NCERT Solutions Poorvi Chapter 1 –32Three Days to See (Helen Keller) — Let us discuss

Book page 31 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.

Work in pairs. Identify the statements that are true from the ones given below. Share your answers with the teacher. 1. The author expresses a deep longing to experience the world through the sense of hearing. 2. The author would like exploring the city only to observe how people are suffering. 3. The author would spend the first day seeing the people whose kind-heartedness and friendship have enriched her life. 4. The author acknowledges that even in three days, she would not be able to see everything. 5. The author feels that everyone can find the greatest joy merely by the sense of touch. 6. The author advises those who can see to appreciate every moment as if they might lose their senses tomorrow. 7. On the third day, the author would like to observe people in their daily lives and understand their experiences.

Answer

The true statements are 3, 4, 6 and 7.

No.	True / False	Evidence from the text
1	False	Her longing is for sight: “I have imagined what I should most like to see if I were given the use of my eyes… for just three days.” She ends, “sight must be the most delightful.”
2	False	She watches the whole range of human life: “I see smiles, and I am happy. I see serious determination, and I am proud. I see suffering, and I am compassionate.”
3	True	“On the first day, I should want to see the people whose kindness and companionship have made my life worth living.”
4	True	“Naturally in those three short days I should not have seen all I wanted to see.”
5	False	Touch gives her much, but she says, “If I can get so much pleasure from mere touch, how much more beauty must be revealed by sight.”
6	True	“use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. And the same method can be applied to your other senses.”
7	True	“this third day, I shall spend in the workaday world, amid the haunts of men going about the business of life.”

Q2.

Complete the table given below with what Helen Keller wanted to do on the three days if she had sight. (Day 1 begins “see the people, know her friends from the feel of their faces, …”; Day 2 begins “arise with the dawn, …”; Day 3 is blank.)

Answer

Day 1	Day 2	Day 3
see the people, know her friends from the feel of their faces; look at the people whose kindness and companionship have made her life worth living; look into a friend's heart through the eye, the ‘window of the soul'; read in a face the laughter and sorrow she can now only feel with her fingertips	arise with the dawn; see the thrilling miracle by which night is transformed into day; behold with awe the magnificent panorama of light with which the sun awakens the sleeping earth; take a hasty glimpse of the world, past and present; go to the museums to see the pageant of man's progress and the condensed history of the earth — animals and the races of men in their native environment, the carcasses of dinosaurs and mastodons	greet the dawn again, anxious for new revelations of beauty; spend the day in the workaday world, amid the haunts of men going about the business of life; go into the city; stand at a busy corner merely looking at people and trying to understand their daily lives; see smiles and be happy, see serious determination and be proud, see suffering and be compassionate

Why it happens: Look at the order she chooses — people she loves, then knowledge and history, then ordinary strangers. Sights that most people would rush to (mountains, monuments, the sea) do not appear at all.

Q3.

The author says that you need eyes to be able to ‘see' the true self of a person. Therefore, she refers to the eye as ‘window of the soul'. How is the narrator able to understand the feelings of a person?

Answer

She understands feelings through her fingertips. As she puts it: “I can only ‘see' through my fingertips the outline of a face. I can detect laughter, sorrow and other obvious emotions. I know my friends from the feel of their faces.”

By resting her hand on a face she reads the shape of a smile, the tightness of grief, the movement of a jaw while someone speaks. She also feels sound as vibration — she can feel “the happy quiver of a bird in full song” through a small tree, and in the same way she can feel the tremble of a voice.

But she is honest about the limit of this method. She can detect only the “obvious” emotions. What she cannot reach is the feeling a person is hiding — and that, she says, is what the eye, “that window of the soul”, would show her.

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