Class 11 English · Original EZT practice
Birth - A.J. Cronin (Class 11 English, Snapshots, Chapter 4)
Birth is Chapter 4 of Class 11 Snapshots in the Reprint 2025-26 printing (pp. 34-38), A.J. Cronin's excerpt from The Citadel. Andrew Manson, newly out of medical school, is called at midnight to a Welsh mining town where Joe Morgan's wife awaits their first child after nearly twenty years. When the child is born lifeless at dawn, Andrew fights for mother and baby both, refusing to stop even when the midwife whimpers 'It's stillborn.' This page retells the night 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 midnight call: Joe Morgan is 'walking up and down with short steps between the closed surgery and the entrance to the house' - 'The missus wants ye' - 'before time, too.' The waiting room: 'Let me make you a cup of tea, Doctor, bach' - the old woman is afraid he will leave the case; Andrew answers 'Don't fret, mother, I'll not run away.' The sounds of the night: 'the slow tick-tock of the wall clock' and 'the beat of Morgan's footsteps as he paced in the street outside'. Susan's condition: 'Susan said not to give her the chloroform if it would harm the baby. She's awful set upon this child, Doctor, bach.' The heavy thoughts: 'He thought of Bramwell, foolishly devoted to a woman who deceived him sordidly, of Edward Page, bound to the shrewish Blodwen, of Denny, living unhappily, apart from his wife.' The birth: 'as the first streaks of dawn strayed past the broken edges of the blind, the child was born, lifeless.' The choice: 'torn between his desire to attempt to resuscitate the child, and his obligation towards the mother' - 'Blindly, instinctively, he gave the child to the nurse and turned his attention to Susan Morgan'. The discovery: 'Where's the child?' - 'She had placed it beneath the bed.' - 'A boy, perfectly formed. The limp, warm body was white and soft as tallow'. The diagnosis: 'The whiteness meant only one thing: asphyxia, pallida' - and Andrew's mind races back to a case he once saw at the Samaritan. The miracle: 'the pigmy chest, which his hands enclosed, gave a short, convulsive heave, another… and another…' - then 'a joyful iridescent bubble' - 'Then, exquisitely, came the child's cry.' The news: 'All right, Joe,' he said thickly - 'Both all right.' - 'It was quite light. Nearly five o'clock.'
2. Key details and what they signal
Nineteen years of waiting: 'Joe and his wife, who have been married nearly twenty years, are expecting their first child' - the stakes of the whole night sit inside that one fact. Andrew's divided mind: the 'dismal failures' he has seen at Cardiff station war with 'the image of Christine before him' - he works all night with his own question about love unresolved. The instinctive triage: 'The dilemma was so urgent he did not solve it consciously' - mother first, then the child, a decision made faster than thought. The method: 'Get me hot water and cold water' - 'like some crazy juggler, he hurried the child between the two, now plunging it into the icy, now into the steaming bath', then 'rubbing the child with a rough towel, crushing and releasing the little chest with both his hands'. The witnesses: the midwife's 'It's stillborn.' and the old woman, 'her hand pressed to her throat, uttering no sound', praying against the wall - the room gives up before Andrew does. The wreck of the room: 'blankets, towels, basins, soiled instruments, the hypodermic syringe impaled by its point in the linoleum' - the cost of the fight left lying on the floor.
3. Theme
A calling proved in one night: textbook knowledge meets 'the world of a practising physician' when instinct, memory and refusal to quit save two lives. Persistence against the verdict of the room: everyone else - nurse, midwife, grandmother - has surrendered before Andrew allows himself to. Love under examination: the failed marriages Andrew broods over set his fear beside his hope, and the Morgans' nineteen-year wait answers it. Dawn as renewal: the case begins in 'quiet mystery' at midnight and ends in daylight, with miners starting the next shift as Andrew walks home spent.
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.
Answer the midnight call
Choose the method: Waiting, then early.
EZT practice question
Why is Joe Morgan waiting in the street at midnight?
Show the worked solution
- The figure: Joe is 'walking up and down with short steps between the closed surgery and the entrance to the house'.
- The message: 'The missus wants ye' - 'before time, too.'
- The stakes: after nearly twenty years of marriage, their first child is coming early.
Answer: His wife Susan has gone into labour ahead of time - 'The missus wants ye' - 'before time, too.' - and after nearly twenty years of waiting for a first child, Joe cannot wait indoors.
Check: Wants ye, before time, twenty years.
Watch for this: Do not read Joe's pacing as impatience with the doctor - it is nineteen years of hope concentrated into one night; the street is the only place big enough for it.
Now try it yourself
Why does the story open on Joe and not on Andrew?
Check your answer
The stakes belong to the Morgans first; meeting the pacing husband before the doctor makes the night's weight human before it becomes medical.
The case is introduced by the man it matters most to.
Read the tea offer
Choose the method: Tea, then fear.
EZT practice question
What does Mrs Morgan's mother offer Andrew, and what is she really afraid of?
Show the worked solution
- The offer: 'Let me make you a cup of tea, Doctor, bach'.
- The fear beneath it: she is afraid he will leave the case and return later.
- The reassurance: 'Don't fret, mother, I'll not run away.'
Answer: She offers tea - 'Let me make you a cup of tea, Doctor, bach' - but the real plea is that he stay; she fears he will leave the case, and he answers 'Don't fret, mother, I'll not run away.'
Check: Tea offered, staying promised.
Watch for this: Do not take the tea as hospitality alone - it is an anchor thrown at the doctor; every small kindness in that kitchen is an attempt to keep him in the house.
Now try it yourself
Why does Andrew's promise matter more than his skill at this point?
Check your answer
The family cannot judge his medicine, only his presence; 'I'll not run away' is the first thing in the night they are allowed to trust.
Before the doctor can save anyone, he must stay.
Weigh the chloroform
Choose the method: Pain, then baby.
EZT practice question
What does Susan tell her mother about the chloroform?
Show the worked solution
- The instruction: 'Susan said not to give her the chloroform if it would harm the baby.'
- The emphasis: 'She's awful set upon this child, Doctor, bach.'
- The signal: the mother's own comfort ranks below the child's safety.
Answer: Not to give it 'if it would harm the baby' - 'She's awful set upon this child, Doctor, bach.' - Susan chooses the baby's safety over her own relief from pain.
Check: No chloroform if it harms the baby.
Watch for this: Do not treat this as a medical detail only - it is the story's clearest statement of what the night is for; Susan has already decided whose life comes first.
Now try it yourself
Why tell Andrew this before the crisis?
Check your answer
It arms his later choice: when the child is born lifeless, Andrew already knows the mother would want everything risked for the baby.
The instruction is the night's moral compass.
Choose in the crisis
Choose the method: Child, then mother.
EZT practice question
When the child is born lifeless, what does Andrew attend to first?
Show the worked solution
- The collision: 'torn between his desire to attempt to resuscitate the child, and his obligation towards the mother'.
- The mother: Susan 'lay collapsed, almost pulseless'.
- The decision: 'Blindly, instinctively, he gave the child to the nurse and turned his attention to Susan Morgan'.
Answer: The mother: Susan 'lay collapsed, almost pulseless', and 'Blindly, instinctively, he gave the child to the nurse and turned his attention to Susan Morgan' - the child waits while he saves her.
Check: Mother first, child handed over.
Watch for this: Do not read the choice as hesitation overcome - 'The dilemma was so urgent he did not solve it consciously'; instinct, not deliberation, ranks the two lives.
Now try it yourself
Why does the story call the decision instinctive?
Check your answer
A conscious choice could be second-guessed forever; instinct settles it the way a doctor's training intends - the life most certainly saveable first.
Triage is character, not debate.
Find the child
Choose the method: Question, then discovery.
EZT practice question
Where does the midwife put the child, and what does Andrew see when he pulls it out?
Show the worked solution
- The question: 'Where's the child?'
- The answer: 'She had placed it beneath the bed.'
- The discovery: 'A boy, perfectly formed. The limp, warm body was white and soft as tallow' - among 'the sodden newspapers'.
Answer: The midwife had put it 'beneath the bed' among 'the sodden newspapers'; Andrew pulls out 'A boy, perfectly formed. The limp, warm body was white and soft as tallow'.
Check: Beneath the bed, perfectly formed, white as tallow.
Watch for this: Do not miss what 'perfectly formed' does to the scene - the child is not a lost cause, only an unstarted one; the beauty of the body is what Andrew refuses to surrender.
Now try it yourself
Why does the midwife's verdict matter less than Andrew's look?
Check your answer
The midwife filed the child as finished - 'It's stillborn.'; Andrew's examination finds warmth and form, and the difference between filed and found is the whole fight.
The room gives up; the doctor looks again.
Work the two basins
Choose the method: Icy, then steaming.
EZT practice question
Describe the special method Andrew uses on the child.
Show the worked solution
- The order: 'Get me hot water and cold water'.
- The method: 'like some crazy juggler, he hurried the child between the two, now plunging it into the icy, now into the steaming bath'.
- The finish: 'rubbing the child with a rough towel, crushing and releasing the little chest with both his hands' - for half an hour, until the first heave.
Answer: Two basins, hot and cold: 'now plunging it into the icy, now into the steaming bath' for half an hour, then a rough towel and 'crushing and releasing the little chest with both his hands' until 'the pigmy chest' gives 'a short, convulsive heave'.
Check: Icy and steaming, towel, crushing and releasing.
Watch for this: Do not treat the method as luck or magic - Andrew has seen it work at the Samaritan; the 'crazy juggler' is remembered medicine executed past the point where everyone else stopped.
Now try it yourself
Why does the story time the effort at half an hour?
Check your answer
The clock is the antagonist: half an hour of failure is long enough for every witness to be sure, and Andrew keeps going anyway - persistence needs a measure.
The miracle has a duration.
Try a mixed set
Choose a method or explanation before opening each answer.
1. The midnight message?
Show answer and reason
'The missus wants ye' - 'before time, too.'
Twenty years of hope, arriving early.
2. Susan's chloroform rule?
Show answer and reason
Not 'if it would harm the baby'.
The night's moral compass.
3. The triage?
Show answer and reason
'Blindly, instinctively, he gave the child to the nurse.'
Mother first, faster than thought.
4. The method?
Show answer and reason
'Now plunging it into the icy, now into the steaming bath.'
Remembered medicine, past the clock.
Try it yourself
Work these on paper before checking any notes. Answers are deliberately not shown here.
- In two sentences, explain why 'The dilemma was so urgent he did not solve it consciously' is the story's most important sentence about Andrew.
- Contrast the midwife's 'It's stillborn.' with Andrew's 'Get me hot water and cold water' and say what the pair shows about the room versus the doctor.
- Explain in your own words why the story ends with miners walking to the morning shift rather than with the Morgans.
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Questions about this practice page
- Who wrote Birth in Class 11 Snapshots?
- A.J. Cronin. The chapter's introduction names the piece as an excerpt from his novel The Citadel; the textbook carries no biographical note, so this page stays with what the excerpt shows.
- What happens in Birth by A.J. Cronin?
- Young doctor Andrew Manson attends Susan Morgan's long-awaited first delivery in a Welsh mining town; when the child is born lifeless at dawn he saves the mother first, then revives the baby with hot and cold water immersion and massage after half an hour of failure.
- Where is the story Birth set?
- In Blaenelly, a small Welsh mining town - Andrew is fetched from Bryngower to the Morgans' home at Number 12 Blaina Terrace, and the case ends as miners head out for the morning shift.
- What condition does Andrew diagnose in the newborn?
- 'The whiteness meant only one thing: asphyxia, pallida' - a suffocation state the textbook's own footnote explains as lack of oxygen and excess of carbon dioxide in the blood, with pale skin and weak pulse.
- Where is Birth in the Class 11 book?
- Chapter 4 of Snapshots in the Reprint 2025-26 printing (pp. 34-38); the Rationalised 2023-24 contents lists it as Chapter 5 (pp. 49-54). Chapter numbers and pages differ between printings, so check your own copy.