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The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse Important Extra Questions and Answers Class 11 English Snapshots
The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse Extra Questions and Answers Short Answer Type
Question 1.
What does the writer suggest by beginning the story with the following words, “One day back there in the good old days…”?
Answer:
The beginning of the story is suggestive of the fact that the episode that is going to be narrated is not one from the recent past. On the contrary, it is something that happened years back. The words ‘good old days’, suggest that the times in the past were better than what they are at present.
Question 2.
What does the writer say about the ‘good old days’?
Answer:
The ‘good old days’ refer to a time when the narrator was about nine years old. Then, to him, the world was full of all possible kinds of splendour. Life then seemed charming and was as alluring as a mystifying dream.
Question 3.
What was the narrator’s first reaction to the horse?
Answer:
When the narrator’s cousin, Mourad, came to his house at four in the morning and woke him up, Aram couldn’t believe what he saw. Mourad was riding a beautiful white horse. He stuck his head out of the window and rubbed his eyes to make sure that he wasn’t dreaming.
Question 4.
What did the narrator think of Mourad?
Answer:
Unlike the rest of the world, it was only Aram who did not feel that Mourad was ‘crazy’. Aram knew that Mourad enjoyed being alive more than anybody else, and ‘who had ever fallen into the world by mistake’.
Question 5.
What were the chief traits of the members of his family that the narrator could recall?
Answer:
The narrator felt that although the people of his clan were poverty stricken, yet they were honest. They were proud, honest, and they believed in right and wrong. None of them would take advantage of anybody in the world, let alone steal.
Question 6.
Why was the narrator both delighted and frightened at the same time?
Answer:
The narrator was delighted at the magnificence of the horse. He could smell it, hear it breathing, which excited him but what frightened him was that Mourad could not have bought the horse. The narrator realized, if he had not bought it, he must have stolen it.
Question 7.
How did the narrator establish that Mourad had stolen the horse?
Answer:
When the initial fascination and surprise wore out, Aram asked Mourad where he had stolen the horse from. Aram was certain that no one in their family could afford one. When Mourad did not deny having stolen the horse, and evaded that question, Aram was sure that he had stolen the horse.
Question 8.
How did Aram justify the act of stealing the horse?
Answer:
Aram felt that stealing a horse for a ride was not the same thing as stealing something else, such as money. Perhaps, it was not stealing at all because they were crazy about horses. He felt it would not be called stealing until they offered to sell the horse, which they would never do.
Question 9.
What did Aram feel about Mourad’s temperament?
Answer:
According to Aram, Mourad had a crazy streak. That made him the natural descendant of Uncle Khosrove who had a crazy element in him. This crazy streak was common in their tribe and need not be passed on from a father to the son. The people of the tribe had been, from the beginning, unpredictable and unrestrained.
Question 10.
What happened when Aram tried to ride the horse?
Answer:
When Aram kicked into the muscles of the horse, it reared and snorted. Then it began to run. It ran down the . road to the vineyard of Dikran Halabian where it began to leap over vines. The horse leaped over seven vines and Aram fell off but the horse continued running.
Question 11.
What was the problem the children faced after getting the horse back?
Answer:
After Aram had been thrown off, it took Mourad half an hour to find the horse and bring him back. The next concern was that they did not know where to hide the horse till the next day, and by then the people had woken up.
Question 12.
Where did the boys hide the horse for the night?
Answer:
The boys walked the horse quietly to the bam of a deserted vineyard, which at one time had been the pride of the farmer named Fetvajian. There were some oats and dry alfalfa in the bam. It was there that they kept the horse.
Question 13.
Who was John Byro? What concern did he express at Aram’s place?
Answer:
John Byro was an Assyrian farmer who, out of loneliness, had learned to speak Armenian. He was sad because his white horse, which was stolen a month back, was still not found. Byro had a surrey a four-wheeled horse-drawn pleasure carriage having two or four seats which was of no use without a horse.
Question 14.
Mourad showed a special concern for animals. Justify.
Answer:
Mourad not only had a special understanding with the horse but Aram saw Mourad, trying to nurse the hurt wing of a young robin which could not fly. He healed the bird and it took flight. The dogs, too, in John’s farm, did not bark when he went there to put back the horse.
Question 15.
What did John Byro mean when he said, “A suspicious man would believe his eyes instead of his heart”?
Answer:
John Byro scrutinized the horse; it was an exact replica of the one he owned. He refused to believe that the two boys had taken his horse, as he knew their family was famed for honesty. So, even when his rational mind said that it was his horse, his heart refused to believe it.
Question 16.
What did John Byro perceive about the horse after it was returned? Why?
Answer:
After the horse was returned, John Byro said that the horse was stronger than ever and also better tempered. It was so because the children loved the horse and had taken good care of it. Moreover, it had exercised without the weight of the surrey.
The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse Extra Questions and Answers Long Answer Type
Answer the following in 120-150 words each.
Question 1.
Write a brief note on the Garoghlanian family as perceived by the narrator.
Answer:
The Garoghlanian family was poor. In fact, the whole tribe was poverty-stricken. But the family was living in the most amazing and comical poverty in the world. Nobody could understand where they ever got money enough to feed them, not even the old men of the family. Most importantly, they had been famous for their honesty for around eleven centuries, even when they had been one of the wealthiest families in the world.
They were proud, honest, and believed in values such as right and wrong. None of them would take advantage of anybody in the world, let alone steal. The streak of ‘madness’ shared by the narrator’s Uncle Khusrove and cousin Mourad had been there in their tribe, from the beginning, unpredictable and unrestrained.
Question 2.
What did Aram feel about the ‘crazy streak’ in the family?
Answer:
Aram felt that every family has a crazy element somewhere, and Mourad seemed to have inherited it from their Uncle Khosrove, a man so furious in temper, so irritable, so impatient that he stopped anyone from talking by roaring, “It is no harm; pay no attention to it.” That was all he said no matter what anybody happened to be talking about. Even when his own son Arak came running to the barber’s shop where he was having his moustache trimmed to tell him their house was on fire, Khosrove roared exactly the same thing. The barber repeated what the boy had said but Khosrove roared, “Enough, it is no harm, I say.” Mourad, though he was the son of Zorab, was the one who had inherited the streak of madness from Khusrove.
Question 3.
Describe the ride of Aram and Mourad when they went out together for the first time.
Answer:
Mourad called out to the narrator who leaped onto the horse behind his cousin Mourad. On Olive Avenue, they let the horse run for as long as it felt like running. Mourad, then, went for a ride alone; he kicked his heels into the horse and shouted, “Vazire, run.” The horse stood on its hind legs, snorted, and burst into a fury of speed. Mourad raced the horse across a field of dry grass, across the irrigation ditch and five minutes later returned, dripping wet.
When Aram leaped onto the horse for a ride, the horse did not move at first. Mourad told him to kick into his muscles. When Aram did so, the horse once again reared and snorted and began to run. But instead of running across the field to the irrigation ditch, the horse ran down the road to the vineyard of Dikran Halabian where it began to leap over vines. The horse leaped over seven vines and then Aram fell off.
Question 4.
Bring out the humour in Uncle Khosrove’s and John Byro’s meeting.
Answer:
Uncle Khosrove came to Aram’s house for coffee and cigarettes. Soon another visitor arrived, a farmer named John Byro. The farmer, having his coffee and a cigarette, said with a sigh that his white horse which had been stolen the previous month, was still untraceable. Uncle Khosrove became very annoyed and shouted that it was no harm since they had all lost their homeland. Hence, it was no use crying over a horse.
John Byro said that without a horse his carriage could not be put to use. “Pay no attention to it,” roared Uncle Khosrove. When John said that he had walked ten miles to get there, Uncle Khosrove shouted that he had legs. The farmer said that his left leg pained but Uncle Khosrove roared again, “Pay no attention to it.” The farmer said that the horse cost him sixty dollars. Uncle Khosrove said, “I spit on money” and walked out of the house, slamming the door.
Question 5.
Describe John Byro’s meeting with his horse and the two boys. What impact did it have on him?
Answer:
One morning, on the way to Fetvajian’s deserted vineyard, where they would hide the white horse during the day, the boys met John Byro who was on his way to town. They wished each other and the farmer studied the horse eagerly. He asked the boys the name of the horse. Mourad said it was called ‘My Heart’ in Armenian. John Byro said that he could swear it was his horse that was stolen many weeks ago.
The farmer then looked into the mouth of the horse. He was even more certain that the horse was a replica of his. He said, had he not known their family’s fame for honesty, he would have claimed the horse to be his. He believed Mourad when he suggested that the horse was the twin of John Byro’s horse. The next morning, the boys took the horse to John Byro’s vineyard and put it in the bam.