Short Answer Type Questions
Q1. How does the poem expose man and presents him in true colours?
Ans. Childhood symbolizes innocence, purity, softness and love. As a child grows, these qualities start receding. Man becomes impure, cunning, shrewd and hypocrite. Grown-ups become blatant liars. They talk of love but practice hatred. They preach brotherhood of mankind but perpetuate hatred and killing. Simplicity and honesty evaporate into thin air, the moment man crosses the threshold of innocent childhood.
Q2. What is the poet’s feeling towards the childhood?
Ans. The poet regards childhood as a period of heavenly innocence. A child sincerely feels that there is god above. He is free from all earthly evils. He believes that there is really a Heaven and a Hell. He is truly religious in his soul. A child knows no hypocrisy. He always means what he says. There is no difference between his thoughts and actions. A child is free from any sense of ego. He does not think himself to be different from or superior to others. In short, childhood is a state of heavenly innocence and purity of heart.
Q3. What according to the poem, is involved in the process of growing up?
Ans. As a person grows up, he becomes a rationalist, an egoist and a hypocrite. He accepts nothing that is not logical. He loses faith in God. He does not believe in Hell or Heaven. He becomes very conscious of his self. He wants to follow his own desires and ideas. He becomes an egoist. He talks of love and preaches of love, but is not so loving in his actions. In short, he loses all his innocence of his childhood.
Q4. How does the poet describe the process of being grown up?
Ans. The process of being grown up develops the critical thinking and analytical point of view in the person. It makes the person rationalized and abled to take his decision by virtue of his seat of reasoning.
Q5. How does the poet repent on his loss of childhood?
Ans. He expresses concern over his childhood’s disappearance. Childhood cannot be regained. It keeps our life aloof from the world of hypocrisy, bitter reality and materialism.
Q6. The poet has asked two questions one is about the time and other is about the place. Why has he used these questions?
Ans. He has used these two questions to interpret the time and place of way of going his childhood away. “When” points out the process of being rational at a particular time and “where” states the place where the innocent world of childhood resides.
Q7. What does the Hell and heaven stand for?
Ans. It stands for the world of imagination that fascinates only small children. These are nothing but the product of our imaginative mind that helps the person to escape from reality.
Q8. What contrast did he find in adult’s behaviour?
They talked of human values but did not practise in their day to day life.
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