Passage 1

(i) Alliteration is used 'in bleak and bitter cold'. Consonant sound - 'b' is repeated. Adjectives
'bleak and bitter' describe the situation in which the six men were trapped. It was a gloomy, sad ,
frustrating and hopeless situation.
(ii) There are six human beings referred to in the above extract. They represent the whole human
race. They are trapped in an atmosphere of bitter cold from which there is no escape. There is a
fire to keep them warm. But it is dying. They can keep the fire alive by feeding it with the logs
of wood they have.
(iii)”The first one” was a white women. She was prejudiced against the black man. So out of her
racial prejudice, she holds back her log though the fire is dying out. Just because of the
white colour of her skin, she thought she was superior to the black- skinned man. It was her
arrogance. The second man had a narrow outlook. He liked the people who only belonged to his
own religion. He was a bigot.
(iv) The first woman holds back her log because she found one black man around the fire. She
found it unacceptable to help a black person by lightning the fire with her own log of wood, even if
it was going to hurt herself otherwise.
(v) It was the fire which is symbolic to the warm human spirit in their hearts that was also dying
and they needed to share the logs of wood to keep the fire burning outside and also light their
inner fire. It would help them all in building a world where everyone knows how to live together,
how to live and let live. This is how this line is connected with the theme of the poem.
Passage - 2
(i) Tattered clothes means old, worn out clothes. This signifies that the man in tattered clothes was
a poor man. He gave his coat a hitch to cover himself more closely and keep himself warm. He
wanted to keep what little he had to himself which showed his mean attitude.
(ii) The third man is poor. He finds that one of the group is a rich man. He hates the rich. He thinks
they are lazy and never help the poor. So, he too would not give his log to warm a rich man. He
keeps his log to himself.
(iii) The rich man thought that whatever wealth he has earned by his hard work, he was not willing
to spend his precious log to warm the poor whom he thought to be undeserving. He considered
the poor undeserving because they never try to improve their lot. This shows his selfish attitude.
(iv) As the white man has prejudice against the black man, so does the black man has prejudice
against the white man. He thinks the white people have oppressed his race, and it is a chance to
take revenge.
v) The black man has been oppressed and hated by the White man. Now the black man finds the
white man trapped in cold. The black man has a log of wood. He thinks that by withholding his log
he will be able to teach the white man a lesson. So out of hatred for the white man, he does not
part with his log of wood.
Passage 3
i) Meaning of forlorn is hopeless or lonely. In this sense, there is a contradiction. A man in a group
cannot be lonely. But, though there were six men, they were still alone. In that sense oxymoron is
the figure of speech used here.
(ii) The last man's game was give and take. He helped only those who helped him. It was a sort of
barter that he practised. He was a selfish man who only thinks of gain. Since no one in the group
helped him, so he does not give his stick to help them.
iii) Human beings are expected to have fellow feeling. They should have warmth and sympathy for
each other. But the six men have no warmth of human relations. They suffer from prejudice,
bigotry, greed, hate, revenge and selfishness. These are deadly sins that lead to their death and
destruction.
(iv) The six men were trapped in bleak and bitter cold from which they had no escape. They were
sure to die. There was a fire that could keep them alive. Though each of them had a stick to keep
the fire burning, they withheld their sticks and died. It was the lack of warmth in their hearts that
actually killed them. Their hearts were cold, means lacking basic human emotions of love,
kindness, care, tolerance.
(v) Human race has two options. It can survive if people have love, sympathy and co-operation.
We have means to survive even in the most dire situation. Other option is to perish. The human
race is sure to perish if people don't have sympathy and love for each other.