Monday, June 28, 2010

ICSE Sample Paper: The Postmaster: A Short Story by Rabindranath Tagore



Q. What do we keep doing repeatedly? 

        “We cling with both arms to false hope, refusing to believe the
weightiest proof against it, embracing it with all our strength.” 
        Finally a time comes when false hopes escape, leaving us almost half-
dead by draining our heart’s blood. Time passes. Our wounds heal. But
again “we rush to fall into snares of delusion all over again.” 

Q. Do you blame the postmaster for his decision to leave without
Ratan? What was Ratan’s reaction to the situation? How do you justify
what both of them did? 

        From a moral point of view the postmaster perhaps committed a
grievous wrong so far Ratan was concerned. It was not absolutely
improbable or impossible for him to treat her as her own sister. May
be if the postmaster had been poor and uneducated, he would have taken
the orphan girl into his fold like even the poorest of people would do
in such a circumstance. However, the postmaster reacted as any city
bred and educated man would have done and so he is not to be blamed. 

        Ratan reacted to the situation in a miserable manner, mistaking
despair to be hope and the inevitable (unavoidable) to be false. In
the process, her heart bled profusely, making her sorrow and agony to
be inconsolable. 

       The greatest justification of what both of them did is that such
brief preludes of intense hopefulness and acute agony (in case of
Ratan) are but very familiar milestones in life’s journey. On the
other hand, the postmaster’s mild betrayal of Ratan (mild because what
the postmaster did was commonplace) i.e. the act of forsaking a
helpless orphaned girl is not much to talk about. 

2 comments:

  1. i need atleast 10 points to prove the postmaster wright or wrong in 250-300 words for a project,,plz could you help further

    ReplyDelete
  2. i need atleast 10 points to prove the postmaster wright or wrong in 250-300 words for a project,,plz could you help further

    ReplyDelete