Here we are providing NCERT Solutions for Class 11 English Snapshots Chapter 2 The Address. Students can get Class 11 English The Address NCERT Solutions, Questions and Answers designed by subject expert teachers.
The Address NCERT Solutions for Class 11 English Snapshots Chapter 2
The Address NCERT Text Book Questions and Answers
Question 1.
‘Have you come back?’ said the woman. ‘I thought that no one had come back.’ Does this statement give some clue about the story? If yes, what is it?
Answer:
The narrator went back after the war to Marconi Street—Number 46, in search of her mother’s belongings. The belongings were with a non-Jewish lady, Mrs Dorling, who had stayed close by. This woman had often come to their place and regularly taken heavy boxes of silverware, cutlery, crockery etc. to keep with her till after the war. Not only did she volunteer to keep them, but had also insisted that they leave the things with her for safety.
However, when the narrator returned, Mrs Dorling at first refused to recognise her and then she expressed her surprise and said that she had not expected anyone to return. This is the first vital clue that the people who had once left the country were unwelcome. The people, who had volunteered to keep their belongings safely, were using their things as their own and had no intention of returning them. The political animosity had seeped into personal lives as well.
Question 2.
The story is divided into pre-War and post-War times. What hardships do you think the girl underwent during these times?
Answer:
The story is divided into pre-War and post-War times. The situations lend a direct contrast to each other. During the pre¬War times, the narrator and her mother lived a comfortable life, where there was bonding between the people in their neighbourhood. When during the first half of the War, the narrator visited her home she noticed that various things were missing. Her mother told her about Mrs Dorling, an old acquaintance, who had suddenly turned up and renewed their contact.
Since then, she had come regularly. She had insisted on taking their things to “save” all the “nice things”. The narrator’s mother also censured her daughter for not trusting the lady.As the narrator feared, when she went back after the war, Mrs Dorling stood at the door and “wanted to prevent it opening any further. Her face gave absolutely no sign of recognition.” She was wearing her mother’s green knitted cardigan but refused to talk to the narrator. She said that it was “not convenient” for her to talk. It was a betrayal of trust and sentiment.
The girl, like anyone who goes through war, must have undergone a traumatic experience. They were uprooted and insecure. They had to leave the country that they thought to be their own, leave their house and belongings that were not merely things but held memories and had sentiments attached to them. The basic necessities of life were not available. Moreover, they left behind the people who they thought were their friends. Above all, they lived a threatened life. This is evident through the observation of the narrator—“But gradually everything became more normal again. Bread was getting to be a lighter colour, there was a bed one could sleep in unthreatened, a room with a view one was more used to glancing at each day.”
Question 3.
Why did the narrator of the story want to forget the address?
Answer:
The narrator’s visit to Mrs Dorling’s house horrified her. She had come out of curiosity to see her possessions to see them, touch them, and relive the memories attached with them. But she felt oppressed in the strange atmosphere. Her eyes fell on the woollen tablecloth. The memories came flooding back to her. She followed the lines of the pattern and knew that somewhere on the edge there should be a bum mark that had never been repaired.
The cups on the tea table, the white pot, the spoons, all were so familiar and yet so strange. She recalled how as a child she had always fancied the apple on the pewter plate. She said one gets so used to touching all the lovely things in the house that one ceases to notice them unless something is missing. She recalled the time her mother had asked her to polish the silver. It was then that she had realised the spoons, forks and knives, they ate off every day were silver.
The objects were linked in her memory with the familiar life of earlier times but now they had lost their value because with the passage of time she felt cut off from them as they were now in unfamiliar surroundings. Moreover, she now lived in a small rented room where no more than a handful of cutlery could fit in the narrow table drawer. Hence, she thought of an easier way out to forget the address.
Question 4.
‘The Address’ is a story of human predicament that follows war. Comment.
Answer:
Although, this is apparently a very sad story about loss and regret emanating from the persecution of the Dutch Jews during the Second World War, it also speaks, more intimately, of the personal challenges we all must face as individuals in resolving crisis in our own lives. The story relays events before and after the war as the female narrator attempts to confront her past as she visits “the address” where her family’s past belongings were ‘stored,’ at a non- Jewish neighbour’s house.
She felt the urge to see them, touch and recall memories. On a deeper level, the story is a commentary on memories and remembering on what is worth remembering and what is worth forgetting: things “lose their value when you see them again, tom out of context…”