What does Valli mean when she says, &ldq | Class 10 English - First Flight Chapter Madam Rides the Bus, Madam Rides the Bus NCERT Solutions

What made Mr Keesing allow Anne to talk in class?

Are there people like Lencho in the real world? What kind of a person would you say he is? You may select appropriate words from the box to answer the question.

   greedy            naive                   stupid                ungrateful 
   selfish            comical               unquestioning

Chubukov says of Natalya: “... as if she won’t consent! She’s in love; egad, she’s like a lovesick cat...” Would you agree? Find reasons for your answer.

Why didn’t Valli want to make friends with the elderly woman?

Did Lencho try to find out who had sent the money to him? Why/Why not?

What ideals does Nelson Mandela set for the future of South Africa?

Anne says teachers are most unpredictable. Is Mr Keesing unpredictable? How?

Do you think Mr Keesing was a strict teacher?

How does Mandela describe the systems of government in his country

(i) in the first decade, and
(ii) in the final decade of the twentieth century?

What does courage mean to Mandela?

What ideals does Nelson Mandela set for the future of South Africa?

There are two kinds of conflict in the story: between humans and nature, and between humans themselves. How are these conflicts illustrated?

Why does the conductor call Valli ‘madam’?

What did Mij do to the box?

Match, the italicised phrases in Column A with the phrase nearest meaning in Column  B.

(Hint: First look for the sentence in the text in which the phrase in column A occurs.)

There are some examples of diary or journal entries in the ‘Before You Read’ section. Compare these with what Anne writes in her diary. What language was the diary originally written in? In what way is Anne’s diary different?

What do these statements tell you about Anne Frank as a person?
(i) We don’t seem to be able to get any closer, and that’s the problem. Maybe it’s my fault that we don’t confide in each other.
(ii) I don’t want to jot down the facts in this diary the way most people would, but I want the diary to be my friend.
(iii) Margot went to Holland in December, and I followed in February, when I was plunked down on the table as a birthday present for Margot.
(iv) If you ask me, there are so many dummies that about a quarter of the class should be kept back, but teachers are the most unpredictable creatures on earth.
(v) Anyone could ramble on and leave big spaces between the words, but the trick was to come up with convincing arguments to prove the necessity of talking.

What does Anne write in her first essay?

Would you agree that the “depths of oppression” create “heights of character”? How does Mandela illustrate this? Can you add your own examples to this argument ?

The Narrative Voice Here are two other sentences from the story. Can you say whose point of view the italicised words express?

1. But on Wednesday, Peggy and Maddie, who sat down in front with other children who got good marks and who didn’t track in a whole lot of mud, did notice that Wanda wasn’t there.

2. Wanda Petronski. Most of the children in room thirteen didn’t have names like that. They had names easy to say, like Thomas, Smith or Allen.