NCERT Solutions for Class 11 English: Woven Words, Hornbill, and Snapshots

NCERT Solutions for Class 11 English for Woven Words, Hornbill, and Snapshots are provided in the article. NCERT Class 11 English is distributed across three textbooks: Woven Words (Elective Book), Hornbill (Core Book), and Snapshots (Supplementary Book).

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Woven Words Textbook Solutions

NCERT Woven Words textbook covers short stories, poetry, and essays that follow the latest CBSE curriculum 2022-23. 

Woven Words Short Stories: Important Notes

Woven Words Short Stories Important Notes are shared in the following section.

Chapter 1 – The Lament

• The Lament, by Anton Chekhov, covers the story of a father and his great despair for his dead son.
• Iona, the father, is a Russian sleigh driver who desperately tried to share his grief with strangers.
• The story is a stinging rebuke of modern society where there seems to be an insurmountable distance between people and are too busy to share each other's sorrows.

Chapter 2 – A Pair of Mustachios

• A Pair of Mustachios by Mulk Raj Anand is written in a humorous tone and deals with a hilarious clash that takes place because of the upturned mustaches of Seth Ramanand.
• The story is divided into parts. The first is concerning the kind of mustachios that are popular in India.
• The second part of the story is about an individual that claims to be of feudal descent. 

Chapter 3 – The Rocking-horse Winner

• The Rocking Horse Winner", a short story by D.H. Lawrence, tells the story of a little boy who seeks to relieve his family's financial worries by accurately predicting the outcome of horse races.
• The story explores how modern materialism can become a corrupting influence.
• The money anxieties of the family in "The Rocking Horse Winner" may also be a reflection of Lawrence's own early life as the child of struggling working-class parents. 

Chapter 4 – The Adventure of the Three Garridebs

• The Adventure of the Three Garridebs story’s plot is set in motion when a man, Nathan Garrideb, writes to the private detective Sherlock Holmes to ask for assistance in finding another man whose surname is also Garrideb.
• As the short story unfolds, the main characters come forth, only two of whom make a direct appearance in the story.
• Readers come across John Garrideb (John), Counsellor at Law, and Nathan (Nathan) Garrideb, a collector of oddities.

Chapter 5 – Pappachi’s Moth

• The lesson Pappachi’s Moth is an extract from Arundhati Roy’s first novel “The God Of Small Things”.
• Pappachi (grandfather) is an imperial entomologist prior to his retirement.
• Papachi has been bitter since his discovery of new moth species was dismissed and subsequently credited to someone else.
• This lesson subtly raises important issues that plague our milieu.

Chapter 6 – The Third and Final Continent

• The story, written by Jhumpa Lahiri, is a narration by a Bengali man who left India for England in 1964.
• The story is also about assimilation and marriage. It is the story of how a young immigrant manages to adjust to his new home in a different country and a new bride.
• The main character is the eccentric, elderly widow who manages to make sure that the man feels less lonely and shows him qualities in his wife that he failed to notice.
• Unfortunately, Mrs. Croft passes away towards the end of the story. 

Chapter 7 – Glory at Twilight

• Glory at Twilight highlights the social problems of contemporary Indian society, in a truthful and honest form.
• The story revolves around Satyajit who, after building an empire of wealth and abundance in the city suffers a sudden collapse.

Chapter 8 – The Luncheon

• ‘The Luncheon’ is one of the most fantastically funny stories.
• The story is about a lunch date with a lady who likes Maugham’s stories and gains the author’s favor and declares her desire to see him at Foyot. 
• In the story, the author exposes the bogus motives of the middle classes’ moderate eating habits with a touch of humor.

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Woven Words Poetry: Important Notes

Woven Words Poetry Important Notes are provided below.

Chapter 1 – The Peacock

• The poet describes the beauty and stature of the peacock. Throughout the poem, the poet personifies the peacock as ‘he’.
• The sound of the peacock is hard to be tracked and located as if the sound is from nowhere. 
• The description of the scene shows how hard it is to catch hold of the sight of a peacock because peacocks are sensitive, sacred birds that are not commonly seen social world.

Chapter 2 – Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds

• Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds is a sonnet that is addressed to Shakespeare’s friend, the Earl of Southampton.
• It was written to emphasize the consistency of true love and friendship when the Earl was presumably attracted to the physical charms of a dark lady.

Chapter 3 – Coming

• Coming is a poem written by Philip Larkin.
• The poem's speaker describes what it's like to watch spring slowly reawaken the surrounding world.
• The poem maintains a melancholy tone throughout, however, especially as the speaker compares the happiness of the coming spring to the superficial joy a child might feel after misinterpreting the forced laughter of two adults who have just finished arguing. This comparison implies that the joys of spring—with all its symbolic connotations of renewal and rebirth—are shallower and less meaningful than people may want to believe.

Chapter 4 – Telephone Conversation

• 'Telephone Conversation' is a poem written by Wole Soyinka, a renowned African writer in English.
• The poem exposes the presence of racial discrimination at the individual level in society even after the passing of laws against it.
• The poem is a conversation between a white woman and a black man over the telephone.

Chapter 5 – The World is too Much With Us

• The poem revolves around the loss of nature and the natural world and the impacts of the busy life.
• The poet argues that people have forsaken their souls for material gains.
• In fact, the whole text of the poem denounces the materialism that the poet has seen around him.

Chapter 6 – Mother Tongue

• “Mother Tongue” explores Amy Tan's relationship with the English language, her mother, and writing.
• The poem was originally given as a talk during the 1989 State of the Language Symposium; it was later published by The Threepenny Review in 1990.
• In the poem “Mother Tongue,” Padma Sachdev tries to bring out the issues of language destruction. scripts wearing out.

Chapter 7 – Hawk Roosting

• Hawk Roosting, by Ted Hughes, is an animal poem.
• The speaker of this poem is a hawk who is looking down on the earth beneath him.
• The speaker begins on the top of a tree, preparing to swoop on his next prey.
• His actions and tone are exceedingly arrogant, and he compares himself to God. He is very proud of his position in the food chain and his right to choose who survives and who dies. 

Chapter 8 – For Elkana

• 'For Elkana' is a poem composed by the famous Indian contemporary writer Nissim Ezekiel.
• The common element in a family of Indians but portrayed extraordinarily makes the poem stand out as very unique.
• The texture of parenthood is uniquely described. 

Chapter 9 – Refugee Blues

• “Refugee Blues” was written by the British poet W.H. Auden.
• First published in 1939, on the eve of World War II, the poem meditates on the plight of Jewish refugees—forced to flee Nazi Germany, but unable to find refuge elsewhere.
• The poem raises broader questions about isolation, loneliness, and exile.

Chapter 10 – Felling of the Banyan Tree

• This poem is about a person who is reliving fond memories of his childhood.
• The speaker is asking the tree if it remembers a child that used to rest on its branches but has left now.
• The poet compares the boy with the birds that have nested in the shell of a banyan and left it.

Chapter 11 – Ode to a Nightingale

• Keats is in a state of uncomfortable drowsiness.
• Envy of the imagined happiness of the nightingale is not responsible for his condition; rather, it is a reaction to the happiness he has experienced through sharing in the happiness of the nightingale.
• The bird's happiness is conveyed in its singing.

Chapter 12 – Ajamil and the Tigers

• The poem 'Ajamil and the Tigers' is written by Arun Kolatkar.
• The poem is a political satire representing the plight of the subjects oppressed by corrupt politicians.
• Ajamil and the Tigers poem talks about a story where a shepherd made an agreement with a king of Tigers to restore peace between the two communities.

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Woven Words Essay: Important Notes

Woven Words Essay Important Notes are provided below.

Chapter 1 – My Watch

• 'My Watch' is one of the famous works of Mark Twain.
• The premise of this short story is a watch that the author has been using for 18 months without interruptions.

Chapter 2 – My Three Passions

• The three passion that is important in his life is love, knowledge, and pity for the suffering of human life.
• The first two qualities raise him to heaven and the third quality brings him back to the land. 

Chapter 3 – Patterns of Creativity

• S. Chandrasekhar tries to answer the question 'Why is there a difference in the patterns of creativity among the practitioners in the arts and the practitioners in the sciences.
• The poem revolves around the idea that poetry makes immortal the beauty of nature and this world. Scientists, on the other hand, make use of the resources given to them by nature.

Chapter 4 – Tribal Verse

• The roots of India's literary traditions can be traced to the rich oral literature of the tribes/Adivasis.
• Usually, in the form of songs or chanting, verses are expressions of the close contact between the world of nature and the world of tribal existence.

Chapter 5 – What is a Good Book?

• According to Ruskin Bond, a good book was just like a newspaper or a letter but in good print.
• It conveys the voice of the author to numerous people and preserves their ideas and voice for future generations. 

Chapter 6 – The Story

• The three voices represent the three various types of novel readers.
• The first voice depicts a good-tempered person engaged in some activity and is aware of the advantages of literature.
• The second voice shows the attitude of other types of novel readers.
• The third voice is of the novelists like the author, to whom the story is the soul of the novel. All the three voices are consistent in that a novel tells a story. 

Chapter 7 – Bridges

• Bridges is a revelation of how a dancer evolved in Kumudini Lakhia.
• The piece is an autobiographical one describing in details how the author became a dancer.
• The author tells about the struggle one undergoes to learn the art of dancing. She does not believe that anybody is born to dance.

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Hornbill Textbook Solutions

NCERT Hornbill textbook covers textbook notes and poetry that follow the latest CBSE curriculum 2022-23. 

Hornbill: Important Notes

Hornbill Important Notes are provided below.

Chapter 1-The Portrait of a Lady

• The Portrait of a Lady, written by Kushwant Singh, includes an autobiographical element.
• Beautiful and unforgettable memories of his Grandmother have been described vividly by the author. 
• The author recalls how his grandmother used to prepare him for school and used to seat in the temple and read sacred texts.
• The author also describes how he began to grow apart from her grandma even after staying in the same room.

Chapter 2-“We’re Not Afraid to Die… if We Can All Be Together”

• “We’re Not Afraid to Die… if We Can All Be Together”, written by Gordon Cook and Alan east, is a story about narrator and his family who went on a voyage around the world.
• The story tells the readers about how they survived each day of their voyage till the end.
• Even after his whole family was injured, the narrator, with the help of his family was able to make the ship secure and informed Amsterdam for help. 
• This story is all about how they finally survived the journey.

Chapter 3-Discovering Tut: the Saga Continues

• Discovering Tut: the Saga Continues, written by A.R Williams, is about the mysterious circumstances behind the death of King Tutankhamen.
• The lesson discusses facts and myths related to the last Pharaoh Dynasty.
• The Silk Road to Mt. Kailash is well known for its natural beauty even if the road is very rough and has sharp turns.

Chapter 4-Landscape of the Soul

• The first section of the essay is an extract from "Landscape of the Soul: Ethics and Spirituality in Chinese Painting," written by Nathalie Trouveroy. 
• The second part is based on "Getting Inside 'Outsider Art”, an article published in the Hindustan Times, written by Brinda Suri.
• The chapter is about the arts. 

Chapter 5-The Ailing Planet: the Green Movement’s Role

• ‘The Ailing Planet: the Green Movement’s Role’, written by Nani Palkhivala, was published on 24th November 1994, in the Indian express. 
• This chapter specifically covers things related to ecology and environment and most importantly, this chapter state the duty of human being to their environment.

Chapter 6-The Browning Version

• The Browning Version is a short extract from the play 'The Browning Version' written by Terence Rattigan.
• The author criticizes the education system.
• The Browning Version is also about the relationship between a student and a teacher.

Chapter 7-The Adventure

• ‘The Adventure’, written by Jayant Narlikar, is a story about Professor Gangadharpant Gaitonde.
• Professor Gaitonde travels through time and experiences very different events and is in a state of shock.
• The story shows how Professor Gaitonde wonders about the fate of India if the Marathas were not allowed any relief to stay in Bombay by the EIC.

Chapter 8-Silk Road

• The author of Silk Road is Nick Middleton.
• Author describes his journey to Mount Kailash on Silk Road to complete his Kora.
• In this chapter, students can learn about the history of the Afro-Eurasian mass, which is named after the silk passage.

Hornbill Poetry: Important Notes

Hornbill Poetry Important Notes are elaborated below:

Poem 1- A Photograph

• ‘A Photograph’, written by Shirley Toulson, is a poem in which the author describes a photograph of her mother.
• The poet’s mother was only twelve years old then and was enjoying a vacation with her cousins.
• Now that her mother had passed away long ago, the author remembers her through this poem.

Poem 2- The Laburnum Top

• The poem Laburnum Top by Ted Hudges revolves around the relationship between a Laburnum Tree and a Goldfinch bird.
• The poet describes the Laburnum Tree during the early autumn. 
• The poet also describes how the tree came to the life once the Goldfinch bird started chirping on a branch of that tree.

Poem 3- Voice of the Rain

• The ‘Voice of the Rain’, written by Walt Whitman, represents the imaginary conversation between the poet with the rain.
• Poet explains how the rain narrates its eternal journey in its birthplace, i.e. earth to the poet.

Poem 4- Childhood

• The poem ‘Childhood’, by Marcus Natten, narrates the poet’s emotions regarding his lost childhood.
• The poet believes that adults preach love but their actions don't reflect that.
• The poet also shows that his childhood went to some forgotten place. 

Poem 5- Father to Son

• The poem 'Father to Son' is written by Elizabeth Jennings.
• The theme of the poem is Generation Gap and Communication Gap.
• In the poem, a father and his son are living in the same house for years yet according to the father, they talk very much like strangers.

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Snapshots Textbook Solutions

Snapshots Textbook Solutions are shared in the following section.