Chapter 11 Keeping Quiet Solutions
Question - 21 : - Elucidate and bring out what the Pablo Neruda wants to convey through the following :
Answer - 21 : -
(i) Life is what it is about.
(ii) As when everything seems dead and later proves to be alive.
Answer
(i) The poet urges all the people to observe silence and stand still for a while. He wants this time to be utilised for quiet introspection and to create better understanding among human beings. He does not suggest the stillness and silence of death. Life, after all, has to go on. The normal and necessary activities cannot be suspended.
(ii) In nature the seasons change regularly. In cold winter when it snows, the earth’looks all dead no greenery, no flowering, no movement of birds and beasts. But this situation is misleading. After a month or so, the earth proves itself better equipped for a new life.
Question - 22 : - According to Pablo Neruda, what is it that human beings can learn from Nature ?
Answer - 22 : -
The human beings can learn to be quiet and still from the Nature that teaches to grow at one’s own place. We should be contented what we had but not bother about the others’ wealth.
Question - 23 : - Analyse the importance of the dramatic count to twelve in ‘Keeping Quiet.’
Answer - 23 : -
The poem opens with the poet’s appeal to begin with a count to twelve followed by a moment of silence. The poet links silence with hope for a moment of togetherness. The repetition of the poet’s request to count to twelve in the first and the last stanzas creates a personal space of silence in the poem. The poet seeks this moment of silence as a moment to introspect and meditate, to share a feeling of oneness.
The poet wishes that in this selected moment, the fishermen would not kill the whales and the men gathering salt would give rest to their injured hands. The threat of destruction of the world would come to a halt. In this chosen moment we would have time for self assessment. The number ‘twelve’ is dramatically significant to represent our clock time, a moment in real life.
Question - 24 : - How is the poet’s appeal for keeping quiet different from absolute sluggishness ?
Answer - 24 : -
The poet, in his appeal for keeping quiet, emphasizes the importance of self-introspection in a man’s life. He urges us to seek a moment to understand ourselves and analyse our actions as we experience the sadness of death. The poet’s appeal for a moment of silence or stillness should not be mistaken as a plea, as a moment of inactivity or absolute sluggishness.
He seeks a silence where people are not obsessed with work and give a personal moment of time to think about their actions. This moment of silence will help them to overcome their woes and defects. The poet even feels that the Earth will enlighten men in this process, as silence is only a moment captured where there is activity under apparent stillness.
Question - 25 : - Analyse the poetic devices that the poet adopts in the poem.
Answer - 25 : -
The poet has incorporated the use of repetition in the line ‘let’s not speak’ and let’s stop for one second’ to create the poetic effect of emphasis on his readers. Even the phrases ‘count to twelve’ and ‘count up to twelve’ are symbolic, as the poet repeats his request to keep quiet for a second time. The word ‘twelve’ symbolizes a measure of time representing our clock time of real life, capturing a moment from our present time.
The phrases ‘hurt hands’ and ‘clean clothes’ are examples of alliteration. Man will cleanse his soul, heart and mind in the process. The word ‘brothers’ here implies brotherhood and synecdoche is used by using a concrete object instead of an abstract concept. There is use of metaphor in ‘put on clean clothes’, as the poet wants the warmongers to shed their blood-soiled clothes (meaning, stop wars) and put on fresh clothes (meaning, follow brotherhood).