Class 12 English Vistas Chapter 5 — Should Wizard Hit Mommy?
Welcome to HSLC Guru’s complete study guide for Class 12 English Vistas Chapter 5 “Should Wizard Hit Mommy?” by John Updike, prescribed by ASSEB (Assam State School Education Board) for Higher Secondary Second Year students. John Updike (1932–2009) was an acclaimed American novelist, poet, and short-story writer best known for his “Rabbit” series and his keen observation of middle-class American life. In this gentle yet thought-provoking story, a father named Jack tells his four-year-old daughter Jo a Roger Skunk tale at bedtime — a tale that suddenly forces both father and child to confront questions of identity, parental authority, conformity, and the limits of love. Below you will find the author’s note, plot summary, character sketches, themes, NCERT-style textbook answers, additional short and long questions, MCQs, and extract-based questions — all in the WordPress block format used across HSLC Guru.
About the Author
John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was one of the most celebrated American writers of the twentieth century. Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Updike studied at Harvard University and later at the Ruskin School of Drawing in Oxford. He spent much of his career writing for The New Yorker magazine. His most famous creation is the four-novel “Rabbit” series — Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich, and Rabbit at Rest — which won him two Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction (1982, 1991). Updike’s writing is known for its careful attention to the small textures of ordinary domestic life, especially the quiet conflicts of marriage and parenthood. “Should Wizard Hit Mommy?” is taken from his collection Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories (1962) and remains one of his most anthologised short pieces because of the way it slips a deep moral question into a simple bedtime story.
Summary (English)
For nearly two years Jack has been telling his little daughter Jo a story every evening and before her Saturday afternoon nap. The stories all share the same basic shape: a small creature called Roger has a problem, visits the wise old owl, is sent to the wizard, and the wizard solves the problem with a magic spell. On this particular Saturday Jack invents the story of Roger Skunk. Roger Skunk smells so bad that none of the woodland children — the rabbit, the squirrel, the chipmunk, the porcupine — will play with him. He cries and goes to the owl, who sends him to the wizard. The wizard, after Roger pays seven pennies and recites a magic spell, makes Roger Skunk smell like roses. The other little animals immediately gather around him and play with him until dark. But that night Roger Skunk’s mommy is furious. She drags Roger straight back to the wizard and demands that he restore her son’s old, foul smell. When the wizard refuses, the mommy hits him over the head with her umbrella. Frightened and crying, the wizard reverses the spell. Roger Skunk goes home smelling stinky again — but, Jack adds quickly, his mommy hugs him and “the rose smell faded slowly” while the children played with him anyway. Jo is upset by this ending. She insists that the wizard should hit the mommy back and that Roger Skunk should keep the rose smell. Jack refuses to retell it that way. He sees a parent’s authority being threatened and stubbornly defends Mommy Skunk’s right to want her child as he was made. Jo, hurt and unsatisfied, lies in her cot pleading “Daddy” while Jack goes downstairs to his pregnant wife Clare, who is painting woodwork. He feels trapped — by the unfinished house, by the rituals of fatherhood, by Jo’s unreasoning insistence that the world be just. The story closes on his exhaustion, leaving the reader to decide who was right — the loving but controlling mommy, or the child who simply wanted Roger to be happy.
সাৰাংশ (Assamese)
প্ৰায় দুবছৰ ধৰি জেকে নিজৰ চাৰি বছৰীয়া জীয়েক জ’ক প্ৰতি সন্ধিয়া আৰু শনিবাৰৰ দুপৰীয়াৰ টোপনিৰ আগতে এটাকৈ সজা কাহিনী কয়। প্ৰতিটো কাহিনীৰে ভিত্তি একে — ৰজাৰ নামৰ এটা সৰু জন্তুৱে কোনোবা সমস্যাত পৰে, জ্ঞানী পেচাৰ ওচৰলৈ যায়, পেচাই তাক জাদুকৰৰ ওচৰলৈ পঠিয়ায় আৰু জাদুকৰে মন্ত্ৰৰে সমস্যা সমাধান কৰি দিয়ে। সেই দিনা জেকে কয় ৰজাৰ স্কাঙ্কৰ কাহিনী। ৰজাৰ স্কাঙ্কৰ গোন্ধ ইমানেই বেয়া যে অন্য সৰু জন্তু কেইটাই — শহাপহু, কাঠফুটুকী, চিপমাঙ্ক, কাঁইট-নিগনি — তাৰ লগত নেখেলে। দুখ পাই সি পেচাৰ ওচৰলৈ যায়, পেচাই তাক জাদুকৰৰ ওচৰলৈ পঠিয়ায়। সাত সিকিৰ বিনিময়ত জাদুকৰে ৰজাৰ স্কাঙ্কক গোলাপৰ সুগন্ধ দিয়ে। তেতিয়াৰ পৰা সকলোৱে তাৰ লগত খেলে। কিন্তু সন্ধিয়া ঘৰলৈ ঘূৰি যোৱাৰ পিছত ৰজাৰৰ মা ভয়ংকৰ খং উঠে। মাৰে ৰজাৰক টানি জাদুকৰৰ ওচৰলৈ লৈ যায় আৰু পুৰণি বেয়া গোন্ধ ঘূৰাই দিবলৈ আদেশ দিয়ে। জাদুকৰে অমান্য কৰোতে মাৰে ছাতিৰে তাৰ মূৰত মাৰে। ভয়তে কান্দি কান্দি জাদুকৰে মন্ত্ৰ ঘূৰাই দিয়ে আৰু ৰজাৰ স্কাঙ্ক পুনৰ গন্ধাই গন্ধাই ঘৰলৈ যায়। জ’এ এই সমাপ্তিত সন্তুষ্ট নহয়; সি বিচাৰে যে জাদুকৰে মাক প্ৰত্যুত্তৰত মাৰক আৰু ৰজাৰৰ গোলাপ-গোন্ধ থাকক। জেকে অমান্য কৰে — পিতৃৰ আধিপত্য আৰু মাতৃ-স্কাঙ্কৰ “পুতেক যেনে আছিল তেনে থাকক” বুলি কৰা দাবী তেওঁ ৰক্ষা কৰিব বিচাৰে। কাহিনীৰ অন্তত জ’এ “ডেডি” বুলি অনুনয় কৰি থাকে আৰু জেক ক্লান্ত হৈ গৰ্ভৱতী পত্নী ক্লেয়াৰ ওচৰলৈ নামি যায়। এই কাহিনীয়ে শিশু আৰু মা-বাপেকৰ দৃষ্টিভংগীৰ পাৰ্থক্য, পৰিচয় ৰক্ষা আৰু সাৱধানতাৰ মাজৰ দ্বন্দ্ব আৰু পিতৃত্বৰ ক্লান্তি — তিনিটাকে চুটি অথচ গভীৰভাৱে দাঙি ধৰে।
Plot Summary (Step-by-Step)
- The ritual. Every Saturday afternoon Jack tells his daughter Jo a “Roger” story before her nap.
- The fixed plot. A small creature has a problem → goes to the wise owl → owl sends him to the wizard → wizard solves it.
- This Saturday’s hero. Roger Skunk smells dreadful and the other little animals run away from him, calling him “Stinky”.
- The wizard. Roger pays seven pennies, the wizard waves his wand and chants — Roger now smells like roses.
- The reward. All the little animals come and play with Roger till dark.
- The conflict. Roger’s mommy is enraged. She drags him back to the wizard and demands the original smell.
- The blow. When the wizard refuses, Mommy Skunk hits him on the head with her umbrella; the wizard cries and undoes the spell.
- Jo’s protest. Jo insists that the wizard should hit the mommy back and that Roger should keep the rose smell.
- Jack refuses. Jack repeats that “Mommy was right” and walks out, leaving Jo whimpering “Daddy” in her cot.
- The frame. Downstairs, Jack rejoins his pregnant wife Clare, who is painting woodwork; he feels claustrophobic, like he too is caught in a cage.
Character Sketches
Jack
Jack is a young father, gentle, imaginative and loving, but also tired and conflicted. He has been telling Jo a “Roger” story every nap-time for nearly two years and treats the storytelling almost as a craft — he is “rather pleased” when an inspired moment arrives. Yet he is also a husband whose wife is pregnant, whose house is unfinished, and who feels increasingly trapped by domestic obligations. When Jo questions the moral of the Skunk story, Jack stiffens. He sides with Mommy Skunk because, as a parent himself, he intuitively defends a parent’s right to decide what is best for the child. His refusal to change the ending shows him asserting authority, but the closing scene — Jo crying for him while he stands on the stairs feeling like a man in a cage — reveals his guilt and inner conflict. He is therefore a sensitive but emotionally weary father, torn between affection for his child and the rigidities of adult life.
Jo (Joanne)
Jo is Jack’s four-year-old daughter, an alert, opinionated and morally clear-sighted child. She has outgrown the passive listener stage; she now interrupts, suggests endings, and corrects her father. Her sense of justice is uncomplicated — if someone is happy smelling like roses, no one (not even Mommy) has the right to take that happiness away; if Mommy hits the wizard, the wizard should hit her back. She represents the freshness of the child’s worldview: untrained by social norms, unaffected by adult hierarchies, and fiercely loyal to fairness. At the same time, her stubborn pleading at the close (“Daddy”) shows how vulnerable she is — her moral universe still depends on her father’s approval.
Clare (Jack’s Wife)
Clare appears only in the frame — pregnant, downstairs, painting the woodwork while her husband puts the child to bed. Yet her presence is crucial. She is the picture of patient domestic labour. Jack notices her with mixed tenderness and weariness; her swelling body and her quiet absorption in her work remind him of all the responsibilities tightening around him. She has no dialogue, but her industriousness silently judges the men of the household — both Jack and the fictional wizard — who let women’s expectations bend them.
Roger Skunk
The story-within-the-story protagonist. Roger Skunk is innocent and lonely, ostracised because of a smell he did not choose. His joy at finally being accepted by the other little animals is brief and beautifully drawn. He represents every child who is told that the very thing that makes him different will, in the end, be all right; he also represents the tension between individuality and family belonging.
Mommy Skunk
The other side of the moral question. Mommy Skunk loves her child but loves him as he was created — including the smell that protects him from predators. From an adult’s point of view she is the responsible parent guarding her child’s natural identity; from a child’s point of view she is a violent and unreasonable bully who hits the kindly wizard.
The Wizard
An ambiguous figure — wise but timid, magical but defenceless. He grants Roger Skunk’s wish, takes payment, but cannot stand up to a determined parent. The wizard is a comic exaggeration of every helpful outsider whose intervention is overruled by family authority.
Themes
- Parent–child relationship and the generation gap. Jack and Jo love each other deeply, yet they cannot agree on the ending of a simple bedtime tale — a miniature image of how every generation eventually disagrees with the next.
- Parental authority versus the child’s individuality. Mommy Skunk (and Jack) insist on preserving identity as it was given. Jo (and the wizard) believe that if a child is happier with a change, the change should be allowed.
- Identity, conformity and acceptance. Roger Skunk’s smell is the very thing that makes him a skunk; losing it gains him friends but costs him a defence. The story asks whether one should change to be liked or remain “oneself”.
- Moral choices and ambiguity. Updike refuses to give a clear answer. The reader is left, like Jo, asking who was right.
- The “cage” of adulthood and marriage. Jack’s exhaustion and the image of bars on the staircase suggest that adulthood, marriage and parenting can feel like confinement, and that Jack’s stubbornness in the story is partly a way of defending his own shrinking authority.
- The power of stories. A simple Roger tale becomes the battlefield on which a father and a daughter fight about the world. Stories teach values; whoever controls the ending controls the lesson.
Understanding the Text (NCERT Reading with Insight)
1. What is the moral issue that the story raises?
Answer: The story raises the deep moral issue of whether a parent has the right to override a child’s freedom of choice in matters of his own happiness. Roger Skunk had a real problem — his smell drove the other little animals away. The wizard’s spell solved that problem and brought him friends. Yet his mommy refused to accept the change and forced the wizard, by violence, to give back the original foul smell. The story therefore asks: should the parent’s idea of what is “natural” or “right” for the child always prevail, even when the child himself, and the world around him, prefer the change? Jack supports the mommy because he himself is a parent; Jo, a child, supports Roger and the wizard. Updike does not settle the question — he leaves us to weigh parental authority against the child’s individual happiness, conformity against identity, and love-as-control against love-as-freedom.
2. How does Jo want the story to end and why?
Answer: Jo wants the story to end with the wizard hitting Mommy Skunk back on the head, and with Roger Skunk continuing to smell like roses so that he can go on playing happily with his friends. Her reasons are simple but firm: (i) Roger was unhappy when he smelt bad and happy when he smelt of roses, so the rose smell should remain; (ii) Mommy was wrong to hit the kind wizard; therefore the wizard, in return, must hit her; (iii) it is unfair that a mother’s anger should cancel a child’s happiness. Jo’s ending shows the natural justice of childhood — a sense that good must be rewarded and bullying punished, regardless of who the bully happens to be.
3. Why does Jack insist that it was the wizard that was hit and not the mother? Why does Jo disagree?
Answer: Jack insists the wizard was hit because he is, before anything else, a father. He recognises in Mommy Skunk the same instinct he himself feels — the wish to keep his child as he was born, “without artificial improvements”. Reversing the blow would also reverse the moral of the tale: a child would learn that he can defy his parent and even punish her, and Jack, sensing his own authority slipping, refuses to let that happen. Jo disagrees because she has not yet absorbed the adult logic of obedience. To her, the wizard was kind, the mommy was cruel, and fairness requires that cruelty be answered. The disagreement therefore is not really about a story — it is about two whole worldviews colliding inside a small bedroom.
4. What is your stance regarding the two endings to the Roger Skunk story?
Answer: Both endings carry weight, but the story is most truthful when both are kept in tension. From a child’s standpoint, Jo’s ending feels right — Roger Skunk had every reason to keep his rose smell, his happiness deserved protection, and Mommy’s violence deserved a response. From an adult’s standpoint, Jack’s ending also feels right — a parent loves the child as he is, fears for the dangers of “improvements”, and knows that not every social problem can be solved by a wizard. A balanced reader will say that Mommy should not have hit the wizard, but Roger Skunk’s defence (his bad smell) should also not have been removed without thought. The very fact that Updike forces us to argue with him is the story’s success; it teaches that in real moral life there is no perfect ending, only choices.
5. Why is an adult’s perspective on life different from that of a child?
Answer: A child’s mind is uncluttered. It judges by the heart and by the immediate facts of happiness and pain. Jo sees that Roger was sad, then happy, then sad again, and she demands the obvious correction. An adult, however, has been trained by experience, society, fear, and responsibility. Jack must think about a mother’s authority, a child’s safety, the long-term consequences of breaking the natural order, and his own fragile control over Jo. He is also tired, married, expecting another baby, building a house — every one of these pressures shapes how he reads a story. Children therefore answer with intuition, adults with calculation; children defend the individual, adults defend the system.
Talking about the Text
1. Discuss in pairs or small groups: “Adults often impose their thoughts and decisions on children.” Comment with reference to the story.
Answer: The story is a small but exact picture of the way adults impose their will. Jack does not abuse Jo; he simply refuses to alter a story she has helped invent. He returns again and again to the line “Mommy was right” because admitting that Mommy was wrong would weaken his own position as a parent. In the same way, Mommy Skunk forces a happy child back into a smell he hates because, to her, that is how a skunk should be. Both adults invoke the language of love but exercise the muscle of control. Real life is full of similar moments — clothes, careers, friendships, languages, and faiths chosen for children “for their own good”. Updike does not say adults are villains; he only suggests that they should listen more carefully to the small, clear voice that says “but Daddy, the wizard was nicer.”
2. “Stories we tell our children carry our values.” Discuss with reference to “Should Wizard Hit Mommy?”
Answer: Every story is also a sermon. When Jack ends the Skunk tale by saying the mommy was right, he is teaching Jo that obedience to a parent matters more than the child’s own happiness. When Jo demands a different ending, she is also fighting for a different value — that fairness and kindness must outrank obedience. The bedtime ritual is therefore not merely entertainment; it is a tiny school in which a value system is being passed down. The story warns parents that storytelling is never neutral: every choice of plot, every refusal to change an ending, is a small act of moral instruction.
3. Imagine yourself as Jo. How would you respond to your father’s ending?
Answer: If I were Jo I would feel cheated. The story had moved towards happiness — Roger had paid for the spell, the spell had worked, and the other animals had finally come to play. A mother’s anger does not undo a child’s joy. I would tell Daddy that Mommy could love Roger Skunk just as much even if he smelt of roses, that the wizard was the only one in the story who had been kind without asking anything in return, and that hitting kind people on the head should always be punished — whoever does it. I might cry, as Jo does, because I would feel that the grown-up world is being unfair, and because my father, whom I trust, has chosen the wrong side.
Working with Words
| Word from the text | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Custom | A regular practice or habit |
| Inspiration | A sudden creative idea |
| Contemplated | Looked at or thought about deeply |
| Tremulous | Trembling, nervous |
| Roused | Stirred up, awakened |
| Indignantly | With anger at unfairness |
| Pungent | Strong sharp smell |
| Foul | Very bad, dirty |
| Elaborately | In great detail |
| Pleaded | Begged earnestly |
| Stubborn | Refusing to change one’s mind |
| Cosmic | Relating to the universe; here, very large in feeling |
| Weariness | Tiredness |
| Cage | An enclosure (here a metaphor for trapped life) |
Additional Short Answer Questions (2–3 marks)
1. What custom did Jack follow in the evenings and for Saturday naps?
Answer: Every evening before bed and every Saturday afternoon nap, Jack invented a “Roger” story for his four-year-old daughter Jo. The custom had begun two years earlier, when Jo was two, and had become a fixed part of the household’s day.
2. What was the basic plot of every “Roger” story?
Answer: A small creature named Roger had a problem; he went to the wise old owl; the owl sent him to the wizard; the wizard, after collecting some pennies and reciting a spell, solved the problem.
3. What was Roger Skunk’s problem?
Answer: Roger Skunk smelled so foul that none of the other little animals — the rabbit, the squirrel, the porcupine, the chipmunk — would play with him. They held their noses, ran away and called him “Stinky”.
4. What did the wizard do for Roger Skunk?
Answer: The wizard accepted seven pennies, waved his wand, recited a magic spell and turned Roger Skunk’s smell into the smell of roses. The other little animals immediately gathered round him and played until dark.
5. How did Mommy Skunk react to Roger’s new smell?
Answer: She was furious. She declared that her son must smell as a skunk should smell, dragged him back to the wizard, demanded that the spell be reversed, and when the wizard refused she struck him on the head with her umbrella.
6. What did the wizard do after being hit?
Answer: The wizard cried, accepted Mommy’s authority, and reversed the spell, restoring Roger Skunk’s original bad smell.
7. Why was Jo dissatisfied with this ending?
Answer: Jo felt that Roger had been happy with the rose smell, that the wizard had been kind, and that Mommy Skunk’s anger and violence were unjust. To her, the natural conclusion was that the wizard should hit Mommy back and that Roger’s rose smell should remain.
8. How did Jack respond to Jo’s request for a different ending?
Answer: Jack refused. He kept saying “Mommy was right”, insisted that it was the wizard who was hit and not the mother, and would not invent a new ending — even when Jo grew tearful.
9. What was Clare doing while Jack told Jo the story?
Answer: Clare, Jack’s pregnant wife, was downstairs painting the woodwork of their unfinished house, absorbed in slow, patient work.
10. How did Jack feel as he came down the stairs after the story?
Answer: He felt as though he were a man inside a cage. The bars of the staircase, the unfinished walls, his pregnant wife, and the tiny voice of Jo still calling “Daddy” all pressed in on him, leaving him weary and trapped.
11. Why does Mommy Skunk want her son to smell as before?
Answer: She believes the smell is part of who Roger is and protects him from predators. She also wants him to remain her own kind of skunk and not be remade by an outsider’s spell.
12. What does Jo’s repeated word “Daddy” at the end show?
Answer: It shows her hurt, her dependence on her father’s approval, and her unwillingness to let the disagreement end. Despite being upset, she still reaches for him as the source of her moral world.
13. What sort of listener has Jo become?
Answer: She is no longer a passive listener. She interrupts, predicts, suggests endings, and corrects her father when she disagrees, showing that she has begun to think for herself.
14. How does the wizard’s house look in the story?
Answer: The wizard lives in a little hat-shaped cottage where he keeps his magic books and bottles. He is small, friendly and businesslike, willing to perform spells in exchange for a few pennies.
15. What is the symbolic importance of the rose smell?
Answer: The rose smell stands for everything that the world considers attractive and acceptable — beauty, sweetness, social approval. It is the opposite of the natural skunk-smell, which stands for individuality and identity given by birth. The clash between these two smells is the clash of the whole story.
Long Answer Questions (5–6 marks)
1. Critically examine the central conflict between Jack and Jo in “Should Wizard Hit Mommy?”
Answer: The central conflict of the story is, on the surface, a disagreement about how to end a bedtime tale. Underneath, however, it is a clash between two ways of seeing the world. Jack, the father, believes that the mother is always right and that a parent’s wish must overrule a child’s preference. He defends Mommy Skunk because he himself is in her position — a parent who would like his child to remain “as he was made”. Jo, the daughter, has not yet learnt to think in terms of authority. She sees only the simple facts: Roger was happy with the rose smell, the wizard had been kind, and the mommy used violence. To her the just ending is the one where kindness wins. The conflict is therefore between adult conformity and childhood justice, between the protection that disguises itself as love and the love that demands fairness. Updike does not crown either side; he shows that the disagreement leaves both parties unhappy — Jo crying in her cot and Jack feeling caged at the foot of the stairs. This is the story’s deepest insight: every parent–child relationship is, at some point, a quiet war about whose ending the story will have.
2. “The story raises the issue of confrontation between a parent and a child.” Discuss.
Answer: Confrontations between parents and children rarely take dramatic form. They tend to occur, as in this story, over apparently small matters — a story’s ending, a clothing choice, a bed-time. Yet they reveal big questions: who controls the child’s imagination? whose values will the child internalise? In “Should Wizard Hit Mommy?” the confrontation begins when Jo predicts that the wizard will hit Mommy. Jack at once redirects her — “No, the mommy hit the wizard.” He repeats the line because every time he says it he is reinforcing his control over the meaning of the tale. Jo resists with the only weapons she has: tears, repetition, the word “Daddy”. The confrontation ends not with one side winning but with both sides withdrawing in pain — Jack down the stairs, Jo into silence. Updike’s lesson is that confrontations between a child and a parent are never trivial; they are the moments in which a small person’s worldview is either honoured or smothered, and even an attentive father can, almost without meaning to, take away something precious.
3. Discuss the appropriateness of the title “Should Wizard Hit Mommy?”
Answer: The title is brilliantly chosen because it is a question, not a statement. It places the entire moral weight of the story on the reader. By naming the two well-wishers of Roger Skunk — the wizard, who solves his problem, and Mommy, who wants him as he was — the title makes us see that the conflict is between two different kinds of care. It also keeps the child’s voice in the foreground; “Should Wizard Hit Mommy?” is exactly the way Jo would phrase the question. The interrogative form refuses to resolve, exactly as the story refuses to resolve. By the time we have finished the story we know that there are good arguments on both sides — and that the very act of asking is the lesson. Few titles so neatly state the theme of a story while inviting the reader to write its conclusion.
4. Discuss the character of Jack. How is he both a tender father and a tired adult?
Answer: Jack is one of Updike’s most carefully drawn fathers — gentle, inventive, observant, and at the same time worn out. We see his tenderness in the very fact that he tells a fresh story every night, in his pleasure at his own creative touches, in the quiet care with which he watches Jo. We see his weariness in the unfinished house, the pregnant wife painting woodwork below, the heaviness of his step on the stairs and the cage he feels closing around him. When Jo demands a new ending he does not shout at her; he simply refuses, again and again, until the refusal itself becomes a small cruelty. He is therefore not a bad father — he is a real father, the kind whose love is genuine but whose patience has a limit. Updike is reminding us that being a parent involves more than affection: it involves fatigue, the politics of authority, and the daily, unglamorous task of bearing a child’s hopes when one is tired oneself.
5. How does the story bring out the difference between a child’s and an adult’s perspective?
Answer: A child judges by feeling and by the immediate facts; an adult judges by experience and consequence. Jo sees Roger become happy and demands that his happiness be preserved. She sees a wizard struck on the head and demands that the violence be answered. Her morality is straightforward — kindness deserves protection, cruelty deserves punishment, and a child’s pleasure is not a thing to be cancelled by a parent’s mood. Jack, by contrast, weighs the world in adult coins: a parent’s authority must not be broken; a child must learn that he cannot have everything; identity must be guarded; rebellion must not be encouraged. Both views have their truth. The story, however, gently sympathises with the child, because Jo’s simple sense of fairness exposes the way adult arguments can sometimes hide adult fears. The difference between the two perspectives is therefore not a matter of right and wrong but of innocence and self-protection.
6. How does Updike use the inner story (Roger Skunk) to comment on the outer story (Jack and Jo)?
Answer: The genius of the story is that the inner tale and the outer frame mirror each other perfectly. Roger Skunk is to his mommy what Jo is to her father — a small creature wanting one thing, ruled by a parent who wants something else. The wizard is the figure of imagination who could grant the child’s wish; Jack, the storyteller, plays exactly that role for Jo and refuses, just as the wizard finally refuses Roger. Even the violence is mirrored: Mommy Skunk hits the wizard with her umbrella, while Jack quietly, without violence, “hits” Jo by refusing to revise the ending. The inner story is therefore a tiny model of the outer one. The reader sees that adults pass on, through their stories, the very lessons that make children obedient — and Updike, by showing this so clearly, lets the reader feel the cost.
7. What is the significance of the cage image at the end of the story?
Answer: As Jack walks down the stairs after refusing Jo’s ending, he feels he is in a cage — the bars of the staircase form one side, the unfinished walls of the house another, his pregnant wife a third, and Jo’s lingering “Daddy” a fourth. The cage is the perfect image for a man at the centre of family life: surrounded by people he loves, and yet trapped by their needs. It also suggests that the cage is partly his own making — he could have chosen Jo’s ending, set Roger Skunk free, and made the bedtime end on a smile. Instead he asserted his authority and now the authority itself confines him. The cage therefore stands for the way adulthood, marriage, and parenting can imprison a person who insists on being right. It is one of the saddest images in the story, and it is what gives the story its weight beyond the bedroom.
8. Comment on the role of Clare in the story, even though she has no dialogue.
Answer: Clare never speaks but her presence shapes the entire frame. She is the pregnant wife painting woodwork in the half-built house; she stands for the slow, unromantic labour of building a family. Through Jack’s eyes we see her weariness and her patience, and we feel his guilt at being upstairs telling stories while she paints downstairs. She also functions as a moral counterweight to Mommy Skunk — both are mothers protecting a kind of order; both inspire in the men around them a feeling of obligation and confinement. Without Clare’s silent presence the cage image at the end would have nothing to contain Jack. Her muteness, in other words, is part of the story’s design: she is the unspoken adult world that closes around Jack just as he has closed around Jo.
9. The story ends without resolving the moral question. Is this a strength or a weakness? Justify.
Answer: The lack of resolution is the story’s greatest strength. A neat conclusion — Jo wins, or Jack wins — would betray the truth of family life, which is that most disagreements end neither in victory nor in agreement but in tired silence. Updike’s refusal to settle the question forces us, the readers, to sit with the discomfort that Jo and Jack sit with. We are made to argue with our own parents, with our own children, and with ourselves. A clear answer would have flattered one generation at the cost of the other; the open ending honours both. In serious literature, ambiguity is not weakness but courage, and “Should Wizard Hit Mommy?” earns its place among Updike’s most admired stories precisely because it has the courage to leave us asking.
10. “Conformity and identity are at war in this story.” Discuss with reference to Roger Skunk.
Answer: Roger Skunk is born with a smell that society — the rabbits, the squirrels, the chipmunks — finds unacceptable. To gain friends he must conform; the wizard’s spell offers him a kind of social makeover by replacing his natural smell with the smell society admires. Conformity wins him the playground but costs him his identity. His mommy, on the other side, insists that identity must be preserved at the cost of friendship; she would rather have a stinking, lonely son than a sweet-smelling, accepted one. The story makes neither choice easy. To smell of roses is to lose what makes Roger a skunk; to smell foul is to be excluded. Updike thus reaches one of the oldest moral questions in literature — should a person change to be loved, or stay as he is and be alone? — and dramatises it through the playful surface of a child’s tale.
Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs)
1. Who is the author of “Should Wizard Hit Mommy?”?
(a) Ernest Hemingway (b) John Updike (c) John Cheever (d) Saul Bellow
Answer: (b) John Updike
2. How old is Jo at the time of the story?
(a) Two (b) Three (c) Four (d) Five
Answer: (c) Four
3. For how long has Jack been telling Jo the “Roger” stories?
(a) Six months (b) About one year (c) Nearly two years (d) Four years
Answer: (c) Nearly two years
4. What is the basic plot of every Roger story?
(a) A wizard fights a witch (b) A creature with a problem visits the wise owl, then the wizard, who solves it (c) A boy goes to school (d) Animals fight a war
Answer: (b) A creature with a problem visits the wise owl, then the wizard, who solves it
5. What is Roger Skunk’s problem?
(a) He cannot run fast (b) He smells very bad (c) He is afraid of the dark (d) He has no parents
Answer: (b) He smells very bad
6. Where does the wise old owl send Roger Skunk?
(a) To a doctor (b) To a witch (c) To the wizard (d) To his father
Answer: (c) To the wizard
7. How many pennies does the wizard charge?
(a) Four (b) Five (c) Seven (d) Ten
Answer: (c) Seven
8. What new smell does the wizard give Roger Skunk?
(a) Lavender (b) Roses (c) Lemons (d) Cinnamon
Answer: (b) Roses
9. How do the other little animals react to Roger’s new smell?
(a) They run away (b) They tease him (c) They gather round and play with him (d) They report him to the owl
Answer: (c) They gather round and play with him
10. What does Mommy Skunk do when she learns of the new smell?
(a) She is delighted (b) She faints (c) She is furious and drags Roger back to the wizard (d) She runs away from home
Answer: (c) She is furious and drags Roger back to the wizard
11. What does Mommy Skunk hit the wizard with?
(a) A wand (b) Her umbrella (c) A stick (d) Her hand
Answer: (b) Her umbrella
12. What does the wizard do after being hit?
(a) He hits her back (b) He runs away (c) He cries and reverses the spell (d) He turns Mommy into a frog
Answer: (c) He cries and reverses the spell
13. How does Jo want the story to end?
(a) Roger keeps the rose smell and the wizard hits Mommy (b) Roger leaves home (c) Mommy dies (d) Roger becomes a wizard
Answer: (a) Roger keeps the rose smell and the wizard hits Mommy
14. Why does Jack refuse to change the ending?
(a) He is too tired to invent more (b) He sympathises with Mommy Skunk as a fellow parent (c) He has forgotten the story (d) He wants to teach Jo about magic
Answer: (b) He sympathises with Mommy Skunk as a fellow parent
15. What is Jack’s wife Clare doing during the story?
(a) Cooking (b) Painting the woodwork of the house (c) Reading a book (d) Sleeping
Answer: (b) Painting the woodwork of the house
16. What is special about Clare’s condition?
(a) She is ill (b) She is pregnant (c) She is a writer (d) She is a wizard
Answer: (b) She is pregnant
17. How does Jack feel as he descends the stairs?
(a) Joyful (b) Triumphant (c) Caged and weary (d) Excited
Answer: (c) Caged and weary
18. What kind of listener has Jo become?
(a) Passive (b) Sleepy (c) Active and opinionated (d) Indifferent
Answer: (c) Active and opinionated
19. The Roger story Jack invents that day is about ____.
(a) Roger Fish (b) Roger Skunk (c) Roger Squirrel (d) Roger Bear
Answer: (b) Roger Skunk
20. Which of the following is NOT one of the little animals who reject Roger?
(a) Rabbit (b) Squirrel (c) Lion (d) Chipmunk
Answer: (c) Lion
21. The story is taken from which Updike collection?
(a) Rabbit, Run (b) Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories (c) The Centaur (d) Bech: A Book
Answer: (b) Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories
22. What is the central moral question of the story?
(a) Should children obey parents always? (b) Should a parent override a child’s happiness in the name of identity? (c) Are wizards real? (d) Is rose smell better than skunk smell?
Answer: (b) Should a parent override a child’s happiness in the name of identity?
23. The “cage” Jack feels at the end is a metaphor for ____.
(a) His house (b) The constraints of adulthood, marriage and parenting (c) Jo’s bedroom (d) The wizard’s cottage
Answer: (b) The constraints of adulthood, marriage and parenting
24. The title of the story is in the form of ____.
(a) A statement (b) A question (c) An exclamation (d) A command
Answer: (b) A question
25. Updike’s most famous novel series is about a character called ____.
(a) Bech (b) Rabbit (c) Skunk (d) Roger
Answer: (b) Rabbit
Extract-Based Questions
Extract 1
“In the evenings, and for Saturday naps like today’s, Jack told his daughter Jo a story out of his head. This custom, begun when she was two, was itself nearly two years old, and his head felt empty.”
(i) Who is Jack and who is Jo?
Answer: Jack is a young father; Jo is his four-year-old daughter to whom he tells nightly stories.
(ii) Why is Jack’s “head empty”?
Answer: He has been inventing a fresh Roger story every evening and Saturday nap for nearly two years; his imagination is exhausted.
(iii) What does the line tell us about Jack as a father?
Answer: He is loving and dutiful — willing to invent stories rather than read them — but also tired, foreshadowing the strain that will appear later in the story.
(iv) What is meant by “out of his head”?
Answer: Made up entirely by him, without help from any book.
Extract 2
“Now: he stood up, fully smelling of roses. ‘Why, Roger Skunk,’ the wise old owl exclaimed, ‘how nice you smell!’ All the other little animals heard the noise and came running.”
(i) What change has come over Roger Skunk?
Answer: The wizard’s spell has replaced his foul smell with the smell of roses.
(ii) Why do the other little animals come running this time?
Answer: Because his pleasant rose smell is attractive, unlike his earlier smell which had driven them away.
(iii) What theme does this moment illustrate?
Answer: Conformity and social acceptance — society welcomes whoever smells right.
(iv) Why is this a turning point in the story?
Answer: Roger has gained what he most wanted — friends — and the reader briefly feels the story will end happily, just before Mommy Skunk arrives to undo it.
Extract 3
“‘But, Daddy, then he hit the mommy! Hit her on the head with the umbrella!’ ‘No, the mommy hit the wizard. Now don’t tell Daddy what to do; you’re just a four-year-old.'”
(i) What does Jo demand?
Answer: She demands that the wizard hit Mommy Skunk back as a punishment for striking him.
(ii) Why does Jack refuse?
Answer: Because he sympathises with Mommy Skunk as a parent and feels his own parental authority is at stake.
(iii) What does Jack’s tone reveal here?
Answer: Mild irritation and assertion of adult authority over a child whom he loves but will not be argued with.
(iv) What does the exchange show about the relationship?
Answer: A loving relationship that has hit its first real moral disagreement, with neither party willing to give way.
Extract 4
“He felt caught in an ugly middle position, and though he as well felt his wife’s presence in the cage with him, he did not want to speak with her.”
(i) Where is Jack at this point?
Answer: He has come down the stairs after refusing Jo’s preferred ending and is standing near the foot of the staircase.
(ii) What does the “cage” stand for?
Answer: The constraints of family life — fatherhood, marriage, the unfinished house, the expected new baby — pressing on him from all sides.
(iii) Why does he not want to speak to his wife?
Answer: He is exhausted, slightly guilty about the way he has handled Jo, and does not wish to explain or be judged.
(iv) How does this ending strengthen the story’s theme?
Answer: It shows that Jack’s victory over Jo has cost him his peace; the controlling parent ends up imprisoned by his own control. Adult authority brings adult loneliness.
This concludes the HSLC Guru study guide for Class 12 English Vistas Chapter 5 — “Should Wizard Hit Mommy?” by John Updike, prepared for ASSEB Higher Secondary Second Year examinations. Use the questions above for revision, classroom discussion, and exam practice. For other Class 12 English chapters and full subject indexes, visit hslcguru.com.