Gujarat Board GSEB Class 10 English Textbook Solutions First Flight Poem 8 The Trees Textbook Exercise Important Questions and Answers, Notes Pdf.
Gujarat Board Textbook Solutions Class 10 English First Flight Poem 8 The Trees
GSEB Class 10 English The Trees Text Book Questions and Answers
Thinking about the Poem
(1) Find, in the first stanza, three things that cannot happen in a treeless forest.
(2) What picture do these words create in your mind: no sun bury its feet in shadow…….’ ? What could the poet mean by the sun’s ‘feet’ ?
(1) The three things that cannot happen in a treeless forest are the sitting of a bird on trees, the hiding of insects and the sun burying its feet in the shadow of the forest.
(2) The sun radiates heat and the given words create a picture of the hot, radiating sun cooling its feet in the cool shadow of the s forest. The sun’s ‘feet’ refers to its rays that reach the earth.
(1)Where are the trees in the poem? What do their roots, their leaves and their twigs do ?
(2)What does the poet compare their branches to ?
(1) In the poem, the trees are in the poet’s house. Their roots work all night to disengage themselves from the cracks in the veranda floor. The leaves make efforts to move towards the glass, while the small twigs get s stiff with exertion.
(2 ) The poet compares the ‘long-cramped’ branches that have been shuffling under the roof to newly discharged patients who look half-dazed a they move towards the hospital doors after long illnesses and wait to get out of the hospital. The branches also have cramped under the roof and want to get out into the open to spread themselves in fresh air.
(1) How does the poet describe the ? moon:
(a) at the beginning of the third stanza, and
(b) at its end ? What causes this change ?
(2) What happens to the house when the trees move out of it ?
(1) In the beginning of the third stanza, the poet says that the whole moon is shining s in the open sky in the fresh night. However, at the end of the stanza, she describes the moon as broken into many pieces such as a shattered mirror. This change is caused by the trees that have made their way from her home to outside. Their branches have risen into the sky, blocking the moon, which is why the moon seems to be broken into many pieces. These pieces can be seen flashing at the top of the tallest oak tree.
(2) When the trees move out of the house, the glass gets broken and the smell of the leaves and lichens still reaches the rooms of the house.
Now that you have read the poem in detail, we can begin to ask what the poem might mean. Here are two suggestions. Can you think of others ?
(1) Does the poem present a conflict between man and nature ? Compare it with A Tiger in the Zoo. Is the poet suggesting that plants and trees, used for ‘interior decoration’ in ’ cities while’ forests are cut down, are ‘imprisoned’, and need to ‘break out’?
(2) On the other hand, Adrienne Rich has been known to use trees as a metaphor for human beings : this is a recurrent image in her poetry. What new meanings emerge from the poem if you take its trees to be symbolic of this particular meaning ?
(1) Yes, the poem presents a conflict between man and nature. While nature is more free and unbounded, man prefers to live in bounded spaces and also wants to curb nature. He uses plants for interior decoration of houses, cuts trees to make a house for himself, kills animals for food or other purposes and cages them in zoos. In all these ways, man curbs nature and denies plants and animals the freedom in which they should live.
The poem shows that trees and plants are rebelling against man as they strive to work their way out into the open. For instance, in the poem A Tiger in the Zoo, the poet presents the fact that animals feel bounded by cages. They can only take a few steps inside the cage, whereas they really want to run and leap into the open. This signifies the fact that plants and animals feel caged by humans and want to break out from the imprisonment at the hands of humans.
(2) If trees are symbolic of human beings, then it could be said that humans too want to break away from the shackles of the busy and selfish lives they lead. They also want to go out into the nature and be free. They work all day and sometimes all night to try and achieve something though they do not have the time to enjoy it. They keep striving hard in their routines as they feel cramped under the roofs ! of their homes and offices. Even they want to break free and go out into the peaceful nature.
GSEB Class 10 English The Trees Additional Important Questions and Answers
Read the following stanzas carefully and answer the questions given below them:
The trees inside are moving out into the forest,
the forest that was empty all these days
where no bird could sit
no insect hide
no sun bury its feet in shadow
the forest that was empty all these nights
will be full of trees by morning.
(1) Where are the trees moving from ?
(2) Where are the trees moving to ?
(3) What does the poet mean by the symbols like trees, house and forest?
(1) The trees are moving from a closed house.
(2) The trees are moving out to a barren world without trees.
(3) Trees are symbolic of women who had been kept slaves for centuries. The house is the society that kept women its captive. The forest is the world where women will enjoy their freedom.
All night the roots work
to disengage themselves from the cracks
in the veranda floor.
The leaves strain toward the glass,
small twigs stiff with exertion,
long-cramped boughs shuffling under the roof
like newly discharged patients
to the clinic doors.
(1) What do the roots of the trees do all night ?
(2 ) What are being compared to newly discharged patients ? Why are they so compared ?
(3) Pick out the words from the stanza which reveal the agony of the trees.
(1) All night the roots of the trees keep on separating themselves from the cracks in the veranda floor.
(2) The branches of the tree which have been confined in the space for a very long time are being compared to newly discharged patients. They are compared so because they have been weak being limited in a particular space for a very long time. They lack in energy.
(3) The words revealing the agony of the trees in this stanza are : strain, stiff with exertion, long-cramped boughs, shuffling
I sit inside, doors open to the veranda
writing long letters
in which I scarcely mention the departure
of the forest from the house.
The night is fresh, the whole moon shines
in a sky still open
the smell of leaves and lichen
still reaches like a voice into the rooms.
My head is full of whispers
which tomorrow will be silent.
(1) What is the poet doing while the trees are getting ready to go out?
(2) Why is the poet not mentioning the departure of the trees in her letter?
(3) What does the poet mean by the whispers she hears in her head?
(1) The poet is seated at her writing desk writing long letters about the preparation of the trees.
(2 ) The poet does not mention about the trees and their preparation to go out of the house because she is willing that they go out. It seems that the poet had been preparing these trees to go out.
(3) In another sense, the trees that make long and discrete preparation to go out of the rooms symbolise the poet’s suppressed feelings. By writing a long letter and letting it go out, the poet is trying to free herself.
Listen. The glass is breaking.
The trees are stumbling forward
into the night. Winds rush to meet them.
The moon is broken like a mirror,
its pieces flash now in the crown
of the tallest oak.
(1) Which glass is breaking ?
(2) Winds rush to meet them. What does ‘wind’ symbolise ?
(3) Why does the moon seem to be broken ?
(1) The glass, which has so far kept the offshoots of the tree confined, is breaking.
(2) Here the word ‘wind’ stands for all elements of unbounded nature.
(3) From the ground, when the moon is seen through the branches of the tall oak tree, the branches obstructing the full view of the moon, makes the moon seem to be broken.
Choose the correct figures of speech used in the following lines:
‘The trees inside are moving out into the forest’ ?
‘where no bird could sit
no insect hide
no sun bury its feet in shadow’.
C. Internal Rhyme
D. Both ‘A’ and ‘B’
D. Both ‘A’ and ‘B’
‘no sun bury its feet in shadow’.
D. Both ‘A’ and ‘B’
D. Both ‘A’ and ‘B’
‘long-cramped boughs shuffling under the roof
like newly discharged patients’.
‘still reaches like a voice into the rooms’.
‘The moon is broken like a mirror’.
D. Both ‘A’ and ‘B’
D. Both ‘A’ and ‘B’
My head is full of whispers, which tomorrow will be silent. (August 20)
B. Internal Rhyme
Answer the following questions in three to lour sentences each:
‘The forest that was empty’- What would happen if the forest remains empty?
Without the trees, there is no existence of the forest. Forest is the natural habitat of trees, birds, insects, and other wild animals. In the absence of the trees in the forest, ecological balance would be disturbed. All the activities of the beasts and birds would stop. They need protection from the hunting and other natural calamities.
What is the central theme of the poem ‘The Trees’?
Adrienne Rich’s ‘The Trees’ is a poem about nature. The poet has given a visual picture of an alternative space where the trees have managed to escape from an artificial house. Here, the poet has personified nature. This poem brings the body and mind of trees together, which extend to the unconscious mind. The uprooted trees are kept in the modern artificial house and it depicts the trees have become free breaking all the artificial barriers.
Why does the poet compare the trees with ‘patients’ ?
The poet has used a conceit where she compares the ‘long-cramped’ branches that have been shuffliffg under the roof to newly discharged patients who look half-dazed as they move towards the hospital doors after long illnesses and wait to get out of the hospital. As, the patients want to get free from the hospital, in the same manner, the trees urge to be free from the prison house. The poet shows like a human, the trees also need freedom and they can achieve it when they are in the forest not in an artificial house.
‘All night the roots work’. How do the roots work?
In this poem, the trees are kept in the poet’s house where the trees become captive in the house and urge for freedom. Thus, the roots work all night to disengage themselves from the cracks in the veranda floor. The leaves make efforts to move towards the‘glass, while the small twigs get stiff with exertion.
The Trees Summary in English
The Trees Introduction:
Adrienne Cecile Rich (May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called ‘one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century’, and was credited with bringing ‘the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse’. Her first collection of poetry, A Change of World, was selected by renowned poet W. H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award.
The Trees Summary:
The ‘I’, the voice of the speaker of Adrienne Rich’s poem, ‘The Trees’, is a voice with a body engaged in activities and sensing intrusions that are not organic to the conventions of a nature poem. This is, in fact, an (un)natural poem that narrates the struggle of a population of trees to escape the confines of a greenhouse. In evoking the trees’ ‘strain’, the poem demonstrates the unsuitability of language itself as a greenhouse or container of nature.
The speaker is a witness to the trees’ exodus, but distances herself from participating in the making of something out of the spectacle. She ‘sit[s]’ and ‘writ[es]’ but not poems, Tong letters’, in which she ‘scarcely mention[s] the departure of the forest.’ Even though the speaker addresses an audience, her own ‘head is full of whispers’ – she’s an audience as well. We, however, the audience to the poem, are compelled by the command:‘Listen’. The speaker reaches across the barrier between poem and audience, a transaction that occurs on a page, and says: Listen, you.
Adrienne Rich articulates her consciousness of the many levels of inner and outer and the blurring of the boundaries between them. The trees, ‘long-cramped … under the roof’ are trying to get out while, the speaker remains in the space the trees long to escape. An open door makes the ‘night’ and the ‘whole moon’ and the ‘sky’ available to the speaker; at the same time, through this door ‘the smell of leaves …/still reaches’ back in. The speaker’s ‘head’ is another interior, implicitly entered by ‘whispers’.