Summary
Chapter 3: Two Stories about Flying
PART – I
The story “His First Flight” by “Liam O’ Flaherty” is about a young seagull .The seagull is afraid to fly. All his younger siblings regardless of their much shorter wings fly courageously while he is unable to gather the guts to fly and have faith in his own wings. The young seagull became sad on seeing his parents making his younger siblings perfect in the art of flying. His parents rebuke and tease him for not even trying. They even call him a “coward” and force him to at least try. They also pressurize him and tell him that they will leave him alone and starving if he does not learn how to fly.
Next day, he is even left in isolation and on feeling hungry; he tries to look for the attention of his family members. Only the mother, who is withering a fish trying to eat it, notices his son. The young seagull starts crying out of hunger hoping his mother would help him. When his mother came near him with the fish, he got thrilled. But when his mother stopped in between, he got enraged out of hunger and took a jump at the fish, forgetting that he is afraid of flying. Finally, he took his first flight. All the family members celebrated his victory by encouraging him and dancing around him. He also attempted floating in the sea that he was once afraid of. Thus, he could overcome his fright and realize that it is all in the mind.
PART – II
The story “Black Aero plane” is about a pilot who is glad and contended flying over a city that is sleeping (at the night time). He is flying from Paris to London. While taking his flight, he dreams about a long vacation with his family. He also fantasizes about the delectable breakfast he would have on landing. When he crosses Paris, he notices the dark clouds which were a sign of an upcoming storm. The right decision was to turn back to Paris to be safe. But as he was taken away by his dreams and did not want to delay achieving them, he risked the life of his passengers and headed directly into the storm.
Everything got dark, he was unable to see anything, all his direction instruments stopped working and he lost control of the plane. When all the hopes were lost, he saw another plane whose pilot was keen to rescue them. The author was panicking as there was very less fuel left. The unidentified pilot guided them and took them out of the storm and vanished as soon as they saw light. Upon landing, when he asked the lady in the control room about the other pilot, he got a shock of his life when she says that there was no other plane in the sky except for the one he was flying.
It was actually the author’s own self that helped him through the storm He was a good pilot, and it might have been his own self that came to his help.
Chapter 3: Poem 1: How to tell wild Animals
The poet is describing the different wild animals that are very dangerous. She has introduced them in a very funny way. First of all she tells us about an Asian lion. She says that if you are visiting the jungles of the east and there you see an animal with yellowish-brown skin and he roars so vociferousl y that you will die out of fear.
This means that you have seen an Asian lion. Next in the line is the Bengal tiger, a royal animal that at once attacks and kills a man. She adds wittiness that if this attractive black striped animal kills you and eats you, then you have definitely met a Bengal tiger. Then she says that if the reader meets an animal that has black spotted skin and it at once jumps on him, then he has met a leopard. Moreover, she says that even if you will cry out in pain, it will be of no use as the leopard will not stop attacking you.
Then she describes a bear and says that it will hug you very tightly and that this is the way to recognize a bear as it kills a person by hugging him very tightly. She asks a Questionto the readers that do they know how to be acquainted with beasts that hunt their prey and explains about hyenas have a smiling face and the crocodiles have tears in their eyes. This can be seen when they are killing their prey. The last one in the list is the Chameleon which is a lizard – like creature and doesn’t have ears and wings. It has the quality of changing its color according to the surface. She explains that if the reader looks at the tree and if he can only see the tree, this means that there is a chameleon sitting on it which has to rend its color to brown just like the branches of the tree.
Chapter 3: Poem 2: The Ball Poem
The poet is talking about a little boy who has lost his ball while playing with his ball. The ball skipped from his hand and went into the close by water body. The poet is describing this sight of the boy losing his favourite ball made him think about the boy and his reaction in such a situation. The boy was vulnerably looking into the water body where his ball had gone. He was gloomy and was shaking with fear.
He got so engrossed in sorrow that he kept standing near the harbour for a very long time and kept on looking for his ball. The poet wanted to comfort him by saying that he will get new balls or would give him some money to buy another ball. But he stopped himself from doing so because he thought that money may bring a new ball but will not bring the reminiscences and feelings attached to the lost ball. He further says that the time has come for the boy to learn his errands. The poet wants to say that now the boy will learn the toughest lesson of life, of accepting the cruel realities of life that one day we might lose our loved ones and our loved things.