the packaging had changed, as might be expected after forty years. Along the way he
had stopped at the same pub, where the publican remembered him or, more accurately, the Jaguar
which had been replaced by a Vauxhall for this trip. Rosie wasn’t in the day room, nor in the garden
though the weather was fine enough to permit it. Attila retraced his steps back towards reception. The
woman, a different one to before, angled her head in the direction of a corridor. Attila advanced down
it, bearing the box of sweets clamped in his huge hand.

In the dining room he found an afternoon dance underway: a dozen people moved slowly to the sound
of the Blue Danube. Mostly residents danced with a member of the staff. Around the room elders
dozed and snored, made soporific as flies by music and heat.

There in the centre – Rosie, cradled by the arms of the young, African worker Attila had noticed during
his last visit. Her forehead was pressed against his chest, her hand in his, eyes closed. The care
worker had his head bent towards her. He had young, smooth skin and, Attila noticed for the first time,
a small beard.

For some minutes Attila stood and watched. Then he placed the box of sweets down on a table and
reached for a chair. As he did so, the music wound to a halt, people began to shuffle from the floor.
He bent to pick up the box of sweets, heard Rosie say his name and looked up. The smile was
already on his face.

But she was not looking his way, seemed not to be aware of his presence in the room. Rather she
was looking up at the young care worker, who still held her in his arms. ‘Shall we do another turn,
Attila? Another turn. What do you say?’

And the young man replied: ‘Whatever makes you happy, Rosie.’

Rosie nodded. The music began again. Attila replaced the box of Newbury Fruits on the table.
He sat down and watched.

[Howards Heath]

Q. How does Aminatta Forna Make this such a moving moment in the story?

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#Rana R. Sherwani