NCERT Solutions Class 12 English Chapter 4 Tomorrow 2026-27

Concept used. Chapter: Tomorrow. A direct context answer should name the incident and explain the motive behind it. Captain Hagberd came to Colebrook because he believed his missing son Harry had been seen there.

1. Captain Hagberd had advertised for years to find Harry.
2. After his wife's death, a letter reached him about a seafaring man with a similar name near Colebrook.
3. The news was probably a trick, but Hagberd treated it as a real clue.
4. He searched the area, failed to find Harry, and then settled there to wait.

Captain Hagberd came to Colebrook because a letter made him believe that his lost son Harry had been there, and he settled there to wait for Harry's return.

Concept used. Chapter: Tomorrow. A character-reputation answer should connect public behaviour with local judgement. The people of Colebrook saw Captain Hagberd as strange, miserly, and obsessed with an impossible return.

1. He did not belong to Colebrook and had arrived in odd circumstances.
2. He kept talking about Harry's return and asking people about his missing son.
3. His canvas clothing, white beard, secretive habits, and repeated phrase about tomorrow made him look strange.
4. He lived cheaply, guarded his property, and avoided normal contact with the townspeople.

Colebrook disliked or mocked Captain Hagberd because his behaviour seemed eccentric, miserly, secretive, and ruled by his delusion about Harry's return.

Concept used. Chapter: Tomorrow. A background answer should show the contrast between job and temperament. Captain Hagberd had been a coastal sailor who disliked the sea deeply.

1. He had worked as a coasting skipper, not as a sailor on long ocean voyages.
2. His journeys usually stayed close to England and often lasted only a short time.
3. He disliked life at sea because it kept a man away from home.
4. When his wife inherited enough money, he gladly gave up the sea.

Captain Hagberd had been a coastal seaman who stayed near land and hated the unsettled life of the sea.

Concept used. Chapter: Tomorrow. An inference answer should read what a character suggests indirectly. Captain Hagberd hints that Bessie will marry Harry when Harry comes home.

1. Hagberd speaks of Harry as ready for marriage.
2. He praises Bessie as sensible and suitable for a good home.
3. He describes the second cottage and future housekeeping as if she has a share in it.
4. His winks and suggestions make Bessie understand that he imagines her as Harry's future wife.

He hinted that Bessie would become Harry's wife and share the prepared home after Harry returned.

Concept used. Chapter: Tomorrow. A reaction answer should include change over time. Bessie first sees Hagberd's talk as madness, then humours it, and later half shares its emotional pull.

1. At first, Bessie knows that Captain Hagberd is mentally unwell.
2. She listens patiently because he is harmless and because pity makes her kind.
3. She learns not to contradict him, since doubt makes him suffer violently.
4. Over time, the thought of Harry's return and marriage begins to touch her own hidden longing.

Bessie reacts with pity, patience, occasional amusement, and finally a troubled half-belief that connects his hope with her own desire for release.

Concept used. Chapter: Tomorrow. A character sketch should join facts with behaviour. Mr Carvil is a blind retired boat-builder who has become selfish, abusive, and tyrannical toward Bessie.

1. Mr Carvil is widowed, blind, heavy, and physically dependent.
2. He shouts for Bessie constantly and expects instant service.
3. He treats her as if she were responsible for his blindness.
4. He has money, but he refuses to make her life easier with help or kindness.

Mr Carvil is a cruel, lazy, and domineering father who uses his blindness to keep Bessie trapped in service.

Concept used. Chapter: Tomorrow. A comparison answer should state the shared pattern. Both men trap Bessie through their own needs, though in different ways.

1. Captain Hagberd depends on Bessie to protect his belief in Harry's return.
2. Mr Carvil depends on Bessie for physical care and daily service.
3. Both men use her patience and goodness.
4. Both also live inside a narrow world from which Bessie cannot easily escape.

The similarity is that both men depend on Bessie and imprison her emotionally or physically within their own needs.

Concept used. Chapter: Tomorrow. A motivation answer should connect pressure with response. Bessie becomes irritated because Hagberd's hopeful fantasy mocks her own hopeless life, while her father keeps enslaving her.

1. She spends her best years caring for a harsh and helpless father.
2. Captain Hagberd keeps describing a future home that may never exist.
3. His talk of marriage and servants reminds her of everything missing from her life.
4. Old Carvil's constant shouting interrupts even the small comfort of her talks with Hagberd.

Bessie shows irritation because pity, tiredness, false hope, and her father's tyranny press on her at the same time.

Concept used. Chapter: Tomorrow. An identification answer should state who the stranger is and describe Hagberd's response. The stranger is Harry Hagberd, the lost son himself.

1. A man comes to the gate and asks whether Hagberd has been advertising for his son.
2. He later tells Bessie plainly that he is Harry.
3. Captain Hagberd does not recognise him and feels threatened by him.
4. He calls him a grinning information fellow, withdraws indoors, bolts the door, and even throws a shovel from the window.

The stranger was Harry Hagberd, but Captain Hagberd reacted with fear, suspicion, denial, and rejection.

Concept used. Chapter: Tomorrow. An interpretation answer should show Harry's misunderstanding before Bessie explains. Harry thinks someone is cheating or tricking his father.

1. Harry hears that the old man expects his son tomorrow.
2. Since Harry himself has arrived, he assumes another man may be posing as Harry.
3. He calls it a swindle and expects some fun when the impostor appears.
4. Only after Bessie explains does he understand that tomorrow is his father's fixed delusion.

Young Hagberd first thinks the word tomorrow means that some impostor or trickster is planning to deceive his father.

Concept used. Chapter: Tomorrow. A reason answer should explain Bessie's moral choice. Bessie says contradicting Hagberd would only make him miserable or push him further out of his mind.

1. She tells Harry that she never contradicted Captain Hagberd.
2. She believed open denial would only hurt him deeply.
3. She had once seen how terrified he became at the thought that Harry might be dead.
4. She also admits that it was easier to half believe the hope herself.

Bessie encouraged Hagberd because contradiction seemed cruel, dangerous to his mind, and emotionally harder than sharing his hope a little.

Concept used. Chapter: Tomorrow. An evidence answer should collect recognition clues. Bessie becomes convinced because Harry's looks, voice, laugh, manner, and memories match what she knows of Captain Hagberd.

1. Harry says directly that he is the old man's son.
2. His laugh resembles Captain Hagberd's, though it is softer and younger.
3. He asks Bessie to imagine the old man's beard on his own chin.
4. He remembers his father chasing him with a strap and his fear of leaving home for sea trips.

Bessie is convinced by Harry's resemblance to his father, his familiar laugh, and his personal memories of life with old Hagberd.

Concept used. Chapter: Tomorrow. A life-sketch answer should infer from Harry's speech and stories. Harry has lived a wandering, rough, adventurous life outside domestic limits.

1. He has travelled widely and says the whole world is hardly large enough for him.
2. He speaks of hard work, disorder, open space, and many scrapes.
3. He compares himself to a Gambusino, a wanderer searching for something like gold.
4. He has known many women, poverty, hunger, and unstable friendships.

Harry has lived a restless, roving, worldly life, full of travel, risk, poverty, casual love, and refusal of settled domestic duty.

Concept used. Chapter: Tomorrow. A plot-detail answer should state the plan and its effect on Harry. Bessie tells Harry that his father has prepared a home, money, furniture, and marriage for him.

1. She explains that Captain Hagberd has saved and starved himself for Harry.
2. He has filled the second cottage with furniture for Harry's future household.
3. He expects Harry to settle down, marry, and live a respectable home life.
4. Bessie also becomes part of that plan because Hagberd wants Harry to marry her.

Bessie tells Harry that his father expects him to accept the saved property, live in the prepared cottage, marry, and settle into domestic life.

Concept used. Chapter: Tomorrow. A recall answer should identify the warning and its irony. From the window, Captain Hagberd calls the real Harry a vagabond and tells Bessie not to have anything to do with him.

1. He calls the young man a grinning information fellow.
2. He tells Bessie that the man is only a vagabond.
3. He says the stranger cannot be Harry because Harry is coming tomorrow.
4. He promises that Harry will marry Bessie and that only one more day remains.

Captain Hagberd calls out that the stranger is a vagabond, warns Bessie to send him away, and repeats that Harry will come tomorrow and marry her.

Concept used. Chapter: Tomorrow. A theme answer should identify the repeated inner rule of a delusion. Captain Hagberd's madness is consistent because everything is organised around Harry's return tomorrow.

1. He keeps postponing fulfilment to a future that never becomes present.
2. He buys furniture, saves money, digs the garden, and plans marriage for that same future.
3. He rejects any fact that would make Harry dead, absent, changed, or already arrived.
4. The word tomorrow keeps his hope alive because it is always near and never testable.

The consistency in his madness is his fixed belief that Harry will come tomorrow, so every action and denial serves that permanent future.

Concept used. Chapter: Tomorrow. A preparation answer should list visible actions and explain their meaning. Captain Hagberd prepares by buying property, saving money, furnishing a cottage, and planning a settled life for Harry.

1. He buys a plot of ground and builds two yellow brick cottages.
2. He lives in his own cottage, rents the adjoining cottage to Carvil, and prepares his own rooms for Harry.
3. He fills and guards his own cottage with furniture, carpets, tables, and household articles.
4. He saves every penny, keeps seeds for the garden, and imagines Harry married to Bessie.

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He prepares his own cottage, furniture, savings, garden plans, and even a bride, because he imagines Harry returning to a complete domestic life.

Concept used. Chapter: Tomorrow. A psychological answer should trace how sympathy becomes emotional participation. Bessie begins by humouring Hagberd, then slowly lets his dream touch her own loneliness.

1. She listens to Captain Hagberd because she feels pity for him.
2. She avoids contradicting him after seeing how badly doubt wounds him.
3. His talk of Harry, a home, and marriage offers her a possible escape from Carvil's cottage.
4. Because her own life is hopeless, the fantasy of tomorrow begins to feel strangely comforting.

Bessie shares the insanity by protecting Hagberd's hope and gradually letting that hope become a private dream of rescue for herself.

Concept used. Chapter: Tomorrow. A motive answer should separate practical need from curiosity. Harry comes because a friend has seen the advertisement, and Harry thinks there may be money or useful information.

1. A chum in London sees Captain Hagberd's advertisement and tells Harry about it.
2. Harry has little money and spends his last coins on railway fare and a shave.
3. He knows his father may have property, though he says he does not care for the old man's pieces.
4. He is also curious and suspicious when he hears that another Harry is expected tomorrow.

Harry comes because the advertisement reaches him through a friend, and he hopes the meeting may bring money, food, shelter, or at least a useful explanation.

Concept used. Chapter: Tomorrow. A theme answer should connect expectation with reality. Harry disappoints Bessie because he is not the settled, loving rescuer she has half imagined.

1. Bessie has begun to imagine that Harry's return may change her trapped life.
2. The real Harry rejects his father's home, money, marriage plan, and settled life.
3. He flirts with Bessie, takes her money, kisses her, and then leaves.
4. His departure leaves her with Carvil, Hagberd's madness, and a sharper awareness of loss.

Harry's return disappoints Bessie because he brings desire and shock, but no loyalty, home, or rescue.

Concept used. Chapter: Tomorrow. A discussion answer should explain an abstract statement through the story. The line means that even madness has an inner balance, and a person suffers when that balance is disturbed.

1. Captain Hagberd's self-esteem depends on believing that he is a provident father.
2. His plan for Harry gives meaning to his poverty, furniture, garden, and waiting.
3. When strangers mock him or question the plan, his mental balance is shaken.
4. The real Harry disturbs that balance most of all because he makes the dream face reality.

The statement means that Hagberd's madness has its own order, and he becomes unhappy when mockery or fact threatens that order.

Concept used. Chapter comparison. A thematic comparison should identify shared ideas and also note difference. Both stories show trapped lives, failed escape, family duty, fear, and paralysis at a decisive moment.

1. In Eveline, the heroine cannot leave home with Frank because duty, fear, and memory hold her back.
2. In Tomorrow, Bessie is trapped by her father, Hagberd's delusion, and her own hope of rescue.
3. Both stories show a promised future that does not become real.
4. The difference is that Joyce focuses on Eveline's inner paralysis, while Conrad also uses tragic irony through Harry's actual return.

The stories are similar because both present a trapped woman, an imagined escape, and a final failure of movement into a freer life.

Concept used. Chapter: Tomorrow. An appreciation answer should name narrative method and effect. Conrad unfolds Hagberd's past indirectly through town gossip, the barber's account, Bessie's conversations, and Harry's later memories.

1. The opening gives the town's view of Hagberd as an outsider and eccentric.
2. The barber supplies the story of the advertisements, the hoax letter, and the search for Harry.
3. Bessie's talks with Hagberd reveal his sea life, his hatred of the sea, and his domestic dream.
4. Harry's arrival adds a final correction by showing the son from his own rough memory.

Conrad uses gradual disclosure, gossip, dialogue, and multiple viewpoints to reveal Hagberd's past piece by piece.

Concept used. Chapter: Tomorrow. An appreciation answer should widen the theme beyond one character. The story suggests that forms of obsession and blindness appear in several people, not only in Hagberd. Scope note: this is a full-NCERT Kaleidoscope practice question, so students using a board-only shortlist should confirm that Chapter 4 is prescribed before treating it as exam-only revision.

1. The barber shows a mild contagious obsession when he imagines every strange sailor as Hagberd's son.
2. Mr Carvil shows a brutal kind of moral madness by making himself helpless to enslave Bessie.
3. Bessie half shares Hagberd's hope because it offers a way out of despair.
4. Harry shows a restless hunger for escape so extreme that no home or affection can hold him.

These instances suggest that madness in the story is not only illness, but also obsession, cruelty, hope, and fear shaped by lonely lives.

Concept used. Language Work: allusion. An allusion is an indirect reference to a known story, figure, place, or myth. It helps the writer add meaning without a long explanation.

1. The story compares Captain Hagberd to Father Christmas when Harry jokes about his beard. This allusion suggests an old, bearded, gift-bearing figure, but here the gifts belong to a deluded future.
2. The reference to Davy Jones's locker alludes to a sailor's phrase for death at sea. It suggests that townspeople think Harry may have drowned long ago.
3. The Gambusino song alludes to wandering gold-seekers. It compares Harry to a restless seeker whom no woman can hold.

Suitable allusions include Father Christmas, Davy Jones's locker, and the Gambusino. Each compares a character or situation with a familiar cultural image.

Concept used. Language Work: word stress. Primary stress is the syllable spoken with the strongest force. Some words change stress when the grammatical function changes.

1. For present, the verb is stressed on the second syllable: preSENT. The completed noun form is presenTAtion.
2. For examine, the verb is exAMine and the noun is examiNAtion.
3. Production gives the missing verb proDUCE; both keep strong stress near the second syllable.
4. Calculate is stressed as CALculate, while the noun shifts to calcuLAtion.
5. Distribution gives the missing verb disTRIBute and the noun stress distriBUtion.
6. Specialise has early stress as SPEcialise, while the noun shifts to specialiSAtion.

Completed table: preSENT to presenTAtion; exAMine to examiNAtion; proDUCE to proDUCtion; CALculate to calcuLAtion; disTRIBute to distriBUtion; SPEcialise to specialiSAtion.