BSc BA ADP English Notes Modern English Essay Bachelor's Dilemma Herbert Gold  Question Answers

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Q 1. What do different people think about a bachelor?

Ans. The bachelor is a man who does not take a decision is his life and sticks to his condition of status quo. The bachelor is not a common man; he goes against the traditions and set ways of life in a society.  He avoids the trap of responsibilities and relations.  Every member of society holds different attitude and opinion towards him.

A wife idealizes him as a challenge.  She thinks that he is a romantic, charming and a dream like man.  Unlike her husband, he is an ideally perfect man.   She has sympathy with him and thinks of getting a girl for him but when he gets close to her, she tries to trap him in an inviting manner.

A husband sometimes glances at him with envy because he is a free man who has not been trapped in the net of promises and desires of family life.  Sometimes he pities him as a man who is alone and is deprived of the conjugal bliss, joy of children and the homely pleasure of hearth.

A girl has mixed feelings about him.  Sometimes she is apprehensive and thinks about the diseases and disabilities mentioned in the Sunday supplements and magazines.  But mostly she tries to trap him.  She knits a snare with her beautiful looks and promises of home cooking.  Even she knows that he has run through a dozen like her but “I am different”, she decides bravely.

For the hostess he is an extra man or a partner to dance with. The dinner table takes him to be a gobbling mouth.  A psychiatrist sees a patient.  Another bachelor takes him as a friend who has an incomplete life with one button always missing from his shirt.  He bores him with complaints but finally runs away with him girl friend.

A bachelor has too many identities because he has no certain identity. He is like a liquid that can set in any type of thought or opinion according to the needs of the thinker.

Q 2. What are the two types of bachelors?

Ans. The bachelor is a man who doesn’t take a decision to settle down in his life.  He decides to live a solitary life without any responsibility.  He floats here and there on the ocean of the world and does not find any harbour for himself.

The writer describes two types of bachelors.  One is a very clever boy of Don Juan type with plenty of time, money, initiative and a will for adventure.  He can do whatever he likes.  He can pick the girl of his choice and have fun.  He can experience all kinds of joys.  He is fought for, as a commodity especially in large cities where there tend to be more girls than men.  He flies high and is envied by all.

Then there is a meeker and milder bachelor of Don Mitty type.  He does not have a lot of resources.  He cannot get the entertainment of his choice.  He does not have the chances to pick his favourite girl in reality but his dreamland is full of such girls who always throng around him to please him and to get his favours.  As soon as the dream breaks, he comes back on hard surface of reality and is faced by his own loneliness, troubles and needs again.

Whatever is the type of bachelor, he is a lonely person, constantly in need of companionship and in search of his roots.

Q 3. Discuss the problems of a bachelor?

Ans. A person who does not get married is called a bachelor. Marriage is a fine social institution that makes a family.  Family is the basic unit of society.  It makes the society stable and productive.  Family provides protection and moral support.  It helps us to live together with a fine "give and take". The man who refuses to become a family man or a married man is deprived of these advantages.  Though, the family life has some demands and responsibilities too but these are much less than the advantages of it.

A bachelor faces many problems.  The foremost and basic problem is his loneliness.  He has to spend his life alone.  He is alone in his joys, his progress, his sorrows, his illness, in his failure and in all his life.  He is alone in all respects.  People try to use him in their own favour.  Nobody cares for him and he does for nobody.

Then there are diseases that become his chronic partner.  Almost every bachelor suffers from some maladies.  Some of them are psychological, related to anxiety and frustration and some are physical mostly related to his stomach.  The bachelor suffers from stomach diseases like ulcers etc.  It is because he has to eat in a disorganized way.  He has no timings and proper arrangements for meals.  Too much restaurant food spoils his health.

Then comes the problem of sex; no doubt a bachelor always remains engrossed in the problems related to sex.  He feels deprived and tries to get sexual satisfaction in any safe or unsafe way.  The lack of sex-life makes him sluggish and deprived of the urge to live.

The boredom always surrounds a bachelor's existence.  Nothing gives him the true happiness and joy.  He gets fed up with the same stale routine of life and same dull face in the bathroom mirror.

In whatever way you count, a bachelor always has a short life expectancy.  He dies young because of all these problems in which he cannot find any shoulder to help or support him.  The bachelor lives a miserable and lonely life.

Q 4. Why does the writer talk about paramecium?

Ans. Paramecium is a one-called creature.  It reproduces by binary fission that means to split into two equal and alike beings.  It does not need any sexual activity for this reproduction.  But the scientists discovered something every curious. In a microscopic study, some biologists noticed that the paramecium became very tired and sluggish after continuous fission.  They viewed a culture of paramecia, under the microscope to know the reasons of this exhaustion.  What they found was the meeting of a paramecium with another of its kind. They exchanged their nuclei and again became vigorous and healthy enough to start the process of binary fission with a new fervour.

All this shows that even a unicellular creature needs companion ship, friendship and physical contact.  So for a man how can it be possible to live without all these factors?  He cannot live alone and if he tries like a paramecium, he loses the vigour of life and finally disintegrates mentally, physically, sexually and emotionally.

Q 5. What is the conclusion of this essay?

Ans. This essay gives an ample discussion on the life, ways, behaviors and circumstances of a bachelor.  After an exhaustive discussion, he concludes that a person should get married because it is according to the laws of nature.  Nature tends to destroy everything that goes against its flow.  So the bachelor's avoidance from this demand of nature leads him to a meaningless, boring and directionless life.  He is rootless and floats like a ghost ship on the ocean of life alone, alone and then alone.  His loneliness echoes and surrounds his whole existence.

So the writer's objective in presenting the hopeless condition of a bachelor is to stress the need of love, companionship and relations in life.  One cannot live alone, so one should not try to live alone.