TOPIC 2 OF 5
The Address
🎓 Class 11
English
CBSE
Theory
Ch 2 — The Address
⏱ ~35 min
🌐 Language: [gtranslate]
📖 English Passage Assessment
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This CBSE English Passage Assessment will be based on: The Address
Assessment Format:
• 2 Short Answer Questions (2 marks each) = 4 marks
• 2 Fill in the Blanks Questions (1 mark each) = 2 marks
• 2 Short Answer Questions (1 mark each) = 2 marks
• 2 Multiple Choice Questions (1 mark each) = 2 marks
Total: 8 Questions, 10 Marks
📖 English Grammar Assessment
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This CBSE English Grammar Assessment will be based on: The Address
Assessment Format:
• 10 Randomized Grammar Questions (1 mark each)
• Question Types: Fill in the Blanks, MCQs, Error Identification, Reported Speech, Sentence Completion
Total: 10 Questions, 10 Marks
📖 English Vocabulary Assessment
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This English Vocabulary assessment will be based on: The Address
Targeting Vocabulary & Usage with Intermediate difficulty.
Before You Read — Anticipation Guide
Marga Minco's story is a quiet, devastating exploration of memory, loss, and the choice to move on. Engage with these questions before reading.
1. If you returned to a beloved home after years of forced absence and found your family's possessions in a stranger's house, how do you think you would feel? Would you want them back?
The narrator in this story discovers that her mother's possessions — silver, china, paintings, a woollen tablecloth — have been moved to Mrs Dorling's house. But when she finally sees them in their new setting, they feel wrong, oppressive, alienated from meaning. The story asks a deeper question than "do you want them back?" — it asks whether objects carry meaning independently of their context, and what happens to memory when the context that gave it life is gone.
2. Notice these expressions and infer their meaning before reading: "held the door a chink," "fleetingly," "reprovingly," "severed from them," "shreds of black-out paper."
Held the door a chink: opened the door only a tiny crack — guarded, unwilling to let anyone in. Fleetingly: very briefly, for only a fleeting instant — suggesting the narrator's one prior sighting of Mrs Dorling was too brief for confident recognition. Reprovingly: in a manner that expresses disapproval or gentle rebuke. Severed from them: cut off from the objects — disconnected, separated with finality. Shreds of black-out paper: torn remnants of the wartime blackout curtains — physical evidence of the War's presence in everyday domestic life.
3. The story is set in post-War Holland and draws on the experience of Jewish survivors. What kinds of losses — beyond the material — might a survivor returning to their city face?
Material losses are the most visible — homes, furniture, silverware, the physical evidence of a life. But the deeper losses are invisible: the loss of the people who gave those objects their meaning; the loss of the routines and relationships within which objects were used; the loss of a self that existed in relation to those people and things. The narrator's most devastating realisation is not that the objects are gone but that the context that made them meaningful — her mother, their shared life — is irretrievably lost. The objects remain; the life that animated them does not.
4. Contextual Inference: The story opens with: "'Do you still know me?' I asked." What does this opening question immediately suggest about the narrator's situation and emotional state?
The opening question is precisely calibrated. "Do you still know me?" suggests the narrator expects not to be recognised — she is returning from an absence so long and so disrupting that even being known is uncertain. The word "still" implies a prior relationship; the word "know" encompasses both recognition and acknowledgement. Beginning with a question rather than a statement immediately establishes the narrator's tentative, vulnerable position in this post-War world — she is testing whether she still exists in anyone's memory.
About the Author
Notice These Expressions
held the door a chink
Opened the door only the narrowest crack — the word chink here means a very small gap or opening. The phrase immediately signals Mrs Dorling's wariness and unwillingness to engage.
"She had opened the door a chink. I came closer and stood on the step."
fleetingly
For only a very brief moment; in passing. From fleet (swift, transient). The narrator saw Mrs Dorling only once and very briefly — which explains her difficulty recognising her.
"I had seen her only once, fleetingly, and that was years ago."
reprovingly
In a manner that expresses mild disapproval or gentle rebuke. From reprove — to express disappointment at someone's conduct. The mother's look silences the narrator's scepticism about Mrs Dorling.
"My mother seemed to notice I was not entirely convinced. She looked at me reprovingly."
severed from them
Cut off from the objects entirely; separated with finality. Sever implies a clean, decisive break — the narrator realises the objects have been permanently detached from the life that gave them meaning.
"Objects linked in your memory with familiar life instantly lose their value when, severed from them, you see them in strange surroundings."
shreds of black-out paper
Torn remnants of the heavy paper used during the War to cover windows so that no light escaped to guide enemy bombers. Their continued presence in the narrator's rented room makes the War's aftermath physically visible.
"A small rented room where the shreds of black-out paper still hung along the windows."
I thought that no one had come back
Mrs Dorling's phrase — almost whispered — is the story's most chilling line. It reveals that the return of any survivor was unexpected; it implies the scale of death in the community that once lived here.
"'Have you come back?' said the woman. 'I thought that no one had come back.'"
The Story — Close Reading
Reading Note All text below is a pedagogical paraphrase of Marga Minco's story. The non-linear structure — present visit, wartime memory, second visit, resolution — is preserved. Clickable keywords open vocabulary modals. Literary device tags appear inline.
¶1
The story opens on a doorstep. The narrator asks: "Do you still know me?" The woman who has opened the door — barely a crack — stares without recognition. The narrator steps closer, identifies herself as the daughter of Mrs S. The woman holds the door as though guarding against entry, her face giving nothing away. Imagery
¶2
Perhaps, the narrator thinks, she has the wrong house — she had seen this woman only once, fleetingly, years before. Then: the woman is wearing her mother's green knitted cardigan. The wooden buttons have gone pale from repeated washing. The woman notices the narrator's gaze and half-conceals herself behind the door. But it is enough. The narrator knows she has the right address. Symbolism
¶3
The woman — Mrs Dorling — says she cannot help, that it is inconvenient, that the narrator should come another time. She closes the door carefully, as though afraid to disturb whoever is inside. The narrator stands on the step. Through the curtain of the bay window, someone moves and stares. Mrs Dorling, she imagines, would tell them: "It was nothing." Irony
¶4
Walking back toward the station, the narrator slips into memory: the wartime past. She had been home briefly during the first half of the War and had immediately sensed that something about the rooms had changed. Things were missing. Her mother told her about Mrs Dorling — an old acquaintance who had suddenly reappeared and begun visiting regularly, each time taking something away: the table silver, the antique plates, the heavy vases, all transported in suitcases and bags. Symbolism
¶5
The mother described Mrs Dorling's generosity with genuine gratitude: she was saving the valuables, taking the risk of carrying them through a city under occupation. The narrator was not entirely convinced, but her mother's reproving look silenced her. They never spoke of it again.
¶6
Back in the present — on the train back from that first failed visit — the narrator recalls the morning she first saw Mrs Dorling. She had come downstairs to find her mother seeing a woman out: a woman with a broad back, wearing a brown coat and a shapeless hat, struggling with a heavy suitcase. Her mother had said: "She lives in Marconi Street. Number 46. Remember that." The narrator had remembered.
¶7
But she had not gone immediately after Liberation. Initially she felt no desire to confront the stored objects — she was afraid of them. Afraid of being faced with things that had belonged to a connection that no longer existed; things waiting patiently in boxes and cupboards for people who would never return to reclaim them.
¶8
Gradually, life normalised. Bread grew lighter in colour. There was a bed one could sleep in without fear. One day the narrator found herself curious — wanting to see the objects, to touch them, to remember through them. She decided to try a second visit.
¶9
On the second visit, Mrs Dorling was out on an errand. Her daughter — about fifteen, with a broad back, just like her mother — opened the door and invited the narrator inside. In the entrance passage, an old iron Hanukkah candle-holder hung beside a mirror. They never used it, the narrator recalls — it was too cumbersome. Symbolism
¶10
The girl led her into the living room. The narrator stopped, horrified. She was in a room she both knew and did not know — surrounded by objects she had wanted to see but which now oppressed her. It was the wrong atmosphere, the tasteless arrangement, the muggy smell, the ugly furniture surrounding her mother's beautiful things — she could barely look. Imagery
¶11
She sat and stared at the woollen tablecloth. Rubbed it. Her fingers grew warm. She traced the pattern along the edge, looking for a burn mark that had never been repaired. It was there. Symbolism The burn mark — a small, private imperfection known only to her family — confirmed the cloth's identity more surely than any label could. Memory lived not in the beautiful objects but in the flawed ones.
¶12
The girl made tea, chattering cheerfully. She pointed out "antique" things with pride. She used the special plates for ordinary meals — she had wanted to so much, and it wasn't anything special. Her casual, unknowing possession of objects weighted with someone else's grief is quietly devastating. Irony
¶13
The narrator found herself speaking about her own history with the objects — about the silver cutlery, about not knowing it was silver, about her mother asking her to polish it one afternoon years ago. She heard her own voice as unnatural, strange — "as though each sound was different in this room." Imagery
¶14
When the girl moved toward the sideboard drawer — about to open it and show the narrator the cutlery — the narrator stood abruptly, said she had to catch her train, and left. She walked down the passage hearing the jingling of spoons and forks behind her. Symbolism
¶15
At the corner she looked up at the name-plate: Marconi Street, Number 46. The address was correct. But she no longer wished to remember it. She resolved to forget it — because objects linked in memory with a lost life instantly lose their meaning when severed from that life and seen in unfamiliar surroundings. And what would she have done with them in her small rented room, with its narrow table drawer and its shreds of black-out paper still hanging on the windows? Imagery
¶16
"I resolved to forget the address. Of all the things I had to forget, that would be the easiest." Irony The story ends on this line — an assertion of resolution that is also an acknowledgement of the vastness of what must be forgotten. The address is the smallest of the losses. The largest cannot be named.
Narrative Structure — The Address
The story moves between two timeframes — wartime past and post-War present — in a non-linear structure. The arc below traces the emotional journey of the narrator.
Theme Web — The Address
Five interlocking themes radiate from the central tension between memory and the need to move on.
Extract-Based Questions (CBQ Format)
Extract I
The Return of the Survivor
"'Have you come back?' said the woman. 'I thought that no one had come back.' [...] The woman let go of the door and stepped to the side. She was wearing my mother's green knitted cardigan. The wooden buttons were rather pale from washing. She saw that I was looking at the cardigan and half hid herself again behind the door. But I knew now that I was right."
Q1. What does Mrs Dorling's line "I thought that no one had come back" reveal about the wider historical context of the story? (2 marks)
L4 Analyse
30–40 words
Model Answer: The line is the story's most chilling moment of historical revelation. Mrs Dorling expected no one to return — because she knew what had happened to the Jewish community the narrator belonged to. The words expose her prior knowledge, her complicity, and the scale of the Holocaust, all without the story ever naming it directly. The narrator's survival is presented as an exception, which makes the extent of the loss devastatingly clear.
Q2. Analyse the symbolism of the mother's green knitted cardigan in this passage. What does it reveal about Mrs Dorling's character and the nature of the narrator's loss? (3 marks)
L4 Analyse
40–60 words
Model Answer: The cardigan functions as a condensed symbol of the entire story's central tension. It is an intimate, personal garment — worn against the body — that now belongs to another woman entirely. Its "pale wooden buttons" show it has been washed many times, absorbed into Mrs Dorling's domestic routine. The half-concealment behind the door — Mrs Dorling covering herself when she notices the narrator's gaze — is a visual enactment of guilt. For the narrator, it is both confirmation and wound: her mother's life, now worn by a stranger.
Q3. "The Address" is a story about the relationship between objects and identity. Evaluate this statement with close reference to the narrator's two visits to Marconi Street and what she discovers about her own emotional state. (5 marks)
L5 Evaluate
120–150 words
Model Answer: The story argues that objects do not carry meaning independently — they carry meaning only in relation to the people, routines, and emotional contexts that surrounded them. The narrator goes to Marconi Street hoping that the objects will function as a bridge to her lost past — a way of touching, and therefore preserving, her mother and their shared life. What she discovers on the second visit is the opposite: the objects, placed in an alien domestic setting among ugly furniture and unfamiliar smells, have been evacuated of precisely the meaning she came to reclaim. They are still beautiful — the china, the silver, the tablecloth — but they are no longer hers in any emotionally meaningful sense. The burn mark on the tablecloth is the story's most subtle insight: the narrator is drawn not to the beautiful objects but to this small, private imperfection, which memory alone can authenticate. It is the mark of the family's ordinary life — and it is the only thing in the room that still belongs to the past. The resolution — "I resolved to forget the address" — is not a defeat but a mature recognition: identity cannot be recovered through possessions when the people who animated them are gone.
Q4. Write a letter from the narrator to her mother, written the evening after the second visit to Marconi Street. (5 marks — Creative)
L6 Create
120–150 words
Model Answer — Sample Letter:
Dear Mother,
I went back today. I found them — the tablecloth, the silver, the china plates that used to hang on the wall. They were all there, exactly where Mrs Dorling had put them, surrounded by things that had nothing to do with you or with us. I sat down on a strange chair and put my hands on our tablecloth and searched for the burn mark until I found it. I cried then, but quietly, so the girl would not notice.
I am not going back. Not because the things are lost — they were already lost the moment you were no longer there to use them. But because going back hurts in a way that coming forward does not. I am keeping the burn mark. I am keeping your cardigan. I am keeping everything that fits inside a memory. The rest, I am leaving at Number 46.
Your daughter
Dear Mother,
I went back today. I found them — the tablecloth, the silver, the china plates that used to hang on the wall. They were all there, exactly where Mrs Dorling had put them, surrounded by things that had nothing to do with you or with us. I sat down on a strange chair and put my hands on our tablecloth and searched for the burn mark until I found it. I cried then, but quietly, so the girl would not notice.
I am not going back. Not because the things are lost — they were already lost the moment you were no longer there to use them. But because going back hurts in a way that coming forward does not. I am keeping the burn mark. I am keeping your cardigan. I am keeping everything that fits inside a memory. The rest, I am leaving at Number 46.
Your daughter
Think About It — Comprehension Questions
Question 1
"Have you come back?" said the woman. "I thought that no one had come back." Does this statement give some clue about the story? If yes, what is it?
4 marks | Inferential
Model Answer: Mrs Dorling's statement is the story's most important single line of clue. It tells us several things simultaneously. First, that the narrator belongs to a community that was targeted for destruction — almost no one survived to return. Second, that Mrs Dorling was fully aware of this when she was removing the belongings: she expected never to be asked to account for them. Third, that the narrator's very survival is exceptional — which makes her quest for the objects both poignant and complicated. The line functions as the story's historical context delivered in a single sentence of seven words, without the story ever naming the Holocaust explicitly. Minco's restraint here is a stylistic choice: naming the event would have made it abstract; leaving it as an implication makes it personal and devastating.
Question 2
The story is divided into pre-War and post-War times. What hardships do you think the narrator underwent during these times?
4 marks | Inferential
Model Answer: During the War, the narrator's hardships would have been those common to Jewish people under Nazi occupation in the Netherlands: the systematic removal of rights, the threat of arrest and deportation, the necessity of going into hiding. The story strongly implies that the narrator's mother — and likely other family members — did not survive. The narrator herself survived, but the cost is evident: she returns to a city full of memories she cannot bear to revisit, living in a small rented room with black-out paper still on the windows, possessing almost nothing. In the post-War period, the hardship is psychological — the "normalisation" of survival while carrying the knowledge of what was lost. Her initial inability to visit Marconi Street ("afraid of being confronted with things that had belonged to a connection that no longer existed") is a precise description of grief deferred and trauma managed through avoidance.
Question 3
Why did the narrator of the story want to forget the address?
4 marks | Evaluative
Model Answer: The narrator resolves to forget the address for a reason she articulates precisely and which the story has carefully prepared the reader to understand: "Objects linked in your memory with the familiar life of former times instantly lose their value when, severed from them, you see them again in strange surroundings." The objects at Number 46 are no longer hers — they have been absorbed into a different domestic life, decontextualised, emptied of the specific emotional meaning they once held. Reclaiming them would not restore what is lost; it would only install reminders of loss in a space too small to contain them. Forgetting the address is an act not of passivity but of self-protective wisdom: she is choosing the future over an impossible attempt to recover a past that no longer exists in any retrievable form.
Question 4
"The Address" is a story of human predicament that follows war. Comment. (5 marks)
5 marks | 120–150 words
Model Answer: "The Address" explores with extraordinary economy the particular predicament of survivors: how does one live after catastrophic loss? The story presents this not as a political or historical question but as a profoundly personal one — felt through the texture of a tablecloth, the weight of a cardigan, the sound of spoons jingling in a drawer. The narrator's predicament is that she cannot recover her past through objects, because the objects have lost their emotional context along with the people who animated them. Yet she also cannot simply forget — memory is the only form in which her mother and their shared life continue to exist. Minco does not resolve this tension sentimentally. The narrator chooses to let go — of the address, of the possessions — not because she has healed but because she has understood. The story argues that survival requires a willingness to distinguish between what can be held and what must be released, and that this distinction is perhaps the most painful knowledge a human being can acquire.
Vocabulary Engine
Class 11 focus — etymology, register, and precise contextual meaning. All words from the story.
fleetingly
adverb
For only a very brief moment; in passing. From fleet (swift, transient). Suggests a glimpse so brief that certainty of recognition is impossible — hence the narrator's initial doubt.
"I had seen her only once, fleetingly, and that was years ago."
Collocations: glimpsed fleetingly, fleetingly aware, a fleeting impression
reprovingly
adverb
In a manner expressing gentle disapproval or mild rebuke. From reprove — to tell someone that their behaviour is wrong. A look rather than a word; the mother's silent communication of trust.
"My mother looked at me reprovingly and after that we spoke no more about it."
Collocations: looked reprovingly, a reproving glance, a reproving tone
musty
adjective
Having a stale, damp, or mouldy smell associated with enclosed spaces or old things. From Middle English — suggests neglect, disuse, or the accumulation of time. Often signals psychological as well as physical staleness.
"A musty smell emerged" from the passage behind Mrs Dorling.
Collocations: musty smell, musty old books, musty air, damp and musty
oppressed
verb (past tense) / adjective
Weighed down heavily; caused to feel mentally or emotionally burdened. From Latin opprimere (to press down). In this context: the familiar objects, misplaced, created a sense of suffocating wrongness.
"Things I did want to see again but which oppressed me in the strange atmosphere."
Collocations: felt oppressed, an oppressive atmosphere, oppressive silence
cumbersome
adjective
Large, heavy, and awkward to carry or use. From Middle English — literally "that which encumbers." Applied to the Hanukkah candlestick: impractical and therefore never used. Now it sits in Mrs Dorling's passage, stripped of its religious context.
"We never used it because it was much more cumbersome than a single candlestick."
Collocations: cumbersome process, cumbersome equipment, cumbersome to carry
severed
adjective / verb (past participle)
Cut off; separated with finality. From Old French sevrer (to separate). Suggests a clean, irreversible break — the objects are not merely moved but permanently disconnected from the life that gave them meaning.
"Objects...instantly lose their value when, severed from them, you see them in strange surroundings."
Collocations: severed ties, severed connection, severed from the past
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "The Address" about in Class 11 Snapshots?
"The Address" by Marga Minco is a poignant post-World War II story about a Dutch Jewish girl who returns to find her mother's belongings after the war. She visits Mrs Dorling, a woman her mother had entrusted with their possessions during the Nazi occupation. The narrator finds the objects but feels no emotional connection to them in their new setting, ultimately deciding to let go of the past rather than reclaim the items.
Why does the narrator decide not to reclaim her mother's belongings in "The Address"?
The narrator realises that the familiar objects now look strange and out of place in Mrs Dorling's home. Reclaiming them would mean confronting painful memories of her mother and the life lost to the war. She understands that the address — and the possessions — belong to a past she can no longer return to. Letting go becomes an act of healing and acceptance rather than of defeat.
Who is Mrs Dorling and what is her role in "The Address"?
Mrs Dorling is a woman who had been an acquaintance of the narrator's mother. During the Nazi occupation, the mother trusted her with their household possessions for safekeeping. However, Mrs Dorling is portrayed as cold and unwelcoming when the narrator visits after the war — suggesting she has little intention of returning the items and has absorbed them into her own life, making her morally ambiguous in the story.
What themes are explored in "The Address" by Marga Minco?
The story explores: the trauma of war and loss — the narrator has lost her mother and her former life; memory and identity — objects that once held meaning feel alien; letting go and moving on — the narrator chooses not to revisit the past; human greed and betrayal of trust through Mrs Dorling's attitude; and the psychological cost of displacement on Holocaust survivors.
What is the significance of the title "The Address" in the story?
The title refers literally to the address Mrs Dorling's daughter gives the narrator, which her mother had mentioned — Number 46, Marconi Street. Symbolically, the address represents the narrator's attempt to reconnect with her past and her lost mother. By deciding not to return to the address, she symbolically accepts that the past cannot be recovered, making the title a metaphor for memory, loss, and the impossibility of going back.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Address about in NCERT English?
Read The Address by Marga Minco from NCERT Class 11 Snapshots with comprehension answers.
What vocabulary is important in The Address?
Key vocabulary words from The Address are highlighted in the lesson with contextual meanings, usage examples, and interesting facts. Click any highlighted word to see its full definition.
What literary devices are used in The Address?
The Address uses various literary devices including imagery, symbolism, and figurative language that are identified with coloured tags throughout the text for easy recognition.
What exercises are included for The Address?
Exercises include extract-based comprehension questions in CBSE board exam format, grammar workshops connected to the text, vocabulary activities, and creative writing tasks.
How does The Address connect to the unit theme?
The Address is part of a thematic unit that explores related ideas through prose, poetry, and non-fiction. Each text in the unit reinforces the central theme from a different perspective.
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