Prose Dusk

Subject: English
Class 8
Prose: Dusk
Textbook Questions
2. Answer the following questions:
a) How does Norman Gortsby view dusk?

Norman Gortsby felt that dusk was the hour of the defeated. According to him, men and women who
fought and lost, came forth in this hour so that their shabby clothes and bowed shoulders and
unhappy eyes might pass unnoticed and unrecognized.
b) How did the young man present himself as genuine in his tale?
Seeing that the young man was angry when he came to sit on the bench and that he expected Gortsby
to take due notice of his angry demonstration, Gortsby struck a conversation with him. The young
man behaved so frankly that he said that he had done the silliest thing in his life. Thus, by blaming
himself he presented himself as genuine in his tale.
c) What predicament was the young man in?

The young man claimed that he had come to the city meaning to stay at the Patagonian Hotel in
Berkshire Square which he was familiar with. However, when he got there he found that it had been
pulled down and hence found another hotel some way off to stay in. He then went out to buy a bar of
soap as he had forgotten to pack any and he hated using hotel soap. After buying the cake of soap he
had a drink and strolled a bit and turned to go back to his hotel. As the hotel was unfamiliar, he
couldn’t remember its name hotel or location. Furthermore, he had spent most of his money and just
had a few pence left. He was upset as he was stranded in the large city for the night and had no one to
get help from as the people he knew were out of town.
d) Did Gortsby believe the young man’s story? Why?

Yes, initially Gortsby believed the young man’s cock and bull story. He had a similar experience in
his own life as he too had lost his hotel’s address while he was in a foreign capital with one of his
friends.
e) How did the young man fool Gortsby?
The young man was a professional thief but he was a better story teller. He, by describing how he
had forgotten the whereabouts of the hotel where he had taken a room and left his belongings,
appeared to have a genuine problem but when he could not produce the prime evidence, the bar of
soap, he left Gortsby in a haste. However in the end, Gortsby was most dramatically fooled by the
young man in the story. Initially he refused the young man a loan even after hearing his sad story as
the weak point of his story was that he had lost his soap which was a vital proof to establish his
story’s authenticity. When he found the soap lying near the park bench after the young man had left
he felt that the young man’s story was genuine and felt guilty for what he had not done for him, and
ran to help him. Later when he found that the soap belonged to the elderly man he realized that he
had been fooled.
f) Do you think ‘Dusk’ is an appropriate title for this story?

Yes, I think ‘Dusk’ is an appropriate title for this story. The title refers to the particular time in which
1
Subject: English
Class 8
this ironic story takes place as it occurs at ‘thirty minutes past six on an early March evening’ with
dusk having fallen ‘heavily’ over the scene. It also corresponds to the mood of its protagonist, who
attaches a special significance to this particular time. Dusk seems to signify human failure and
discontent. Dusk seems to be in the narrator’s mind, a time when humans can walk around in the
encroaching darkness and not have to hide their failures. There is an intense irony in this, as Gortsby
feels he is able to judge circumstances as he looks at others and imagines their situations, yet clearly
he makes a massive mistake when he finds a bar of soap and mistakenly believes the young man,
giving him money, when the young man has been trying to deceive him along. Dusk seems to have
only masked Gortsby’s own abilities to discern the truth.
g) Why do you think the young man built a story around a bar of soap?
I think that the young man built a story around a bar of soap as most people hate hotel soap and this
fact would sound convincing when he told his story.
WORKBOOK QUESTIONS:
Q.II Answer the following questions based on the text:
1. What kind of help is the young man looking for?

The young man had lost his hotel’s address and would have to wait for a day to get help from his
people. In the mean-time he had just two pence left with him and no friends in London to lend him
money. He needed to borrow money from somebody so that he could stay in a hotel that night or else
he would have to spend the night on the street.
2. What is the weak point in the man’s story?

According to Gortsby, the young man’s story was probably true because a similar incident had
happened in his own life but the weak point of his story was that he had lost the bar of soap, a vital
proof to establish his story’s authenticity.
3. Apart from Gortsby and this man who is the other character in the story? Briefly describe him.
It was an elderly gentleman who first sat near Gortsby on the bench. The man seemed to have lost
interest in life. He looked dejected and disappointed but refused to admit this fact. He was not
wearing entirely shabby clothes but one could not call them fine either. Even his physical appearance
did not seem deceptive. It seemed that no one cared about him as perhaps he was in the dusk of his
life.
4. Why did Gortsby think that the man was careless?

The young man said he was a stranger in town and had left his hotel to buy a cake of soap. He had
not taken any precautions to keep the hotel’s address with him and had forgotten the name of his
hotel and the street where it was in. He had not carried enough money with him and had only a
shilling in his pocket which he had spent on buying the soap and having a drink for himself which
pointed to him being careless. According to Gortsby, the fact that the young man could not produce
the cake of soap when he was asked to show it is another indication that the young man was careless.

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Subject: English

2. Answer the following questions:

a) How does Norman Gortsby view dusk?

c) What predicament was the young man in?

d) Did Gortsby believe the young man’s story? Why?

e) How did the young man fool Gortsby?

f) Do you think ‘Dusk’ is an appropriate title for this story?

Q.II Answer the following questions based on the text:

1. What kind of help is the young man looking for?

2. What is the weak point in the man’s story?

4. Why did Gortsby think that the man was careless?

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