BEGE-105 2024-25 SOLVED ASSIGNMENT

Description

Elective Course in English
UNDERSTANDING PROSE (BEGE – 105)
Based on Blocks 1-7
Programme: BDP
Course Code: BEGE-105/2024-25
Maximum Marks: 100
Answer All Questions
1. Comment on the dominant variety of prose (narrative, expository or descriptive) present in each of
the following passages. Write a brief critical appreciation of each passage in about 250 words each:
a) My brother and I carried our father into the hospital, stamping on the goat turds which were
spread all over the floor. There was no doctor in the hospital. The Ward boy, after we bribed
him ten rupees, said that a doctor might come in the evening. The doors to the hospital’s rooms
were wide open. A few men had spread a newspaper on the ground and were sitting on it. One
of them had an open wound on his leg. He invited us to sit with him. My brother and I lowered
our father onto the newspaper sheets. Two little girls came and sat beside us; both had yellow
eyes and skin. Jaundice it seemed. We kept adding newspapers to the ground and the line of
diseased eyes, raw wounds and delirious mouths kept growing.
b) It was perfectly true that the house was made out of trees. It was a fair-sized but elderly shack,
made out of poplar poles and chinked with mud. There was an upstairs, which was not so usual
around here, with three bedrooms, one of which I was to share with Chris’s sister, Jeannie, who
was slightly younger than I , a pallid-eyed girl who was either too shy to talk or who had nothing
to say. I never discovered which, because I was so reticent with her myself, wanting to push her
away, not to recognize her, and at the same time experiencing a shocked remorse at my own
unacceptable feelings.
c) Theologians don’t much like it when we attempt to peel away the accretions of myth, history,
dogma, and sacrament that cloud the origins of their chosen faith. When we seek common
threads among the world’s spiritual doctrines, we may be chided for taking a cafeteria approach
to religion: a little from this one, a little from that one, as if we were downloading only our
favorite songs from the Internet in order to make up our own “Best of” CD
It is true enough that some New Age belief systems do little more than dabble in devotion,
backing off quickly whenever spiritual discipline becomes too incompatible with one’s lifestyle.
One cannot really be a part-time Buddhist any more than a self-described Christian can purchase
salvation with one hour a week in church. But the irrefutable truth is that at the heart of each of
the great religious traditions are three small words: God is one.
(10×3=30)
2. The story ‘Misery’ by Chekhov deals with human insensitivity to other peoples’ grief. Do you
agree? Give a reasoned answer.
(10)
3. Write a detailed note on The Binding Vine as a Stream of Consciousness novel.
(10)
4. Comment on how Lamb has used humour in his essay “ A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig”, to make
the essay entertaining. Give examples from the text wherever necessary.
(10)
5
5. How does Bill Aitkin comment upon the cultural divide between the North and South? Give a
reasoned answer.
(10)
6. Write a note on how Gandhi spent his days in Calcutta and his impression of Burma as seen in his
autobiography.
(10)
7. What do we get to know about the Holocaust from Anne Frank’s diary?
(10)
8. Laurence was committed to social causes. Write a note on her commitment to nuclear disarmament
as seen in her speech “My Final Hour.”