Gujarat Board GSEB Class 9 English Textbook Solutions Moments Chapter 9 The Accidental Tourist Textbook Exercise Important Questions and Answers, Notes Pdf.
Gujarat Board Textbook Solutions Class 9 English Moments Chapter 9 The Accidental Tourist
GSEB Class 9 English The Accidental Tourist Text Book Questions and Answers
Think about It
Question 1.
Bill Bryson says, “I am, in short, easily confused.” What examples has he given to justify this?
Answer:
Bill Bryson claims that he gets easily confused and cannot even do his routine work without creating a mess. Many times he went looking for the lavatory in a cinema and ended up standing in an alley on the wrong side of a self-locking door. He would forget his hotel room number and would return twice or thrice to the reception to confirm. He would spill his drink on others or just scatter his things. That is why he said that he was easily confused.
Question 2.
What happens when the zip on his carry-on bag gives way?
Answer:
His fingers get hurt when the zip of his carry-on bag gives way. He is bleeding profusely. All belongings in his bag come flying across the floor of the waiting hall of the airport. He seems to be making a mockery of himself and of being civilized and way of behaving at a particular place.
Question 3.
Why is his finger bleeding? What is his wife’s reaction?
Answer:
His finger gets stuck in the zip of his bag and starts bleeding. His wife is astonished by the way he has created a mess all around himself.
Question 4.
How does Bill Bryson end up in a ‘crash position’ in the aircraft?
Answer:
Once onboard a flight, Bryson leaned over to tie his shoelaces. At the same moment, someone in the seat in front of him threw his seat back into full recline and Bryson was pinned helplessly in the crash position.
Question 5.
Why are his teeth and gums navy blue?
Answer:
On one occasion, while on a plane, Bryson was pondering over his notes in his notebook and kept sucking on the end of his pen. He was careless enough not to notice that the pen had leaked and his gums, teeth, tongue and chin were all coloured with navy blue ink.
Question 6.
Bill Bryson “ached to be suave”. Is he successful in his mission? List his ‘unsuave’ ways.
Answer:
Bill Bryson “ached to be suave”. The way he behaves in public shows that he has failed in his mission. He would sometimes show the most uncivilized act. He would love, just once in his life, to rise from a dinner table without looking as if he has experienced an extremely localized seismic event or get in a car and close the door without leaving 14 inches of his coat outside or wear light-coloured trousers without discovering at the end of the day that he had at various times sat on chewing gum, ice cream, cough syrup and motor oil.
Question 7.
Why do you think Bill Bryson’s wife says to the children, “Take the lids off the food for Daddy”?
Answer:
Bill Bryson’s wife knew his knack of creating misery for himself and putting others in trouble. So, to avoid being in such kind of a situation again, she asked the children to take the lids off the food for Bill. She knew that if Bill tried to do that himself, then he might take it off in such a manner that the lid would be flying away to some part of the plane and the food might spill all over the place or on some passenger.
Question 8.
What is the significance of the title?
Answer:
The title is significant because it is about a man who travels a lot and is always confused. He gets into trouble because of his acts which are not deliberate. The story depicts humorous travel experiences – like being pinned in a crashed position, spilling drink or food on a co-passenger, unknowingly gets his gums and teeth covered in ink and many more such instances are there when the author accidentally gets into trouble, thus justifying the title.
The Accidental Tourist Summary in English
The Accidental Tourist Summary:
The Accidental Tourist by Bill Bryson is a short story that highlights the importance of having suave and elegant manners at the time of travelling. In this story, we see that the narrator almost flies over 100,000 miles every year because of his job’s nature. So, we can say that the narrator is an accidental tourist, though he doesn’t enjoy travelling but still he has to because of his job.
However, in his own words, he says that he is sort of a confused man who often forgets the roads and gets into wrong alleys or gets trapped into self-locking doors. In this story, he takes us to some of his awry travel experiences where he did some crazy things, though unwittingly.
Most of his experiences are based around airports or inside the flights. On one instant, while flying to England from Boston with family for Christmas, he forcibly opened the zip of his bag, as a result, it broke down and all the stuff littered on the ground. This made him embarrassed and the people around him.
One day in the flight, he got up to tie his shoelace, but then suddenly the person on the next seat pulled up the full recliner, he got crushed into his seat and with great difficulty, he managed to get himself freed. This indicates that he was absentminded when tying shoelaces.
On other days, he repeatedly spilled drink on a lady’s lap sitting beside him. Because of this habit, one day his wife let herself opened the lid of the food container. In another funny instance, the narrator was busy noting something with a pen, but at the same time, he was sucking the one side of his pen and speaking to a young lady. When he visited the lavatory, he found blue stains on his chin, mouth, hands and so on.
There are some instances when the narrator, owing to his poor memory, forgot some or other thing and landed himself up in trouble. The message from this story is that travelling is not everyone’s cup of tea. One needs to be alert and graciously presentable to avoid getting into blunders or causing inconvenience to others. You need to have good manners and immaculate presence of mind while travelling to far-off distances. Imagine what will you do if you lost your documents and money and gadgets?