SESSION: 2021-22

SUBJECT: ENGLISH

CLASS: XI

5. Father to Son Book: Hornbill

By - Elizabeth Jennings

Introduction
The poem ‘Father to Son’ is written by Elizabeth Jennings. The poem is about the anguish of a father
who doesn’t have a good relationship with his son. His son is now grown up and is busy in his life. The
father is bitter about the generation gap between them and the feeling of separation. He shares his
feelings by saying he doesn’t know much about him and there is no sign of understanding. He wants
their relationship to be just like when his son was a child. He is trying his best to resolve the issue but he
is in vain. Therefore, they are drifting apart.

Summary
The poet shares his feelings regarding the relationship with his son. The poet explains they he and his
son have spent many years in the same house. However, in spite of spending so many years together,
the father still doesn’t understand his son. Furthermore, the father doesn’t know anything about his
son. He doesn’t know what his son likes or what he dislikes. The father made an effort to build up a
relationship with his son since he was small. However, over the years, change has come in his son. As a
grown-up man, his son certainly has changed.
The father acknowledges his role in the communication gap between him and his son. He explains that
despite his efforts, things are not turning to his side. He says that his son was in a place that he could
not access. Furthermore, the father tells us that their communication is like the communication of
strangers. It seems there is not much attachment between the two. Moreover, there has been no signs
of understanding between the father and son. His child had a resemblance in appearance with his
father. However, in spite of this resemblance in appearance, the father didn’t know what his son loved.

There is a silence between the father and the son. As a child, his son was of a prodigal nature. His father
had a desire for his son to return home, the one he knew. The father does not want his son to move
around in the world and make his own world. The father was willing to express his forgiveness to his

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son. Furthermore, the father was willing to let go of the sorrows that he had inside of him due to the
existing distance between them. The father certainly had a desire to love him again.

Now, the son speaks for the first time and expresses his feelings. Furthermore, the son has a feeling of
sadness about the distance between them. Furthermore, the son tells that he is at a point in his life
where he does not understand himself. Moreover, the son explains that his anger is due to sadness.
Hence, it becomes pretty clear that both the father and son feel the same frustration due to this gap in
the relationship. Also, both the father and son are willing to forgive each other. However, they are
failing to find a solution to their problem. Both of them put out an empty hand for each other but in
futility.

Conclusion

The Father to Son summary throws light on a damaged relationship between a father and son.

Word-Meaning
 Sown – do something which will bring a result
 Prodigal – spending money freely
 Grief – sorrow, sadness
 understand – know
 for years – for many years
 build up – develop
 strangers – unknown to each other
 sign – indication
 in the air – known
 cannot share – do not
 silence – here it means lack of communication
 surrounds – everywhere, all over
 prodigal – extravagant, wasteful
 move his world – shift to newer avenues
 shaping from sorrow – making something new
 same globe – this world
 grows from grief – develops from deep sorrow
 put out – extend
 longing – desiring keenly or strongly

I. Read the extract given below and answer any two of the questions that follow.

I do not understand this child

Though we have lived together now

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In the same house for years. I know

Nothing of him, so try to build

Up a relationship from how

He was when small.

Question 1. Who are T and ‘this child’ in the above lines?

(a) ‘I’ is the mother and ‘this child’ is the mother’s son

(b) T is the brother and ‘this child’ is his younger brother

(c) ‘I’ is the father and ‘this child’ is his son

(d) ‘I’ is the uncle and ‘this child’ is his nephew

Answer: (c) ‘I’ is the father and ‘this child’ is his son

Question 2. What does the speaker complain about?

(a) The speaker complains that he knows nothing about his son

(b) The speaker complains that he knows a few bad things about his son

(c) The speaker complains that his son does not take care of him

(d) The speaker complains that his son is a drunkard

Answer: (a) The speaker complains that he knows nothing about his son

Question 3. What does the speaker want?

(a) The speaker wants to end his relationship with his son

(b) The speaker wants to make his son realise his mistakes ‘

(c) The speaker wants to live with his son

(d) The speaker wants to start a new relationship with his son

Answer: (d) The speaker wants to start a new relationship with his son

II. Read the extract given below and answer any two of the questions that follow.

Yet have I killed

The seed I spent or sown it where

The land is his and none of mine?

We speak like strangers, there’s no sign

Of understanding in the air.

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This child is built to my design

Yet what he loves I cannot share.

Question 1. Why does the father feel that the seed was sown in the land that was not his?

(a) Because the son does not share any of the physical features of his father

(b) Because the son shares the physical features of his father

(c) Because the son does not share any of the behavioural characteristics of his father

(d) Because the son shares some of the behavioural characteristics of his father

Answer: (c) Because the son does not share any of the behavioural characteristics of his father

Question 2. What is wrong between father and son?

(a) Father and son do no| resemble each other

(b) Father and son have a dispute related to their property

(c) Father likes his son but the son likes his mother

(d) Father and son behave like strangers and do not share any common likes or dislikes

Answer: (d) Father and son behave like strangers and do not share any common likes or dislikes

Question 3. “Built to my design” means

(a) that his son does not look like him

(b) that his son looks like him as far as physical features are concerned

(c) that his son wears the same brand of clothes that he does

(d) that his son wears clothes designed by him

Answer: (b) that his son looks like him as far as physical features are concerned

III. Read the extract given below and answer any two of the questions that follow.

Silence surrounds us. I would have

Him prodigal, returning to

His father’s house, the home he knew,

Rather than see him make and move.

His world. I would forgive him too,

Shaping from sorrow a new love.

Question 1. What does ‘silence surrounds us’ mean here?

(a) It means the silence of the night.

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(b) It means the silence in the house due to the switching off electrical appliances

(c) It means the silence in the house due to the demise of a loved one

(d) It means the silence due to no conversation happening between the father and the son

Answer: (d) It means the silence due to no conversation happening between the father and the son

Question 2. What does T want?

(a) ‘I’ wants his son to study hard

(b) T wants his son to not follow his wishes

(c) T wants his son to be realistic

(d) T wants his son to reciprocate forgiveness and mend the relationship

Answer: (d) T wants his son to reciprocate forgiveness and mend the relationship

Question 3. Find a word from the extract which means a person who spends money or uses resources
freely and recklessly.

(a) Returning

(b) Prodigal

(c) Prodigy

(d) Shaping

Answer: (b) Prodigal

IV. Read the extract given below and answer any two of the questions that follow.

Father and son, we both must live

On the same globe and the same land,

He speaks: I cannot understand

Myself, why anger grows from grief.

We each put out on empty hand,

Longing for something to forgive.

Question 1. Who are ‘we’ in the extract?

(a) The father and his two sons

(b) The father and his friend’s son

(c) The father and his son

(d) The uncle and his son

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Answer: (c) The father and his son

Question 2. Why must father and son live on the same globe and the same land?

(a) To take care of each other

(b) To not let others to take disadvantage of them staying apart

(c) To make their life easy

(d) To rebuild their relationship

Answer: (d) To rebuild their relationship

Question 3. What does ‘empty hand’ signify?

(a) It signifies the poverty of the father

(b) It signifies the failure of the father and the son to understand each other

(c) It signifies the poverty of the son

(d) It signifies the bad behaviour of the son

Answer: (b) It signifies the failure of the father and the son to understand each other.

Literary Devices
Simile – a figure of speech that makes comparison and shows similarities between two things

We speak like strangers

Alliteration - The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of closely connected words

The seed I spent or sown it where -‘s’ sound

Silence surrounds us

Metaphor - an indirect comparison between a quality shared by two persons or things

The seed I spent or sown it where

The land is his and none of mine?

I would have

Him prodigal, returning to

His father’s house

Questions and Answers

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Question 1. Why doesn’t the father know anything about his son though they have lived in the same
house?

Answer: The father-son relationship is actually non-functional. The father doesn’t understand the
aspirations, longings arid cravings of the son. They do not communicate with each other and behave like
strangers. Therefore, the father doesn’t know anything about his son.

Question 2. Is the father responsible for the present situation? What are your views?

Answer: Yes, I think the father is responsible for the present situation. We do not get to hear the son’s
version about his relationship with the father here. But the father is guilty of allowing continued silence
or non-communication between them and also not understanding the son’s aspirations and feelings.
Question 3. Father and the son behave like strangers to each other. What can be the possible reason
with for this?

Answer: They both act and behave like strangers due to lack of understanding with each other. A
growing son has his own ambitions and aspirations. Elders must try to act like friends rather than
command their children to behave according to their orders.

Question 4.What does the poet mean by ‘Silence surrounds us?’

Answer: The father feels helpless as he has no dialogue with his son. They don’t understand each other
and they are living like strangers to each other in spite of their living under the same roof for years. Their
outlook and temperament are so different that they remain separated from each other. They have a
communication gap along with the generation gap, which causes the silence.

Question 5. How does the father feel when his relationship with his son comes under strain?

Answer: Father feels very helpless at this situation when both father and son do not understand each
other. It saddens him to understand that he has never tried to understand his son’s perspective and his
son has distanced himself from him from long.

Question 6. What is the father’s attitude towards his son in the third stanza?

Answer: The father wants to rectify the situation in the third stanza. The father wants his son return to
the home that he has left. The father is willing to forgive his son and restart their relationship.

Question 7. What does the father wish for?

Answer: The father is unhappy and helpless. He wants to maintain a healthy relationship with his son.
The father wants that his prodigal son may return to his home and start living under the same roof with
him. He doesn’t want that he should create and live in a world of his own.

Question 8. The father is ready to have his prodigal son return. What inference can you draw from this?

Answer: Prodigal means wastefully extravagant. Here the reference is to the story in the Bible in which a
father gives his inheritance to his sons. The younger brother leaves, wastes his fortune and returns to his

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father’s home. Still the father is ready to take him back and forgive him. In the poem, the father also
wants to forgive him so that they live peacefully together again.

Question 9. The root cause of the generation gap presented in the poem lies in the fact that it is only the
father talking to his son rather than hearing or understanding him. Explain.

Answer: One of the reasons of the generation gap is absence of understanding and communication.
Here in this poem we hear only the father’s point of view. We do not hear anything from the son’s side.
The root cause of the generation gap has been lack of sharing of interests or not paying attention to the
child’s, emotional needs, when he is growing up. The child should be allowed to express his opinions
freely and adults should not behave like dictators.

Question 10. What do the words ‘an empty hand’ signify?

Answer: The words ‘empty hand’ signify that both the father arid the son want to forgive each other and
extend a hand of friendship to each other, but neither of them is willing to be the first one to do so. This
means that although they are longing to forgive each other, their egos are coming in the way so that
none of them wants to be the first one to do so.

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