NCERT Solutions for Class 12 English Vistas Chapter 4 “The Enemy” provide detailed, precise, and easy-to-understand answers to all textbook questions. This complete study guide covers Read and Find Out and Reading with Insight. Be sure to read The Enemy Summary to grasp Pearl S. Buck’s powerful exploration of medical ethics, wartime prejudice, and human compassion more effectively!
The Enemy Class 12 Question Answers
Read and find out Questions
Q.1. Who was Dr Sadao? Where was his house? (p. 24)
Ans. Dr Sadao Hoki was a famous Japanese surgeon and scientist. He had been educated in America and was perfecting a discovery that would make wounds entirely clean. His house was a low, square stone house built on rocks on the Japanese coast, above a narrow beach lined with bent pines. It was the spot where he had played as a boy.
Q.2. Will Dr Sadao be arrested on the charge of harbouring an enemy? (p. 27)
Ans. It seemed likely, since Sadao himself said, “If we sheltered a white man in our house we should be arrested.” But he was not arrested. The old General, who depended on him for an operation, protected him. Sadao also helped the American escape, and the General later forgot his promise to have the prisoner killed, so the matter never came out.
Q.3. Will Hana help the wounded man and wash him herself? (p. 31)
Ans. Yes. When the servant Yumi refused to wash the white man, Hana was angered by her stubbornness and washed his face and upper body herself. Later she also helped Sadao in the operation by giving the anaesthetic, and she fed the American gently with a porcelain spoon.
Q.4. What will Dr Sadao and his wife do with the man? (p. 35)
Ans. They kept him in the house and nursed him back to health. Sadao first thought of giving him to the police, but he could not do it. When the servants left and the danger grew, Sadao decided to help him escape. He gave him a boat, food, water, quilts and a flashlight, and sent him to a nearby island to wait for a Korean fishing boat.
Q.5. Will Dr Sadao be arrested on the charge of harbouring an enemy? (p. 39)
Ans. No. The messenger had come only to call him to the palace because the old General was in pain again. The General needed Sadao so much that he said he could allow nothing to happen to him. He promised to have the American quietly killed by his private assassins, but he forgot this promise. Sadao was therefore safe.
Q.6. What will Dr Sadao do to get rid of the man? (p. 43)
Ans. After several nights of fear (waiting for the General’s assassins), Sadao decided to send the American away. He proposed that the American should row a boat, which he would leave on the shore with food and clothing, to a small uninhabited island near the coast, and wait there until a Korean fishing boat passed. He also gave him a flashlight for signalling.
Reading with Insight (p. 46)
Q.1. There are moments in life when we have to make hard choices between our roles as private individuals and as citizens with a sense of national loyalty. Discuss with reference to the story you have just read.
Ans. Dr Sadao faces exactly this conflict.
- As a citizen: Japan is at war with America, and the American is an enemy and a prisoner of war. Sadao knows that his duty is to hand him over to the police. Hiding him could make him a traitor and endanger his family and position.
- As a doctor and human being: He has been trained “not to let a man die if I can help it”. When he sees the wounded man, his “trained hands” begin to help him on their own. He cannot throw him back into the sea.
- The struggle: He and Hana first agree that they will hand the man over. Then Sadao operates and saves him. He starts a letter to the Chief of Police but hides it in a drawer. He does not report him, and in the end, he helps him to escape. He keeps telling himself that he cares nothing for the man.
- Resolution: Sadao chooses a middle path, which is to follow his conscience and humanity while avoiding open disloyalty. He does not kill the man or give him up. The story shows that sometimes the individual’s moral sense is stronger than the demands of national loyalty, and that such choices are painful and carry risks.
Q.2. Dr Sadao was compelled by his duty as a doctor to help the enemy soldier. What made Hana, his wife, sympathetic to him in the face of open defiance from the domestic staff?
Ans.
- Hana had lived in America and had seen Americans as people, not only as enemies.
- She had a natural human compassion. She could not bear to see “a wounded helpless man” suffer, and she asked, “Is this anything but a man?”
- Her pride and sense of superiority were hurt by the servants’ stubbornness, so she acted on her own judgement.
- She saw the scars on his neck and the thin, tortured face, and wondered whether he had been ill-treated as a prisoner.
- She also remembered that Sadao, as a doctor, could not simply let someone die.
Although she was frightened and knew the servants were right “in most of her being”, something in her could not agree to turning the man away.
Q.3. How would you explain the reluctance of the soldier to leave the shelter of the doctor’s home even when he knew he couldn’t stay there without risk to the doctor and himself?
Ans. Tom was a young, weak escaped prisoner, who had been wounded, possibly tortured (the scars on his neck), and had a terror of recapture. In the doctor’s house, he was safe, warm and cared for, and for the first time since his escape he was treated with kindness. Outside lay the sea, the island, hunger, solitude and the danger of capture. He was afraid and asked, “Do I have to?” He also felt gratitude and trust towards the man who saved him. Leaving meant going back to uncertainty and fear, so he naturally hesitated, though he understood the risk to the doctor and agreed when Sadao said it was necessary.
Q.4. What explains the attitude of the General in the matter of the enemy soldier? Was it human consideration, lack of national loyalty, dereliction of duty or simply self-absorption?
Ans. The General’s attitude was mainly self-absorption.
- He needed Sadao for his own operation and cared more about his own life than about the prisoner or the law. He said, “Suppose you were condemned to death and the next day I had to have my operation?”
- He did not trust other surgeons, who were trained by Germans, and he feared he might die on the operating table.
- He planned a secret killing of the prisoner by assassins, but forgot the promise when his own pain returned. He admitted, “I thought of nothing but myself.”
- It was not human consideration, as he was ready to have the man killed. It was not lack of loyalty or deliberate neglect of duty either, though he worried that his forgetfulness might look like it (“it was not lack of patriotism or dereliction of duty”). He was simply absorbed in his own suffering and comfort.
This shows that even those in authority are guided by personal interest, and this self-interest saved Sadao.
Q.5. While hatred against a member of the enemy race is justifiable, especially during wartime, what makes a human being rise above narrow prejudices?
Ans. Points:
- Compassion and common humanity: Seeing a suffering person as a human being first, and not as a member of a race or country.
- Professional ethics and training: Sadao’s training as a doctor teaches him to save life regardless of who the patient is. His American professor taught him mercy with the knife.
- Personal experience and exposure: Sadao and Hana had lived in America and met kind people there, which widened their outlook.
- Conscience and values: A deep sense of right and wrong, which is stronger than politics and propaganda.
- Reason and understanding: Recognising that hatred of a whole race is unfair, and that individuals are different.
The story shows that humanity can overcome prejudice, though it is a hard struggle, as seen in Sadao’s mixed feelings.
Q.6. Do you think the doctor’s final solution to the problem was the best possible one in the circumstances?
Ans. Yes, it was the best possible:
- Handing the man over would mean his death, which would waste the life Sadao had saved and go against his duty as a doctor.
- Killing him or letting the assassins do it would be a cruel betrayal of his professional ethics.
- Keeping him in the house was impossible, since the servants had already left and the risk to his family grew every day.
- Helping him to escape to the island saved the American’s life, protected Sadao and his family from the charge of treachery, and spared him the strain of waiting for the assassins. It also kept the secret hidden, because the General’s protection and forgetfulness helped him.
Possible criticism: It involved deceit and risk, and the American’s survival on the island was uncertain. But in the circumstances of war, this was the most humane and practical choice.
Q.7. Does the story remind you of ‘Birth’ by A. J. Cronin that you read in Snapshots last year? What are the similarities?
Ans. Yes. In “Birth”, Dr Andrew Murray, a young doctor, saves a newborn baby after great effort, when everyone thought the baby was dead, while the mother is safe.
Similarities:
- In both stories the central character is a doctor who is guided by professional duty to save life against all odds.
- Both doctors refuse to give up and act with skill and determination.
- Both stress the value of human life and the doctor’s commitment to it.
- In both, saving a life is the greatest reward and a victory of humanity.
- Both are tests of the doctor’s character in a difficult situation.
Q.8. Is there any film you have seen or novel you have read with a similar theme?
Ans. Sample answers:
- Schindler’s List (film): A German businessman risks his own life to save more than a thousand Jews during the Holocaust, rising above national and racial prejudice.
- The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas or The Pianist (films): Show human kindness across enemy lines in wartime. In The Pianist, a German officer helps a Jewish musician.
- Joyeux Noël (film): Enemy soldiers on the Western Front share a Christmas truce.
- Indian examples: The story of Bhai Kanhaiya, who gave water to wounded enemy soldiers on the battlefield, and the film Veer-Zaara (which shows love and humanity across the India-Pakistan border).
- A Farewell to Arms or All Quiet on the Western Front (novels): Show the humanity of soldiers on both sides of a war.
Common theme: Humanity and compassion are stronger than hatred, race, national boundaries and war.
