Exam-useful questions from this chapter, grouped by marks, each with a full model answer. Try writing the answer yourself first, then check it against this one.
1 1-Mark Questions
Q. Who wrote “My Mother at Sixty-six”?
Answer: Kamala Das.
Q. Where was Kamala Das born?
Answer: She was born in Malabar, Kerala.
Q. What is Kamala Das’s pen name for her fiction?
Answer: Madhavikutty, the pen name under which she published novels and short stories in both English and Malayalam.
Q. Where was the poet driving to in the poem?
Answer: She was driving to Cochin, from her parent’s home.
Q. What does the poet compare her dozing mother’s face to?
Answer: She compares it to “that of a corpse.”
Q. What word does the poet use for “mother” while saying goodbye?
Answer: She uses the word “Amma.”
Q. What is the rhyme scheme of the poem?
Answer: The poem has no rhyme scheme; it is written in free verse.
Q. What is the poet’s last action in the poem?
Answer: She smiles: “all I did was smile and smile and smile……”
2 2-Mark Questions
Q. Why does the poet feel pain while looking at her dozing mother?
Answer: She feels pain because her mother’s open-mouthed, ashen face looks like a corpse, and she realises with pain that her mother truly is as old as she looks.
Q. Why does the poet look out at the young trees and children after her painful realisation?
Answer: The poem does not give a reason: it says only that she “soon put that thought away, and looked out at Young Trees sprinting”. One reading is that the youthful scene outside gives her a distraction from the painful thought, though the poem keeps setting her still, ageing mother against them.
Q. What does the comparison to “a late winter’s moon” suggest about the mother?
Answer: It suggests that the mother’s vitality, like the faint, fading light of a winter moon, is dimming with age. It captures quiet decline rather than the sudden shock of the earlier corpse image.
Q. Why does the poet say only “see you soon, Amma” instead of expressing her fear?
Answer: She keeps to an ordinary, affectionate parting phrase and does not voice the fear underneath. One reading of the poem is that the strongest feelings are the ones left unsaid.
Q. What effect does the repeated word “smile” have in the poem’s last line?
Answer: The repetition of “smile” suggests an effort kept up rather than one natural smile: it shows the poet working hard to hide her real feelings from her mother at the moment of parting.
Q. Why is the poem written as a single, unbroken sentence?
Answer: The book’s own note says the single sentence, “punctuated by commas”, “indicates a single thread of thought interspersed with observations of the real world around”, moving between the poet’s feelings and what she observes around her without a break.
Q. What is the significance of the exact age “sixty-six” in the title?
Answer: Giving the mother’s exact age makes the poem feel like one specific, real memory rather than a general statement about growing old, and it sets up the contrast between this precise number and the timeless vitality of the young trees and children.
Q. What is the central contrast the poem is built around?
Answer: The poem is built around the contrast between the mother’s pale, ageing stillness and the sprinting young trees and merry, spilling children outside the car, old age placed directly beside youth.
3 4-Mark Questions
Q. Trace the poet’s feelings through the poem, from seeing her mother dozing to the moment of parting.
Answer: The poet first feels pain and shock on seeing her mother’s ashen, corpse-like, dozing face, and realising she is truly old. She soon puts this thought away and looks out at the youthful world outside, the sprinting trees and merry children. At the airport, looking at her mother again, the old “familiar ache” and “childhood’s fear” return, and the mother now looks pale and fading, “wan, pale as a late winter’s moon”. Finally, at the actual moment of parting, she says nothing of this and simply smiles, repeatedly, saying only an ordinary “see you soon, Amma.”
Q. Explain, with examples, how contrast is used as the central device of the poem.
Answer: The poem constantly places the mother’s ageing beside images of youth and vitality. Her “ashen,” corpse-like face is set against “Young Trees sprinting”; her stillness is set against “the merry children spilling out of their homes.” Even her second, quieter image, “wan, pale as a late winter’s moon,” continues this pattern of light fading rather than shining. This repeated contrast is what makes the mother’s decline feel sharp and immediate without the poet ever stating it directly.
Q. Identify and explain any three poetic devices used in the poem, with the exact line for each.
Answer: 1) Simile: “her face ashen like that of a corpse” compares the mother’s face to a corpse, a comparison with death, using “like.” 2) Personification: “Young Trees sprinting” gives the trees a human action. 3) Repetition and polysyndeton: “smile and smile and smile” repeats the word, joined by “and,” which can be read as a forced, sustained effort to hide real feeling.
Q. Why does the book describe the poem’s structure as “a single thread of thought”?
Answer: The poem is written as one continuous, enjambed sentence with no stanza breaks, moving without pause between the poet’s private feelings (pain, the old ache) and what she sees around her (the trees, the children, the airport). Because there is no full stop until the very end, the reader experiences the same unbroken rush of thought and observation that the poet herself is experiencing during the drive, which is exactly what the book’s note describes.
Q. What does the poem suggest about how people hide their deepest fears from those they love?
Answer: One reading is that the deepest fears, here, the fear of losing her mother, are often the hardest to say aloud, especially to the person the fear is about. Instead of speaking her fear, the poet reduces it to an ordinary, cheerful parting phrase, “see you soon, Amma,” and a repeated smile. One reading is that this kind of protective silence, sparing a loved one from seeing one’s own pain, is itself a quiet, private act of love.
Q. Compare the two similes used for the mother in the poem and explain how they differ in effect.
Answer: The first simile, “her face ashen like that of a corpse,” is sudden and shocking, comparing the mother directly to death and startling both the poet and the reader. The second, “wan, pale as a late winter’s moon,” is quieter and gentler, suggesting fading light and slow decline rather than death itself. Together, the two similes move the poem from a moment of shock to a longer, sadder acceptance of the mother’s ageing.
Q. How does the title “My Mother at Sixty-six” prepare the reader for the poem’s content?
Answer: The title is plain and factual, simply naming a relationship and an age, which makes the emotional weight that follows feel more real rather than announced in advance. The precise number “sixty-six” also quietly sets up the poem’s central contrast: an exact, ageing number for the mother against the general, timeless vitality of “young trees” and “children” that the poem later describes.
4 6-Mark Questions
Q. Discuss the poem’s use of what is left unsaid, with reference to the poem.
Answer: The poem’s most powerful moments are built on silence rather than speech. When the poet realises her mother is truly old, she does not say so, she “put that thought away.” When she feels her childhood fear return at the airport, she again says nothing of it. At the actual moment of parting, the one point where speech finally happens, all she says is the ordinary, affectionate “see you soon, Amma,” and all she does is “smile and smile and smile……” The trailing ellipsis at the very end is itself a mark of unfinished, unspoken feeling. Most of the poem’s emotion is carried through image and gesture. The poet does name pain and fear (“realised with pain”; “my childhood’s fear”) but never names love, and one reading is that this is why the poem feels so restrained and so moving: the reader is shown far more than the poet ever actually says.
Q. Discuss how Kamala Das uses the natural world (trees, children, the moon) to express a deeply personal, human fear in this poem.
Answer: The poem never names the fear outright as the fear of losing her mother. It names only “my childhood’s fear” at the airport, and carries the rest through images from the natural and everyday world. The “Young Trees sprinting” and “merry children spilling out of their homes” stand for a vitality and forward motion that the mother’s stillness no longer has. The “late winter’s moon,” pale and faintly lit, can be read as a quiet stand-in for the mother’s fading life itself, gentler than the earlier, starker comparison to “a corpse.” By routing her fear through these external, natural images rather than naming it outright, the poet makes an intensely personal anxiety feel universal: any reader who has looked at an ageing parent and felt that same unspoken ache can recognise themselves in these images, even though the poem names that fear only as “my childhood’s fear”.
Q. Examine the structure of the poem (its single-sentence form, lack of rhyme, and use of enjambment) and explain what this structure contributes to its meaning.
Answer: The poem is written as one unbroken sentence, with no stanza breaks, no rhyme scheme and constant enjambment, lines running on into each other without a pause. This structure mirrors the poem’s content closely: just as the poet’s thoughts move continuously between her private feelings and the world she observes around her, without the neat separations a stanza break would offer, so the sentence itself never stops to let the reader (or the poet) settle into any one feeling for long. One can read the absence of rhyme as keeping the tone close to ordinary speech, suited to what is, at heart, an ordinary car journey rather than a formal occasion. The one moment the sentence structure does pause meaningfully is at the very end, where the ellipsis after “smile” finally lets the built-up, unspoken feeling trail off into silence rather than a full stop, closing the poem on exactly the note of unresolved emotion its whole structure has been building toward.
Q. “The poem’s two images of the mother, the corpse and the winter moon, mark two different stages of the poet’s own understanding.” Discuss.
Answer: The first image, the mother’s face “ashen like that of a corpse,” arrives as a painful realisation that she is as old as she looks, and her first response is to push it away: she “put that thought away.” The second image, “wan, pale as a late winter’s moon,” arrives later, after the airport’s security check. On one reading, it is gentler and more resigned: fading light rather than death itself. Read together, the two images trace the poet’s own emotional journey across the poem, from a jolt of pain she tries to push away, to a quieter, sadder acceptance that returns as “that old familiar ache, my childhood’s fear”. By the poem’s end, this understanding is complete enough that all she can do is hide it, silently, behind a smile.
5 Case Studies
(A) 1 mark What does the poet see when she looks at her mother in the car?
Answer: She sees her mother dozing, open-mouthed, her face ashen like that of a corpse.
(B) 2 marks What realisation does this sight bring, and what does the poet do with it?
Answer: It brings the painful realisation that her mother is truly as old as she looks. The poet soon puts this thought away (“but soon put that thought away”).
(C) 3 marks How does the poet use the trees and children in this extract, and what do they represent?
Answer: The poet looks out at “Young Trees sprinting” and “the merry children spilling out of their homes” immediately after her painful thought. They represent youth, motion and vitality, the exact opposite of her mother’s stillness and ageing, and one reading is that they give the poet a way to distract herself from what she has just realised.
(A) 1 mark What does the poet notice about her mother at the airport?
Answer: She notices her mother looking “wan, pale as a late winter’s moon.”
(B) 2 marks What feeling does this sight bring back, and how does the poem describe it?
Answer: It brings back “that old familiar ache,” described as her “childhood’s fear”.
(C) 3 marks How does the poet’s outward behaviour in this extract contrast with what she is actually feeling?
Answer: Although she feels a deep, familiar ache and fear, all she says aloud is the ordinary “see you soon, Amma,” and all she does is smile repeatedly. The extract shows a clear gap between her real inner feeling and her calm, cheerful outward behaviour, which shows emotion held back rather than spoken.