Warming Up!

Chit-Chat

1. Two babies born at the same time are called twins. Guess and share who are:

Triplets – Three babies born at the same time
Quadruplets – Four babies born at the same time
Quintuplets – Five babies born at the same time

2. Imagine you had an identical twin (brother or sister). Imagine and share with your classmates what pranks you two would play on your friends, elders in the family and even in school.

Ans:

We would attend each other’s classes, pretend the other one was the one who did not do the work.

More Questions from Warming Up!

1. Study the following pairs or groups of words. Cup and saucer, needle and thread, birds and beasts, take a risk, sip tea/coffee, hide and seek etc.

2. These are sets of words that more than often go together and occur together. We call such sets Collocation.

Insert the appropriate words from the brackets to form collocations.

(direct answers given below)

a) absolutely – necessary
b) cannot – afford
c) formal – clothes
d) job – interview
e) pass – time
f) accept – role
g) early – morning
h) catch a – cold
i) leading – defeat
j) joint – owners

3. Exaggeration or overstatement often causes humour. For example, she is thin as a pin.

– He has a pea-sized brain.
– My shoes are killing me.

When such exaggerated lines occur in poetry, they are examples of the Figures of Speech; Hyperbole.

Complete the following examples of Hyperbole using words from the bracket below.

a) She wept an ocean of tears.
b) The hungry man ate a ton of food.
c) He runs faster than a horse.
d) Brrrr..! I am freezing to death.
e) I shall come over in just a second.



From the main chapter pages

1. In what aspects were the brothers alike each other?

Ans: The brothers were alike each other in form and feature, face and limb.

2. What name did the speaker get?

Ans: The speaker got his brother’s name Henry.

3. How did the speaker suffer at school?

Ans: The speaker got flogged in school because of his brother’s actions.

4. What is impossible in the last two lines?

Ans: It is impossible for the neighbours to bury the speaker’s brother John when it was the speaker who had died.



English Workshop

1. Rewrite putting the mistakes in the speaker’s life, in their proper order.

Ans:

d) No one in the family could distinguish between the twin-babies.
e) At the naming ceremony wrong names were given to the two twin brothers.
a) He got beaten-up, often, at school.
c) The speaker desperately asked for guidance.
b) The speaker’s bride became his brother’s wife.

2. Pick out four situations in the lives of the twins, which are too absurd and senseless to believe.

a) The speaker’s intended bride became his brother’s wife.
b) The neighbours buried John when the speaker had died.
c) The speaker was given his brother’s name and vice-versa.
d) The speaker got flogged at school due to his brother’s actions.

3A. Complete the web diagram:

Poet uses humour to:

– Create laughter
– Give poetic effect
– Create rhymes
– Reduce boredom
– Make it light-hearted
– Make it enjoyable

3B. Write any two lines from the poem, that you find most humorous.

1) For somehow my intended bride, became my brother’s wife.
2) And when I died, the neighbours came, and buried brother John.

4. Pick out lines that contain:

Alliteration
a) In form and feature, face and limb.
b) It puzzled all our kith and kin.
c) One day, to make the matter worse.

Pun
a) I grew so like my brother.
b) That folks got taking me for him.

Hyperbole
a) It reached a fearful pitch.
b) We got completely mixed.

5. Pick out from the poem sets of words that generally go together.

Example: Kith and Kin

a) form and feature
b) face and limb
c) turned the tide
d) fearful pitch
e) domestic life
f) fate’s decree

6. Write in your notebook, the summary of this poem in about 15 to 20 lines in your own words. You can suggest another humorous title.

Title: The Twin Problem

The poet Henry and his bother John were born twins. However, they were so similar in their looks and appearances that everyone was confused which was which amongst the two. From the beginning, the speaker suffered due to this as he ended up with his brother’s name after the nurse mixed them up after being washed. Even when the speaker went to school, he faced a lot of hardship. He often got flogged due to the actions of his brother John. The speaker pleaded with everyone he knew from family to friends, what they would do if they were him, just to prove his own identity. The close resemblance between the twins continued to create problems in their adulthood as well. The speaker’s intended bride, ended up being his brother John’s wife. Such confusion continued to create issues in the speaker’s domestic life. Finally when the speaker died, the neighbours came and ended up burying his brother John.

7. Appreciation of poem – The Twins

For the appreciation of the poem, please click here.