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The Pot Maker: CBSE Class 9 English practice questions

Practise 50 questions on The Pot Maker, free, with an explanation for each answer.

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Sample questions

From a young age, Sentila dreamed of becoming a pot maker like her mother and grandmother. What did her mother, Arenla, want her to become instead?

A loom with a striped shawl beside clay pots
  1. A farmer who works in the fields
  2. A weaver
  3. A teacher in the village school
  4. A basket maker
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B. A weaver

Arenla wanted Sentila to become a weaver. She felt that weaving earns much more, provides cloth for the family, is not messy and can be done indoors in every season. Sentila, however, was fascinated by pot making, the craft of her mother and grandmother.

Arenla complains that a batch of pots takes months of hard labour. Then she says, "And the reward? A few rupees." Why does she use a question mark in 'And the reward?'

A balance with heavy pots on one pan and two small coins on the other
  1. To stress, by asking and then answering herself, how little all that labour earns
  2. To ask Mesoba what price the pots should be sold for
  3. To show that she has forgotten how much pots cost
  4. To show that she is excited about the money she will earn
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A. To stress, by asking and then answering herself, how little all that labour earns

'And the reward?' is a rhetorical question: Arenla asks it only to answer it herself, 'A few rupees.' The pause builds up to her bitter point that months of hard labour bring only a pittance. She is not asking anyone for information, and she is clearly not excited.

When her mother's body is carried out, Sentila cries that she did not want it to happen this way: "it simply came to me. Please forgive me." What does 'it' in 'it simply came to me' most likely refer to?

Rows of pots in a shed, lit through a half-open door
  1. The skill of making pots as well as her mother, which came to her suddenly while she worked alone
  2. The headache and backache her mother had complained about
  3. The decision of the village council about her family
  4. Her old wish to give up pot making and become a weaver
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A. The skill of making pots as well as her mother, which came to her suddenly while she worked alone

That morning Sentila suddenly made pot after pot with her mother's speed and skill, just one short of her mother's tally. 'It simply came to me' refers to this mastery of the craft. She asks forgiveness because the gift arrived on the very day her mother died, as if the skill had passed from one generation to the next.

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