The Shroud Questions and Answers
Short Essay Type Questions with Answers
Q. 1. Assess The Shroud as an Indian short story.
Ans. Walter Allen in his book The Short Story in English (1982) says that the short story before the modern short story came into being, was a manifestation of the romance. Its aim was to entertain. Its province was the extraordinary. The short story deals with, dramatizes a single incident and in doing so, utterly transforms it. He further says that “the short story should be rooted in a single incident or perception that principally differentiates it from the novel. One should feel that it is the reading that is the fruit of a single moment of, time of a single incident, a single perception”.
According to Edgar Allen Poe, ‘a short story is a prose narrative requiring form half an hour to one or two hours in its perusal’. W. H. Hudson emphasizes on the singleness of purpose while defining the short story and says: “A short story must contain one and only one informative idea and that the idea must be worked out to its logical connections with absolutes singleness of aim and directness of method”. S. K. Kumar quotes Edgar Allan Poe’s definition, ‘Short story is a piece of prose fiction which can be read at a single sitting, and it presents an artistic and unified impression of life through many devices especially theme, characters and action’.
The Shroud is a multi-layered short story. Shroud (Kafan) is Munshi Premchand’s last short story and unarguably one of his best. The story is a satire on the degradation of human beings and talks about afather and son who need money to cremate the son’s wife after her premature death during childbirth. It is a story about a low-caste father and his son who work as labourers in a village in Orissa. The son’s wife, Bhudia, is near the end of her pregnancy and is in need of medical attention, which the family certainly cannot afford.
The poor lady writhes in pain as Ghisu and his son Madhav watch helplessly. Bhudia eventually dies during childbirth, adding to the problems of the father and son. Driven to extreme poverty and despair, they have no money or means to perform the funeral rites for the unfortunate women.
They cannot ignore the dead body lying in their hut, and set out to ask the villagers for some monetary assistance. The question is will the villagers reach out to help the unfortunate low-caste family? ‘Kafan’ which is translated as ‘Shroud‘ in English, describes the degradation of human beings to the lowest level possible. It not only talks about privation of the lower caste in the society but also delves into the depravity of the human soul across all castes, creeds or religions.
Q. 2. Critically analyse Premchand’s art of characterisation in The Shroud.
Ans. The characters in the story are shown by contrast. Madho is Ghisu’s son. He is married and Budhia is his wife. She is pregnant. Madho, like his father, is lazy person and he depends on his wife for food and clothing. He doesn’t work. He is burdened with debt, steals potatoes and pegs from people’s fields and fill themselves. He is a destitute. He doesn’t take care of his pregnant wife. When she is writhing in childbirth pains, he doesn’t sit beside her.
Instead he waits and wants her to die. He spends / wastes all money on revelry leaving the dead body of his wife at home. He is an insensitive person. Now, let us discuss the character of Budhia. Budhiais the wife of Madho. She is pregnant. We see her writhing in labour pain inside the hut. She had brought some order in the family of Ghisu and Madho. She would go for work and bring some food for the two men in house. As a result, the two men had become lazier. She cries a lot in the labour pain. She doesn’t get medical help. At last she dies with her child dead inside. The two men, instead of buying the shroud for her, waste the money in merry-making.
The Zamindar is a minor character in the story. Ghisu and Madho go to him pleading for help and money to buy the shroud for Budhia. The zamindar rebukes them for not turning up for work. At last he flings two rupees at them but he did not utter a word of sympathy.
3. How does Premchand diagnose the ills of the decadent society in The Shroud?
Ans. The Shroud is a multi-layered short story. Premchand’s stories are full of realism. He describes the problems of the poor and the urban middle-class people. His works depict a rationalistic outlook. He shows his deep concern for poverty in India. In the short story, The Shroud, he tells us how poverty causes degeneration of man into a beast. Ghisu and Madho are poor. Both of them steal food from people, don’t go for work and therefore, we get angry with their behaviour. But given a deep thought, we understand that the real problem is poverty.
They don’t have a decent house to live, don’t have enough land to till and they were not paid properly for their work by the upper-case people. There was a great social inequality. There was a great economic inequality also. Both of them belong to chamar caste which is very low. Money-lenders in the village look down upon them. They yoke them for work without payment. They exploit them physically, socially, economically and culturally. So these so poor people react in a bad way.
We feel that both, Ghisu and Madhoare bad people. But it is the poverty that has made them greedy, selfish and deceitful. There is also a parallel thought running throughout the story: the miserable condition of women. The patriarchal system always imposes sorrows and suffering on women, it exploits women and does great injustice to womenfolk. It imposes on them meaningless age-old customs, traditions, morals and manners. The custom of buying the shroud for the dead is useless.
Feople don’t buy new clothes when one is living but they have to buy a new piece of cloth as a last rite. The new clothe is of no use to a dead person because it burns along with the corpse. But the people do follow the practice of wrapping the corpse in the shroud without asking a word against it. The writer has a message to convey us from the story. He exposes the cruelty and injustice done to the lower class people. He criticizes the social system which turns man to behave like a beast. He tries to open our eyes by highlighting social and economic inequality in the village.
Q. 4. Write a note on the setting of the story, The Shroud.
Ans. The Shroud is a multi-layered short story. The setting refers to a place where the events in a story happen. The action in the shroud happens in a small village. The village is drowned in darkness ofignorance, misery, exploitation and superstitious practices. The action takes place late in the evening in a hut. The hut symbolizes poverty and suffering. There is a description of village life. The people in village – The zamindar, Banias and money lenders all help Madho and Ghisu to enable them to buy the shroud. Thus all the events in the story take place in a remote village i.e. rural part of India.
Q. 5. Write a note on the character of Ghisu in the story, The Shroud.
Ans. The Shroud is a multi-layered short story. Ghisu is one of the characters in the story The Shroud written by Munshi Premchanda. He is the father of Madhav and father-in-law of Budhia. He is sixty years old. He is lazy, shirks his duties and wastes his time wandering outside. He drinks along with his own son Madho. He has no qualms or conscience.
Ghisu and Madhav belong to a low caste community. It was the community of cobblers or chamars. They are notorious in the village. Ghisu would work for one day and rest for three days. Madhav was such a shirker that if he worked for half an hour, he would smoke a chilam for an hour. That is why they did not get jobs anywhere. Both father and son duos are portrayed very indifferent towards Budhia.
Q. 6. Critically analyse the significance of the title of the story, The Shroud.
Ans. The Shroud is a multi-layered short story. The title of the story must be apt and attractive and suitable one. The title, The Shroud is very proper because it shows the rites to be performed after the death of a person. Here, the woman named Budhia dies in her labour pain. So her husband and father-in-law, being poor, demand money from the people to buy her the shroud. They go to the market to buy the shroud. But somehow their heads turn and they waste the money in drinking and eating.
They think that it is useless to wrap a corpse in a new clothes. So without buying the shroud, they return to the village They think that the shroud will come from people somehow Thus the whole action of the story moves around the buying of the shroud. It also exposes the meaninglessness and senseless superstition being practical from immemorial times. Therefore, the title ‘Shroud” is suitable one. It conveys the message of the story well. Both father and son duos are portrayed very indifferent towards Budhia.
Short Questions with Answers
Ans. Ghisu. Madhay and Budhiya are the chief characters in this short fiction. Ghisu is the father of Madhav. They belong to a Dalit chamar family. They are landless agricultural labourers who act as free agents and refuse to work if they are not agreeable.Q. 2. Who does the story delineate the plight of Budhia?
Ans. Budhia is the wife of Madho. She is pregnant. We see her writhing in labour pain inside the hut. She had brought some order in the family of Ghisu and Madho. She would go for work and bring some food for the two men in house. As a result, the two men had become lazier. She cries a lot in the labour pain. She doesn’t get medical help. At last she dies with her child dead inside. The two men, instead of buying the shroud for her, waste the money in merry-making.
Q. 3. How did the whole village look?
Ans. In a small village somewhere in India Ghisu and Madho, father and son respectively, are seen sitting outside their hut in a tense and irritable mood on a dark winter night as Madho’s wife Budhia lies writhing and wailing in childbirth in the hut. The whole village is drowned in darkness and gloom.
Q. 4. Comment on the community to which Ghisu and Madho belong. Why did the villagers not allow job to them?
Ans. Ghisu and Madhav belong to a low caste community. It was the community of cobblers or chamars. They are notorious in the village. Ghisu would work for one day and rest for three days. Madhav was such a shirker that if he worked for half an hour, he would smoke a chilam for an hour. That is why they did not get jobs anywhere.
Q. 5. How wereGhisu and Madho treated by the other people of the village?
Ans. Ghisu and Madho were chamars by caste, and were treated with contempt by the whole village. For every day that Ghisu worked he shirked duty for three. But the real shirker was Madho who sat and puffed at the chillum for an hour after each hour of work that he put in. That is why no one hired them.
Q. 6. How was the Zamindar by nature?
Ans. The zamindar was kind he knew that his kindness would be wasted on these fellows. The zamindar himself gave them two rupees how could lesser mortals like the village banias, shopkeepers or moneylenders avoid making some contribution to the good cause. Ghisu made much of the zamindar’s name and some contributed two annas some four.
Ans. They had nothing in the house except for a couple of clay utensils. They covered their nakedness in tattered rags. Even though they were free from the temptations of life they were burdened with debt. They listened to people’s insults and abuses with perfect equanimity. They were so destitute that people lent them things without any hope of getting the same back. They would enter other people’s fields, steal potatoes and peas and roast them to fill their stomachs. Or they would uproot a few sugarcane stalks and suck the juice through the night.10. What does the hut symbolise in the story?
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