NEB Class 12 Humanities Optional English Question Paper 2077 Nepal

(Attempt any one. A full model answer for each option is given below.)

(a) The American Dream in The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is a powerful study of the American Dream — the belief that, in America, anyone, regardless of birth, can rise to wealth, status and happiness through hard work and determination. The novel both celebrates this dream and exposes its hollowness in the 1920s 'Jazz Age'.

1. The dream as self-made success. Jay Gatsby is the embodiment of the dream. Born poor as James Gatz, he reinvents himself, amasses an enormous fortune and builds a mansion in West Egg. His rise illustrates the promise that an ordinary man can achieve extraordinary things.

2. The dream tied to romantic idealism. For Gatsby the dream is not merely money but Daisy Buchanan, who symbolises beauty, love and acceptance into the elite. The green light at the end of Daisy's dock represents his unreachable hope and the future he forever reaches toward.

3. The corruption and failure of the dream. Fitzgerald shows that the dream has been corrupted by materialism. Gatsby's wealth comes from bootlegging and crime; the careless rich (Tom and Daisy) 'smash up things and creatures and then retreat back into their money.' The Valley of Ashes and the brooding eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg reveal the moral decay beneath the glittering surface.

4. The death of the dream. Gatsby is murdered, Daisy returns to Tom, and almost no one attends Gatsby's funeral. The dream proves to be an illusion — a beautiful but unattainable ideal destroyed by class barriers and human selfishness. Nick's closing image of boats borne 'ceaselessly into the past' shows that the American Dream is forever pursued yet never grasped.

Conclusion. Through Gatsby's hope, struggle and tragic end, Fitzgerald presents the American Dream as a noble aspiration that has decayed into pursuit of money and status, ultimately unfulfilled and illusory.

(b) 'Unhappy men are selfish' — Dr. Kirilov in Chekhov's Enemies

Chekhov's statement that 'unhappy men are selfish' means that intense personal suffering can narrow a person's vision so completely that he becomes incapable of feeling sympathy for the pain of others — grief turns him inward and hardens his heart.

Application to Dr. Kirilov. In Enemies, Dr. Kirilov has just lost his only child, a six-year-old boy, to diphtheria. At the very moment of his grief, Abogin arrives, desperately begging the doctor to come and save his dying wife. Although Kirilov is a physician sworn to help the sick, his own sorrow makes him unwilling and unable to respond to another's suffering; he goes only reluctantly. When it turns out that Abogin's wife has merely faked illness to elope with her lover, Kirilov explodes with bitter rage and contempt.

Justification. The story shows that both men are absorbed in their own emotions — Kirilov in fresh grief, Abogin in fresh betrayal — so that neither can truly see or pity the other. Their shared unhappiness, instead of uniting them, makes them selfish and turns them into 'enemies'. Chekhov thus criticises how suffering, though it should breed compassion, often makes people egotistical and blind to others. Kirilov's behaviour fully justifies the statement: his real misfortune deserves sympathy, yet it also makes him unjust and self-centred toward Abogin.

Conclusion. Chekhov does not condemn Kirilov but uses him to show a painful truth of human nature — deep personal unhappiness tends to make even good men selfish.

(Attempt any one.)

(a) Tom Buchanan's character (The Great Gatsby)

Tom Buchanan is one of the most unlikeable characters in the novel. He is immensely wealthy, born into 'old money', and physically powerful — a former football champion at Yale with a 'cruel body'. His leading traits are:

• Arrogant and aggressive — domineering, used to getting his way.
• Hypocritical and unfaithful — he keeps a mistress, Myrtle Wilson, yet is enraged by Daisy's affair with Gatsby.
• Racist and snobbish — he spouts theories about the 'white race' being submerged and looks down on the 'new rich'.
• Careless and cruel — together with Daisy he 'smashes up things' and lets others bear the consequences.

In short, Tom represents the corrupt, selfish and brutal side of the wealthy upper class.

(b) Nick's tea party

Nick Carraway arranges a tea party at his small cottage at Gatsby's request, so that Gatsby can secretly be reunited with Daisy after many years apart. At first the meeting is extremely awkward and tense — Gatsby is nervous, almost knocking over a clock, and both he and Daisy are uncomfortable. Nick tactfully leaves them alone for a while. When he returns, the atmosphere has completely changed: the rain stops, the sun comes out, and Gatsby 'glows' with happiness while Daisy weeps with joy. The party thus marks the emotional rekindling of their old love.

(Attempt any one.)

(a) Working conditions of the old man (The Big Fish)

The old man worked under harsh, exhausting and poorly paid conditions. He had to labour long hours in the cold and wet, exposed to the dangers of the sea, with little rest or comfort. Despite his age and failing strength, he continued the demanding physical toil of fishing simply to survive, receiving very little reward for his struggle. His situation reflects the hardship, poverty and dignity of the working poor who must keep struggling against nature and circumstance to earn their living.

(b) Lollò Zirafa (The Jar by Luigi Pirandello)

Lollò Zirafa is the main character of Pirandello's story The Jar. He is a wealthy but bad-tempered and quarrelsome landowner in Sicily, famous for his love of lawsuits — he is always ready to take people to court over the smallest matter and keeps a lawyer on constant call. He is proud, stubborn and obsessed with his property, especially his fine new olive-oil jar (giara). When the cracked jar is mended with the repairman Zi' Dima trapped inside it, Lollò's greed, rigidity and litigious nature turn a trivial accident into an absurd comedy. He thus embodies a man enslaved by his possessions and his own ill temper.

(Attempt any one.)

(a) Maurya's endurance of tragedy (Riders to the Sea by J. M. Synge)

Maurya is an old Irish island woman who has lost her husband, her husband's father and her sons to the cruel sea. In the play she has already lost five sons; her son Michael has recently drowned, and her last surviving son Bartley insists on crossing to the mainland to sell horses.

How she bears the tragedies. Throughout the play Maurya is filled with grief and dark foreboding. She tries to stop Bartley from going, fearing the sea will take him too. Her bearing is one of deep sorrow mixed with stubborn endurance: she has wept and prayed so many times that she is almost numbed by repeated loss. When she has a terrible vision of Bartley riding to his death with the ghost of dead Michael behind him, she knows the sea will claim her last son. Soon Bartley's drowned body is carried in.

How she consoles herself at the end. Having lost everything, Maurya reaches a state of calm, almost stoic acceptance. She says the sea can do no more to her now: 'They're all gone now, and there isn't anything more the sea can do to me.' She sprinkles holy water over the bodies, prays for the souls of all the dead, and is finally at peace, comforted by the thought that 'no man at all can be living forever, and we must be satisfied.' Her consolation comes from religious faith and from the recognition that death is the common, unavoidable lot of all humanity.

Conclusion. Maurya bears her endless tragedies with sorrow but also with extraordinary strength, and finds peace at last in resignation and faith.

(b) Summary of 'Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day' (Shakespeare's Sonnet 18)

This famous sonnet by William Shakespeare is a poem of love and praise addressed to a beloved (the 'fair youth').

• Opening question (lines 1-2). The poet asks whether he should compare his beloved to a summer's day, then declares that the beloved is 'more lovely and more temperate' than summer.
• Faults of summer (lines 3-8). He shows that summer is imperfect: rough winds shake the buds of May, summer is too short ('summer's lease hath all too short a date'), the sun is sometimes too hot and sometimes hidden by clouds, and every beautiful thing in nature eventually fades and declines.
• The beloved's eternal beauty (lines 9-12). Unlike summer, the beloved's 'eternal summer shall not fade'; the beloved will not lose beauty nor be claimed by death, because of this poem.
• Couplet (lines 13-14). The poet asserts the immortalising power of poetry: 'So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.' As long as people read the poem, the beloved's beauty will live forever.

Theme. The poem celebrates the beloved's beauty and, above all, the power of poetry to grant immortality.

(Attempt any one.)

(a) Maurya's character (Riders to the Sea)

Maurya is the central character of Synge's play — an old, grief-stricken Irish mother who has lost her husband and sons to the sea. Her chief traits are:

• Suffering and sorrowful — worn down by a lifetime of loss and constant mourning.
• Loving and protective — she fears for and tries to save her last son, Bartley.
• Religious — she prays constantly and sprinkles holy water over the dead.
• Resilient and stoic — at the end she accepts her fate with dignity, saying the sea can do no more to her.

Thus Maurya embodies the suffering, endurance and quiet courage of the island people who live at the mercy of the sea.

(b) Marriage in Lomov's opinion (A Marriage Proposal by Chekhov)

In Chekhov's farce A Marriage Proposal, Ivan Lomov sees marriage not as a matter of love but of practical necessity and convenience. A nervous, sickly hypochondriac of thirty-five, he decides to marry his neighbour Natalya Stepanovna chiefly because she is a good housekeeper, of suitable age and from a respectable, neighbouring landowning family. For Lomov, marriage is a sensible social and economic arrangement — a way to secure a settled domestic life at a 'critical age' — rather than a romantic union. The comedy lies in the fact that even before he can propose, he and Natalya fall into absurd quarrels over land and dogs, showing how far his calculated, unromantic view of marriage is from any idea of love.

(Attempt any one.)

(a) The paradox 'The Sound of Silence'

The phrase 'The Sound of Silence' is a paradox (oxymoron) because silence, by definition, is the absence of sound, yet here silence is said to make a 'sound'. The apparent contradiction carries a deep meaning: silence can itself communicate and can be more powerful and oppressive than noise.

The paradox suggests that in modern society people are surrounded by talk and noise yet fail to truly listen, understand or connect with one another — 'people talking without speaking, people hearing without listening.' Their lack of real communication is a kind of silence that 'speaks' loudly of loneliness, alienation and spiritual emptiness. Thus the 'sound of silence' is the disturbing, meaningful message conveyed by the absence of genuine human communication.

(b) Reference to the context

When I am dead, my dearest, / sing no sad songs for me, / plant thou no roses at my head, / Nor shady cypress tree.

Reference. These lines are taken from the poem 'Song' ('When I am dead, my dearest') by Christina Rossetti.

Context. Here the speaker addresses her beloved ('my dearest') and tells him how she wishes to be treated after her death.

Explanation. The speaker calmly asks her loved one not to mourn for her with sad songs, and not to plant roses or the shady cypress tree (a traditional emblem of mourning) over her grave. She wishes to be remembered without elaborate rituals of grief. The lines express her serene, untroubled acceptance of death and her indifference to the customary symbols of mourning. They reflect the poem's central idea that death brings a quiet forgetfulness in which remembering and forgetting no longer matter — 'Haply I may remember, / And haply may forget.'

Significance. The simple language and gentle tone convey a peaceful, almost detached attitude toward death, free from fear or sorrow.