HEADACHE- NOTES

1. HEADACHE - R.K.NARAYAN

R.K.Narayan is one of the most famous Indian Writers in English. He brings out in an amusing way how headache, whether real or unreal, helps people to avoid many delicate personal discomforts and save the face of people. Headache is the most useful blessing given to mankind by God. It acts as a password to escape from problems. During our school days while writing leave let (Specimen letter) teacher give example as “I am suffering from headache”. Headache was a boon to mankind. During drill classes students those who wanted to escape from exercises use headache as a password. The schoolboy dislikes doing homework. So he lies that he is suffering from severe headache. Highly placed officials talk of their indisposition to escape from unpleasant commitments. Telling the truth bluntly will disrupt human relationships. So we lie that we are suffering from headache. The husband does not want to take his wife out. So he lies to her that he is suffering from headache. The clerk who does not like his routine work at office cannot complain openly that his job is boring. So he stays at home, saying that he has an unbearable headache. Headache is essential for maintaining human relationship in working order. It has become such a confirmed habit that a huge trade has developed in providing a cure for it. Companies manufacture medicines for curing headache which is only a myth and not a reality.

ONE MARK QUESTION: 

1. 
   Headcahe is a____________ 

1. 
   Blessing 
2. 
   Cursing 
3. 
   None of the above 

2. 
   Headache is essential for _________ 

1. 
   Maintain critical circumstance 
2. 
   Maintain human relationship 
3. 
   Maintain the mental power 

4. The word boon means ______________ 

1. 
   Gift 
2. 
   Blessing 
3. 
   praise 

5. 
   The word myth means ___________ 

1. 
   a commonly believed idea which is true 
2. 
   a commonly believed idea which is not true 
3. 
   both 

6. 
   No other aches, except headache, can be so openly mentioned with impunity, because they are _________ and __________ 

1. 
   Smooth and physiological 
2. 
   Smooth and crude 
3. 
   crude and physiological 

7. 
   Rheumatism means _____________ 

1. 
   pain in the joints and muscles 
2. 
   pain in the head and nerves 
3. 
   pain in the bones 

PARAGRAPHS: 

1. 
   Why does R.K.Narayan say that headache is God’s blessing to man? Give some reasons. 

• 
  He brings out in an amusing way how headache, whether real or unreal, helps people to avoid many delicate personal discomforts and save the face of people. 
• 
  Headache is the most useful blessing given to mankind by God. 
• 
  It helps people to avoid uncomfortable situations in life. 
• 
  It acts as a password to escape from problems. 
• 
  Headache was a boon to mankind. 
• 
  During drill classes students those who wanted to escape from exercises use headache as a password. 
• 
  The schoolboy dislikes doing homework. 
• 
  Telling the truth bluntly will disrupt human relationships. 
• 
  So we lie that we are suffering from headache. 
• 
  The husband does not want to take his wife out. 
• 
  And also mother-in-law, father-in-law, officers and friends also use headache as an excuse. 

2. 
   How headache is essential for maintaining human relationship? 

• 
  Telling the truth bluntly will disrupt human relationships. 
• 
  So we lie that we are suffering from headache. 
• 
  The husband does not want to take his wife out. 
• 
  So he lies to her that he is suffering from headache. 
• 
  The clerk who does not like his routine work at office cannot complain openly that his job is boring. 
• 
  So he stays at home, saying that he has an unbearable headache. 
• 
  Headache is essential for maintaining human relationship in working order. 
• 
  It has become such a confirmed habit that a huge trade has developed in providing a cure for it. 
• 
  Companies manufacture medicines for curing headache which is only a myth and not a reality. 

ESSAYS: 

1. 
   Summarize R.K.Narayan’s ideas on ‘Headache’? 

INTRODUCTION: 

• 
  R.K.Narayan is one of the most famous Indian Writers in English. 
• 
  He brings out in an amusing way how headache, whether real or unreal, helps people to avoid many delicate personal discomforts and save the face of people. 

HEADACHE AS A BOON: 

• 
  Headache is the most useful blessing given to mankind by God. 
• 
  It helps people to avoid uncomfortable situations in life. 
• 
  It acts as a password to escape from problems. 
• 
  Headache was a boon to mankind. 
• 
  During drill classes students those who wanted to escape from exercises use headache as a password. 
• 
  The schoolboy dislikes doing homework. 
• 
  So he lies that he is suffering from severe headache. 
• 
  Highly placed officials talk of their indisposition to escape from unpleasant commitments. 

AUTHOR’S PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: 

• 
  He remembers his school experience that the very first letter was taught, as”I am suffering from headache. I request to grant me leave”. 
• 
  He wonders why the teacher chooses the same for the leave letter. 

INDISPOSITION AS SUPERIOR: 

• 
  The word “Indisposition” is superior to the word “Headache”. 
• 
  People use the word ‘indisposition’ to excuse themselves. 
• 
  It is a wage word. 
• 
  It sounds better in the third person. 
• 
  A gentle man’s secretary can use it in a press note. 
• 
  An excuse is an elegant falsehood. 

HEADACHE HELPS TO MAINTAIN HUMAN RELATIONSHIP: 

• 
  Telling the truth bluntly will disrupt human relationships. 
• 
  So we lie that we are suffering from headache. 
• 
  The husband does not want to take his wife out. 
• 
  So he lies to her that he is suffering from headache. 
• 
  The clerk who does not like his routine work at office cannot complain openly that his job is boring. 
• 
  So he stays at home, saying that he has an unbearable headache. 
• 
  Headache is essential for maintaining human relationship in working order. 
• 
  It has become such a confirmed habit that a huge trade has developed in providing a cure for it. 
• 
  Companies manufacture medicines for curing headache which is only a myth and not a reality. 

HEADACHE IS ONLY A HABIT: 

• 
  Headache is only a habit. 
• 
  Headache is rather a habit than a disease. 
• 
  The sufferer feels uneasy as they do not carry always headache tablets in their pockets. 

• 
  Opticians sell glasses to relieve headache, thus a huge trade has developed in providing a cure for it. 

CONCLUSION: 

` The author says that there is no such thing as headache or indisposition.

LORD OF THE FLIES SHORT SUMMARY

Plot Overview

            Lord of the Flies explores the dark side of humanity, the savagery that underlies even the most civilized human beings. William Golding intended this novel as a tragic parody of children's adventure tales, illustrating humankind's intrinsic evil nature. He presents the reader with a chronology of events leading a group of young boys from hope to disaster as they attempt to survive their uncivilized, unsupervised, isolated environment until rescued.

            In the midst of a raging nuclear war, a plane evacuating a group of schoolboys from Britain is shot down over a deserted tropical island. They find themselves stranded without adult supervision on the island. The group is roughly divided into the "littluns," boys around the age of six, and the "biguns," who are between the ages of ten and twelve. Initially, the boys attempt to form a culture similar to the one they left behind.

            The story begins with the two of the boys, Ralph and Piggy who discover a conch shell on the beach, and Piggy realizes it could be used as a horn to summon the other boys. Once assembled, the boys set about electing a leader and devising a way to be rescued. They choose Ralph as their leader, and Ralph appoints another boy, Jack, to be in charge of the group of choirboys-turned-hunters who will hunt food for the entire group.

            Ralph, Jack, and another boy, Simon, set off on an expedition to explore the island. When they return, Ralph with the advice and support of Piggy (the intellectual of the group), strives to establish rules for housing and sanitation. He declares that they must light a signal fire to attract the attention of passing ships. The boys succeed in igniting some dead wood by focusing sunlight through the lenses of Piggy’s eyeglasses. However, the boys pay more attention to playing than to monitoring the fire, and the flames quickly engulf the forest. A large swath of dead wood burns out of control, and one of the youngest boys in the group disappears, presumably having burned to death.

            At first, the boys enjoy their life without grown-ups and spend much of their time splashing in the water and playing games. Ralph, however, complains that they should be maintaining the signal fire and building huts for shelter. The hunters fail in their attempt to catch a wild pig, but their leader, Jack, becomes increasingly preoccupied with the act of hunting.

            When a ship passes by on the horizon one day, Ralph and Piggy notice, to their horror that the signal fire which had been the hunters’ responsibility to maintain has burned out. Furious, Ralph accosts Jack, but the hunter has just returned with his first kill, and all the hunters seem gripped with a strange frenzy, re-enacting the chase in a kind of wild dance. Piggy criticizes Jack, who hits Piggy across the face. Ralph blows the conch shell and reprimands the boys in a speech intended to restore order.

            At the meeting, it quickly becomes clear that some of the boys have started to become afraid. The littlest boys, known as “littluns,” have been troubled by nightmares from the beginning, and more and more boys now believe that there is some sort of beast or monster lurking on the island. The older boys try to convince the others at the meeting to think rationally, asking where such a monster could possibly hide during the daytime. One of the littluns suggests that it hides in the sea, a proposition that terrifies the entire group.

            The conflict between Jack and Ralph and the forces of savagery and civilization that they represent is aggravated by the boys' literal fear of a mythical beast roaming the island. One night, an aerial battle occurs above the island. The boys, asleep below, do not notice the flashing lights and explosions in the clouds. A casualty of the battle floats down with his opened parachute, ultimately coming to rest on the mountaintop. Breezes occasionally inflate the parachute, making the body appear to sit up and then sink forward again. Sam and Eric, the twins responsible for watching the fire at night, are asleep and do not see the parachutist land. When the twins wake up, they see the enormous silhouette of his parachute and hear the strange flapping noises it makes. This sight panics the boys as they mistake the dead body for the beast they fear. They think that the island beast has come closer and they rush back to the camp in terror and report that the beast has attacked them.

            The boys organize a hunting expedition to search for the monster. Jack and Ralph, who are increasingly at odds, travel up the mountain. They see the silhouette of the parachute from a distance and think that it looks like a huge, deformed ape. The group holds a meeting at which Jack and Ralph tell the others of the sighting. Jack says that Ralph is a coward and that he should be removed from office, but the other boys refuse to vote Ralph out of power. Jack angrily runs away down the beach, calling all the hunters to join him. Ralph rallies the remaining boys to build a new signal fire, this time on the beach rather than on the mountain. They obey, but before they have finished the task, most of them have slipped away to join Jack.

            In a reaction to this panic, Jack is joined by all but a few of the boys. Jack has drawn the other boys slowly away from Ralph's influence because of their natural attraction to and inclination toward the adventurous hunting activities symbolizing violence and evil. The boys who join Jack are enticed by the protection Jack's ferocity seems to provide, as well as by the prospect of playing the role of savages: putting on camouflaging face paint, hunting, and performing ritualistic tribal dances. Jack declares himself the leader of the new tribe of hunters and organizes a hunt and a violent, ritual slaughter of a sow to solemnize the occasion. Eventually, Jack's group actually slaughters a sow and, as an offering to the beast, puts the sow's head on a stick.

            After witnessing the death of the sow and the gift made of her head to the beast, the mystic Simon begins to hallucinate. The voice, which he imagines as belonging to the Lord of the Flies, says that Simon will never escape him, for he exists within all men. Simon faints. When he wakes up, he has the courage to discover the true identity of the beast sighted on the mountain where he sees the dead parachutist. He understands that the beast is not an animal on the loose but is hidden in each boy's psyche. He travels to the beach to tell the others what he has seen. But the others are in the midst of a chaotic revelry—even Ralph and Piggy have joined Jack’s feast. They see Simon’s shadowy figure emerge from the jungle. Perceiving him as the beast, the boys beat him to death. They fall upon him and kill him with their bare hands and teeth.

            The following morning, Ralph and Piggy discuss what they have done. Jack’s hunters attack them and their few followers and steal Piggy’s glasses in the process. Ralph’s group travels to Jack’s stronghold in an attempt to make Jack see reason, but Jack orders Sam and Eric tied up and fights with Ralph. In the ensuing battle, one boy, Roger, rolls a boulder down the mountain, killing Piggy and shattering the conch shell. Ralph barely manages to escape a torrent of spears.

            Ralph hides for the rest of the night and the following day, while the others hunt him like an animal. Jack has the other boys ignite the forest in order to smoke Ralph out of his hiding place. Ralph stays in the forest, where he discovers and destroys the sow’s head, but eventually, he is forced out onto the beach, where he knows the other boys will soon arrive to kill him.

            A passing ship sees the smoke from the fire, and a British naval officer arrives on the beach just in time to save Ralph from certain death at the hands of the schoolboys turned savages. Ralph collapses in exhaustion, but when he looks up, he sees the British naval officer standing over him. The other boys reach the beach and stop in their tracks at the sight of the officer. Amazed at the spectacle of this group of bloodthirsty, savage children, the officer asks Ralph to explain. Ralph is overwhelmed by the knowledge that he is safe but, thinking about what has happened on the island, he begins to weep. The other boys begin to sob as well. The officer turns his back so that the boys may regain their composure.