ENGLISH TEACHER

Poem at a Glance The ancient Mariner stops one of the wedding-guests. He wants to narrate his tale to him and unburden his grief. The Wedding-Guest is in a hurry as he has to attend the wedding party. The bright-eyed Mariner made the wedding-guest helpless. He had no option but listen to his tale. The old Mariner began narrating his story. Their ship was cheered off the harbour happily. There came a severe storm and it drove them southwards. Then it became very cold with both mist and snow. The ship was surrounded by huge icebergs as high as the mast. Then came the albatross from the fog. The sailors cheered it as a ‘Christian Soul’. The albatross’s arrival was auspicious as it brought a favourable south wind. The sailors gave it food and it flew over the ship. In a senseless fit, the ancient Mariner killed the albatross with his cross-bow. The fellow mariners cursed the old Mariner for killing an innocent and auspicious bird. The weather worsened. The Mariners chan...

INTRODUCTION This sonnet, composed in 1817, is one of most famous of Shelley’s anthologised poems. This poem was composed in competition with Shelley’s friend Horace Smith, who wrote another sonnet on the same topic of Ozymandias. In terms of theme imagery, this poem is notable for its virtuous diction. The theme is the decline of all leaders, of all the empires they build, however mighty they may have been in their own time. Ozymandias was a another name for Ramesses the Great, Pharoah of the 19th century ancient Egypt. The sonnet parphrases the inscription beneath the statue, ‘‘If anyone wants to know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass any of my works’’. PARAPHRASE 1 – 8 lines – (I met a traveller ……………….. that fed) The speaker recalls having met a traveller from an ancient land who told him a story about the ruins of a statue in the desert of his native country. The traveller said that two vast legs of stone stand without a body and near this, a massive crumblin...

INTRODUCTION Sonnet 55 builds up on Horace’s theme of poetry outlasting physical monuments to the dead. In Horace’s poetry, the poet is himself immortalised by his poetry but in this sonnet, Shakespeare seeks to build a figurative monument to his beloved, the fair lord. The fair lord is not described or revealed is any way in this sonnet. Instead, the sonnet just addresses the idea of immortality through verse. The ravages of time is a recurrent theme in the sonnets of Shakespeare. So sonnet 55 is one of the most famous works of Shakespeare and a notable deviation from other sonnets in which he appears insecure about his relationships and his self-worth. Here we find an impassioned burst of confidence as the poet claims to have the power to keep his friend’s memory alive evermore. 1 – 4 lines – (Not marble …………………. sluttish time) The first stanza talks about how time will not destroy the poem, though it will destroy the world’s most magnificent structures. He wishes to say that p...

SUMMARY This poem is written in free verse and does not depend on any rhythm to convey the message. It is a poem describing a woman’s struggle against the falsity of lies and the truthful harshness of her own image from the perspective of an unsympathetic mirror. ‘I’ in the poem represents the mirror as Sylvia Plath is trying to see the mirror’s view of herself. The poem is written in the style of a monologue. Sylvia Plath was suffering from severe depression and she had very little compassion for herself. This poem shows how she is really scared of the truth the mirror is reflecting. Unlike other people, the mirror is free from any preoccupations or prejudices. Unlike human beings, it is free from any likes and dislikes and reflects only the truth. It is omniscient like the God, and sees everywhere. The mirror has God-like powers over the woman. The mirror constantly gazes at the wall opposite to it and the wall has pink spots of age, or discoloration on it. The view in the mirror...

In a bog, which was called Bingle Bog, there lived a frog, who was crazy about his singing and incessantly sang from the evening to the morning light. All the creatures living in the bog found his songs to be most unpleasant and they tried to beat and insult him, but the frog was very insensitive and boastful. The frog kept singing with extreme passion because this was his way of expressing his heart-felt elation. One day the creatures of the bog were pleasantly surprised to hear a very melodious and soothing song sung by a nightingale. The frog was shocked and felt jealous. He wanted to be the undisputed singer of the bog. The nightingale’s song created a sensation and all the creatures praised it tremendously. The frog was very cunning and he introduced himself as the owner of the tree, on which the nightingale sang. He also boasted that he was a music critic, who wrote for ‘Bog Trumpet’. The nightingale was impressed that a musician like Mozart was taking interest in her. When...

The narrator is a young boy, who is travelling by train. His attention is attracted by a big woman, sitting opposite, reading a newspaper. The headline and the coverstory was regarding a 14-year-old school boy named Sebastian Shultz, who awoke from a coma that the doctors feared would last forever. The story further elaborated that Sebastian had been injured in a motorway accident and did not regain consciousness. The mother of Sebastian hoped that their son would get out of coma, but only a miracle could save him. The narrator sees the boy’s photograph also and he is shocked to discover, it is the same Sebastian whom he had got to know. But the newspaper story stated that the boy had been in coma throughout. The narrator felt nervous and confused. He couldn’t figure out how could this have happened. It all started a month back, when the narrator along with his Dad had brought the latest psycho-drive games with a virtual reality, visor and glove. Some of these games didn’t appear n...

This story depicts the dreams and aspirations of smalltimers and the apathy of film people for whom making films is a business. Patol Babu was a middle aged man of about fifty years with a bald head. His neighbour Nishikanta Ghosh informed him that his brother-in-law Naresh Dutt, a film producer, was looking around for an actor for a scene in a film, with looks like that of Patol Babu. Patol Babu was so excited to hear this news that in his excitement, he made the wrong purchases in the vegetable market. Patol Babu remembered fondly that he always had a great passion for the stage and in his youth he had acted in many ‘Jatras’. Indeed there was a time when people bought tickets especially to see him. It was in the year 1934, when he lived in Kanchrapara and worked as a clerk with Hudson and Kimberley. He had thought of floating his own theatrical club but he lost his job. Ever since Patol Babu had to struggle a lot to make a living. He worked in a Bengali film, worked as an insuran...