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Question

“I resemble everyone/but myself, and sometimes see/in shop-windows,/despite the well-known laws/ of optics,/the portrait of a stranger,/date unknown,/often signed in a corner/by my father"
Which state(s) of being is/are illustrated in the above lines from A. K. Ramanujan's "Self Portraits"?

The poem "Self Portrait" by A. K. Ramanujan explores the themes of identity and self-perception, particularly focusing on the complexity of understanding oneself in relation to one's family and society. Let's break down the states of being illustrated in the provided lines:

  1. Existential Alienation: The lines "I resemble everyone/but myself" suggest a feeling of disconnect from one’s own identity, a common theme in existential philosophy which grapples with the isolation and estrangement from one's own self and the world.
  2. Anxiety of Self, Caused by the Structures of Kinship: The mention of seeing "in shop-windows" a "portrait of a stranger, date unknown, often signed in a corner by my father" suggests a sense of anxiety and confusion about one's identity that stems from familial ties. This reflects on how familial expectations and lineage can obscure personal identity and self-understanding.

These explanations show why the correct answer includes both "Existential alienation" and "Anxiety of self, caused by the structures of kinship". The other options, "Artistic ecstasy" and "Euphoria in the marketplace", do not align with the theme of introspective and familial identity tension depicted in the poem and thus are ruled out.

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Important Questions from Analytical Reasoning Drawing Reasonable Conclusions from Passages

  1. “I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror—of an intense and hopeless despair. . . . He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:
    'The horror! The horror!"
    Which political and existential condition can be inferred from the above passage in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness?
  2. Which of the following statement(s) is/are true about “The Republic of Orissa: A Page from the Annals of the Twentieth Century,” one of the earliest narrative texts written in English by an Indian?
  3. Which of the following statement(s) is/are true regarding Elaine Showalter's essay "A Literature of Their Own"?
  4. "I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed both here and at home with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia."
    Which of the following statement(s) is/are correct based on the above excerpt?
  5. “Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd-seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalised figure of a sahib."
     

    What condition(s) is/are illustrated in the above lines from George Orwell's essay "Shooting an Elephant"?

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