NCERT Solutions for Class 11 English - Hornbill Father to Son

Question: Why does the father say he “cannot understand” his son?
Answer: They have grown apart in habits, interests, and even language; the father no longer recognizes the boy he raised.

Question: What does “silence surrounds us” suggest?
Answer: A breakdown of communication; both avoid real conversation, creating tense quietness.

Question: How does the father view the son’s childhood?
Answer: With nostalgia; he believes their early bond should have ensured lifelong closeness.

Question: What does the image of the son “building his own world” convey?
Answer: Independence and separation; the son has formed values apart from the father’s.

Question: Explain the irony in the father’s complaint.
Answer: He longs for closeness yet admits he “cannot share” himself either, so he also causes the gap.

Question: What emotions dominate the father?
Answer: Bewilderment, hurt, guilt, longing, and some pride.

Question: Why does the father repeat “forgive” and “forgive”?
Answer: He seeks mutual reconciliation; neither side is wholly at fault.

Question: What does the “prodigal” allusion imply?
Answer: A biblical echo indicating unconditional acceptance if the son returns emotionally.

Question: How is the son presented?
Answer: Indirectly, through the father’s perspective; the son’s silence stresses the distance.

Question: What tone runs through the poem?
Answer: Confessional and pleading, tinged with regret and self-reproach.

Question: Identify two figures of speech with effect.
Answer: Metaphor “building his own world” highlights separation; paradox “love yet strangers” sharpens contradiction.

Question: Comment on structure and rhyme.
Answer: Free verse with light half-rhyme; a conversational flow mirroring hesitant thought.

Question: What resolution does the father propose?
Answer: Open dialogue and mutual forgiveness; he offers his hand first.

Question: State the poem’s message in one line.
Answer: Generational rifts mend through humility, listening, and shared forgiveness, not authority.

NCERT Solutions for Class 11 English Hornbill Father to Son - Long Question Types

Question: Examine the father–son relationship in the poem. How does Jennings stage distance and desire together?
Answer: The speaker loves the son yet calls him a “stranger,” pairing intimacy with alienation. Distance shows in images of separate “worlds,” mismatched “speeches,” and the shared house that no longer feels shared. Desire shows in the father’s repeated offers to reconcile, his backward glance to childhood, and the closing plea for “forgive.” Syntax mirrors this tension: short declaratives expose hurt; conditional phrases (“if…”) signal hope. The dramatic monologue keeps the son silent, so the father’s yearning dominates while the gap persists. The poem concludes without certitude but with an extended hand, proving that desire for connection can coexist with estrangement when pride loosens.

Question: How does the poem critique authoritarian parenting while avoiding blame of a single side?
Answer: The father confesses failure to “share” himself, admitting limits of authority that relies on ownership (“my son”). He recognises that nurture does not guarantee sameness and that control cannot manufacture affection. Yet the son’s autonomy becomes withdrawal, worsening the rift. Jennings balances agency: each must “forgive.” This bilateral ethic rejects the easy villain. The critique lies in the father’s slow shift from command to conversation. Authority yields to vulnerability. The moral is procedural, not punitive: relationships repair through listening, apology, and patience, not by asserting rights or rehearsing past sacrifices.

Question: Analyse the poem’s structure and how free verse supports its meaning.
Answer: Free verse releases the voice from fixed rhyme and meter, mimicking halting thought. Enjambment carries sentences across lines like unfinished conversations. Occasional half-rhymes create faint cohesion, suggesting a bond that almost clicks but does not. Caesuras act as swallowed replies. The lack of stanzaic symmetry resists neat resolution, appropriate for a living family problem. Where the father moves from recollection to proposal, lineation opens into more conditional verbs and softer modals, marking an emotional pivot. Form follows feeling: irregular music records a domestic discord that seeks cadence in forgiveness.

Question: Discuss the function of memory. Why does looking back not solve the present?
Answer: Memory supplies the father’s legitimacy and longing. He recalls feeding, teaching, and playing, assuming continuity from care to closeness. But memory is unilateral here. The adult son’s memories, values, and private meanings do not surface. Past investment cannot compel present intimacy because identity evolves. The father’s nostalgia risks idealising a child who no longer exists. Jennings uses this to show that love must re-negotiate terms as people change. Memory can motivate repair by reminding us what mattered, yet reconciliation requires contemporary acts: dialogue, boundary-respect, and new rituals that fit who the son is now.

Question: Explore the symbolism of house, world, and language.
Answer: The house symbolizes shared history and legal kinship. It holds them but cannot bind them; walls without rapport become mere shelter. The son’s separate world signals differentiated identity—friends, ideals, and rhythms outside the parental map. Language marks the sharpest border. The father and son “speak” different idioms: not just vocabulary but codes of feeling. Home fails when speech fails. Jennings’ triad implies repair pathways: redesign the house as a hospitable space, visit the son’s world without colonising it, and learn each other’s language through slow, non-defensive talk.

Question: What is the effect of the prodigal-son allusion, and how does Jennings revise it?
Answer: The biblical echo primes readers for unconditional welcome. Jennings keeps the father’s readiness to forgive but removes spectacle: no feast, no confession, no explicit return. The revision modernises the parable by locating exile within a functioning household. Estrangement is psychological, not geographic. The father’s grace is proactive, offered “first,” and the reconciliation is mutual rather than one-sided absolution. This reframe shifts emphasis from moral failure to communication failure, fitting contemporary family dynamics where autonomy, not riotous living, drives distance.

Question: Evaluate the reliability of the father-narrator. Where might his view be limited?
Answer: As sole speaker he shapes the narrative, but his bias shows. He centres his sacrifices, underplays the son’s reasons, and universalises his hurt as truth. His repeated “I cannot” may conceal unwillingness to adapt. He frames difference as loss rather than growth. Yet he also self-critiques, admitting inability to “share” himself and asking forgiveness. Jennings crafts a credible but partial witness: trustworthy for emotion, limited for facts about the son. The interpretive lesson is methodological—hear the missing voice before final judgment.

Question: How does Jennings use sound and diction to register tension?
Answer: Plain, Anglo-Saxon words—son, house, speak—produce stark clarity, matching domestic realism. Hard consonants in phrases of refusal tighten mood, while softer modals (“would,” “could”) appear near reconciliation. Repetition (“forgive”) functions as incantation, trying to will change into being. Pauses create unsaid answers. The overall acoustic palette is subdued, resisting lyrical flourish to honour everyday pain. This restraint heightens authenticity: the poem sounds like a careful conversation, not a performance, which suits its ethical aim of de-escalation.

Question: Connect the poem to the wider theme of generational transitions in Hornbill.
Answer: Several texts in the syllabus track identity under change. “Father to Son” contributes the domestic microcosm: how modernity reallocates authority from lineage to choice. Education, peers, and media expand a teenager’s world, so similarity to parents is no longer default. Jennings maps the negotiation stage—after dependence, before full adult reciprocity. The poem recommends skills needed across units: empathetic listening (“The Portrait of a Lady”), respect for different callings (“We’re Not Afraid to Die”), and humility before autonomy. It becomes a toolkit for peaceful transition rather than a lament.

Question: Propose a practical reconciliation plan derived from the poem’s insights.
Answer: Step 1: Name the gap without accusation. Use “I” statements. 

Step 2: Invite the son’s world. Ask him to choose time, place, and topics. 

Step 3: Set rules: no interruptions, reflect back what you heard. 

Step 4: Trade stories: one childhood memory each, then one present priority each. 

Step 5: Negotiate boundaries: privacy, chores, finances, shared spaces. 

Step 6: Ritualise connection: a weekly task or meal, small but consistent. 

Step 7: Close with forgiveness: acknowledge missteps; agree on a signal for cooling off. The poem’s final outstretched hand becomes a repeatable protocol: humility first, structure second, persistence throughout.