Her brothers came plodding back through the dust. Behind them the father slouched morosely. He had his hands deep in his pockets, and his face was lined with a frown deeply embedded with dust.
“We’ll be here for hours,” he informed his wife through the car window. “A rickshaw driver has gone off to the nearest thana to find a policeman who can put sense into that damn truck driver’s thick head.” Despondently he threw himself into the driver’s seat and sprawled there. “Must be a hundred and twenty degrees,” he sighed.
Choose ONE of the underlined words in the above passage.
1. What sort of associations do we have with the word? What ideas or pictures does it bring to mind?
2. What mood is created by the use of that word in the passage?
1. The word "plodding" suggests a slow, laborious, and weary movement. It brings to mind the image of the brothers returning tiredly and perhaps reluctantly after dealing with a difficult situation. It conveys a sense of exhaustion and dragging on.
2. The word "plodding" creates a mood of sluggishness, weariness, and frustration in the passage. It conveys the sense of the brothers and the father coming back reluctantly and wearily, adding to the overall tense and exasperated atmosphere of the situation.