Class 12 English Previous Year: Short Questions With Answers (Part - 1) - A Roadside Stand

Short Answer Questions (2025)

Q1: Comment on the contrast brought out in the poem "A Roadside Stand".

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​Ans: The poem contrasts the rural poor’s simple hopes at their roadside stand with the city dwellers’ indifference and the exploitative schemes of “greedy good-doers,” highlighting the divide between rural struggles and urban insensitivity or manipulative interventions.

Q2: What is Robert Frost’s complaint in "A Roadside Stand"?

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​Ans: Frost complains about the exploitation of rural folk by urban elites and authorities, who ignore their roadside stands’ plea for economic support and impose manipulative “benefits” that disrupt their lives, as seen in the poem’s satirical tone.

Q3: How does the poet highlight the mean and selfish nature of the city dwellers?

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​Ans: Frost highlights city dwellers’ selfishness through their indifference to the roadside stand, speeding past without stopping to buy, ignoring the rural folk’s economic plight, and treating their stand as a mere obstruction, revealing their lack of empathy.

Q4: What is the complaint of the country folk against the ‘party in power’?

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​Ans: The country folk complain that the ‘party in power’ makes false promises of progress, planning to relocate them under the guise of help, which strips their autonomy and exploits their trust, as seen in the poem’s critical portrayal.

Q5: How do the expressions "polished grief" and a stand that "pathetically pled" depict the contrasting worlds that co-exist in the poem "A Roadside Stand"?

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Ans: “Polished grief” depicts the city dwellers’ superficial, detached sympathy, masking their indifference, while the stand that “pathetically pled” reflects the rural folk’s desperate, sincere plea for economic survival, highlighting the contrasting worlds of urban insensitivity and rural vulnerability.

Previous Year Questions

Q.1. Read the lines below and answer the questions that follow:
The little old house was out with a little new shed
In front at the edge of the road where the traffic sped,
A roadside stand that too pathetically pled,
It would not be fair to say for a dole of bread,
But for some of the money, the cash, whose flow supports,
The flower of cities from sinking and withering faint.
Questions:
1. Where was the new shed put up?
2. Who put it up there?
3. What did the roadside stand plea pathetically for? 
4. What was unfair to say?
Answers 1. The new stand was put up in front of a house on the edge of the road.
2. It was put up there by a farmer who owned the house.
3. It pled for money in exchange of farmer’s produce.
4. It was unfair to say that he pled for charities.

Q.2. Read the lines below and answer the questions that follow:
The polished traffic passed with a mind ahead,
Or if ever aside a moment, then out of sorts
At having the landscape marred with the artless paint
Of signs that with N turned wrong and S turned wrong
Offered for sale wild berries in wooden quarts,
Or crook-necked golden squash with silver warts,
Or beauty rest in a beautiful mountain scene,
You have the money, but if you want to be mean,
Why keep your money (this crossly) and go along.
Questions:
1. What is polished traffic referred to?
2. What was wrong with the signs?
3. What were the signs meant for?
4. What was said crossly?
Answers 1. The polished traffic refers to the glistening cars that sped along the road past the roadside stand.
2. The letters N and S in the signs were painted the wrong way.
3. The signs offered wild berries and golden squash for sale.
4. The farmer cursed wealthy city people for not stopping and buying something from the stand.

Q.3. Read the lines below and answer the questions that follow:
Here far from the city we make our roadside stand
And ask for some city money to feel in hand
To try if it will not make our being expand,
And give us the life of the moving-pictures’ promise
That the party in power is said to be keeping from us.
Questions:
1. Who made the roadside stand?
2. Why do they want money for
3. What dreams do they have?
4. What do they think the party in power has done to them?
Answers 1. A farmer has made the roadside stand in front of his house.
2. They wanted to raise their standard of living.
3. They have seen in movies how people enjoy theluxuries of life in cities.
4. They think the party in power is responsible for their poverty.

Q.4. Read the lines below and answer the questions that follow:
It is in the news that all these pitiful kin
Are to be bought out and mercifully gathered in
To live in villages, next to the theatre and the store,
Where they won’t have to think for themselves anymore,
While greedy good-doers, beneficent beasts of prey,
Swarm over their lives enforcing benefits
That are calculated to soothe them out of their wits,
And by teaching them how to sleep they sleep all day,
Destroy their sleeping at night the ancient way.
Questions: 
1. How do the do gooders want to help the poor village people?
2. What is their calculated move?
3. What does the poet think of the good-doers?
4. What name was given by the poet to the do gooders?
Answers 1. They want to buy their land to help them with money.
2. Their calculated move was to cheat the poor farmers with a sweet talk.
3. The poet thinks that the good-doers are selfish and mean.
4. The poet calls them beasts of prey.

Q.5. Read the lines below and answer the questions that follow:
Sometimes I feel myself I can hardly bear
The thought of so much childish longing in vain,
The sadness that lurks near the open window there,
That waits all day in almost open prayer
For the squeal of brakes, the sound of a stopping car,
Of all the thousand selfish cars that pass,
Just one to inquire what a farmer’s prices are.
And one did stop, but only to plow up grass
In using the yard to back and turn around;
And another to ask the way to where it was bound;
And another to ask could they sell it a gallon of gas
They couldn’t (this crossly); they had none, didn’t it see?
Questions:
1. What do you think is the poet’s childish longing?
2. Why does the farmer setup the roadside stand?
3. What made them say crossly “they had none……”?
4. Which word in the passage means ‘fruitless’?
Answers 1. The poet’s childish longing is to end the misery of the farmers at one stroke.
2. The farmer set up the roadside stand hoping that the cars would stop and buy things.
3. The car showed no interest in things that he could offer.
4. vain

Q.6. Read the lines below and answer the questions that follow:
No, in country money, the country scale of gain,
The requisite lift of spirit has never been found,
Or so the voice of the country seems to complain,
I can’t help owning the great relief it would be
To put these people at one stroke out of their pain.
And then next day as I come back into the sane,
I wonder how I should like you to come to me
And offer to put me gently out of my pain.
Questions:
1. What do the country people complain? Why do they so complain?
2. How does the poet end the misery of those people?
3. What does he think when he ‘comes back into the sane’?
4. Which two words in the extract are opposite of each other?
Answers 1. The country people complained that they cannot enjoy life.
2. They don’t have much money and their profit is very small.
3. He thinks, they should be killed to relieve them of their sufferings.
4. When the poet regains his wisdom, he thinks it is a vain idea to kill all the poor people.
5. Pain - Relief