Extracts of Deep Water | William Douglas | Chapter 3 | Flamingo |

Extracts of Deep Water | William Douglas | Chapter 3 | Flamingo |

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Extract 1

It had happened when I was ten or eleven years old. I had decided to learn to swim. There was a pool at the Y.M.C.A. in Yakima that offered exactly the opportunity. The Yakima River was treacherous. Mother continually warned against it, and kept fresh in my mind the details of each drowning in the river. But the Y.M.C.A. pool was safe. It was only two or three feet deep at the shallow end; and while it was nine feet deep at the other, the drop was gradual. I got a pair of water wings and went to the pool. I hated to walk naked into it and show my skinny legs. But I subdued my pride and did it.

a) Who is ‘I’ in the above lines?
• President Roosevelt
• The instructor
• William Douglas
• Alphonse Daudet

b) What does the word ‘Treacherous’ mean?
• Dangerous
• Safe
• Punitive
• All of these

c) How was YMCA pool safer?
• For it had instructors
• For it had life guards
• For it had shallow water to learn swimming
• All of these

d) What does the speaker mean by ‘I subdued my pride’?
• Put pride down by force
• Brought pride out of control
• Raised his pride
• All of these

Answers:

a. William Douglas

b. Dangerous

c.  All of these

d.  Put pride down by force

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Extract 2

From the beginning, however, I had an aversion to the water when I was in it. This started when I was three or four years old and father took me to the beach in California. He and I stood together in the surf. I hung on to him, yet the waves knocked me down and swept over me. I was buried in water. My breath was gone. I was frightened. Father laughed, but there was terror in my heart at the overpowering force of the waves. My introduction to the Y.M.CA. swimming pool revived unpleasant memories and stirred childish fears. But in a little while I gathered confidence.

a) Who is the author of Deep Water?
• John Updike
• Gertrude Simmons
• William Blake
• None of these

b) What does the word ‘Revived’ mean?
• Given fresh life
• Restored to consciousness
• Resuscitated
• All of these

c) What does the speaker mean by ‘I was buried in water’?
• That he was drenched
• That he was drowned
• That he lost his breath in the pool
• All of these

d) Why did he go to Y.M.C.A pool?
• Because it was safer
• Because it was riskier
• Because it had personal instructor
• All of these

Answers:

a. None of these

b. All of these

c. That he was drowned

d. Because it was safer

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Extract 3

I went to the pool when no one else was there. The place was quiet. The water was still, and the tiled bottom was as white and clean as a bathtub. I was timid about going in alone, so I sat on the side of the pool to wait for others. I had not been there long when in came a big bruiser of a boy, probably eighteen years old. He had thick hair on his chest. He was a beautiful physical specimen, with legs and arms that showed rippling muscles. He yelled, “Hi, Skinny! How’d you like to be ducked?” With that he picked me up and tossed me into the deep end.

a) Who threw the narrator into the pool?
• Big bully
• Big lad
• Big chap
• All of the above

b) What does the word ‘Timid’ mean?
• Bold
• Coward
• Lazy
• Agile

c) Who has been called ‘Skinny’ in the extract?
• The instructor
• William Douglas
• Douglas Mother
• Both i and ii

d) Name the chapter.
• Deep water
• On the Face of It
• Evans Tries an O Level
• Indigo

Answers:

a. All of the above

b. Coward

c. William Douglas

d. Deep Water

Extract 4

I landed in a sitting position, swallowed water, and went at once to the bottom. I was frightened, but not yet frightened out of my wits. On the way down I planned: When my feet hit the bottom, I would make a big jump, come to the surface, lie flat on it, and paddle to the edge of the pool. It seemed a long way down. Those nine feet were more like ninety, and before I touched bottom my lungs were ready to burst. But when my feet hit bottom I summoned all my strength and made what I thought was a great spring upwards. I imagined I would bob to the surface like a cork. Instead, I came up slowly.

a) What does the phrase ‘Frightened out of wits’ imply?
• Badly scared
• Badly wounded
• Badly managed
• All of these

b) Where is the narrator?
• At Yakima river
• At Tieton
• At YMCA Pool
• None of these

c) What strategy was made by the narrator to rescue him?
• To swim across the pool and reach safely
• To drown and remember his mother
• To go to bottom, hit it hard and reach the surface
• All of these

d) What does the speaker mean by ‘I summoned all my strength’?
• That he gathered his strength
• That he accumulated his strength
• That he called up his strength
• All of these

Answers:

a. Badly Scared

b.  At YMCA Pool

c. To go to bottom, hit it hard and reach the surface

d. All of these

Extract 5

I opened my eyes and saw nothing but water — water that had a dirty yellow tinge to it. I grew panicky. I reached up as if to grab a rope and my hands clutched only at water. I was suffocating. I tried to yell but no sound came out. Then my eyes and nose came out of the water — but not my mouth. I flailed at the surface of the water, swallowed and choked. I tried to bring my legs up, but they hung as dead weights, paralysed and rigid. A great force was pulling me under. I screamed, but only the water heard me.

a) What does the word ‘Tinge’ mean?
• Colour
• Fear
• Filthy
• None of these

b) What did the narrator swallow?
• Water
• Fear
• Anger
• All of these

c) Why could no one come to help the narrator?
• For he was alone there
• For everyone thought he was fooling
• For he was able to swim himself
• All of these

d) Which of the following is incorrect?
• He was alone at the pool
• He was saved at the eleventh hour
• He was rescued by big bully
• He was learning swimming at the deep end

Answers:

a. Colour

b. Water

c. For he was alone there

d. He was rescued by big bully

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Extract 6

A mass of yellow water held me. Stark terror took an even deeper hold on me, like a great charge of electricity. I shook and trembled with fright. My arms wouldn’t move. My legs wouldn’t move. I tried to call for help, to call for mother. Nothing happened. And then, strangely, there was light. I was coming out of the awful yellow water. At least my eyes were. My nose was almost out too. Then I started down a third time. I sucked for air and got water. The yellowish light was going out. Then all effort ceased. I relaxed. Even my legs felt limp; and a blackness swept over my brain.

a) What does the narrator mean by ‘All effort ceased’?
• That he gave up hope
• That he gave up trying
• That he gave in courage to survive
• All of these

b) Which of the following is correct?
• His mother came to rescue him
• He legs were almost paralysed
• His arms were moving regularly
• He wanted to die as soon as possible

c) What was the mental condition of the narrator at that time?
• He was under doctor’s observation
• He immediately hired the psychiatrist
• He was unable to think properly
• He was on the verge of death

d) Which literary device has been use in ‘Stark terror took an even deeper hold on me’?
• Synecdoche
• Anaphora
• Assonance
• Personification

Answers:

a.  All of these

b. He legs were almost paralyzed

c. He was on the verge of death

d. Personification

Extract 7

It wiped out fear; it wiped out terror. There was no more panic. It was quiet and peaceful. Nothing to be afraid of. This is nice… to be drowsy… to go to sleep… no need to jump… too tired to jump… it’s nice to be carried gently… to float along in space… tender arms around me… tender arms like Mother’s… now I must go to sleep… I crossed to oblivion, and the curtain of life fell. The next I remember I was lying on my stomach beside the pool, vomiting. The chap that threw me in was saying, “But I was only fooling.” Someone said, “The kid nearly died. Be all right now. Let’s carry him to the locker room.”

a) Who said “But I was only fooling”?
• William Douglas
• Big bully
• Big instructor
• All of these

b) According to the narrator death is ……………
• Brutal
• Peaceful
• Merciless
• Frightening

c) Which literary device has been used in the first line of the extracts?
• Synecdoche
• Anaphora
• Metonymy
• Onomatopoeia

d) Who saved the narrator’s life at the eleventh hour?
• Instructor
• His mother
• Big bully
• None of these

Answers:

a. Big Bully

b.  Peaceful

c.  Anaphora

d.  Instructor

Extract 8

I feared water. I avoided it whenever I could. A few years later when I came to know the waters of the Cascades, I wanted to get into them. And whenever I did — whether I was wading the Tieton or Bumping River or bathing in Warm Lake of the Goat Rocks — the terror that had seized me in the pool would come back. It would take possession of me completely. My legs would become paralysed. Icy horror would grab my heart. This handicap stayed with me as the years rolled by. In canoes on Maine lakes fishing for landlocked salmon, bass fishing in New Hampshire, trout fishing on the Deschutes and Metolius in Oregon, fishing for salmon on the Columbia, at Bumping Lake in the Cascades — wherever I went, the haunting fear of the water followed me.

a) What is ‘Tieton’ in the above extract?
• A city
• A lake
• A river
• A village

b) Find out the synonym of the word ‘Wading’ from the following.
• Walking with your feet in shallow water
• Walking with your feet in deep water
• Walking with your feet in medium water
• All of these

c) Which figure of speech has been used in ‘Icy horror would grab my heart’?
• Hyperbole
• Overstatement
• Personification
• Zeugma

d) Which phobia was the narrator suffering from?
• Claustrophobia
• Ablutophobia
• Xenophobia
• None of these

Answers:

a.  A city

b. Walking with your feet in shallow water

c.  Personification

d.  None of these

Extract 9

The instructor put a belt around me. A rope attached to the belt went through a pulley that ran on an overhead cable. He held on to the end of the rope, and we went back and forth, back and forth across the pool, hour after hour, day after day, week after week. On each trip across the pool a bit of the panic seized me. Each time the instructor relaxed his hold on the rope and I went under, some of the old terror returned and my legs froze. It was three months before the tension began to slack.

a) What is pulley?
• Machine with a wheel
• Machine without a wheel
• Machine with a rope
• Machine with a wheel and a rope

b) What does the phrase ‘Back and forth’ mean?
• Moving from one place to another
• To and fro
• Backward and forward
• All of these

c) Tension began to slack means……
• Tension started ebbing
• Tension started increasing
• Tension started being stable
• None of these

d) Name the author of this chapter.
• William Saroyan
• William Blake
• William Wordsworth
• William Douglas

Answers:

a. Machine with a wheel

b. All of these

c. Tension started ebbing

d. William Douglas

Extract 10

Yet I had residual doubts. At my first opportunity I hurried west, went up the Tieton to Conrad Meadows, up the Conrad Creek Trail to Meade Glacier, and camped in the high meadow by the side of Warm Lake. The next morning I stripped, dived into the lake, and swam across to the other shore and back — just as Doug Corpron used to do. I shouted with joy, and Gilbert Peak returned the echo. I had conquered my fear of water. The experience had a deep meaning for me, as only those who have known stark terror and conquered it can appreciate.

a) What does the word ‘Residual’ mean?
• Remainder
• Residents
• Inhabitants
• Both ii and iii

b) I stripped implies……
• To put on clothes
• To get undressed
• To change clothes
• To give away clothes to others

c) What does the word ‘stark’ mean?
• Unconditional
• Bleak
• Crude
• All of these

d) Find out the antonym of the word ‘Conquered’ from the following.
• Subdued
• Defeated
• Suppressed
• Stamped down

Answers:

a. Remainder

b. To get undressed

c.  All of these

d. Defeated

Extract 11

In death there is peace. There is terror only in the fear of death, as Roosevelt knew when he said, “All we have to fear is fear itself.” Because I had experienced both the sensation of dying and the terror that fear of it can produce, the will to live somehow grew in intensity. At last I felt released — free to walk the trails and climb the peaks and to brush aside fear.

a) What does the narrator mean by ‘In death there is peace’?
• That death must be rejoiced
• That death is more peaceful than life
• That death is painful
• That death gives more pain than peace

b) What does the narrator learn from President Roosevelt statement?
• To scare the fear
• To adorn the fear
• To move on with fear
• To be fearful of everything

c) The phrasal verb ‘Brush aside’ means…….
• Ignore
• Remember
• Entice
• All of these

d) Whom does the narrator fear now from the following?
• Water
• Lake
• River
• None of these

Answers:

a. That death is more peaceful than life

b. To scare the fear

c. Ignore

d. Water

# Extracts of Deep Water

# Extracts of Deep Water Class 12

# Extracts of Deep Water Class 12 English Core

# Extracts of Deep Water Class 12 Term 1

# Extracts of Deep Water Class 12 Term 2

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