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Paper Code- AU 6708
BA IV Semester (English)
Paper I (Poetry-ii)
Teacher- Dr Manish Shrivastava
Que 1 (i) c , (ii) c , (iii) c , (iv) c , (v) b , (vi) b , (vii) d , (viii) c , (ix) b, (x) d.
Que.2 (a) In these lines, which have been extracted from Robert Browning’s My Last
Duchess, the Duke is showing to the messenger the portrait of the last Duchess painted on the
wall. The picture has been so well done that it appears life-like and realistic. He proudly tells that
the picture is the work of the famous painter, Fra Pandolf who created it in a single day.
(b) In these lines which are taken from Arnold’s Dover Beach the narrator shifts back
to addressing his companion or lover and resolves to love asserting that love in the modern age
can be a source of contentment and peace in a world where faith is on the retreat and is no
longer soul-fulfilling.
(c) These lines which are extracted from W.B. Yeats’ The Second Coming show the
mood of depression in which the poem was produced. The poet, in a depressed mood says that
Man has so distanced away from Christ that Christianity has broken down and anarchy, violence,
and disbelief have taken its place. The rulers lack faith, and the rabble are fanatical.
(d) These lines have been taken from Eliot’s famous poem Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock . These lines reveal the eternal dilemma of Mr Prufrock who is constantly hesitant to
propose to his lady love and says that there is no hurry. He also speaks of many excuses
justifying his non-action. One of them is his consciousness of himself growing old which is
reflected in the present lines.
Que.3) My Last duchess is perfect picture of cold-blooded heartlessness in the sense that it
tells that it is the Duke’s nature that kills the Duchess. The Duke has only jealousy and no love.
He has self-love and obsessed with possession. In the poem the Duke and Duchess are
delineated in a masterly fashion. It shows the poet’s remarkable insight, a keenness of
portraiture, brevity and selection.
Que.4) The sea is everywhere in Dover Beach. It shows up in different places and in different
forms, but we feel its power all over the place. Sometimes it's a physical location, something you
can actually see, like the English Channel or the Aegean Sea, and sometimes it morphs into a
metaphor for the fate of humanity. Using vivid images of the sea, Arnold writes his poem about
a world bereft of all beauty, truth, and optimism.
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Que.5) In Second Coming W.B. Yeats relies on Christian belief in the cycle of civilizations
which holds that each civilization is of 2000 years divided in to two phases of 1000 years each.
The present civilization has so much distanced away from the religion that the earlier predicted
second coming of the Christ is not possible. In fact the second coming will be in form of a beast
(an image evolved of the cultural consciousness) and the second half of the civilization shall be a
bestial civilization.
Que.6) Unknown Citizen symbolises the hazardous influence of the mechanised life on
human beings. The twentieth century has witnessed tremendous rise of the capitalists,
bureaucrates and pseudo-socialists forces. They have destroyed the individuality and also the
identity of a common man. The poems narrates the life of a number, not a person, as a
character. A man’s existence is recognisable not by his individual talent but by the way he is
useful to the system.
Que.7) Strange Meeting is one of the most characteristic war-poems of Wilfred and at the
same time, most moving. Owen had first hand experience of war and its cruelty as a soldier in
the First World War. Being a realist he never glorified war like Rupert Brooke. He wrote, “My
subject is war and the pity of war”. He looked upon war as a colossal waste of human life – an
evil game played by selfish warmongers with a view to grind their own axes at the cost of
innocent young soldiers. The poem gives us a very pathetic account of what commonly happens
in battles. Owen condemns the armchair politicians who cheat on us by propaganda that the
shameless bloodshed of war has a benevolent motive and the soldiers are the national Heroes.
Que.8) Prufrock, the main character of T. S. Eliot`s `The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock', is,
from Eliot's point of view, the prototypical 'modern man'. Urbanization, social change,
secularism, and the fragmentation of the sensibility have left Prufrock unable to have firm
convictions or relations. He is, like Hamlet, indecisive, but has no social or religious framework
of certainty to help him make decisions, and most of the things he needs to decide are
fundamentally trivial. Thus he proves as vacillating in minor dilemmas (whether he should eat a
peach, if he should have cuffs on his trousers, hairstyle) as in the major one of whether he
should attempt to make sexual overtures to the woman of the poem.
DR MANISH SHRIVASTAVA