NCERT Solutions 12th English Chapter 5 Should Wizard Hit Mommy

Ques 1.Who is Jo? How does she respond to her father’s storytelling?
Ans:Jo was Jack and Clare's four-year - old daughter. Each evening and on Saturday afternoons, for the past two years, she was used to hearing stories from her father. Throughout these story sessions, sleep had started to elude her with each passing day and her mind and body remained wide-awake, lost in the world of fantasy and adventure.
NCERT Solutions for Class 12 English: Flamingo Textbook (Prose) - All Chapters

She was a smart, inquisitive child. Her mind was bubbling with questions about something she had learned or seen. Her reactions to the stories were a fascinating combination of emotions trapped in her father's knowledge of the known and eagerness to discover the mysterious features woven into the simple story. An anxious Jo needed the tale to progress quickly and yet could not continue in her mind with contradictory ideas or unanswered questions. She was always a rather observant listener, and her father was corrected whenever she thought he was faltering. Through her body language and facial expressions, the depth of her involvement with the story was evident. She empathized with the protagonist and ignored something that didn't fit into her own narrow universe. She was kept awake by the eagerness to learn and the restlessness to demonstrate her viewpoint. She was even willing to fight with her father, and coax him to end the story from her point of view. Her responses indicate that she had started developing a personality of her own.

Ques 2.What possible plot line could the story continue with?
Ans:From Jo 's viewpoint, the story would have ended with Roger Skunk's happy note of getting rid of the foul smell forever and being able to play with all other kids. However, the story does not have such an innocent fairy tale ending from Jack 's viewpoint. It was evident during the storytelling process that Jack got nostalgic about his own childhood and mother. So, he put it into his own context. His sense of belonging to his mother and his history of coping with fact contributed to a mature and compromising ending in which fact narrowed the reach of fiction. As he associated himself with Roger Skunk of his story, he avoided getting into the problematic situation of identity crisis and of blaming his mother.
Ques 3.What do you think was Jo’s problem?
Ans:For Jo, the story would have ended happily with Roger Skunk relieved of his foul body odor and embraced as their playmate by other kids. Jack, however, brought the plot to a different level, causing a ruckus in Jo's tiny and simple world.
She was unconvinced that the mother of Roger Skunk did not like the newly acquired rose scent and wanted him to restore his previous body odor. The world had been focused on friends to play with for a little girl like Jo. Thus, when she realized that the poor Skunk had been ignored by other small creatures, she empathized with him and strongly thought of the wizard who helped the poor creature acquire friends and joy. She couldn't understand why a mother wants to sacrifice the happiness of her child only to suit her own self. Being the inquisitive person that she was, Jo was unable to grasp why the mother of the skunk struck the good wizard without being hit back. In her perspective, the skunk’s Mommy was wrong in whatever she did. Jo was not ready to accept that ‘mothers are always correct’.
Ques 4.What is the moral issue that the story raises?
Ans:The story explores moral issues that depend on the different maturity levels. There's a sharp difference between the future outlook of an adult and a little child's perspective. Kids stand for innocence. Hatred and inequality should not have a place in the world. In the novel, only after he smelled of roses could the baby skunk make friends. The joy of being able to make friends outpaced everything else in Jo 's view. As a result, she can not determine why her mother skunk has coerced her child to restore her original foul body odor.
In the opposite, Jack tried to defend the mother of the skunk and forced Roger to listen to his mother even though that means smelling bad again. Jack, a typical dad, wanted his daughter to believe that parents were always right and they knew what was best for their children. The story thus poses the question of whether parents are always to be pursued blindly.
Ques 5.How does Jo want the story to end and why?
Ans:With the end of the tale, Jo was not persuaded, and coaxed her father to retell the tale the next day, giving the story a predetermined direction she had planned. According to her, the tale went wrong with neither Roger Skunk nor the wizard. Jo has declined to consider the end where the mother of Roger Skunk hits the wizard and that too without being hit back. She decided to finish the story with the wizard hitting the mother skunk back with his magic wand and 'forcefully' chopping off her wings.
Ques 6.Why does Jack insist that it was the wizard that was hit and not the mother?
Ans:There have been three explanations for Jack's determination that only the Mommy hit wizard.
First, when Jo learned the story doesn't get a rational and decent end if the mum isn't hit back, Jack had already told the story. Reverting his words would be refuting the idea that whatever parents say is right. Second, giving in to Jo's demand for Jack would mean disrespecting the elders. Around the time, Jo was very young and Jack felt it was time for her to learn to respect the elders and to realize that everything the elders do is for the best.