“The Awakening Age” is a poem by Nigerian poet and novelist Ben Okri. In it, he shows the African people’s difficulties and pains. He appeals or calls for the peace, prosperity, happiness, liberation, unity, and harmony among the people of the world. He wishes to awaken the whole world and its people from the world of darkness, and poverty to the awakening age of enlightenment.
In this article, we’ve listed all the question answers as well as the summary of The Awakening Age Exercise as part of the class 12 English curriculum. Here is the table of contents:
- The Awakening Age Exercise: Best Question and Answers For Class 12 English
- The Awakening Age Exercise: Best Questions and Answers Solution Exercise: Reference To The Context For Class 12 English
- The Awakening Age Exercise: Reference Beyond The Text For Class 12 English
- The Awakening Age: Summary For Class 12 English
The Awakening Age Exercise: Best Question and Answers For Class 12 English
Listed below are all the questions and answers for The Awakening Age Exercise for Class 12 English.
a. Who are the people ‘who travel the meridian line’?
Nigerians have been divided into two camps as a result of the brutal civil war: the south and the north. These people have encountered hunger, poverty, unemployment, and other aspects of life during their fragmented existence.
b. What does the poet mean by a new world’?
When the poet says “a new world,” he indicates a lovely world full of hope, riches, unity, truth, knowledge, and creativity. People in Nigeria have witnessed the world of a unified Nigeria since the birth of civil peace.
c. How are people connected to each other?
The hope from history connects people to one another. Their hopes are pretty great. They may reach a new level of becoming a successful and unified nation with optimism and knowledge thanks to this steadfast hope.
d. What can we gain after our perceptions are changed?
We are benefitted from their supportive works with wisdom and creativity. It helps to reach the height of success and prosperity.
f. Describe the rhyme scheme of this sonnet.
There are seven separate couplets (stanzas of two lines) in the poem, totaling fourteen lines. This sonnet’s rhyme scheme is simple and sonorous, providing a rhythmic tone, and each stanza has a rhyming couplet. The rhyme scheme is AA BB CC DD EE FF GG.
The Awakening Age Exercise: Questions and Answers Solution Exercise: Reference To The Context For Class 12 English
Listed below are the answers to the ‘Reference to the context’ part of The Awakening Age Exercise
a. What does the poet mean by ‘the awakening age’?
The awakening age refers to the period when Africans recognize, realize, or become conscious of their situation, as well as the creation of their new world. The era of enlightenment, which follows Nigeria’s bloody civil war, is characterized by peace, prosperity, liberty, happiness, unity, and harmony among people.
b. Why, in your view, have these people lived with poverty’s rage?
These people, in my opinion, “lived with poverty’s anger” since they were continually embroiled in the brutal civil war for three vital years. Millions of people, particularly children, perished from starvation during that period. They neglected the hardships of regular Nigerians in favor of battling for numerous internal concerns related to politics, ethnicity, religion, culture, and other factors.
c. Why does the poet appeal for solidarity among the people?
The poet appeals for solidarity among the people for their dream of a better world to come true. He wishes for all of Nigeria’s unfortunate citizens to achieve new heights of prosperity, hope, unity, truth, wisdom, and creativity. He thinks that people’s solidarity can only help them overcome their obstacles, challenges, and sufferings.
d. Does the poet present migration in a positive light? Why? Why not?
Yes, the poet views migration favorably since it boosts the number of people who are of working age. Through waking, migration aids in a change in their state from one level to another. In a new era of waking, free from the idea of pain, the poet hopes for them to be unified, affluent, honest, smart, and creative. Migrants contribute to the growth of human capital in receiving nations by bringing skills with them. They support the development of cutting-edge technologies as well.
e. Nepal is also known for its economic as well as educational migrants. Have you noticed any change in the perceptions and behaviors of these migrants when they return home from abroad?
Many Nepalese youths go abroad for further studies and employment. They go for economic as well as educational progress. We have noticed changes in their perceptions and behaviors when they return home. After returning back home, they bring new hope and skill as potential benefits. The people. working abroad can increase their income, acquire new skills, and collect savings and assets. When they return, they bring both the financial and human capital accumulated abroad to their homeland. Benefits appear when returned migrants are successful in using skills, knowledge, and savings for the sake of his/her family, society, and country.
f. Relate the rhyme scheme of this sonnet to the kind of life idealized by the poet.
The rhyme scheme is AA BB CC DD EE FF and GG, and it is poetry of optimism. Every couplet in each of the seven stanzas is beautiful in both rhyme and meaning. The poet can show the idealized existence of Nigerians in a new world of the awakening age with the assistance of the poem’s rhyme pattern. All of these rhyming phrases after couplets are linked to the lives of Nigerians and their ideal way of life, including wisdom, realization, hope, prosperity, truth, opportunity, and joy. His excellent rhyme scheme accurately expressed his expectations and good wishes for the ideal existence of Nigerians in the new world of the awakening age.
The Awakening Age Exercise: Reference Beyond The Text For Class 12 English
Listed below are the answers to the ‘Reference Beyond The Text’ part of The Awakening Age Exercise.
a. Write an essay on ‘The Impacts of Migration on Nepali Society.
➜ The Impacts of Migration on Nepali Society
Migration is the term used to describe the transfer of people from one place to another. Migration can take place both inside and across nations. The many types of migration include seasonal, temporary, and permanent migration. There are several reasons why migration happens. These can be in the realms of the economic, social, political, or environmental. Push and pull variables both affect migration. Both the location that migrants depart and the place that they settle are impacted by migration. These impacts might have both advantageous and detrimental effects.
Immigration and emigration are the two types of migration. With a long history (more than 200 years), emigration from Nepal is becoming more common. Due to a lack of thorough research and, on the other hand, a lack of government interest in this area, there are no effective emigration policies. Migration has raised the GDP contribution of remittances, reduced poverty, and progressively improved the education and health sectors, but development is sluggish and the trade imbalance has grown significantly. Therefore, there is a pressing need for international migration management that puts national interests first (including emigration and immigration).
The Awakening Age: Summary For Class 12 English
Here is the summary for ” The Awakening Age” for class 12 English.
In his poem “The Awakening Age,” poet Ben Okri describes the difficulties of the African people and calls for global harmony, peace, and human solidarity. In this poetry, Nigerians are shown to be a vulnerable group due to a lengthy history of starvation, poverty, unemployment, and conflicts (including racial, religious, political, terrorist, and militancy-related ones). The ethnoreligious conflict has been caused by Northern Nigeria’s oppression of the Igho people. The poem depicts the narrative of a people whose optimism binds them together like glue, even though they are led by invisible powers.
In the first stanza, the speaker is trying to address the new people of Nigerians, who have suffered immensely as a result of the country’s tragic bloodshed caused by racial, religious, geographical, and economic issues, and urging them to embrace a common vision of a modern, prosperous nation. A meridian line is an imaginary line that splits the Earth into two hemispheres in geography. In the poetry, it refers to the conflicts and differences that split Nigerians in half. The change of Nigerians from struggle, poverty, and fragmentation during the civil war to a country of peace and harmony is symbolized by the Meridian line passing through this location.
In the second stanza, the poet asks that Nigerians dream of a unified country that shone brightly with the splendor of joy, harmony, prosperity, and unity. The Awakening Age is celebrated after the struggle when every Nigerian has let go of their anger and hatred for one another.
The third couplet of the poem states that everyone must work together to construct the country. People had hoped for a prosperous nation for a very long time, but the continual conflicts had prevented it. People were divided into several sects. This hope binds people together like a strong mountain rope.
The speaker claims in the fourth couplet of “The Awakening Age” that until a nation’s people are united, that nation cannot reach new heights. They must be freed from internal conflicts, unfairness, and negativity if they are to deliver prosperity to their country. The barrier must be crossed for them to transition from inequality and division to peace, prosperity, and harmony.
The poet emphasizes in the fifth couplet that individuals must adjust their restricted viewpoint to acquire the best prospects. They had to deal with hardships, difficulties, poverty, conflicts, and societal division in the past. These are the elements that have contributed to the collapse of the nation. The suffering will never end if these people continue to deny this reality.
The poet clarifies in the sixth couplet that poverty and misery are self-invited and that only collaborative efforts using wisdom and creativity, as well as the resources gained, can reduce them.
In the seventh couplet of The Awakening Age, the speaker continues, “If everyone is united by a shared sense of nationalism, there will be peace, harmony, and brotherhood in any country.” There must be no discrimination or division among people on the basis of race, culture, religion, politics, or economy. By giving up such things, we may bring wealth to our nation. Nigeria’s people are united and aware of their past sorrows, allowing them to currently benefit from love.
About the Author: Ben Okri (The Awakening Age)
Ben Okri (1949-), a Nigerian poet, fiction writer, and essayist who won the Man Booker Prize for his work The Famished Road, grew up in London. Okri’s writing is influenced by folk stories and dream logic, and it also deals with his family’s experience of the Nigerian civil war. “I was raised in a tradition where there are just more levels to reality: tales and myths, ancestors and spirits, and death,” Okri said in an interview with The National. Jane Austen cannot be used to discuss African realities. This raises the question of what constitutes reality. Every person’s reality is unique. We need a distinct language for diverse perspectives of reality.”
A prolific poet and story teller, Okri, like in his other works, portrays the hardships of the African people in “The Awakening Age”. In addition, he makes a call for unity, peace and solidarity among human beings from different parts of the world.
Short Analysis of The Awakening Age
The Awakening Age Poem has seven stanzas and each stanza contains two lines that rhyme with each other. The poet is hopeful that although the world is in grip of prejudice, discrimination, poverty, inequality and innumerable sufferings this grip will soon loosen as the people of the world will get awakened and usher in a new era of peace, harmony and brotherhood. In the poem ” The Awakening age” writer hopes to see a peaceful world where equality and love reign.