Class 7 English Chapter 3: Three Days to See

A question with a catch in it

Suppose you were given three days to see, and then the dark came back. What would you look at? The question sounds like a game. It stops being one when you notice that the writer asking it could not see at all, and was not inventing the problem for effect.

Who is speaking

Helen Keller lost her sight and hearing as a small child. The essay is written from inside that, not about it from outside. That matters for how we read the opening, because she begins not with what is missing but with what she has.

What touch actually gives her

She says she finds hundreds of things to interest her through touch alone, and the examples are exact. The even shape of a leaf. The smooth bark of a silver birch. The rough, hairy bark of a pine. In spring she searches the branches for a bud, the first sign that Nature is waking.

The best of them

Sometimes, she says, she is fortunate. She lays a hand on a small tree and feels, through the trunk, a bird singing. Read that again. She is receiving a song through her fingers. It is the most precise thing in the essay and the easiest to read past.

Not a consolation prize

It would be easy to treat all this as making the best of things. The essay will not allow it. She reports pleasure, in detail, without apology. This is the ground her argument stands on, and misreading it as compensation turns the whole piece upside down.

How the longing follows

Her next move is the hinge. If touch alone gives this much pleasure, she reasons, how much more beauty must sight reveal. The longing grows out of the pleasure rather than replacing it. Someone who had found nothing in touch would have had no measure to reason from.

Three days, three parts

So she imagines being given sight for three days, and divides them. One day for people. One for the world, past and present. One for ordinary life going on around her. The division is not casual, and the order is the most interesting thing in the essay.

Day one: the people

With three days of sight available, she could choose oceans or mountains or famous cities. She gives the first day to her friends, and says why: their kindness and companionship made her life worth living. The only day spent on people who know her is the first one.

What she cannot reach by touch

She can learn a face with her fingertips, and she can detect laughter and sorrow that way. What she cannot get at is what a person is like underneath. She calls the eye a "window of the soul", which is a metaphor, because no window exists. Looking, she is saying, reaches an interior that touching does not.

Day two: dawn, and then the museums

The second day begins early, on purpose. She wants to watch night turn into day, and the sun waking what she calls the sleeping earth. Then she goes indoors, to museums, for a hurried look at the world as it is and as it was.

Bones before people

In the museums she looks for the history of the earth itself: animals, the peoples of the world, and the huge remains of mastodons and dinosaurs. All of them were here long before any human was. She notes what arrived with us: a small body, and a powerful brain.

Day three: a street corner

The last day is not spent on anything rare. She goes into the city, to the everyday working world, and stands at a busy corner simply watching people pass. The plainest choice of the three, and she has kept it for the end.

Feelings that follow the eyes

Watch what happens to her as she watches them. She sees smiles and is happy. She sees serious determination and is proud. She sees suffering and is moved to compassion. Three sights, three feelings, with nothing in between to explain them.

Midnight

Then the darkness comes back. She does not pretend it was enough. She says plainly that in three short days she would not have seen all she wanted, and that only when the dark returned would she learn how much she had left unseen.

Why that ending is the strong one

An essay in which she saw everything and was satisfied would be comfortable and useless. By admitting the three days would fail, she makes the case for the thing she is about to ask of us, which is not gratitude but attention.

The hint, and the method inside it

Use your eyes, she says, as if tomorrow you would be unable to. Then she extends it on purpose: hear as if deafness came tomorrow, touch as if the feeling would go, smell and taste as if you would never do either again. It is a technique, not a sentiment.

Why imagining the loss works

Because a thing about to be taken gets examined, and a thing assumed permanent gets ignored. You can test this on yourself without losing anything. Her last line gives her own verdict: of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful.

Scenario:

A school runs a bus to the hills every year. Riya has taken the window seat on all three of her trips. This year her teacher asks each pupil to write a paragraph about what they saw on the way. Riya finds she has almost nothing. She knows the journey takes two hours and that there is a tea stall halfway. Beyond that her paragraph is four lines long. Her friend Tanvi, who sat on the aisle and had to lean across, fills a page.

Analysis:

This is Helen Keller’s argument arriving in an ordinary classroom, and the window seat is the whole point. Riya had the best view available and three chances at it. What she did not have was any reason to think the view was going anywhere, so she never examined it. Tanvi had a worse seat and a short, awkward sightline, which meant every glance cost her something and therefore got used. That is exactly the mechanism behind the essay’s closing advice. It is not that Tanvi cares more about hills. It is that a thing which is difficult or temporary gets attended to, while a thing assumed permanent and easy slides past unnoticed. Note what this means for the remedy. Telling Riya to appreciate the view more would not work, because appreciation is a feeling and she cannot summon one to order. Telling her that this is the last time she will ever see it would work, which is why the essay asks her to pretend precisely that.

Activity:

Take a journey you make often, even a walk of five minutes. Travel it once as usual, then travel it again having told yourself it is the last time. Write down what you noticed on the second trip that you had never noticed on any of the others.

Title:

Read a tree the way she does

Safety:

Have your partner guide you by the arm and keep you clear of roots, steps and thorns. Do not touch plants you cannot identify, and wash your hands afterwards.

What You Notice:

The blindfolded description is almost always longer, and it is usually full of textures the sighted minute never mentioned. That is not because touch is better than sight. It is because looking at a familiar thing for a minute produces a label, while having to find it out produces details.

Helen Keller lost both sight and hearing as a small child after an illness. She went on to take a university degree, the first deafblind person to do so.

A mastodon was a large, hairy, elephant-like animal that died out thousands of years ago. She names it beside the dinosaurs as something she would look for in a museum.

Braille is read by touch, with raised dots standing for letters. A fluent reader can take in text at a speed close to reading aloud.

The three days, in order — People, Past, Pavement — Day one the People who matter to her. Day two the Past and the world, through museums. Day three the Pavement, a busy city corner and ordinary working life.

What she feels on day three — Smiles, Strength, Suffering — Smiles make her happy. Serious determination makes her proud. Suffering makes her compassionate. Three things seen, three feelings, in the order she lists them.

A verb that never works alone

Some verbs cannot be the only verb in their sentence. She must is not English. She must leave is. The word must needs another verb to help, and that is why we call it an auxiliary, or helping, verb. The particular family of helpers we are looking at is called the modals.

The list

They come in pairs, which is the easiest way to hold them: can and could, may and might, shall and should, will and would. Then must and ought to on their own. Ten items, and the paired ones are exactly those that differ by politeness.

Two verbs, not one

In she must leave early, the verb is must leave. Both words. The modal comes first and the main verb follows with nothing in between. If you are asked to underline the verb in such a sentence and you underline only one word, you have underlined half of it.

The to that is not there

Notice what is missing. We do not say she must to leave. The main verb after a modal drops its to, which is unusual in English, since most verbs that follow another verb keep it. She wants to leave, but she must leave.

The one exception

Ought keeps its to. You ought to apologise is correct; you ought apologise is not. That single irregularity is the reason the book writes ought to in the list, with the to attached, as though it were part of the word.

No s, ever

Modals are the only English verbs that never take an s for he, she or it. She walks, but she can walk. She musts is not a word anybody has ever needed. This is the quickest test there is: if a verb refuses an s, it is a modal.

What they are for

The book groups their meanings as necessity, possibility, permission and ability. Must insists. May and might allow for a chance. May, could and can ask or grant permission. Can also reports what somebody is able to do.

The shades in between

In practice they carry more than four things. You should rest is advice. You ought to apologise is moral obligation, which is advice with a conscience attached. Shall we walk offers a suggestion. Would you pass the salt is a polite request. These are not extra modals; they are what the four meanings look like in a real sentence.

The function is not in the word

Here is the part most worth taking away. Can does not mean ability. In I can swim it carries ability. In can I borrow your pen it asks permission. Nothing about the word changed between those two sentences. What changed was the sentence around it.

Must, twice over

The same thing happens with must. You must stop at the gate is necessity, close to an order. That must be her brother is something else entirely: a deduction, a guess the speaker is confident about. One word, two jobs, and only the sentence tells you which.

So read the sentence

Which means the method for these questions is not to memorise a modal and its label. It is to read the whole sentence and ask what it is doing. Is somebody being allowed, advised, told, or guessed about? The answer names the function.

The traffic runs both ways

One modal can carry several functions, and one function can be carried by several modals. May I, could I and can I all ask permission. They differ in formality rather than in meaning, with may the most formal and can the most ordinary.

Politeness, not the past

Could you pass the salt is not a question about yesterday. In a request, could and would are the polite forms of can and will. The past form has turned into distance rather than time, and that small distance is exactly what stops the sentence sounding like a demand.

How strong is it?

There is an order of strength: might, may, could, should, must. It might rain is a guess. It must be raining is near certainty. You should apologise advises; you must apologise insists. Picking the wrong one turns advice into an order, which is a mistake worth avoiding on purpose.

Back to the extract

Now look again at the Helen Keller passage, and count the times she writes should. She should divide the period. She should want to see her friends. She should arise with the dawn. She should behold the panorama. It is everywhere, and it is not a stylistic habit.

The grammar of something imagined

None of those days ever happened. She is not remembering a visit to a museum; she is supposing one. English cannot report an imagined day in the plain past, because the plain past claims that it happened. So every sentence about those three days needs a modal to mark it as supposed.

Why that matters for reading

This is grammar telling you how to read. A passage full of should is a passage of imagining, and knowing that keeps you from reading the museums and the street corner as memories. The repetition most readers skip over is the signal that the whole middle of the essay is a wish.

Scenario:

The library puts up a new notice. It reads: readers must not eat in the reading room, must return books by the date stamped inside, and must keep their voices down. Within a week two things have happened. Younger pupils have started avoiding the library, and three of them have told their teacher that the librarian is angry with them, although she has not spoken to any of them. The librarian is baffled. Every rule on her notice is one the library has always had, and she has not changed a single one of them.

Analysis:

The rules are unchanged and the notice is new, so the difference is in the wording, and specifically in one word used three times. Must is the strongest modal there is: it insists, and it leaves no room for the reader to agree or decline. A notice built entirely from must therefore reads as somebody telling you off in advance, which is exactly what the pupils reported feeling without being able to name. The fix does not require softening any rule. Please do not eat in the reading room keeps the prohibition and drops the insistence. Books should be returned by the date stamped inside is advice with the same practical force. We ask readers to keep their voices down is a request. Note what this shows about modals in general: the choice between them is a choice of relationship, not of information. All four versions forbid eating. Only one of them accuses.

Activity:

Find a real notice at school or at home that uses must. Rewrite it three times, with should, with please and with a request, and show all four to someone who has not seen them. Ask which one they would obey most willingly, and which they would resent.

Title:

One sentence, five modals

Safety:

None needed.

What You Notice:

Your partner will almost always get must and might right and will hesitate between should and would. That is not carelessness. Those two overlap genuinely in a request, and tone of voice does some of the work that the word cannot — which is the same point the first topic of this unit makes about a line read in different voices.

Modals are the only English verbs that never add an s for he, she or it. We say she can swim, not she cans swim, which is why they are easy to spot once you look.

Ought is the odd one out: it is the only modal that keeps to before the main verb. You ought to apologise, but you should apologise.

Shall has nearly vanished from everyday English except in questions like shall we go, where it offers a suggestion rather than predicting anything.

The four meanings the book groups modals under — N-P-P-A — Necessity, Possibility, Permission, Ability — Necessity is must. Possibility is may or might. Permission is may, could or can. Ability is can. Advice, obligation and politeness are the shades these four come in.

How strong is the modal? — might, may, could, should, must — Weakest to strongest. It might rain is a guess; it must rain is nearly a certainty. You should apologise advises; you must apologise insists. The order is worth knowing because choosing wrongly makes advice sound like an order.

Why her description is better than ours

A writer who cannot see produces sharper description than most people who can. That is worth stopping over. It is not a trick of talent. It is a choice she makes in almost every sentence, and it can be copied.

Verdicts

Here is the ordinary way to describe a place. The garden was lovely. The food was delicious. The temple was beautiful. Each of these reports a conclusion. The reader is told what you decided and is given nothing to decide for themselves.

Sensations

Now the other way. The bark was rough and shaggy under my hand. That reports what reached her, and the reader feels it before drawing any conclusion. She does not tell us the tree was pleasant. She tells us what the tree was like and lets pleasant arrive on its own.

The test

Ask whether a hand or a camera could have recorded it. Rough bark could be felt. A lovely garden could not be recorded by anything, because loveliness is not out there in the garden; it is your verdict about it. Verdicts are invisible. Sensations are not.

The five columns

Sensory words sort by the sense they belong to. The extract gives one for each: panorama for sight, music for hearing, perfume for smell, relish for taste, and rough for touch. Those five are the book’s starting points for the table.

Where the columns leak

The sorting is never quite clean. Sweet is a taste, and also a sound, and also a smell. Sharp is a taste, a noise and an edge. Warm describes a temperature, a colour and a voice. So the sentence has to decide which sense is meant, and a word can honestly appear in two columns.

More from the passage

The extract is full of them once you look. Shaggy and quiver belong to touch. Strains, meaning tunes, belongs to hearing. Morsel, a small piece of food, belongs to taste. Tactile is the adjective for touch itself. Glimpse is a kind of seeing, and a brief one.

Tone

Tone is the writer’s attitude to what she is describing, and you read it off her word choice. In the opening paragraphs she passes her hands lovingly over bark, feels a delicate shape, and calls a bird’s song a happy quiver. The tone those words produce is admiring.

Naming the near miss

It is not nostalgic, because nothing is being missed or looked back on. It is not proud, because she claims no credit for any of it. Saying which tone it is NOT is how you show you chose rather than guessed, and it is usually what earns the mark.

Words that will not go together

Thrilling fits an experience, a tale, an adventure. Thrilling knowledge is wrong. Nothing in it is ungrammatical and the meaning is guessable, but no English speaker would write it. This fit between particular words is called collocation.

How collocation is learnt

Not by rule. There is no principle that permits thrilling adventure and forbids thrilling knowledge; there is only the company the word keeps. Which means you acquire it by reading and noticing, and it is the main reason wide reading improves writing more reliably than instruction does.

The sleeping earth

She writes of the sun waking the sleeping earth. Sleeping is something living creatures do, so the earth has been given a human quality, and the device is personification. It also sets up the rest of the sentence: if the earth was asleep, dawn becomes a waking.

Listening: the conversation

The listening task is a mother and son talking about a classmate who reads Braille. It moves from Braille to the Digital India initiative, and the boy assumes that means learning to use computers. His mother corrects him, and the correction is the point of the exercise.

Tools, and mindset

She explains that it means digital services built so that everyone can use them, including screen readers that speak the text on a screen aloud. Her last point is the one worth keeping: inclusion needs the right mindset as well as the right tools.

Speaking for a minute

When you speak about the sense you value most, use notes and not a script. Reading aloud costs you eye contact, flattens your pace and makes every listener aware they are being read to. Glance down, then look up and say it.

Writing the paragraph

Open with something that catches attention rather than with the name of the place. Then build the middle out of specific details for the five senses, and remember the test: what could a hand or a camera have recorded? Save your verdict, if you want one at all, for the end.

Scenario:

Arun writes a travel piece about a hill station for the school magazine. His draft says the views were breathtaking, the weather was pleasant, the market was colourful and the food was delicious. The editor reads it and asks him a question he cannot answer: what did you eat? Arun realises he remembers the answer perfectly. It was a plate of hot momos, the steam fogging his glasses, the first one too hot to bite and the chilli sauce sharp enough to make his eyes water. None of that is in his draft. His four adjectives took up less space and told the reader nothing.

Analysis:

Arun has not written badly out of carelessness. He has done the natural thing, which is to report his conclusions. Breathtaking, pleasant, colourful and delicious are four verdicts, and a verdict is the end of a thought rather than the material for one. The reader cannot picture a verdict and cannot disagree with it either, so there is nothing for them to do. His momos paragraph works for the opposite reason. Steam fogging his glasses is something a camera could have caught. Too hot to bite is something a mouth recorded. Chilli sharp enough to sting the eyes is a sensation with a consequence attached. Notice that he never says the momos were delicious, and that the reader concludes it anyway — which is the whole mechanism. The conclusion the reader reaches themselves is worth more than the one they are handed, and it is also the only one they will remember.

Activity:

Take a paragraph you have already written about a place and underline every verdict in it. Replace each one with a sensation that could have produced it, then read both versions to someone who was not there and ask which one they can see.

Title:

Describe a room you cannot see

Safety:

Your partner must guide you by the arm, keep you clear of steps, furniture and anything hot or sharp, and stay with you the whole time.

What You Notice:

Almost nobody produces verdicts while blindfolded. With nothing to summarise you are forced to report what arrives, and that is the same position Helen Keller writes from permanently. The lesson is not that sight is a handicap to description, but that having a quick verdict available makes it very easy to stop early.

A screen reader turns the text on a screen into speech, so a person who cannot see can use a computer or phone independently. Many users run them far faster than ordinary speaking speed.

Braille uses raised dots in a cell of six positions. Sixty-three combinations are possible, which is enough for the letters, numbers and punctuation of a whole language.

Panorama was invented in the 1790s for a painting wrapped around a circular room, so a visitor at the centre saw an entire landscape at once.

The five senses and the extract’s word for each — Panorama, Music, Perfume, Relish, Rough — Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, in that order. All five come from the extract itself, which is why the book starts its table with them.

Sensation or verdict? — Could a camera or a hand record it? — Rough bark could be felt by a hand. A lovely garden could not be recorded by anything, because loveliness is your conclusion rather than something out there.