Complete solutions to every question printed at the end of NCERT Class 12 English Core, Flamingo, Chapter 3 Deep Water by William O. Douglas. The chapter also prints a “Notice these words and expressions” box at the start of the story and two short comprehension checks in the margin of the story itself, and it ends with five separate exercise sections, each asking for a different kind of response. All of them are answered below in full, in the order the book prints them.
1 Notice These Words and Expressions
Before the chapter begins, the book prints a box: “Notice these words and expressions in the text. Infer their meaning from the context.” Here is what each one means where it appears in the chapter.
| # | Expression | Meaning in the context of the chapter |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | treacherous | Dangerous in a hidden, deceptive way. “The Yakima River was treacherous”: Douglas’s mother kept warning him against it and kept fresh in his mind the details of each drowning in it, so he went to the Y.M.C.A. pool, which was safe. |
| 2 | subdued my pride | Controlled his embarrassment and did what he did not want to be seen doing. He hated to walk naked into the pool and show his skinny legs, “But I subdued my pride and did it.” |
| 3 | flailed at the surface | Beat at the water wildly and helplessly with his arms. When he first came up after being thrown into the deep end, “I flailed at the surface of the water, swallowed and choked.” |
| 4 | fishing for landlocked salmon | Fishing for salmon that live in lakes shut off from the sea. “In canoes on Maine lakes fishing for landlocked salmon” is one of the many trips on which the haunting fear of the water followed him and ruined his enjoyment. |
| 5 | misadventure | An unlucky accident; a mishap. The “misadventure” is the day a big bruiser of a boy, probably eighteen, picked Douglas up and tossed him into the deep end of the Y.M.C.A. pool, where he nearly drowned. |
| 6 | bob to the surface like a cork | Pop up quickly and lightly to the top of the water, the way a cork floats up. At the bottom of the pool he planned a great spring upwards and “imagined I would bob to the surface like a cork. Instead, I came up slowly.” |
| 7 | curtain of life fell | He lost consciousness completely, as if his life had come to an end, like the curtain falling at the end of a play. “I crossed to oblivion, and the curtain of life fell.” |
| 8 | back and forth across the pool | To and fro, from one side of the pool to the other, again and again. The instructor held the rope tied to Douglas’s belt “and we went back and forth, back and forth across the pool, hour after hour, day after day, week after week.” |
2 In-Text Comprehension Check
NCERT prints two short comprehension checks in the margin of the story itself, before the formal exercises. They are answered here too, since they are part of the book’s own text.
Q. What is the “misadventure” that William Douglas speaks about?
Answer: When Douglas was ten or eleven and was learning to swim at the Y.M.C.A. pool in Yakima, a big boy, probably eighteen years old, picked him up and tossed him into the deep end, which was nine feet deep. Douglas went straight to the bottom, could not get his mouth above the water and nearly drowned; he lost consciousness and came to only when he was lying beside the pool, vomiting.
Q. What were the series of emotions and fears that Douglas experienced when he was thrown into the pool? What plans did he make to come to the surface?
Answer:
At first he was frightened, but “not yet frightened out of my wits,” and on the way down he made a plan: when his feet hit the bottom, he would make a big jump, come to the surface, lie flat on it and paddle to the edge of the pool.
When he rose slowly and saw only dirty yellow water, he grew panicky. He was suffocating, his legs hung “as dead weights, paralysed and rigid,” and when he tried to yell, no sound came out. Going down again, he still remembered his strategy: spring from the bottom, come up “like a cork,” lie flat, strike out with his arms and thrash with his legs until he reached the edge. Then “sheer, stark terror” seized him; he was paralysed with fear, his screams froze in his throat, and he tried to call for his mother, but nothing happened.
On the third descent all effort ceased. A blackness swept over his brain and wiped out fear and terror, and he felt quiet and peaceful, as if carried gently, before he “crossed to oblivion.”
Q. How did this experience affect him?
Answer: Right after the accident he walked home weak and trembling, shook and cried on his bed, and could not eat that night; for days a haunting fear stayed with him, and the slightest exertion made him wobbly and sick. He never went back to the pool and avoided water whenever he could. For years afterwards, whenever he waded the Tieton or Bumping River or bathed in Warm Lake, the old terror returned, paralysing his legs. This fear ruined his fishing trips and took away the joy of canoeing, boating and swimming.
Q. Why was Douglas determined to get over his fear of water?
Answer: The fear had become a handicap that followed him wherever he went: in canoes on Maine lakes, bass fishing in New Hampshire, trout fishing in Oregon and salmon fishing on the Columbia. It ruined his fishing trips and deprived him of the joy of canoeing, boating and swimming. Having tried “every way I knew” to overcome it without success, he decided to get an instructor and learn to swim.
Q. How did the instructor “build a swimmer” out of Douglas?
Answer: He built him “piece by piece.” First he put a belt around Douglas, with a rope running through a pulley on an overhead cable, and, holding the end of the rope, took him back and forth across the pool, hour after hour, until after three months the tension began to slack. Next he taught him to put his face under water and exhale, and to raise his nose and inhale, which Douglas repeated hundreds of times. Then he held him at the side of the pool and had him kick with his legs for weeks, until Douglas could command them. Finally he put the pieces together into an integrated whole, and in April said, “Now you can swim. Dive off and swim the length of the pool, crawl stroke.”
Q. How did Douglas make sure that he conquered the old terror?
Answer: He kept testing himself. First he swam alone in the pool until July, frowning at the “tiny vestiges of the old terror” and saying, “Trying to scare me, eh? Well, here’s to you! Look!” Still “not sure that all the terror had left”, he swam two miles across Lake Wentworth, from Triggs Island to Stamp Act Island; when the terror returned once in the middle of the lake, he laughed it away. Still having “residual doubts,” he went to Warm Lake in the Cascades, dived in, and swam across to the other shore and back. Only then could he say, “I had conquered my fear of water.”
3 Understanding the Text
Q. How does Douglas make clear to the reader the sense of panic that gripped him as he almost drowned? Describe the details that have made the description vivid.
Answer:
Douglas builds the panic in clear stages rather than describing it all at once. On his first trip down, he is still calm enough to make a plan, which he tells us directly: he is “not yet frightened out of my wits.” When that plan fails and he rises “slowly” into water with “a dirty yellow tinge” instead of bobbing up “like a cork”, the panic begins in earnest.
On the second descent, his legs “hung as dead weights, paralysed and rigid”, and although he screams, “only the water heard me”, which makes his complete helplessness vivid. Going down again he still remembers his strategy, but then “sheer, stark terror… that knows no understanding… no control” seizes him, and even his screams “in my throat were frozen”, so that only his own pounding heart tells him he is still alive. The detail of trying to call for his mother and having “nothing happened” makes the helplessness feel total. Only on the third descent, after a brief flash of light, does he finally stop struggling.
Finally, the panic gives way to an eerily calm description of losing consciousness: “This is nice… to be drowsy… to go to sleep.” This is one of the most vivid details in the whole passage, because it is peaceful rather than frightening, and it shows the reader exactly how far beyond ordinary fear Douglas’s mind had travelled by that point.
Q. How did Douglas overcome his fear of water?
Answer:
Douglas overcame his fear only after years in which every way he knew had failed, and he had mostly avoided water, when he finally decided, one October, to hire a swimming instructor. He trained five days a week, an hour a day, and the instructor rebuilt him as a swimmer in three separate steps.
First, the instructor put a belt around him; a rope attached to the belt went through a pulley on an overhead cable, and the instructor held the end of the rope while they went back and forth across the pool. It was three months before the tension began to slack. Second, he taught Douglas to put his face under water and exhale, then raise his nose and inhale, repeated hundreds of times. Third, he held Douglas at the side of the pool and had him practise kicking his legs for weeks, until Douglas could fully command them. In April, the instructor put the three pieces together and declared, “Now you can swim.”
But Douglas did not stop there. He tested himself alone in the pool until July, then, “not sure that all the terror had left”, swam two miles across Lake Wentworth, and finally, with “residual doubts”, swam across Warm Lake in the Cascades and back. Only after this did he say, “I had conquered my fear of water.”
Q. Why does Douglas as an adult recount a childhood experience of terror and his conquering of it? What larger meaning does he draw from this experience?
Answer:
Douglas retells the story because it taught him something far bigger than how to swim. Having experienced both the actual sensation of dying and the terror that comes from fearing death, he concludes that “in death there is peace” and that “there is terror only in the fear of death,” not in death itself.
He connects this directly to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s words, “All we have to fear is fear itself,” using his own experience as living proof of that idea. Because he had lived through and survived his own worst fear, Douglas says “the will to live somehow grew in intensity”, and he felt “released — free to walk the trails and climb the peaks and to brush aside fear.” The larger meaning he draws is in his own words: “There is terror only in the fear of death”, which he links to Roosevelt’s “All we have to fear is fear itself.”
4 Talking about the Text
Q. “All we have to fear is fear itself.” Have you ever had a fear that you have now overcome? Share your experience with your partner.
Answer:
This is a discussion question with no single correct answer; it asks the student to share a personal experience of overcoming a fear, on the model of Douglas’s own account. A good answer follows the same shape Douglas uses: describe what the fear was and where it came from, describe one clear moment when the fear was at its worst, and then describe, step by step, what was actually done to overcome it, ending with how it feels now that the fear is gone. For example, a student might describe a fear of the dark, of cycling on the main road, of speaking in front of the class, or of a particular subject, and explain what specific, repeated action (not just “getting used to it”) finally broke the fear’s hold, the way Douglas’s systematic training broke his.
Q. Find and narrate other stories about conquest of fear and what people have said about courage.
Answer:
The book itself gives two examples to build on. It mentions Nelson Mandela’s long struggle for freedom in South Africa and his perseverance in his mission “to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor,” as he describes in his own autobiography, as an example of a much larger, public conquest of fear over many years rather than a single afternoon. It also names the story “We’re Not Afraid to Die,” read earlier in Class XI, as an example of how courage and optimism helped a family survive extreme danger and stress.
A student can add other real or well-known examples of the same idea, that fear is overcome through repeated, deliberate action rather than by simply wishing it away, such as an athlete overcoming stage fright before a big competition, or a local example of someone who returned to an activity (driving, swimming, public speaking) after a bad experience by practising it again in small, controlled steps, exactly as Douglas’s instructor did with the belt and the pulley.
5 Thinking about Language
Q. If someone else had narrated Douglas’s experience, how would it have differed from this account? Write out a sample paragraph or paragraphs from this text from the point of view of a third person or observer, to find out which style of narration you would consider more effective, and why.
Answer:
Sample third-person paragraph (rewriting the misadventure):
“The boy sat on the side of the pool, waiting for the others to arrive. Suddenly, a much older boy came in, called out a taunt, picked him up and threw him into the deep end. He sank straight to the bottom, swallowed water, and tried to spring back up, but he rose only slowly, into water that looked dirty and yellow. He struggled, flailed his arms, and sank again. To anyone watching from the side, it might have looked at first like ordinary horseplay in a swimming pool, not a boy fighting for his life.”
Which style is more effective, and why. The book asks for your own view. In this answer’s view, the first-person account in the actual chapter is more effective. An outside observer, as in the sample paragraph above, can describe what could be seen from the pool’s edge: a boy being thrown in, struggling, and later lying beside the pool. It cannot show the inside of the experience in the same way. It could not say “sheer, stark terror… terror that knows no understanding, terror that knows no control,” or describe the strange, peaceful feeling of “the curtain of life” falling, because these are private sensations inside Douglas’s own mind, not actions a bystander could see. First-person narration is what lets the reader feel the terror and the final relief along with Douglas, instead of only watching it happen to someone else, and it is also what allows Douglas to step back at the end and explain, in his own reflective voice, the larger meaning he drew from the experience.
6 Writing
Q. Doing well in any activity, for example a sport, music, dance or painting, riding a motorcycle or a car, involves a great deal of struggle. Most of us are very nervous to begin with until gradually we overcome our fears and perform well. Write an essay of about five paragraphs recounting such an experience.
Answer (a model outline and opening, to be developed into five full paragraphs):
Paragraph 1, the fear. Open by naming the activity and the specific fear attached to it, the way Douglas opens with his fear of water; describe one clear early memory of feeling nervous or afraid while attempting it.
Paragraph 2, why the fear did not go away on its own. Explain how the fear was avoided or how it kept returning, the way Douglas avoided water for years after the pool accident.
Paragraph 3, the decision to face it. Describe the moment of deciding to work at the activity seriously despite the fear, and who or what helped, the way Douglas hired an instructor.
Paragraph 4, the step-by-step practice. Describe the actual training or practice in concrete stages, exactly as Douglas describes the belt-and-pulley phase, then breathing, then kicking, one clear step at a time rather than a vague “I practised a lot.”
Paragraph 5, the result. End with what the training achieved and how the activity feels now that the fear is gone. The book suggests you could begin your essay with its last line, “At last I felt released — free to walk the trails and climb the peaks and to brush aside fear,” so you may use it as your opening sentence.
Q. Write a short letter to someone you know about your having learnt to do something new.
Answer (a model letter):
Dear Friend,
I have been meaning to tell you some exciting news: I have finally learnt to swim properly this year! For a long time, I used to stay in the shallow end and watch everyone else swim lengths of the pool. This year I decided to actually take lessons instead of just avoiding it. My coach broke everything down into small steps, first floating, then kicking, then the arm strokes, and only put them together once each part felt comfortable on its own. It took a few months of regular practice, but last week I finally swam a full length of the pool without stopping. I understand now why people say that facing something difficult in small, steady steps works far better than trying to force yourself to be brave all at once. I hope you get a chance to try something you have been putting off too.
With warm regards,
Your friend
7 Things to Do
Q. Are there any water sports in India? Find out about the areas or places which are known for water sports.
Answer:
Yes, India has a long coastline, many rivers and several lakes, and a number of places are well known for water sports. Goa, Kerala’s backwaters, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Rishikesh on the river Ganga are commonly known centres. Common water sports practised in these places include swimming, water skiing, jet skiing, banana boat rides, scuba diving and snorkelling (especially in Goa and the Andamans), and white-water river rafting (especially at Rishikesh, on the Ganga). Kerala’s backwaters are additionally famous for boat races, especially the traditional snake-boat races held during festivals such as Onam. Students researching this question for their own area should name the nearest river, lake, dam or coastline and check locally which of these activities, if any, are organised there.