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| Chapter | 2. The Mark on the Wall |
| Subject | English |
| Textbook | Kaleidoscope, Non Fiction |
| Class | Twelve |
| Author | Virginia Woolf |
| Category | NCERT Solutions for Class 12 |
The NCERT Solutions for Class 12 English are an excellent choice for students preparing for their board or any competitive exams. These solutions are made by expert teachers and faculties of English. Class 12 English Solutions, made by NCERTian, will help students understand the central theme of each chapter. They will strengthen your foundation in English and help you score good marks in the board examination. On this page, we have provided you with the Solutions of Kaleidoscope Non Fiction Chapter 2 – The Mark on the Wall.
NCERT Solutions for Class 12 English Kaleidoscope Chapter 2
The Mark on the Wall Solutions
Stop And Think
Q1) What is the string of varied thoughts that the mark on the wall stimulates in the author’s mind?
Answer) The mark on the wall stimulates various thoughts in the author’s mind and hence can be seen as a perfect example of ‘stream of Consciousness. At first, she thinks of it as a result of a nail but then while rejecting this idea she starts to think about the personalities of the previous occupants of the house. Then thinking about the hole as an ink mark and not a hole she starts to philosophize about the idea of death. Again, she changes her interpretation and sees the mark as just a shadow while pondering over the writings of Shakespeare and the art character composition.
Q2) What change in the depiction of reality does the author foresee for future novelists?
Answer) According to the author, the future novelists will no more rely on deadened traits and realities to compose their characters. They will look deeper into the realms of reality and depict the hard-hidden reality which is not talked about and is left unseen.
Stop And Think
Q1) What is the author’s perception of the limitations of knowledge and learning?
Answer) For the author, knowledge has nothing to do with education. One can gain knowledge when he/she starts to starts to think, anyone under any circumstances can think. She says, “A world which one could slice with one’s thought as a fish slices the water with his fin.” The author does not favour blind pursuits of knowledge and leaning. She suggests a life, “without professor or specialists”.
Q2) Describe the unbroken flow of thoughts and perceptions of the narrator’s mind, using the example of the colonel and the clergy.
Answer) Through her thoughts and views upon the mark on the wall, the narrator philosophizes vast aspects in various ways. This leads to an unbroken flow of thoughts and perceptions in her mind and while thinking of mark as a hole she wonders the profession of an antiquary, who without any evidence cannot prove any truths. For this, she uses the example of the colonel, who has to look at both the sides of the coin and then incline himself towards his camp. Giving the example of a retired colonel she says “Retired Colonels, for the most part, I daresay, leading parties of aged labourers to the top here, examining clods of earth and stone, and getting into correspondence with the neighbouring clergy.
Understanding the Text
Q1) An account of reflections is more important than a description of reality according to the author. Why?
Answer) The author, Virginia Woolf, can only reflect the deeply hidden truths of human realities through characters created by the writers. Existence often requires the radiance of emotions, and a description of reality often fails to evoke the author’s feelings through his or her work. While reflections, on the other hand, help people to examine one’s thoughts or feelings. According to the author, future writers will look into the depths, explore the facts, pursue their illusions, and leave behind the ancient detailed depiction of reality. Hence, according to the author, an account of reflections is more important than a description of reality.
Q2) Looking back at objects and habits of a bygone era can give one a feeling of phantom-like unreality.
What examples does the author give to bring out this idea?
Answer) The author takes Shakespeare, the most famous Elizabethan playwright, as an example to describe the objects and habits of the past era, which brings only a ghostly unreality to the author. The renowned writer, Shakespeare, sat in an armchair by the fireplace, clutching his forehead and the sky above his head, full of incredible and suspicious ideas and inspirations. She believes that a person will naturally be inspired by the environment or experience rather than some inspiring phenomenon. The author collected some examples from ‘Whitaker’s Table of Precedency’ to describe this untrue spirit. Traditional concepts such as good and evil, heaven and hell, God and the devil are invalid and seem to be describing untrue.
Q3) How does the imagery of (i) the fish (ii) the tree, used almost poetically by the author, emphasise the idea of stillness of living, breathing thought?
Answer) The narrator looks at the life of the tree, while the fish emphasizes the stillness of life and the breath of thought. She says, “Wood is a pleasant thing to think about. It comes from a tree, and trees grow, and we don’t know how they grow”. Trees grow independently without any external factors affecting them, which describes how nature works soundlessly without disturbing the world around them. Further, she explains it using the imagery of a fish, saying, “I like to think of the fish balanced against the stream like flags blown out”, describing the still life present in a current world that is often left undiscovered.
Q4) How does the author pin her reflections on a variety of subjects on the ‘mark on the wall’?
What does this tell us about the way the human mind functions?
Answer) In this chapter, the author attempts to describe the “Stream of mindfulness”. First of all, the author thinks deeply about solving the mystery of the marks on the wall, representing the interest of the individual’s mind and the height of the human psychological process. In order to solve a small mystery, the human mind plunges into an unimaginable depth. A smaller secret, “The mark on the wall,” allows her to delve into history, Shakespeare’s writings, traditional norms, etc. All these ideas will enable her to look deeper into the future. Thus, she discusses how nature penetrates our thought processes and stimulates us to take action, and tells us the infinite and infinite nature of human thought in terms of action.
Q5) Not seeing the obvious could lead a perceptive mind to reflect upon more philosophical issues. Discuss this with reference to the ‘snail on the wall’.
Answer) Yes, it is true that not seeing the obvious can lead a perceptive mind to reflect upon more philosophical issues. For example, the story “The Mark on the Wall” revolves around the mark present on the wall from the author’s vision. The mark on the wall, which is the main plot in the story, could have easily been solved by the narrator, examining the mark more closely but she instead investigates using several mental processes to solve the mystery behind it. Instead, she reflects upon more philosophical issues. She goes back to ancient times, to the future and is in a fluctuating state of mind reflecting upon philosophies and at the same time trying to solve the mystery behind the mark. At the end of the story, it is revealed that it’s just the snail who made the mark, creating a plot. However, with her interpretations and perspective, the author reflected upon many philosophical issues throughout the entire process.
Talking about the Text
Q1) ‘In order to fix a date, it is necessary to remember what one saw’. Have you experienced this at any time?
Describe one such incident, and the non-chronological details that helped you remember a particular date.
Answer) The author says, “In order to fix a date, it is necessary to remember what one saw”. Our minds are more receptive to images than writings, so one has to mark any important dates. But, on the other hand, there are chances that we may still forget about it. So the visual images that happened on that particular day may help back track to the date of the day.
Yes, I, too, got to experience the same situation. I once got to see a bus coming crashing into a building near my house on my birthday. Unfortunately, no one was harmed. This unforgettable incident keeps flashing in my mind on every birthday, reminding me of the day it had happened, which provokes me to philosophise life and open my mental process to endless thoughts. Hence the author rightly said, “In order to fix a date, it is necessary to remember what one saw”.
Q2) ‘Tablecloths of a different kind were not real tablecloths’.
Does this sentence embody the idea of blind adherence to rules and tradition? Discuss with reference to ‘Understanding Freedom and Discipline’ by J. Krishnamurti that you’ve already read.
Answer) Both the authors, J. Krishnamurti and Virginia Woolf, have restructured the concept of freedom in many of their works. Both the authors are against the idea of blind adherence to rules without questioning their purpose and intention. They both have talked about how the traditionally set rules have hindered individual freedom and the compromises they have made in their life. Woolf also questioned the importance given to knowledge and learning and the depiction of reality by Shakespeare. She rejects all these traditional set norms and sets up her own thoughts on education and truth with reality.
Q3) According to the author, nature prompts action as a way of ending thought.
Do we tacitly assume that ‘men of action are men who don’t think’?
Answer) The author Woolf assumes nature creates interference to end her thought process with all the obstacles in between. She took this up as a test and did not give in to her appeal to stand up from her chair and solve the mystery behind the mark on the wall in less than a minute. Instead, she used her continuous thinking process to unlock the secrets imprinted on the wall unhurriedly. As a result, she comes out with a lot of countless ideas. Thus, for the narrator, knowledge is related to thinking ability, and nature creates obstacles for us. Therefore, according to the narrator, in the story’s context, the actors do not believe that it is correct to say that people are indeed non-thinking people.
Appreciation
Q1) Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of narration: one, where the reader would remain aware of some outside voice telling him/her what’s going on; two, a narration that seeks to reproduce, without the narrator’s intervention, the full spectrum and continuous flow of a character’s mental process.
Which of these is exemplified in this essay? Illustrate.
Answer) Virginia Woolf’s “The Mark on the Wall” is a perfect example of a Stream of Knowledge. The story’s narrator seeks to represent the full spectrum of a character’s mental process and constant flow without the narrator’s intervention. Although the narrator tries to focus on the ideas to solve the mystery behind the mark on the wall, the author uses various unconnected ideas and opinions in the entire story. These perceptions influence the reader to imagine and stimulate their mental process. But unfortunately, the abundance of thoughts that the mark on the wall bothers the narrator’s mind is unrealistic because the real reason behind it is the snail’s mark. Thus, the author’s different opinions of several myriad ideas sets the narrative technique of the essay.
Q2) This essay frequently uses the non-periodic or loose sentence structure: the component members are continuous, but so loosely joined, that the sentence could have easily been broken without damage to or break in thought.
Locate a few such sentences, and discuss how they contribute to the relaxed and conversational effect of the narration.
Answer) The following set of sentences from the text is an excellent example of the continuous structure of loosely coupled sentences. This narrative structure gives the narrative a relaxed tone—the image of the narrator sitting in a chair and smoking a cigarette trying to solve the problem. The secret behind the mark on the wall was that he hesitated to get up and reveal the mystery in less than a minute, creating an inert atmosphere in the scene. So the reader is fully involved and knows that the narrator is talking to them. In addition, if the reader knows the mysterious mark on the wall, this kind of shadow will bring a specific exotic flavour to the reader.
Here are a few sentences from the text:
“I want to sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface, with its hard separate facts. To steady myself, let me catch hold of the first idea that passes… Shakespeare… Well, he will do as well as another. A man who sat solidly in an arm-chair, and looked into the fire, so— A shower of ideas fell perpetually from some very high Heaven down through his mind. He leaned his forehead on his hand, and people, looking in through the open door, —for this scene is supposed to take place on a summer’s evening—But how dull this is, this historical fiction! It doesn’t interest me at all.”
Task
(i) Can you say which words are content words in the examples below, and which are function words?
All the examples are from the text in this unit.
(ii) Can you name the kind of word (its category as noun, pronoun, etc.?).
A dictionary may help you to do this. You can work in pairs or groups, discussing the reasons for your analysis.
- Ants carry a blade of straw so feverishly, and then leave it.
- They wanted to leave this house because they wanted to change their style of furniture.
- I don’t believe it was made by a nail after all; it’s too big, too round, for that.
- There was a rule for everything.
- The tree outside the window taps very gently on the pane.
Answer)
Ants carry a blade of straw so feverishly and then leave it.
Ants– Content Word, Noun
Carry– Content Word, Verb
A- Function Word, Article
Blade- Content Word, Noun
Of- Function Word, Preposition
Straw- Content Word, Noun
So- Function Word, Adverb
Feverishly- Content Word, Adverb
And- Function Word, Conjunction
Then- Content Word, Adverb
Leave- Content Word, Verb
It- Function Word, Pronoun
They wanted to leave this house because they wanted to change their style of furniture.
They- Function Word, Pronoun
Wanted- Content Word, Verb
To- Function Word, Preposition
Leave- Content Word, Verb
This- Function Word, Pronoun
House- Content Word, Noun
Because- Function Word, Conjunction
They- Function Word, Pronoun
Wanted- Content Word, Verb
To- Function Word, Preposition
Change- Content Word, Verb
They’re- Function Word, Determiner
Style- Content Word, Noun
Of- Function Word, Preposition
Furniture- Content Word, Noun
I don’t believe it was made by a nail after all; it’s too big, too round, for that.
I- Function Word, Pronoun
Don’t- Content Word, Adverb
Believe- Content Word, Verb
It- Function Word, Pronoun
Was- Content Word, Verb
Made- Content Word, Verb
By- Function Word, Preposition
A- Function Word, Article
Nail- Content Word, Noun
After all- Function Word, Preposition
It’s- Function Word, Pronoun
Too- Content Word, Adverb
Big- Content Word, Adjective
Too- Content Word, Adverb
Round- Content Word, Adjective
For- Function Word, Conjunction
That- Function Word, Pronoun
There was a rule for everything.
There- Content Word, Adverb
Was- Function Word, Verb
A- Function Word, Article
Rule- Content Word, Noun
For- Function Word, Conjunction
Everything- Function Word, Pronoun
The tree outside the window taps very gently on the pane.
The- Function Word, Article
Tree- Content Word, Noun
Outside- Content Word, Noun
The- Function Word, Article
Window- Content Word, Noun
Taps- Content Word, Verb
Very- Content Word, Adverb
Gently- Content Word, Adverb
On- Function Word, Preposition
The- Function Word, Article
Pane- Content Word, Noun
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