Summary of Question-answers of The Poem : 8- Vocation with the concerned video

Summary

The child goes to school at 10 in the morning. On his way to school, he first meets the bangle-seller. The child wishes that he was the hawker because he is free to go down any road he likes. He does not have to return home at an appointed hour.

When the child returns from school at 4 O’ clock, he sees the gardener digging the soil with a spade. The gardener is not worried that his clothes are getting dirty or that it is too hot or that he will get wet if it is raining. The child then wishes that he was a gardener.

At night when the child is sent to bed by his mother, he sees the watchman pacing up and down the lane with his lantern. The child envies the watchman because no one tells him to go to bed. So the child wishes that he was a watchman.

Question 1:

You partner and you may now be able to answer these questions.

(i) Who is the speaker in the poem? Who are the people the speaker meets? What are they doing?

(ii) What wishes does the child in the poem make? Why does the child want to be a hawker, a gardener, or a watchman? Pick out the lines in each stanza, which tell us this.

ANSWERS

(i) The speaker is a little child who goes to school. On his way to the school, he met a hawker, who cried “Bangles, crystal bangles!” When he returned from school, he watched a gardener, who was digging the ground. When it got dark and his mother sent him to bed, through his window he saw the watchman walking up and down

(ii) The child in the poem wants to be a hawker, a gardener, and a watchman. When he looks at the hawker, he wishes he could also spend his day on the road crying “Bangles, crystal bangles!” He feels that there is nothing to hurry the hawker on. There is no road he must take, no place he must go to, and no fixed time when he must come home. These are the things that he cannot do himself and therefore, he wants to be a hawker so that he could do all these things. Next, he wishes he was a gardener because a gardener does what he likes with his spade. He soils his clothes with dust. Nobody scolds him if he gets baked in the sun or gets wet. Therefore, if the little child was a gardener, nobody would stop him from digging. Finally, he sees the watchman and wants to be like the watchman so that he could walk through dark and lonely streets all night with his lantern and chase shadows. When he is put to bed and is not allowed to roam outside, he sees the watchman swinging his lantern with his shadow at his side and he feels that the watchman never even once has to go to bed in his entire life. Therefore, he wants to be a hawker, a gardener, and a watchman so that he could do all the things they did as he could not do them being a child.