READING COMPREHENSION: POEM 1

  Read the following poem and answer the questions that follows:

Animal Liberation Human Liberation 

By Kenneth Cassar 

The parallel is obvious for those with eyes to see 

For all feel the same suffering, all the same misery 

The segregation of privileged from those considered tools 

The state miseducation that makes all citizens fools 

Taught that dogs and cats should be treated well as pets 

While in the cold laboratories same animals meet their deaths With painful experimentation for more products to consume A cheap way to make profits sends animals to their doom 

Consider factory farms with the animals crammed inside 

With no access to daylight, from human eyes they hide 

No real animal welfare, this would increase the costs 

They’re treated as a commodity, as just profit or loss 

Consider circus animals or animals in the zoo 

Slaves for your entertainment, suffer just to please you 

In solitude they stay in their prison cage for months 

With violence they are trained to perform unnatural stunts 

Consider the tradition of killing just for fun 

Where birds are shot out of the sky for the pleasure of one 

A dead corpse in a showcase for one to see and boast 

No matter pointless killing is murder to the most 

Violence to animals leads to violence to human beings 

A culture of death does not have eyes for seeing 

An all inclusive world makes it better for every being

Animal liberation leads to human freeing 

Q1

1. What are the atrocities from which animals need to be liberated from 2. Explain the plight of animals in the circus and the zoo. 

3. In what ways are animals are treated as commodities? 

4. What parallel is drawn by the poet between animal liberation and human liberation ? 

5. Explain the phrase – ‘send animals to their doom’ 

6 How are animals trained to perform natural stunts?

 

Q 2. Which word in the poem means the same as 

(a)to separate

(b)the state of being alone