Time to answer
A. Choose the correct option
1. the tension one feels when going to a bank for the first time
2. show his nervousness towards new environment and people
3. because the narrator had just come to open an account and make small deposits but made a big
show of it
4. one of Pinkerton’s men
B. Answer these questions
1. Everything about the bank made the writer nervous due to which he felt out of place and uncomfortable.
2. The writer’s mysterious manner, his request to see the manager alone and his nervous demeanour
alarmed the manager.
3. The narrator was too nervous and kept saying he wanted to meet the manager alone, he deposited
fifty-six dollars and then out of nervousness withdrew all of it again, these instances from the story tell us that the narrator was scared while he was in the bank.
4. The clerk was alarmed on seeing the cheque because it seemed the narrator wanted to withdraw all
the money he had just deposited.
5. The narrator decides to withdraw all his money due to a mistake. He had to write six dollars on a
cheque instead by mistake he wrote fifty-six dollars. Due to this error, he was too embarrassed to
confess his mistake, so he decided to withdraw all the money.
6. The people at the bank laughed at his behaviour when he walked out through the door.
Reference to the context
1. a. iii. alarmed
b. The speaker is ‘unkindly loud’ here because initially, the mysterious manner of the narrator
made him think he was a detective but it turned out he was there to only deposit a small
amount.
c. The speaker thought the narrator was one of Pinkerton’s men who came out to deposit a large
sum at the bank.
d. The speaker sounds indifferent here because the narrator was there to deposit a small sum and
the speaker was no longer interested in him.
2. a. i. surprised
b. The narrator had written fifty-six dollars on the cheque indicating he wanted to withdraw all
the money he had just deposited.
c. The people at the bank were not sympathetic to the problem faced by the narrator. This was
evident from the way they did not help him at all and even laughed at him. They were not
interested because he was not rich and was not making a large deposit in the bank.
d. The people at the bank were helpful at first because the mysterious way the narrator behaved
made them alarmed that he had a big sum to deposit in the bank.
Time to think and answer
1. The manager thought that the narrator had a large amount to deposit because of the writer’s mysterious behaviour.
2. The narrator did not rectify his mistake and went with his decision to withdraw all the money from the bank because he was embarrassed of his mistake.
3. It was a difficult experience for the writer so it is unlikely he would have gone back to the bank unless he had a genuinely big amount of money to deposit or in need to avail any other services specific to banks.
