Class 11 English · Original EZT practice
Father to Son - Elizabeth Jennings (Class 11 English, Hornbill, Poem 5)
Father to Son is Poem 5 of Class 11 Hornbill (pp. 68-69), Elizabeth Jennings's portrait of a father locked out of his son's life. 'I do not understand this child / Though we have lived together now / In the same house for years', the poem opens; 'We speak like strangers, there's no sign / Of understanding in the air.' The father would have him 'prodigal, returning to / His father's house' rather than watch him 'make and move / His world'. This page reads that estrangement with fresh practice questions. (Note: this is original practice, not a textbook exercise key.)
6 original worked examples, 6 fresh self-check questions and 4 mixed questions, with explained answers. These are not copied textbook exercises, an official chapter index or a full answer key. No affiliation with NCERT is claimed.
Official sources for topic and edition context, checked 25 October 2026:
1. The poem at a glance
The admission: 'I do not understand this child / Though we have lived together now / In the same house for years. I know / Nothing of him,'. The attempt: 'so try to build / Up a relationship from how / He was when small.' The farming doubt: 'Yet have I killed / The seed I spent or sown it where / The land is his and none of mine?' The estrangement: 'We speak like strangers, there's no sign / Of understanding in the air.' - 'This child is built to my design / Yet what he loves I cannot share.' - 'Silence surrounds us.' The wish: 'I would have / Him prodigal, returning to / His father's house, the home he knew, / Rather than see him make and move / His world. I would forgive him too, / Shaping from sorrow a new love.' The shared ending: 'Father and son, we both must live / On the same globe and the same land,' - 'We each put out an empty hand, / Longing for something to forgive.'
2. Key details and what they signal
Same house, separate worlds: 'lived together now / In the same house for years' yet 'I know / Nothing of him' - proximity without knowledge. The seed and the land: 'The seed I spent' - the father supplied the seed but 'The land is his and none of mine'; the son grew on ground the father cannot claim. 'Built to my design' that he cannot share: the son is the father's making, yet 'what he loves I cannot share' - design does not confer access. The prodigal wish: the father wants the biblical ending - the son 'returning to / His father's house' - more than he wants the son's own world. 'Shaping from sorrow a new love': forgiveness is something the father plans to manufacture out of grief, not something he feels yet. Two empty hands: the last image belongs to both - 'We each put out an empty hand' - estrangement is mutual, and so is the longing.
3. Theme
Estrangement inside the family: a father and son who share a house, a globe and a land, but not understanding. Possession versus relationship: the father made the child ('built to my design') yet owns no share of him - the land is the son's. Grief turning to anger: 'why anger grows from grief' - the poem names the mechanism by which hurt becomes hostility. Mutual longing: both reach out 'an empty hand'; reconciliation is wanted on both sides and achieved by neither.
Choose, solve, check, then try a fresh question.
Before calculating, read the method prompt and name the condition that makes it useful. Write your own attempt. Open the steps only when you need them, and use the check to catch a wrong sign, unit or interpretation. Finish with the fresh question before reading its answer.
Hear the admission
Choose the method: Years, then nothing.
EZT practice question
How long have father and son lived together, and what does the father admit he knows?
Show the worked solution
- The time: 'Though we have lived together now / In the same house for years.'
- The admission: 'I know / Nothing of him,'.
- The weight: proximity without knowledge - one roof, no access.
Answer: Years in the same house - and the father admits 'I know / Nothing of him': years under one roof, no knowledge.
Check: Same house, for years, nothing of him.
Watch for this: Do not soften 'nothing' - the poem opens at the bottom of the father's honesty; everything after is an attempt to climb from there.
Now try it yourself
Why does the poem open with 'I do not understand this child' rather than with the son?
Check your answer
The poem is the father's confession, not the son's portrait - it begins where the father's knowledge ends, and stays inside that limit.
The first line sets the speaker's boundary.
Rebuild from small
Choose the method: Memory, then blueprint.
EZT practice question
From what does the father try to rebuild a relationship, and why is the attempt already doubtful?
Show the worked solution
- The attempt: 'so try to build / Up a relationship from how / He was when small.'
- The problem: the material is memory - the child who no longer exists.
- The doubt that follows at once: 'Yet have I killed / The seed I spent or sown it where / The land is his and none of mine?'
Answer: From how the son 'was when small' - the father builds from memory, and the poem doubts the build immediately: perhaps the seed was killed, or sown on land that was never his.
Check: Build up, when small, the yet.
Watch for this: Do not read the rebuild as hopeful - 'try to build' from the past is construction on memory; the son he reaches for is years gone.
Now try it yourself
Why must the father build 'from how he was when small'?
Check your answer
It is the only version of the son he still has access to - the present son is a stranger, so the past becomes his only building material.
Memory is the one room he can still enter.
Weigh seed and land
Choose the method: Spent, then his.
EZT practice question
Which farming image carries the father's self-doubt, and what does it divide?
Show the worked solution
- The image: 'Yet have I killed / The seed I spent or sown it where / The land is his and none of mine?'.
- The division: the father supplied the seed; the land - the son's growing ground - 'is his and none of mine'.
- The doubt: either he failed the seed, or the seed was never going to grow for him.
Answer: 'Yet have I killed / The seed I spent or sown it where / The land is his and none of mine?' - seed and land, his and not-his: the son grew on ground the father cannot claim.
Check: Killed the seed, spent, land is his, none of mine.
Watch for this: Do not assign the blame - the question mark is genuine: the father cannot tell whether he failed the son or merely never owned the ground.
Now try it yourself
Why a farming image for fatherhood?
Check your answer
Sowing is the one act of making a father fully owns - and the poem shows even that ends at the seed; the growing was never his to direct.
The image divides making from owning.
Want the prodigal
Choose the method: Return, then world.
EZT practice question
What does the father want more than his son's independence?
Show the worked solution
- The wish: 'I would have / Him prodigal, returning to / His father's house, the home he knew,'.
- The alternative refused: 'Rather than see him make and move / His world.'
- The readiness: 'I would forgive him too, / Shaping from sorrow a new love.'
Answer: He wants the biblical ending - the son 'prodigal, returning to / His father's house, the home he knew' - rather than watching him 'make and move / His world'.
Check: Prodigal, father's house, rather than his world.
Watch for this: Do not miss the cost of the wish - wanting the prodigal means wanting the son to fail first; the father would rather forgive a return than bless an independence.
Now try it yourself
Why 'shaping from sorrow a new love'?
Check your answer
The forgiveness does not exist yet - it would have to be manufactured out of grief; 'shaping' admits the love is a planned object, not a present feeling.
The phrase is honest about what reconciliation would cost.
Trace anger to grief
Choose the method: Speaks, then anger.
EZT practice question
What does the father confess about his own reactions?
Show the worked solution
- The trigger: 'He speaks: I cannot understand / Myself,'.
- The mechanism: 'why anger grows from grief.'
- The confession: he cannot even read his own heart - the estrangement includes himself.
Answer: 'He speaks: I cannot understand / Myself, why anger grows from grief' - when the son talks, the father cannot understand his own response: hurt keeps arriving as anger.
Check: He speaks, cannot understand myself, anger from grief.
Watch for this: Do not read the anger as the son's fault - the father names it as his own unreadable mechanism; the poem's honesty is symmetrical.
Now try it yourself
Why does grief grow into anger here?
Check your answer
Grief is loss without a target; anger gives it one - the father's sorrow at the lost child keeps converting into hostility toward the present son.
The poem names the conversion nobody can stop.
Empty both hands
Choose the method: Each, then forgive.
EZT practice question
What is the final image, and who shares it?
Show the worked solution
- The shared ground: 'Father and son, we both must live / On the same globe and the same land,'.
- The image: 'We each put out an empty hand,'.
- The longing: 'Longing for something to forgive.' - the hand and the longing belong to both.
Answer: 'We each put out an empty hand, / Longing for something to forgive' - father and son alike reach out; estrangement is mutual, and so is the longing.
Check: Same globe, each an empty hand, something to forgive.
Watch for this: Do not give the ending to the father alone - 'we each' makes the son a reacher too; reconciliation is wanted on both sides and achieved by neither.
Now try it yourself
Why is the hand empty?
Check your answer
Neither has anything yet to give or to pardon - the reaching is real, the content missing; the longing itself is all they share.
The empty hand is the poem's exact measure of the distance.
Try a mixed set
Choose a method or explanation before opening each answer.
1. The opening admission?
Show answer and reason
'I know / Nothing of him' - years in one house, no knowledge.
The poem starts at the bottom of honesty.
2. The farming doubt?
Show answer and reason
'The seed I spent... The land is his and none of mine.'
Making is not owning.
3. The prodigal wish?
Show answer and reason
The son 'returning to / His father's house' rather than building his own world.
He would rather forgive than bless.
4. The final image?
Show answer and reason
'We each put out an empty hand, / Longing for something to forgive.'
The longing is mutual.
Try it yourself
Work these on paper before checking any notes. Answers are deliberately not shown here.
- In two sentences, explain how 'built to my design' and 'the land is his' can both be true.
- Contrast the father's prodigal wish with what the son might wish, using 'make and move / His world' as your evidence.
- Explain in your own words why the poem ends on 'something to forgive' rather than on forgiveness itself.
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Questions about this practice page
- Who wrote Father to Son?
- Elizabeth Jennings. The Hornbill text credits her under the title; its note calls the poem 'autobiographical in nature' about 'a father and his son', and carries no further biographical note.
- What is Father to Son about?
- A father who has lived for years in the same house as his son and understands nothing of him: they 'speak like strangers', silence surrounds them, and the father longs for a prodigal return - yet the closing image of two empty hands belongs to both.
- What does the father wish for in the poem?
- That his son would come back 'prodigal, returning to / His father's house, the home he knew', rather than building a separate world - and that he could forgive, 'Shaping from sorrow a new love.'
- What does the last line 'Longing for something to forgive' suggest?
- Both father and son reach out 'an empty hand': each wants reconciliation, but neither has anything yet to give or to pardon - the longing itself is all they share.
- Where is Father to Son in the Class 11 book?
- Poem 5 of Hornbill, the Class 11 English textbook (pp. 68-69 by the NCERT contents page - Reprint 2025-26 front matter, whose contents list the Reprint 2026-27 front matter matched when compared on 24 Oct 2026). Page numbers can differ between printings, so check your own copy.