PACKING - JEROME K. JEROME
SUMMARY
Jerome, Harris and George are three friends who are about to set out on a journey. The story begins with the important task of packing stuff for this journey. Jerome, the narrator, overestimates his packing skills and tells his friends to let him handle it all by himself.
However, his real intention is to make George and Harris do the packing under his supervision and guidance. But his friends take his advice seriously and to his great shock, stretch themselves comfortably, leaving him with all the running around.
Though irritated with their attitude, Jerome straight away gets busy with packing. After a long-drawn packing session, he finally straps up the bag.Both his friends watch him quietly and when he is done with packing, Harris declares that the shoes have been left unpacked. The bag has to be reopened again to accommodate the shoes. An irritated Jerome is just done with packing the shoes when he is reminded of his toothbrush.
Unsure about having packed his toothbrush, Jerome has to empty the bag and hunt through all its contents to locate the brush. After a lot of efforts, he finds the brush in one of the boots! Anyhow the bag is packed again.
The next query comes from George regarding the soap. Jerome is so irritated by this time that he does not even bother about this query and straps up the bag. But, the very next moment he has to unpack it again as he had packed in his spectacles by mistake. Eventually, it is past ten when the packing is finally done. Keeping in mind the amount of time taken by Jerome to pack the bag, George and Harris decide to pack the hampers themselves and show Jerome the real art of packing.
However, they are equally clumsy and break a cup at the very outset. This is followed by squashing a tomato, treading on the butter and smashing the pies by putting heavy things on them. Salt flies all over while they are packing.
After peeling the butter off George’s slipper, they try unsuccessfully to squeeze it into the kettle. They finally scrape it and put it down on the chair. Harris sits on it and the butter gets stuck to his back. Then both these men go about searching for the butter all over the room.
Later, George locates it behind Harris’s back and it is packed in the teapot. Montmorency, their pet dog, contributes his bit to this exercise of packing by sitting on things, climbing into the jam and crushing lemons as though they were rats.
Finally, the packing is done by 12.50 at night. This is followed by a discussion on the ‘wake up’ time and George is so tired that he sleeps off even before the time is decided upon.
Jerome and Harris decide that 6.30 in morning would be the right time to get up and then they too go off to sleep.
MESSAGE
The chapter humorously describes the do’s and don’ts of packing. Packing should not be treated as a frivolous activity but as a serious task that involves concentration and deftness. Another message the account gives is that if we have a pet, it should be well-trained.
I. Read the extracts given below and answer the questions that follow.
A . However, I did not say anything, but started the packing. It seemed a longer job than I had thought it was going to be…
i. Whom does ‘I’ stand for?
ii. Why didn’t ‘I’ say anything?
iii. How did the job not match his expectation?
B. Harris said that we should be wanting to start in less than twelve hours’ time and thought that he and George had better do the rest; and I agreed and sat down, and they had to go.
i. What was ‘the rest’ that Harris and George offered to do?
ii. Why did Harris and George offer to do ‘the rest’?
iii. Why did Harris particularly mention that they had less than twelve hours’ time to start?
II. Answer the following questions in 30-40 words.
i. What kind of a man was the person with whom the author once lived?
ii. Do you think the author packed better than George and Harris? Give reasons for your answer
iii. What did they decide to do after the packing was done?
iv. How was Jerome caught in his own words in the lesson, ‘Packing’?
III. Answer the following question in 120-150 words.
i. Who was Montmorency? How did he contribute to the packing?
2. Describe three incidents which made ‘packing’ a humorous story, in order of sequence.
Please click on below link to download CBSE Class 9 English Packing by Jerome Worksheet
