Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom: CBSE Class 10 English practice questions
Practise 50 questions on Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, free, with an explanation for each answer.
Sample questions
Mandela writes: "I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it." What does courage mean to him?
- Never feeling afraid of anything
- Winning every fight against the guards
- Conquering your fear and acting in spite of it
- Hiding your fear from your comrades
Show the answer
C. Conquering your fear and acting in spite of it
To Mandela, the brave man "is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear". Feeling no fear, winning fights and hiding fear are not what he describes.
Mandela calls 10 May "that lovely autumn day". But in India, May is the middle of summer. Why was it autumn in Pretoria?
- Autumn lasts the whole year in South Africa
- Pretoria stands on a very high, cold mountain top
- South Africa lies in the southern hemisphere, where the seasons are the opposite of those in the north
- Mandela is describing the autumn of his own life, not the weather
Show the answer
C. South Africa lies in the southern hemisphere, where the seasons are the opposite of those in the north
South Africa is in the southern hemisphere, so its seasons run opposite to India's: May is autumn there. The other options invent a climate fact or read the line as a metaphor, which the text does not suggest; he is describing a bright, clear morning.
In South Africa, it was almost impossible for "a man of my birth and colour" to carry out both his obligations. Why?
- Either choice brought punishment or separation from his family
- His family refused to let him do any political work
- The law forbade him to marry or have children
- He freely chose his work over his family from the start
Show the answer
A. Either choice brought punishment or separation from his family
Under apartheid a man of colour who tried to live as a human being was "punished and isolated", and one who served his people was "ripped from his family and his home" into "a twilight existence of secrecy and rebellion". He says he did NOT choose that at first; it was forced.
Topics covered
- Reading: the swearing-in
- Reading: an autumn day in May
- Reading: the oath-taking
- Reading: "an extraordinary human disaster"
- Reading: ideals for the future
- Reading: the air display
- Reading: the military's loyalty
- Reading: the two anthems
- Reading: the sweep of history
- Reading: "the sum of all those African patriots"
- Reading: the "unintended effect" of oppression
- Reading: the nation's wealth
- Reading: the meaning of courage
- Reading: love and hate
- Reading: a glimmer of humanity
- Reading: twin obligations
- Reading: a twilight existence
- Reading: a free boyhood
- Reading: freedom as an "illusion"
- Reading: how his idea of freedom grew
- Reading: "freedom is indivisible"
- Reading: the oppressor must be freed too
- Vocabulary: words from the speech
- Vocabulary: chevron
- Vocabulary: besieged
- Vocabulary: resilience
- Vocabulary: amphitheatre
- Vocabulary: curtailed
- Vocabulary: expressions in the text
- Grammar: nouns formed from verbs
- Grammar: noun and verb pairs
- Grammar: "the" with proper nouns
- Grammar: balanced sentences
- Speaking: preparing a speech
- Literary device: contrast
- Writing: a paragraph on colour prejudice
- Speaking: a two-minute speech
- Poem: title and poet
- Poem: zoo and jungle
- Poem: night in the zoo
- Poem: the tiger's hunting ground
- Poem: "quiet rage"
- Poem: repetition
- Poem: how the poem is built
- Poem: vocabulary
- Poem: what the tiger has lost
- Poem: imagery
- Poem: rhyme
- Poem: message