Deep Water — Class 12 MCQs with Answers

Deep Water — important questions & MCQs with answers (Class 12 English)

2 solved questions from this chapter's difficulty levels, each with its answer and explanation. Tap an option to check yourself.

0 of 2 answered

1. Q1 of 2Medium

   Who threw Douglas into the deep end?

   AHis fatherBThe swimming instructorCA big bruiser of a boy, probably eighteen, with rippling musclesDAnother small boy
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   Answer: A big bruiser of a boy, probably eighteen, with rippling muscles

   Explanation: He yelled, 'Hi, Skinny! How'd you like to be ducked?' and tossed him in.

2. Q2 of 2Medium

   How did the experience affect Douglas immediately afterwards?

   AHe returned to the pool next dayBHe recovered within an hourCHe was weak and trembling, could not eat, and a haunting fear stayed for daysDHe told no one and forgot it
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   Answer: He was weak and trembling, could not eat, and a haunting fear stayed for days

   Explanation: 'The slightest exertion upset me, making me wobbly in the knees and sick to my stomach.'

Deep Water notes: key concepts (Class 12 English)

An excerpt from William Douglas's 'Of Men and Mountains'. Thrown into the deep end of the Y.M.C.A. pool at ten or eleven, he nearly drowns and carries the terror of water for years. He then hires an instructor, is rebuilt 'piece by piece' into a swimmer, and tests the fear down to its last trace.

William Douglas

William Douglas (1898-1980), born in Maine, Minnesota. He taught high school in Yakima, then took up law, met Franklin D. Roosevelt at Yale, and became the longest-serving Justice in the history of the court, retiring in 1975 after thirty-six years.

Why the Y.M.C.A. pool

The Yakima River was treacherous and his mother kept 'fresh in my mind the details of each drowning'. The pool was safe — two or three feet at the shallow end, nine at the other, with a gradual drop.

The earlier fear

At three or four, on a California beach with his father, the waves knocked him down and swept over him: 'Father laughed, but there was terror in my heart at the overpowering force of the waves.'

The misadventure

A big bruiser of a boy of about eighteen called out 'Hi, Skinny! How'd you like to be ducked?' and tossed him into the deep end.

The plan

On the way down he planned to hit the bottom, make a big jump, 'bob to the surface like a cork', lie flat and paddle to the edge. He tried it on the first and second descents; the jump made no difference, and on the third he blacked out.

What actually happened

'Those nine feet were more like ninety.' He rose slowly, saw only 'water that had a dirty yellow tinge', clutched at nothing, and his legs 'hung as dead weights, paralysed and rigid'.

Stark terror

'terror that knows no understanding, terror that knows no control, terror that no one can understand who has not experienced it.' He was 'shrieking under water', with only his heart and the pounding in his head to say he was alive.

The third descent

All effort ceased. 'It was quiet and peaceful… it's nice to be carried gently… tender arms like Mother's.' Then 'I crossed to oblivion, and the curtain of life fell.'

The aftermath

'But I was only fooling,' said the boy who threw him in. For days a haunting fear stayed; he never went back to the pool, and the terror returned at the Tieton, Bumping River, Warm Lake and on every fishing trip — 'It ruined my fishing trips'.

The instructor's method

Five days a week, an hour a day, from October. A belt, a rope through a pulley on an overhead cable, 'back and forth across the pool, hour after hour, day after day, week after week'. Three months before the tension slackened.

Built piece by piece

Then exhaling face-down and inhaling with the nose raised, hundreds of times; then kicking at the side of the pool for weeks. 'Thus, piece by piece, he built a swimmer' — and in April: 'Now you can swim.'

The self-tests

Alone in the pool; then two miles across Lake Wentworth from Triggs Island to Stamp Act Island — 'Well, Mr Terror, what do you think you can do to me?'; then Warm Lake by Meade Glacier, where he 'shouted with joy, and Gilbert Peak returned the echo'.