CLASS 11, Photograph

A PHOTOGRAPH:

1.     1. What does the word cardboard denote in the poem?

Ans -  Generally a cardboard means a stiff and thick paper, but here the word denotes a part of the frame that displays the photograph of the poet’s mother and her two cousins Betty and Dolly safe and intact.

2.     2. What has the camera captured?

Ans- The camera captured all the memories of the three girls in it. It had captured the pretty face of the poet’s mother and the manner the two girls Betty and Dolly dressed themselves for the photograph to be taken on the beach.  

3.     3. What has no changed over the years?

Ans- The sea did not change over the years, it is a symbol of eternity. The photograph and the memories have not changed in spite of the passage of changed time. The photograph was taken twenty thirty years ago, which signify the power nature holds and how helpless humans are in front of time and nature, which is eternal.

4.   4.   The poet’s mother laughed at the snapshot. What did this laugh indicate?

Ans-  The poets mother laughed at the way they dressed up for the beach some twenty thirty years before.

            The laugh indicates her youth when she was twelve years old, the past memories which she can never get back again.

5.   5.  What is the meaning of the line “ Both wry with the labored ease of loss”

Ans- This line refers to the loss which both the poet and her mother had suffered. The mother had lost her childhood, her innocence and joyful spirit which the photograph had captured. And the poet lost the smile of her mother. But both of them accepted their losses with ease though with a heavy heart.

6.     6. The three stanza depict three different phases. What are they?

Ans- The poem A photograph run into three different stanzas. In the first stanza, the photograph shows the poets mother with her two cousin at the beach enjoying their holiday. She was twelve years or so and was the eldest among the three girls.

            The second stanza takes us to twenty thirty years later, here the poets mother laughs at her own snapshot the way they all dressed up for their holiday at the beach.

            And the last stanza the poet remembers her mother with a heavy heart. It describes the time when her mother is no more and the loss of her mother in her life leaves the poet with a pale of silence spreads all over.

7.   7.   Explain the line ‘ the sea holiday as a poet, mine is her laughter.’

Ans- This line is extracted from the poem “ A photograph” composed by S’hirley Taulson”

            This line refers to the loss of both mother and the poet. The childhood days of mother, the sea beach holiday have become her past, she could never get her childhood time back, and the poet lost her mother’s smile and this loss expresses a disappointment for both the mother and daughter but they accepted the losses and their fate with ease.