_By Shel Silverstein
Questions and Answers
Q1. Read the given extracts and answer the following questions.
a)
|
Now God seen some sinnin’ and it gave Him pain. And He said, “Stand back. I’m going to make it rain.” He said, “Hey, brother Noah, I’ll tell you what to do. Build me a floatin’ zoo.” |
i) What was God pained to see?
Ans: God was pained to see people sin.
ii) What did God decide to do?
Ans: God decided to make it rain for 40 days and nights.
iii) What did God tell Noah to do?
Ans: God told Noah to build a floating zoo.
iv) find a word from the extract which is the opposite of ‘sinking’.
Ans: Floating
b)
|
Ol’ Noah looked out into the driving rain, Them Unicorns was hiding, playing silly games, Kicking and splashing while the rain was pouring, Oh, them silly Unicorn. |
i) What did Noah do when it started raining?
Ans: Noah started to look for the Unicorns.
ii) What were the Unicorns doing when Noah looked for them?
Ans: The Unicorns were hiding, playing silly games and frolicking, while the rain was pouring.
iii) Why does the poet call the Unicorns silly?
Ans: Because they were ignoring Noah’s call and never made it on board.
iv) Find a word from the extract which means the same as ‘foolish’.
Ans: Silly
Q2. Answer the following questions in 30 to 40 words.
a) Describe the Earth when it was in its nascent stage a long time ago.
Ans: The earth was fully green and there were different kinds of animals which now does not exists. All the animals run around freely while the earth was being born and the loveliest of all the animals was the Unicorn.
b) How did Noah obey God?
Ans: Noah obeyed God by following his commands and building an ark before it starts raining and take all the animals in pairs.
c)Which animals were sheltering in the Ark? Why could Noah not wait for the Unicorns to enter the ark?
Ans: There were two green alligators and couple of geese. There were two humpy bumpy camels and two chimpanzees. There were two cats and rats and elephants but Noah couldn’t find unicorn. The rain started falling heavily and flood was coming that’s why Noah couldn’t wait for Unicorns.
d) What happened to the Unicorns in the end?
Ans: In the end the unicorns looked up from the rock and saw the ark floating away and started to cry, and the water raised and floated them away.
Q3. Answer the following questions in 100 to 120 words.
a) How was the Earth in the beginning? How did it become flooded?
Ans: The earth was fully green and there were different kinds of animals which now does not exists. All the animals run around freely while the earth was being born and the loveliest of all the animals was the Unicorn. After a few time god was pained to see the people sinning, and decided to make it rain for 40 days and nights and that’s why the earth become flooded.
b) Why do we not see unicorns today?
Ans: Because of the rain the earth was flooded and the unicorns were floated away. This is way we don’t see unicorns anymore.
Q.4 Summary of the poem:
This poem is about why there are no Unicorns on the Earth. Shel thought that they didn’t go on Noah’s ark because they were silly.
The whole poem shows imagery. It feels like you can visualize the whole thing! Words like “He (Noah) marched in the animals two by two” makes you see Noah bring the animals two by two into his ark. This poem is an allusion, because it refers to Noah’s Ark, but Shel adds things like the Unicorn into it too.
The mood begins kind of happy but starts to become a little sad because God didn’t want Noah to forget the Unicorns, but because of the flood they couldn’t wait for them.
Poetry Analysis
In the poem, there are rhyming patterns. Each stanza is aabb, which makes the poem sound good. One-time Shel used alliteration for the words “bein’ born”.
There are no patterns in the syllables. Also, the poem repeats words such as green alligators, long neck geese, humpy bumpy camels, chimpanzees, etc. are in most stanzas.
Shel did this to prove a point that there are so many animals in the world but there are no Unicorns. The poem’s diction was different, for example every time Shel had a word that ended in “ing”, he would remove the “g” such as in “sinnin’, hidin’, kickin’, etc.”
He did this so the poem sounds more fluent, and to make the poem easier to read, since there are so many words that were supposed to end in “ing”.