Freedom – Class 12 English Chapter 14 Notes & NCERT PDF

Section Introduction: What is Non-fiction?

Kaleidoscope's non-fiction section opens with a definition. Non-fiction is "virtually everything that we read as literature but that does not come under the categories of novel, short story, play or poem". It is writing that is factually true: articles, editorials, reports, critical essays, interviews, humorous sketches, biographies and autobiographies, lectures, speeches and sermons. Its purpose is "to explain, analyse, define or clarify something... to show the how and why of things".

The six units in the section are: freedom (Shaw, with a companion piece by Krishnamurti), stream of consciousness (Woolf), why the novel matters (Lawrence), film-making (Bergman), the argumentative tradition (Sen) and science fiction (Asimov).

About the Authors

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) was a dramatist and critic. His plays include Arms and the Man, Candida and Man and Superman. The book calls his work "fearless intellectual criticism, sugar-coated by a pretended lightness of tone". He "sought to puncture hollow pretensions".

J. Krishnamurti (1895–1986) was a world-renowned speaker on education, meditation and human relationships. Schools based on his views run in India, England and the USA. His piece, Understanding Freedom and Discipline, is a talk addressed directly to students.

Summary: Shaw's "Freedom"

Shaw opens with a question: "What is a perfectly free person?" His answer is that "there is no such person, and there never can be". Nature has first claim on all of us. We must sleep for a third of our lives, and we must also wash, dress, eat and travel. Shaw's arithmetic is that nature takes about twelve hours of the day. He calls this natural slavery.

The harsher kind is man's slavery to man: the rich make the poor labour for them. Governments, Shaw says, "enforce your slavery and call it freedom". When chattel slavery costs more than wage slavery, it is abolished, and the worker is made "free" to choose one master or another. For the worker, that freedom is "merely the key of the street". The vote, cast at "a general election every five years or so", only lets you choose between "two of their rich friends". It does not "reduce your hours of labour by a single minute".

Shaw then contrasts the two slaveries. "Nature is kind to her slaves." She makes eating and sleeping pleasant, while human masters make work dull and exhausting.

He adds that the "prodigious mass of humbug" deludes the masters more than the masses. A gentleman educated at a public school and university comes to believe he is "a very fine fellow", superior to the people who brush his clothes. Shaw mocks the view, attributed to Aristotle, that people obey only rulers who are "beautifully dressed and decorated". He also mocks the first women voters for electing "only one woman—a titled lady".

He mentions Marx, who "spent his life" exposing the class war, and Thomas More. He dismisses the general strike as "Trade Unionism gone mad".

In practical terms, out of a twelve-hour working day, "eight hours' work" leaves "four hours a day" of real freedom. Most people want what Shakespeare's Iago advised: "Put money in thy purse". So Shaw's advice is: "Always call freedom by its old English name of leisure, and keep clamouring for more leisure and more money to enjoy it". He closes with a puzzle for the reader. Would you rather work eight hours a day and retire on a full pension at forty-five, or work four hours a day until seventy?

Summary: Krishnamurti's "Understanding Freedom and Discipline"

Krishnamurti argues from the inside out. "Discipline is the cultivation of resistance, is it not?" By building barriers within ourselves, we hope to become free, "but that is not a fact". Freedom "cannot exist in a frame". Parents, teachers, priests and tradition build an enclosure, and "Can a man ever be free as long as he lives in a prison?" So "one has to break down the prison walls of tradition" and discover things for oneself.

Intelligence comes only through freedom to question. It does not come from following rules about what to do and whom to marry.

Fear of parents, teachers, tradition and life "gradually destroys sensitivity". Sensitivity means noticing the temple bell and the sunlight on the water. It means seeing the villagers "trodden down for centuries by exploiters" and helping a servant carrying a heavy carpet. Worrying about "one's looks, about one's saris" encloses the mind.

His conclusion is: "To be really free implies great sensitivity." The school's task is "to sow the seed of freedom, which is to awaken intelligence".

Themes & Arguments

Style

Shaw's essay is ironic, witty and full of mock-paradox, such as "you are fool enough to believe them". He uses exaggeration, rhetorical questions and concrete, everyday examples like sleeping, the vote and the pension choice. He addresses the reader directly as "you".

Krishnamurti speaks gently to students in a conversational register. He keeps asking tag questions ("is it not?", "are you?") so that the listener thinks for themselves.

Word Power

Board Exam Focus

Grammar from the exercises covers simple, complex and compound sentences and rhetorical questions:

Common Mistakes