STEPHJOY BOYS HIGH SCHOOL

FORM THREE DECEMBER HOLIDAY ASSIGNMENT

13. Read the poem below and then answer the questions that follow

I SHALL RETURN
I shall return, I shall return again
To laugh and love and watch with wonder eyes
At garden noon the forest fires burn,
Wafting their blue black smoke to sapphire skies
I shall return to loiter by the streams
That bathe the brown blades of bending grasses,
And realize once more my thousand dreams
Of waters rushing down the mountain passes
I shall return to hear the fiddle and fife
Of village dances, dear delicious tunes
That stir the hidden depths of native life
Stray melodies of the dim-remembered tunes
I shall return, I shall return again
To ease my mind of long, long years of pain
(Claude McKay)

(a) Explain briefly what the poem is about (3mks)

(b) In NOTE form, identify four things which the persona is longing to return to (4mks)

(c) With illustration from the poem, identify and illustrate any three stylistic devices
used in the poem (6mks)

(d) What is the tone of the poem? Illustrate your answer (2mks)

(e) In what kind of environment is the persona living? Explain your answer (2mks)

(f) What specific name is given to the poems with one stanza and fourteen lines as
one above?

(g) What is the name given to the last two lines ending in similar sound? (1mk)

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14. Read the poem below and answer the questions that follow:
POETRY:- OUT CAST

They met by accident So they had to separate

He proposed the idea The boy remains illegitimate.
She gave her consent
All the way to the alter. Last month not long ago
They both took their go
The casualty was male Coincidentally by accident
And his pigment was pale Nothing to inherit.
Unlike his alleged sire
Who was black with Ire The poor boy is hardly ten
And knows no next of kin
The recourse was legitimate He roams the street of town.
He declaimed responsibility Like a wind sown outcast.
So they had to separate
The boy remains illegitimate.

a) Who is the persona in this poem? (2 mks)

b) What is the message in the poem? (4 mks)
c) Comment on any three stylistic device used in the poem. (6 mks)
d) What is the persona’s attitude towards the ”they?” (2 mks)
e) Comment on the last stanza. (3 mks)
15. Read the poem below and then answer the questions that follow:

The inmates
Huddled together,
Cold biting their bones,
Teeth chattering from the chill,
The air oppressive,
The smell offensive
They sit and they reflect.

The room self-contained,

At the corner the gents’ invites
With the nice fragrance of ammonia,
And fresh human dung,
The fresh inmates sit thoughtfully.

Vermin perform a guard of honour,

Saluting him with a bite here,
And a bite there,
Welcome to the world’ they seem to say.

The steel lock of the door,

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 The walls insurmountable
And the one torching torturous bulb
Stare vacantly at him.
Slowly he reflects about the consignment
That gave birth to his confinement
Locked in for conduct refinement
The reason they put him in the prison.

The clock ticks

But too slowly
Five years will be a long time
Doomed in the dungeon
In this hell of a cell.

(a) What is the attitude of the speaker towards the fresh inmate? (4mks)

(b) Explain the atmosphere created through description in the poem (4mks)

(c) Why is the fresh ‘inmate in prison? (2mks)

(d) Identify and explain any three stylistic devices in the poem (6mks)

(e) Explain the mood of the new convict (2mks)

(f) Explain the meaning of the following line:

‘Locked in for conduct refinement (2mks)

16. Read the following poem and answer the questions that follow: (20mks)
THE FOOLISH OLD MAN
My father began as a god
Full of heroic tales
Of days when he was young
His laws were as immutable
As if brought down from Sinai
which indeed he thought they were.
He fearlessly lifted me to heaven
By a mere swing to his shoulder
And made me a godling
By seating me astride
Our milk cow’s back and too,
Upon the great white gobbler.
of which others went in constant fear.

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 Strange then how he shrank and shrank
Until by my time of adolescence
He had become a foolish small old man
with silly and outmoded views
of life and morality.

Stranger still
that as I became older
his faults and his intolerances
scatted away into the past
revealing virtues
such as honesty, generosity, integrity.

Strangest of all
how the deeper he recedes into the grave
the more I see myself
as just one more of the little men
who creep through life
no knee – high to this long-dead god.
(Ian Mudie)

(a) Briefly comment on the theme of the poem (4mks)

(b) Comment on the suitability of the tittle of the poem (3mks)

(c)What is the attitude of the persona towards his father? (3mks)

(d) Identify and explain any three stylistic devices used in the poem (6mks)

(e) What do the following groups of people learn from the poem?
(i) Parents. ……………… (ii) Children………
(f) Explain the meaning of the following words as used in the poem. (2mks)

Immutable…………… Outmoded……………………

17 . ORAL LITERATURE
Read the story below and then answer the questions which follow:-
When she is the only one at the foot of the mortar-stones the hen only scratches with one paw.
For she has, so she thinks, plenty of time to choose her grains for corn.

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 Ponda certainly was not the only girl in M’badane, but she had only to appear for the most
beautiful, and far from being fastidious and difficult to please as might have been expected, she was
only too anxious to find a husband, as she was afraid of growing into an old maid, for she had already
turned sixteen. On their side suitors were not lacking: every single day her girl-friends’ brothers and
fathers, young men and old men from other villages, sent griots and dialis bearing gifts and fine words
to ask her hand in marriage.
If it had only depended on herself Ponda would certainly by now have a baby tied on her back,
either good, or bad-tempered and crying. But in the matter of marriage, as in all things a girl must
submit to her father’s will. It is her father who must decide whom she is to belong to: a. Prince, a rich
dioula or a common badolo who sweats in the field in the sun; it is for her father to say it he wishes to
bestow her on a powerful marabout or an insignificant talibe.
Now Mor, the father of Ponda had demanded neither the immense bride-price of a rich man,
nor the meager possession of a badolo; still less had he thought of offering his daughter to a marabout
or to a marabout’s disciple in order to enlarge his place in paradise. Mor simply told all those who
come to ask for his daughter, whether for themselves, for their masters, for their sons or for their
brothers:
“I will give Ponda without demanding bride-price or gifts, to the man who will kill an ox and
send me the meat by the agency of a hyena; but when it arrives not a single morsel of the animal must
be missing.”
That was more difficult than making the round-cared Narr-the-Moor keep a secret. It was more
difficult than entrusting a calabash full of honey to a child and expect him not to even dip his little
finger in. You might as well try prevent the sun from leaving his home in the morning or retiring to bed
to the end of the day. You might as well forbid the thirsty sand to drink the first drop s of the first rains.
Entrust meat to Bouki-the-Hyena? You might as well entrust a pot of butter to a burning fire. Entrust
meat to Bouk and prevent her from touching it.
But how can you entrust meat; even dried meat to a hyena, and prevent her to touch it? It was
an impossible task, so said the griots as they ended their way home to their masters: so said the
mothers who had come on their sons’ behalf, so said the old men who had come to ask for the
beautiful Ponda for themselves.
A day’s walk form M’Badane lay the village of N’diour. The inhabitants of N’Diou were by no
means ordinary folk’ they were, or so they believed, the only men and the only women since earliest
times to have tamed the double hyenas, with whom in fact they lived in perfect peace and good
understanding. It is true that the people of N’Diour did their share to maintain these good relations.
Every Friday they killed a bull which they offered to Bouki-the-Hyena and her tribe. Of all the
young men of N’Diour, Birane was the best at wrestling as well as working in
the fields, he was also the most handsome. When his griot brought back presents that Mor had
refused, and told him the conditions which Ponda’s father had laid down, Birane said to himself:
“I shall be the one to win Ponda for my bed,” He killed an ox, dried the meat, and put it in a goatskin;
the skin was enclosed in a coarse cotton bag and the whole thing placed in the middle of ‘a truss straw.
On Friday, when Boruki came with her family to partake of the offering given by the people of
N’Diou Birane went to her and said, ‘My griot, who has no more sense than a babe at the breast and
who is as stupid as an ox has brought the fine gifts that I sent to Ponda, the daughter of Mor of
N’Badane. I am certain that if you, whose wisdom is great and whose tongue is as honey, took this
simple truss of straw to N’Badane to the house of Mor you would only need to say, “Birane asks for
your daughter, “for him to grant her to you”.

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 “I have grown old, Birane, and my back is no longer very strong, but N’Bar, the oldest of
my children, is full of vigour and he has inherited a little of my wisdom. He will go to N’Badane
for you, and I am sure that he will acquint himself well of your mission.”
M’Bar set off very early in the morning, the truss of straw on his back. When the dew
moistened the truss of straw the pleasant Odour of the meat began to float in the air. M’bar-thehyena
stopped, lifted his nose sniffed to the right, sniffed to the left, then resumed his way, a little less
hurriedly it seemed. The smell grew stronger, the Hyena stopped again, bared his teeth, thrust his nose
to the right, to the left, into the air, then turned round and sniffed to the four winds. He resumed his
journey, but now hesitating all the time, as if held back by this penetrating, insistent smell which
seemed to come from all directions.
Not being able to resist it any longer, M’Bar left the track that led from N’Diour to N’Badane,
made huge circling detours in the veld, ferreting to the right, ferreting to the left continually retracing
his steps, and took three whole days instead of one to reach N’Badane.
N’Bar was certainly not in the best of tempers when he entered Mor’s home. He did not wear
the pleasant expressions of a messenger who comes to ask a great favour. This smell of meat that
impregnated all the grass and all the bushes of the veld and still impregnated the huts of N’Bedane and
the courtyard of Mor’s home, had made him forget on the ‘way from N’Diour all the wisdom that
Biouki had instilled into him, and stilled the gracious words that one always expects from a petitioner.
M’Bar scarcely even unclenched his teeth to say: Assalamou aleyokoum!” and nobody could even hear
his greeting; but as he threw down the truss of straw from his back had bent under its weight, he
muttered in a voice that was more than disagreeable, ‘Bitane of N”Diour sends you this truss of staw
and asks for your daughter. Under the very eyes of M’Bar the Hyena, first astonished, then indignant,
then covetous Mor cut the liana ropes that bound the truss of a straw, opened it up and took out the
bag of coarse cotton; from the coarse cotton bag of he took out the goat-skin and from the goatskin
the pieces of dried meat.
‘Go’, ‘Mor, said to M’Bar-the-hyena, who nearly burst with rage at the sight of all that meat he
had unsuspectingly earned for three days, and which was spread out, there without his being able to
touch a single bit. (for the folk of N’Badane were not like the inhabitants of N’Diour, and in M’Badane
hunting spears were lying all round). ‘Go,’ said Mor, ‘go and tell Birane that I give him my daughter. Tell
him that he is not only the most spirited and the strongest of all the young men of N’Diour, but he is
also the shrewdest.
He managed to entrust meat to you, hyena, he will be able to keep a sharp watch on his wife
and outwit all tricks.’

a) What type of oral narrative is this?

b)
b) State one economic activity of the community from which the story is taken.
c) What two aspects of Birane’s character come out in this story?

d) What moral lesson do we learn from this narrative?

e) Identify two significant devices used in this narrative and comment on their
effectiveness

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 f) Identify three aspects of social life in the community from which the oral narrative is set

18. Read the poem below and answer the questions that follow.

“SYMPATHY”
I know what the caged bird feels, alas !
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opens,
And the faint perfume from its petals steals-
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing

Till its blood is red on the cruel bans;
For he must fly back for his perch and cling
When he rather would be on the branch a – swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting –
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,

When his wing is bruised and his blossom sore,
When he beats his bars and would be free;
It is not a song of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings –
I know why the caged bird sings !
(Adapted from the poem by Paul Lawrence Dunbar
In American Negropoetry, edited by Arna Bontemps.
New York: Hill and Wang, 1974)

(a) Explain briefly what the poem is about .

(b)
(c) What does the poet focus on in each of the three stanzas? Give your answer in note form.

(c) How would you describe the persona’s feelings towards the caged bird?
(d) What can we infer about the persona’s own experiences?
(e). Identify a simile in the first stanza and explain why it is used.

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 (f). Explain the meaning of the following lines:
(i) “And the faint perfume from its petals steals”.
(ii) “And they pulse again with a keener sting “

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