Class 11 English · Original EZT practice
The Address - Marga Minco (Class 11 English, Snapshots, Chapter 2)
The Address is Chapter 2 of Class 11 Snapshots (pp. 10-15 by the NCERT contents page of the Rationalised 2023-24 edition), Marga Minco's story of a daughter who goes to claim her mother's stored belongings after the War. At Number 46, Marconi Street, Mrs Dorling opens the door 'a chink' and shows 'absolutely no sign of recognition' - yet she is wearing the narrator's mother's green knitted cardigan. In the strange living-room every familiar object feels wrong, until the daughter walks out resolving 'to forget the address'. This page unpacks that quiet decision, 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 story at a glance
The opening: ''Do you still know me?' I asked.' - ''No, I don't know you.'' The proof: 'She was wearing my mother's green knitted cardigan. The wooden buttons were rather pale from washing.' - 'But I knew now that I was right.' The refusal: 'I regret I cannot do anything for you.' - and the door closes 'cautiously', 'as though no one inside the house should be disturbed'. The arrangement: 'Every time she leaves here she takes something home with her' - 'She wanted to save all my nice things.' The room: 'I was in a room I knew and did not know.' The table-cloth: 'Somewhere on the edge there should be a burn mark that had never been repaired.' The silver: 'I didn't know the cutlery we ate off every day was silver.' The exit: 'As I walked down the passage I heard the jingling of spoons and forks.' The resolution: 'I resolved to forget the address. Of all the things I had to forget, that would be the easiest.'
2. Key details and what they signal
The mother's trust: asked whether she agreed Mrs Dorling should keep everything, she cries 'It would simply be an insult to talk like that.' - faith where a receipt was needed. Two visits: the first ends on the doorstep; on the second a girl of about fifteen lets her in, and the familiar things do the damage. The candle-holder: 'An old-fashioned iron Hanukkah' candle-holder 'hung next to a mirror.' - the book glosses Hanukkah as 'the Feast of Lights, a Hebrew festival in December'. Oppression, not comfort: 'things I did want to see again but which oppressed me in the strange atmosphere'. The other family's ease: 'We use it for everything' - 'Once we even ate off the plates hanging there on the wall.' The heart of the story: objects 'linked in your memory with the familiar life of former times instantly lose their value when, severed from them, you see them again in strange surroundings.' Her own bare present: 'a small rented room where the shreds of black-out paper still hung along the windows'.
3. Theme
Loss measured in objects: the War survives in cardigans, plates and spoons rather than in anything anyone can say. Memory needs its setting: severed from the old life, the treasured things become oppressive clutter. Trust betrayed by politeness: the mother's open-handed faith against Mrs Dorling's half-open door. Letting go as survival: forgetting the address is the one loss the narrator can choose.
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.
Read the cardigan
Choose the method: Recognition, then certainty.
EZT practice question
What first proves to the narrator that she has found the right house?
Show the worked solution
- The denial: ''No, I don't know you.''
- The evidence: 'She was wearing my mother's green knitted cardigan. The wooden buttons were rather pale from washing.'
- The certainty: 'But I knew now that I was right.'
Answer: Mrs Dorling denies knowing her, but she is 'wearing my mother's green knitted cardigan', its 'wooden buttons were rather pale from washing' - and the narrator 'knew now that I was right'.
Check: Cardigan, pale buttons, knew I was right.
Watch for this: Do not treat the cardigan as a clue in a mystery - the narrator is not detecting; she is being wounded, and the washed-pale buttons tell her the thing has been used for years.
Now try it yourself
Why do the pale buttons matter more than the cardigan?
Check your answer
Anyone might own a green cardigan, but buttons 'pale from washing' carry time - they prove her mother's thing has lived a long second life in this house.
Wear is the signature of years.
Trace the arrangement
Choose the method: Acquaintance, then carrying.
EZT practice question
How did Mrs Dorling come to have the family's things?
Show the worked solution
- The renewal: she renewed an old acquaintance with the mother during the War.
- The offer: 'She wanted to save all my nice things.'
- The carrying: 'Every time she leaves here she takes something home with her.'
Answer: She renewed an old acquaintance, offered to save the 'nice things' from the War, and carried them off visit by visit - 'Every time she leaves here she takes something home with her.'
Check: Renewed acquaintance, saved things, carried them home.
Watch for this: Do not let the word 'save' pass unexamined - the mother hears rescue; the story shows removal, one bundle at a time, with no list and no receipt.
Now try it yourself
Why did the mother never doubt the arrangement?
Check your answer
She answered the suggestion itself with 'It would simply be an insult to talk like that.' - her trust made asking for proof feel like the crime.
Trust that cannot be questioned cannot be checked.
Explain the delay
Choose the method: Liberation, then fear.
EZT practice question
Why did the narrator wait so long before going to Marconi Street?
Show the worked solution
- The indifference: 'Initially after the Liberation I was absolutely not interested in all that stored stuff.'
- The fear: she dreaded being confronted with what had belonged to 'a connection that no longer existed'.
- The bare present: 'a small rented room where the shreds of black-out paper still hung along the windows'.
Answer: At first she was 'absolutely not interested in all that stored stuff' after the Liberation, and later she feared the stored things would confront her with 'a connection that no longer existed'.
Check: Not interested, then afraid of the connection.
Watch for this: Do not read the delay as busyness or forgetfulness - it is avoidance with a reason: the things survived, the life they belonged to did not, and she knows what seeing them will do.
Now try it yourself
Why do the belongings frighten her more than the loss?
Check your answer
The loss is abstract and everywhere; the belongings are concrete and waiting - to claim them is to stand in one room with the proof that the old life is over.
Objects make absence specific.
Enter the strange room
Choose the method: Knowing, then not knowing.
EZT practice question
What oppresses her inside the living-room?
Show the worked solution
- The paradox: 'I was in a room I knew and did not know.'
- The disorder: 'the tasteless way everything was arranged', 'the ugly furniture', 'the muggy smell that hung there'.
- The oppression: 'things I did want to see again but which oppressed me in the strange atmosphere'.
Answer: Her family's own things, arranged in 'the tasteless way everything was arranged' among 'the ugly furniture' and 'the muggy smell that hung there' - familiar objects that 'oppressed me in the strange atmosphere'.
Check: Knew and did not know; tasteless, ugly, muggy.
Watch for this: Do not blame the oppression on the objects or on Mrs Dorling's taste alone - the story names the cause precisely: things severed from their own life 'instantly lose their value' in strange surroundings.
Now try it yourself
Why does she look for the burn mark on the table-cloth?
Check your answer
The unrepaired burn mark is her proof of continuity - if the cloth is really theirs, the mark must be there; checking it is checking whether the past is real.
A flaw can authenticate what perfection cannot.
Count the silver
Choose the method: Daily use, then value.
EZT practice question
What does she suddenly remember about the family's cutlery?
Show the worked solution
- The sight: the family's cutlery laid out in Mrs Dorling's house.
- The memory: 'I didn't know the cutlery we ate off every day was silver.'
- The signal: the family's ordinary was valuable, and nobody told the child.
Answer: That it was silver at all - 'I didn't know the cutlery we ate off every day was silver' - the ordinary tools of her childhood table turn out to have been valuables worth storing.
Check: Ate off it daily, never knew it was silver.
Watch for this: Do not read this as a fact about tableware - it measures how completely the child took the old life for granted; she learns its value only in someone else's house.
Now try it yourself
Why does the discovery come so late?
Check your answer
Value is invisible inside routine; only removal teaches her that everyday things were treasures - the lesson arrives exactly when it can no longer be used.
We inventory the past only after losing it.
Notice the tea things
Choose the method: Tea, then the lid.
EZT practice question
What does the narrator notice about the tea things the girl sets out?
Show the worked solution
- The scene: the daughter of the house pours tea for the visitor.
- The pot: 'She poured tea from a white pot.'
- The recognition: 'All it had was a gold border on the lid, I remembered.' - her family's own china, in daily use.
Answer: They are her family's own things in everyday service: 'She poured tea from a white pot. All it had was a gold border on the lid, I remembered.'
Check: White pot, gold border, I remembered.
Watch for this: Do not read the tea as hospitality - the girl serves it in the narrator's own family's china without knowing; every courtesy in this house is performed with the belongings of the woman at the door.
Now try it yourself
Why does the gold border matter?
Check your answer
The remembered detail proves the pot is hers before she could ever say so - recognition works through the smallest features, not the whole object.
Memory keeps its evidence in details.
Try a mixed set
Choose a method or explanation before opening each answer.
1. The doorstep proof?
Show answer and reason
'She was wearing my mother's green knitted cardigan.'
Buttons 'pale from washing' carry the years.
2. The mother's trust?
Show answer and reason
'It would simply be an insult to talk like that.'
Faith where a receipt was needed.
3. The room's paradox?
Show answer and reason
'I was in a room I knew and did not know.'
Familiar things, strange order.
4. The final resolve?
Show answer and reason
'I resolved to forget the address.'
'Of all the things I had to forget, that would be the easiest.'
Try it yourself
Work these on paper before checking any notes. Answers are deliberately not shown here.
- Contrast the narrator's two visits to Marconi Street: what changes between the doorstep and the living-room, and why does the second visit do the damage?
- Contrast the mother's 'It would simply be an insult to talk like that.' with Mrs Dorling's 'I regret I cannot do anything for you.' and say what the pair shows.
- Explain in your own words why 'the jingling of spoons and forks' is the right sound to end the visit on.
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Questions about this practice page
- Who wrote The Address?
- Marga Minco. The Snapshots text credits her under the title and carries no biographical note, so this page stays with what the story itself shows.
- What is The Address about?
- After the War, a daughter visits the woman who stored her mother's belongings, finds them arranged as someone else's daily things, and decides to leave both the objects and the address behind.
- What happens on the narrator's first visit to Mrs Dorling's house?
- The door opens 'a chink', shows 'absolutely no sign of recognition', and closes with 'I regret I cannot do anything for you.' - she walks back to the station unheard.
- What does the address - Number 46, Marconi Street - stand for?
- The stored past itself: everything her mother saved that cannot give the old life back.
- Where is The Address in the Class 11 book?
- Chapter 2 of Snapshots, the Class 11 English supplementary reader (pp. 10-15 by the NCERT contents page of the Rationalised 2023-24 edition). Page numbers can differ between printings, so check your own copy.