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 is the poet of ‘Keeping Quiet’, and from which country does he come?
Answer: Pablo Neruda, born in the town of Parral, Chile.
Q. In which year did the poet win the Nobel Prize for Literature?
Answer: 1971.
Q. What does the poet ask everyone to do in the opening stanza?
Answer: Count to twelve and keep still, together.
Q. What does ‘to have no truck with’ mean?
Answer: To refuse to associate or deal with something, or to refuse to tolerate it.
Q. Name one device the poet uses to end the poem where it began.
Answer: Framing repetition (a changed return): the counting of stanza 1, ‘Now we will count to twelve’, returns as ‘Now I’ll count up to twelve’ in stanza 8.
Q. What would fishermen do differently during the pause the poet describes?
Answer: They would not harm whales.
Q. What phrase does the poet use for wars with gas and fire?
Answer: ‘Green wars, wars with gas, wars with fire.’
Q. What symbol from Nature does the poet use to show life continuing under apparent stillness?
Answer: The Earth itself, which seems dead and later proves to be alive.
2 2-Mark Questions
Q. What does the poet mean by ‘an exotic moment… in a sudden strangeness’?
Answer: He calls it an ‘exotic moment’ and a ‘sudden strangeness’ because the poem sets this stillness against the rush and engines of ordinary life: a world ‘without rush, without engines’, where ‘we would all be together’, would feel unfamiliar.
Q. Why does the man gathering salt look at his ‘hurt hands’ during the pause?
Answer: The poem does not say why he looks at them. During the pause he ‘would look at his hurt hands’, so one reading is that the stillness lets him notice the injuries his work has caused.
Q. What clarification does the poet make in stanza 6, and why is it important?
Answer: He says his idea should not be confused with total inactivity, and that he wants ‘no truck with death’. This is important because it prevents the reader from misreading the poem as a wish for people to stop living; it is only a call for one deliberate, temporary pause.
Q. What ‘sadness’ does the poet refer to in stanza 6?
Answer: The sadness ‘of never understanding ourselves / and of threatening ourselves with death’. The poet links it to being ‘so single-minded / about keeping our lives moving’.
Q. Identify and explain one example of anaphora in the poem.
Answer: ‘Wars with gas, wars with fire’ (stanza 5) repeats the phrase ‘wars with’ at the start of successive phrases. This anaphora piles up the different forms of war one after another; one reading is that it makes the destruction feel endless.
Q. Explain the personification in the line ‘Perhaps the Earth can teach us’.
Answer: The Earth is given the human ability to ‘teach’, as though it were a wise teacher rather than a planet. This personification makes the lesson, that apparent death can lead to renewed life, feel like advice from a living source, not just an abstract idea.
Q. What does NCERT’s own note about ‘differing line lengths’ tell us about the poem’s structure?
Answer: The note asks us to notice the differing line lengths and the shift in thought. That fits free verse, with no fixed pattern of rhyme or stanza length. As the book prints it, the eight stanzas run from 2 lines to 13 lines, and the thought shifts as the stanzas change.
Q. Is ‘Keeping Quiet’ only about personal introspection, or does it say something wider? Explain briefly.
Answer: It works on both levels. Personally, it asks the reader to pause and understand themselves. More widely, it pictures fishermen who ‘would not harm whales’ and war-makers putting on clean clothes and walking about with their ‘brothers’, doing nothing, so it can also be read as an environmental and anti-war appeal about the whole world pausing together.
Q. Why does the poet call the pause an ‘exotic moment’ and a ‘sudden strangeness’?
Answer: One reading is that a world with no rush, no engines and no speech would feel completely unlike ordinary daily life. ‘Exotic’ and ‘strangeness’ are words of novelty (unusual diction) used for a moment of stillness, which makes true stillness sound remarkable.
3 4-Mark Questions
Q. Explain the central idea of the poem ‘Keeping Quiet’ in your own words.
Answer: Points to cover: (1) The poet proposes a shared, universal pause, counting to twelve and keeping still, with no speech and no engines. (2) In this pause ‘we would all be together’: a sense of togetherness. (3) Fishermen would not harm whales, and war-makers would put on clean clothes and walk about with their ‘brothers’, doing nothing. (4) The poet is careful to clarify that this is not a wish for death or ‘total inactivity’; ‘Life is what it is about’. (5) The book’s own note names the purpose: ‘quiet introspection and creating a feeling of mutual understanding among human beings’; ‘perhaps a huge silence / might interrupt this sadness / of never understanding ourselves’. (6) The Earth’s own cycle, appearing dead and later proving alive, shows that stillness can renew life rather than end it.
Q. Discuss the anti-war and environmental elements in ‘Keeping Quiet’.
Answer: Points to cover: (1) Stanza 4 shows fishermen who would not harm whales during the pause, an image of humans sparing nature. (2) The same stanza shows the man gathering salt looking at his ‘hurt hands’; one reading is that this is a quiet comment on how hard labour hurts people. (3) Stanza 5 pictures the makers of ‘green wars, wars with gas, wars with fire’ putting on clean clothes and walking about with their ‘brothers’ in the shade, doing nothing. (4) ‘Victory with no survivors’ names the outcome of such wars. (5) Read together, these images can be taken to extend the poem’s call to introspection into a wider appeal for peace and for care of the natural world; this is a reading, as the book itself names only introspection and mutual understanding.
Q. How does the poet use contrast to build his argument in stanza 6?
Answer: Points to cover: (1) Stanza 6 sets ‘total inactivity’ and ‘death’ directly against ‘life’, contrasting what the poet does NOT mean with what he does. (2) The line ‘Life is what it is about’ asserts the positive value he is arguing for. (3) ‘I want no truck with death’ uses the book’s own glossed phrase to flatly refuse the opposite reading. (4) This contrast protects the whole poem from being misunderstood as morbid or passive, and shows the poet actively defending his own meaning mid-poem.
Q. Trace the shift in pronoun from ‘we’ to ‘I’ across the poem, and explain its effect.
Answer: Points to cover: (1) Stanzas 1-3 use ‘we’ (‘we will all keep still’, ‘let’s not speak’, ‘we would all be together’), proposing a shared, collective pause. (2) Stanzas 4-5 drop ‘we’ and turn to other people in the third person: the fishermen, the man gathering salt, ‘Those who prepare green wars’. (3) Stanza 6 opens with ‘I’ (‘What I want…’, ‘I want no truck with death’), the poet speaking in his own voice to clarify his meaning, and then, in the same stanza, returns to ‘we’ (‘If we were not so single-minded’, ‘threatening ourselves’). (4) Stanza 7 keeps ‘us’ (‘the Earth can teach us’). (5) Stanza 8 splits the voice: ‘I’ll count… and you keep quiet and I will go’, separating the poet from the reader. (6) One reading of the effect is that the poet steps in and out of the collective voice to make his personal clarification, then, having made his case, steps back at the end and leaves the choice to the reader.
Q. Explain the significance of the poet’s shift from ‘we’ in the opening stanza to ‘I’ and ‘you’ in the closing stanza.
Answer: Points to cover: (1) Stanza 1 uses ‘we’, making the pause a shared, collective proposal for everyone. (2) In stanza 6, the poet speaks in his own voice (‘What I want…’), taking personal responsibility for the idea he is putting forward, before the same stanza returns to ‘we’ (‘If we were not so single-minded’) and stanza 7 to ‘us’. (3) In the closing stanza 8, the poet separates himself from the reader: ‘I’ll count… and you keep quiet and I will go.’ (4) One reading is that this final shift shows the poet withdrawing after making his case, leaving the choice to keep still, and to understand oneself, to the reader.
4 6-Mark Questions
Q. Keeping Quiet is not a poem about death, but about life understood more deeply. Discuss this statement with reference to the poem.
Answer: Structured points: (1) Introduction: on first reading, a poem about counting to twelve, keeping still and even mentioning ‘death’ might seem morbid, but a closer reading shows the opposite. (2) Stanza 6 directly rejects this misreading: ‘What I want should not be confused with total inactivity… Life is what it is about; I want no truck with death.’ (3) The pause the poet proposes is brief and purposeful, framed by counting to only twelve, not an endless silence. (4) The purpose of the pause is introspection: later in stanza 6 the poet says that if we were not ‘so single-minded / about keeping our lives moving’, ‘perhaps a huge silence / might interrupt this sadness / of never understanding ourselves’. The book’s own note calls this ‘the necessity of quiet introspection’. (5) The Earth’s own cycle in stanza 7, ‘as when everything seems dead / and later proves to be alive’, is offered as proof that stillness is part of life continuing, not life ending. (6) Conclusion: the poem uses the language of stillness and even the word ‘death’ to argue for a fuller, more self-aware kind of life.
Q. Discuss the poetic devices used in ‘Keeping Quiet’ and show how each one supports the poem’s central theme.
Answer: Structured points: (1) Framing repetition: ‘Now we will count to twelve’ (stanza 1) returns as ‘Now I’ll count up to twelve’ (stanza 8), framing the poem around one repeated action. (2) Symbolism: counting to twelve is a literal instruction that also stands for a short, deliberate pause. (3) Simile: ‘as when everything seems dead / and later proves to be alive’ (stanza 7) compares the Earth’s apparent stillness with death and renewal, and carries the poem’s claim that stillness renews rather than ends life. (4) Anaphora: ‘without rush, without engines’ and ‘wars with gas, wars with fire’ build up lists. (5) Imagery: the fishermen, the man gathering salt with his hurt hands and the war-makers in clean clothes turn an abstract idea into pictures a reader can see. (6) Contrast and unusual diction: ‘an exotic moment’ and ‘a sudden strangeness’ make an ordinary pause sound unfamiliar, set against ‘rush’ and ‘engines’. (7) Irony: ‘victory with no survivors’. (8) Personification and free verse: the Earth is given a teacher’s voice, and the poem’s unrhymed, irregular stanzas avoid any fixed pattern. Conclusion: the devices work toward the same end, making a call for introspection and mutual understanding feel concrete and memorable.
Q. Attempt a stanza-wise summary of ‘Keeping Quiet’, bringing out the shift in thought from stanza to stanza.
Answer: Structured points (the book prints the poem in 8 stanzas): (1) Stanza 1: the poet proposes counting to twelve and keeping still, together. (2) Stanza 2: the scale widens to ‘the face of the Earth’: no speech in any language, arms not moved ‘so much’. (3) Stanza 3: the pause is described as ‘an exotic moment’, ‘without rush, without engines’, when ‘we would all be together’. (4) Stanza 4: two human images, fishermen who would not harm whales and the man gathering salt looking at his hurt hands. (5) Stanza 5: even war-makers would put on clean clothes and walk about with their ‘brothers’, doing nothing. (6) Stanza 6: the poet clarifies this is not ‘total inactivity’ or death (‘Life is what it is about’), and then names the sadness ‘of never understanding ourselves / and of threatening ourselves with death’. (7) Stanza 7: the Earth’s lesson, ‘as when everything seems dead / and later proves to be alive’. (8) Stanza 8: the poet steps back into ‘I’, leaving the reader, ‘you’, to keep quiet. Conclusion: the poem moves from proposal, to images, to self-clarification and explanation, to proof, to a final handover to the reader.