Class 11 Alternative English Chapter 7 Question Answer | The Captive

Class 11 Alternative English Chapter 7 Question Answer | The Captive | ASSEB

The Captive

Welcome to HSLC Guru! This page provides complete Class 11 Alternative English Chapter 7 Question Answer for the poem The Captive by Harkrishna Deka, prescribed in the ASSEB (Assam State School Education Board) Class 11 Alternative English syllabus. The notes include a brief introduction to the poet, an in-depth poem summary, critical analysis, themes, textbook questions and answers, MCQs, fill in the blanks, true or false statements, and a glossary to help students master the lesson with ease and confidence.

About the Poet — Harkrishna Deka

Harkrishna Deka (born 1943) is one of the most eminent contemporary Assamese poets, novelists, short story writers, and critics. A retired senior IPS officer who served as the Director General of Police of Assam, Deka is celebrated for his profound intellectual poetry that explores existential anxieties, political violence, and the inner crises of modern man. He received the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award in 1987 for his collection “Aan Ejon” (The Other One). His verse is known for its restrained tone, philosophical depth, sharp imagery, and quiet moral seriousness. Deka’s poetry continues to shape modern Assamese literary sensibility.

Poem Summary

The Captive, originally written in Assamese by Harkrishna Deka and rendered into English translation, is a deeply symbolic poem that meditates on the experience of confinement and the human longing for freedom. The poem opens with the image of a captive being — most often read as a bird trapped within the bars of a cage — whose stillness and silence become the central focus of the speaker’s gaze. The cage stands not merely as a physical enclosure but as a metaphor for the many invisible structures that imprison the human spirit in the modern world.

As the poem unfolds, the speaker observes the captive with a mixture of pity and unease. The captive seems to have grown accustomed to its imprisonment, and yet a deep, almost wordless yearning for the open sky persists in its quiet posture. Deka contrasts this dignified silence with the harshness of confinement, suggesting that captivity slowly corrodes both the body and the will. The cage becomes a chamber of psychological captivity, where memory of flight is the only fragile link to freedom.

The watcher — the poet himself — gradually realises that the line separating the captive from the free is uncomfortably thin. The poem subtly turns the question inward: who is truly free? Deka uses uniquely Assamese imagery — the courtyard, the muted afternoon, the distant call of birds — and weaves it together with a universal theme of imprisonment that transcends political, social, and personal boundaries. The poem becomes a quiet allegory for every prisoner of circumstance, ideology, or self.

In its closing movement, the poem holds up the tension between dignity and degradation, between hope and resignation. The captive does not cry out, nor does it surrender; instead, it endures with a quiet grace that becomes its own form of resistance. Deka leaves the reader with a haunting image of suspended longing — a creature whose unbroken inner light refuses to be extinguished, even when freedom is denied.

Critical Analysis

Imagery: Deka builds the poem on a few precise, recurring images — the cage, the iron bars, the silent bird, the watching eye, and the distant sky. These images are simple yet emotionally charged, allowing the reader to feel the weight of confinement without elaborate description. The visual restraint mirrors the captive’s own restrained posture.

Symbolism: The captive functions on multiple symbolic levels. Most directly, it represents oppressed humanity — the political prisoner, the silenced citizen, the marginalised individual. On a deeper level, it stands for the inner self, trapped within social roles, fears, and conditioned thinking. Some readers also see the captive as the artist or poet, whose voice is constrained by the pressures of his time. The cage, similarly, is at once a literal prison and a metaphor for ideology, fear, or convention.

Tone: The tone of the poem is melancholic, sympathetic, and reflective. There is no rhetorical outburst or political slogan; instead, Deka adopts a quiet, almost meditative voice that draws the reader into shared contemplation. The sympathy is delicate, never sentimental.

Form and Style: The poem is composed in free verse, without a fixed rhyme scheme or metrical pattern. This formal openness mirrors the very freedom that the captive is denied, creating a poignant irony at the level of structure. Deka’s diction is clean, image-driven, and philosophically charged.

Themes

Freedom: the fundamental human longing for liberty in body, mind, and spirit.
Oppression: the many forms of confinement — political, social, psychological — that diminish human existence.
Dignity: the captive’s refusal to be reduced, even in degraded circumstances.
Hope: the quiet endurance that keeps the memory of freedom alive.
Identity: the question of who we truly are when stripped of agency and voice.

Textbook Questions and Answers

A. Short Answer Type Questions (1 Mark)

Q1. Who is the poet of The Captive?
Answer: The poem The Captive is written by the eminent Assamese poet Harkrishna Deka.

Q2. In which language was the poem originally composed?
Answer: The poem was originally composed in Assamese and later rendered into English translation.

Q3. What is the central image of the poem?
Answer: The central image of the poem is a captive bird or being trapped within a cage.

Q4. Which prestigious literary award did Harkrishna Deka receive in 1987?
Answer: Harkrishna Deka received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1987 for his collection Aan Ejon.

Q5. What does the cage symbolise in the poem?
Answer: The cage symbolises both physical imprisonment and the invisible psychological structures that confine the human spirit.

Q6. What is the form of the poem?
Answer: The poem is composed in free verse, without a fixed rhyme scheme or regular metrical pattern.

Q7. What is the dominant tone of the poem?
Answer: The dominant tone of the poem is melancholic, sympathetic, and quietly reflective.

Q8. Who watches the captive in the poem?
Answer: The speaker, who can be identified with the poet himself, watches the captive with a mix of pity and self-questioning.

Q9. Profession of Harkrishna Deka apart from being a poet?
Answer: Apart from being a poet and novelist, Harkrishna Deka served as a senior IPS officer and retired as the Director General of Police of Assam.

Q10. What does the captive long for?
Answer: The captive longs for freedom, the open sky, and the lost world that lies beyond the bars of the cage.

B. Short Answer Type Questions (2-3 Marks)

Q1. How does Harkrishna Deka use the image of the cage in the poem?
Answer: Deka uses the cage as a multi-layered symbol. On the surface, it is the literal enclosure that holds the captive bird. At a deeper level, it represents the many invisible cages — political fear, social conformity, ideology, and inner conditioning — that imprison human beings. The bars are not just iron rods; they stand for every barrier that prevents the spirit from taking flight.

Q2. Discuss the significance of silence in The Captive.
Answer: Silence is one of the most powerful presences in the poem. The captive does not cry out or struggle visibly; its silence becomes a form of dignified endurance. This restraint is far more affecting than any open lament. It also creates a moral pressure on the watcher, compelling him to reflect on his own complicity in the captive’s condition. Silence, in Deka’s hands, becomes a language of suffering and resistance.

Q3. Why can the poem be read as a political allegory?
Answer: The poem can be read as a political allegory because the captive represents those silenced and confined by oppressive systems — political prisoners, marginalised communities, and citizens whose voices are suppressed. Written by a poet who served in the police force during turbulent decades in Assam, the poem reflects an acute awareness of state power, repression, and the moral cost of confinement, even as it transcends any single historical moment.

Q4. What role does the watcher play in the poem?
Answer: The watcher is more than a passive observer; he is a moral participant. Through his gaze, the captive’s suffering is registered, witnessed, and meditated upon. His presence forces a question upon the reader: is the watcher truly free, or is he too imprisoned in subtler ways? The watcher thus mirrors the reader, drawing us into the ethical world of the poem.

Q5. How is the theme of dignity expressed in the poem?
Answer: Dignity is expressed through the captive’s quiet posture, its refusal to break into despair, and the inner light that the cage cannot extinguish. Even in degraded circumstances, the captive holds itself with grace. Deka suggests that true dignity is not a matter of outer freedom but of an inner refusal to be reduced by the conditions of imprisonment.

Q6. Comment on the use of Assamese imagery in the poem.
Answer: Although the poem speaks of a universal experience, its texture is rooted in Assamese life — the open courtyard, the muted afternoon light, the distant calls of birds, and the rhythms of village or small-town existence. This local grounding gives the poem its quiet authenticity, while its philosophical themes lift it to a universal plane, allowing readers across cultures to recognise the captive in themselves.

C. Long Answer Type Questions (5-7 Marks)

Q1. Critically analyse The Captive as a poem about freedom and confinement.
Answer: Harkrishna Deka’s The Captive is a meditation on the fragile boundary between freedom and confinement. At the heart of the poem stands a caged being whose stillness and silence become an emblem of imprisoned life. The cage, with its iron bars, is the most visible symbol of confinement, but Deka quickly suggests that captivity extends far beyond physical enclosure. There are cages of fear, of ideology, of social custom, of self-imposed limits — and these are often more difficult to escape than walls of iron. The captive in the poem becomes a mirror in which the reader is forced to recognise his own invisible bars. The watcher, presumably the poet, does not stand apart from the captive in moral comfort; instead, his gaze becomes complicit, sympathetic, and questioning. Through the steady accumulation of restrained imagery and quiet reflection, the poem suggests that freedom is not a given condition but a continual act of resistance — an inner refusal to surrender one’s dignity, voice, and longing for the open sky. In this sense, The Captive is both a lament for those imprisoned in literal and political senses, and a philosophical appeal for the reader to examine his own state of unfreedom.

Q2. Discuss the symbolism in The Captive.
Answer: Symbolism is the very engine of The Captive. The captive itself works on at least three levels. First, it stands for the literal political prisoner — the dissident, the rebel, the inconvenient citizen — who has been silenced by power. Second, it stands for oppressed humanity at large, including those whose freedom is curtailed by poverty, custom, gender norms, or violence. Third, and most intimately, the captive represents the inner self of every reader — the part of us that has been domesticated, conditioned, or made fearful by the world. The cage, similarly, is a layered symbol: it is at once the iron prison, the structure of state power, and the invisible scaffolding of internalised fear. The bars suggest the regulating limits of language, ideology, and convention. The watcher symbolises consciousness itself — the morally awakened mind that recognises captivity but is not yet able to dissolve it. Even the silence of the captive carries symbolic weight, becoming both a wound and a form of dignity. Through this dense symbolic structure, Deka transforms a small visual scene into a vast moral landscape that resonates with political, existential, and spiritual meaning.

Q3. How does Harkrishna Deka combine local Assamese sensibility with a universal theme in The Captive?
Answer: One of the great strengths of The Captive lies in Deka’s ability to root a universal theme in a specifically Assamese sensibility. The poem’s atmosphere — the muted light, the courtyard quiet, the distant cry of birds, the unhurried rhythm of observation — belongs unmistakably to the Assamese landscape and way of life. Even the moral attentiveness of the watcher carries the imprint of an Assamese ethical tradition that values restraint, witness, and quiet conscience. Yet none of this localism narrows the poem; instead, it grounds the philosophical theme of captivity in lived particulars, giving the abstract question of freedom a body and a place. Around this local centre, Deka opens out into a universal meditation that speaks to readers far beyond Assam. The longing of the captive for the open sky, the watcher’s troubled compassion, and the recognition that the line between captor and captive is dangerously thin are themes that resonate with readers in every language and political climate. By holding the local and the universal in delicate balance, Deka produces a poem that is at once unmistakably Assamese and unmistakably modern, rooted and ranging.

Q4. Examine the tension between dignity and degradation in The Captive.
Answer: A central tension in Deka’s The Captive lies between the degradation imposed by confinement and the dignity preserved by the captive’s inner bearing. Captivity, by its nature, is degrading: it strips the captive of agency, voice, movement, and ordinary belonging. The cage reduces a creature meant for the open sky to a creature of narrow space, regulated time, and forced silence. Deka does not minimise this degradation; the poem feels its weight in every restrained line. Yet alongside this degradation runs an unmistakable strain of dignity. The captive does not collapse into pure misery, nor does it become a spectacle of suffering. Instead, it endures with a kind of unspoken self-possession, retaining within itself a memory of flight and a stubborn light that the cage cannot snuff out. The watcher, observing this, recognises that dignity here is not granted by the world but maintained from within. The poem thus becomes a quiet ethical argument: even when external freedom is denied, the captive can refuse to be reduced. This tension — between what the cage does to the body and what the spirit refuses to surrender — gives the poem its haunting moral force.

Q5. Justify the choice of free verse as the formal vehicle for The Captive.
Answer: Deka’s choice of free verse for The Captive is far from accidental; it is deeply meaningful at the level of form and theme. Traditional metrical patterns and fixed rhyme schemes carry their own kind of structural enclosure — they regulate, repeat, and confine the line. Had Deka chosen a strict form, the poem would have been formally trapped within the very condition it laments. Free verse, by contrast, allows the poem to breathe in irregular rhythms, to pause and resume according to the inner pressure of feeling rather than an external grid. This formal freedom stands in poignant contrast to the captivity of the central figure, generating a quiet but powerful irony: the poem is free in the way the captive is not. At the same time, free verse permits Deka the sparse, image-driven, restrained voice that the subject demands. There is no metrical bombast, no rhetorical flourish; only a clear, considered line that mirrors the dignity of the captive itself. Thus form and theme reinforce each other, making free verse the most truthful vehicle for a poem about the longing for liberation.

Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs)

Q1. Who is the poet of The Captive?
A. Hiren Bhattacharyya
B. Harkrishna Deka
C. Nilamani Phookan
D. Navakanta Barua
Answer: B. Harkrishna Deka

Q2. In which year was Harkrishna Deka born?
A. 1939
B. 1941
C. 1943
D. 1945
Answer: C. 1943

Q3. Harkrishna Deka received the Sahitya Akademi Award in:
A. 1985
B. 1986
C. 1987
D. 1989
Answer: C. 1987

Q4. The collection for which Deka received the Sahitya Akademi Award is:
A. Aan Ejon
B. Surjyamukhir Sapon
C. Manuh Anukul
D. Bohu Manuh Bohu Thai
Answer: A. Aan Ejon

Q5. Apart from being a poet, Deka served as a:
A. Professor
B. Journalist
C. IPS officer
D. Doctor
Answer: C. IPS officer

Q6. The cage in the poem chiefly symbolises:
A. luxury
B. confinement
C. travel
D. wealth
Answer: B. confinement

Q7. The form of the poem is:
A. sonnet
B. free verse
C. ballad
D. ode
Answer: B. free verse

Q8. The dominant tone of the poem is:
A. cheerful
B. sarcastic
C. melancholic and reflective
D. comic
Answer: C. melancholic and reflective

Q9. The poem was originally written in:
A. Hindi
B. Bengali
C. English
D. Assamese
Answer: D. Assamese

Q10. The captive in the poem most directly suggests:
A. a king
B. a caged bird / oppressed being
C. a soldier
D. a child at play
Answer: B. a caged bird / oppressed being

Fill in the Blanks

Q1. The poet of The Captive is __________.
Answer: Harkrishna Deka

Q2. Harkrishna Deka received the Sahitya Akademi Award in __________.
Answer: 1987

Q3. The poem is written in __________ verse.
Answer: free

Q4. The cage symbolises both physical and __________ captivity.
Answer: psychological

Q5. The poem was originally composed in the __________ language.
Answer: Assamese

True or False

Q1. Harkrishna Deka is a Bengali poet.
Answer: False

Q2. The poem The Captive is composed in free verse.
Answer: True

Q3. The captive in the poem cries out loudly in protest.
Answer: False

Q4. The cage symbolises confinement at multiple levels.
Answer: True

Q5. Harkrishna Deka served as an IPS officer.
Answer: True

Glossary

Word	Meaning
Captive	A person or creature held in confinement; one who has lost freedom.
Cage	An enclosure with bars used to confine a bird or animal; a symbol of imprisonment.
Bars	The rigid rods of a cage; symbolic of barriers and limits.
Confinement	The state of being kept within limits or imprisoned.
Liberty	The condition of being free from restriction or control.
Oppression	Prolonged cruel or unjust treatment that crushes the spirit.
Dignity	The quality of being worthy of honour and self-respect, even in suffering.
Endurance	The ability to bear pain or hardship with patience.
Allegory	A narrative or poem in which characters and events represent deeper meanings.
Free Verse	Poetry without a fixed metre or rhyme scheme, shaped by natural rhythm.
Symbol	An image or object that stands for a larger or abstract idea.
Melancholic	Marked by deep, thoughtful sadness.
Watcher	One who observes; in the poem, the morally engaged speaker.
Yearning	A deep, persistent longing.
Sahitya Akademi	India’s National Academy of Letters that honours outstanding literary work.

This completes the detailed HSLC Guru notes on Class 11 Alternative English Chapter 7 — The Captive by Harkrishna Deka under the ASSEB syllabus. The notes cover the poet, summary, critical analysis, themes, textbook questions and answers, MCQs, fill in the blanks, true or false, and glossary, designed to give every student a thorough preparation for examinations and a deeper appreciation of the poem.