ENGLISH

THE TREES
—Adrienne Rich
Reference to Context
1. “All night the roots work to disengage themselves
from the cracks
on 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
half-dazed, moving
to the clinic doors”.
Q(a) Choose the option that lists the example/s of ‘exertion’.
1. Jack had been up all-night keeping accounts and now she’s resting.
2. Jill was running for five miles non-stop last evening.
3. John is watching his favourite show and having snacks.
4. Jammy helped a senior citizen board a flight in the morning.
(i) 1 and 2
Q(b) Choose the option that depicts the correct pictorial representation of the central object
of the poem.
(ii) Option (b)
Q(c) What are the boughs compared to?
The boughs are compared to ___________.
(iii) newly discharged patients
Q(d) “Personification is a poetic device in which human characteristics are given to animals
and non-living things.” Select the option/s that is NOT a correct example of the afore-
mentioned poetic device.
I. The snow swaddled the earth like a mother would her infant child.
II. Winter would spend the day eating cookies and drinking hot cocoa by a lake.
III. The ploughman homeward plods his weary way.
IV. My phone is not cooperating with me today.
(i) I and II
2. “Winds rush to meet them. The moon is broken like a mirror,
its pieces flash now in the crown of the tallest oak”.
Q(a) Whom do the winds rush to meet?
(i) Trees
Q(b) ‘The moon is broken like a mirror’ suggests _____________________.
(i) the shadow of the oak tree divides the moon into many fragments
Q(c) What is the central idea of the poem?
(iv) Both (ii) and (iii)
(d) Identify the poetic device in ‘The moon is broken like a mirror’.
(iii) Personification

Read and Answer

Q(a) Find, in the first stanza, three things that cannot happen in a treeless forest.
A(a) The three things that cannot happen in a treeless forest are:
(i) no bird can sit on the trees
(ii) no insect can hide
(iii)no shadow of the sun.
Q(b) What picture do these words create in your mind: “... sun bury its feet in shadow...”?
What could the poet mean by the sun’s ‘feet?’
A(b) The Sun's feet here refer to the rays of the sun that reach the earth's surface. Since the
sun radiates heat, the words “Sun bury its feet in shadow” show the image of the radiating
sun cooling its feet in the shadow of the forest's trees.
Q(c) What does the poet compare their branches to?
A(c) The poet compares the branches to newly discharged patients of a hospital. The large
branches of the trees become cramped due to the roof above them, and when they get free
they rush stumbling to the outside world.
Q(d) Why the poet does not mention the departure of forests in her poem?
A(d) The poet does not want to mention the departure of the forests as she feels guilty for
merely looking silently at them as they depart. This way, she subtly points out the
thanklessness of man towards forests.
Q(e) Where are the trees in the poem? What do their roots, their leaves, and their twigs do?
A(e) 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 stiff with exertion.
Q(f) What happens to the house when the trees move out of it?
A(f) When the trees move out of the house, the glasses break and the whispers of the trees
vanish, leaving the house silent.