NCERT Solutions for Class 8 English Honeydew Chapter 6 This is Jody’s Faun

Jody’s father had been bitten by a rattle snake.

The doe saved Penny’s life as its liver and heart were used to draw the poison out from Penny.

The fawn had become an orphan as its mother had been killed by Jody. He wanted to bring the fawn home as he was the one responsible for making him an orphan so this sense of conscientiousness made him do so.

Jody’s father knew that it was a male fawn because in a male fawn the spots are all in a line whereas in females they are haphazardly arranged. This knowledge helped his father to recognize it being a male fawn.

Jody did not want Mill-wheel with him because
1. If the fawn would die then he didn’t want Mill-wheel to see the frustration on his face.
2. If the fawn would be alive then he did not want to share his gladness with anybody else.

Mill-wheel was afraid to leave Jody alone because he was afraid that Jody could forget his way or get bitten by a snake.

Jody did not want to panic the fawn. So he first stroked its neck slowly, and then put his arms around it. He picked it up and carried it through the thick bushes. He tried to protect its face from the pointed vines. He then halted to take rest on his way home. When he went a little further, he saw the fawn had started following him. Then he picked him up and carried it, or made it follow him. On reaching home, it was not ready to climb the stairs. So he picked it up inside the house.

Jody was filled with emotion after he finding the fawn. Three words or phrases are
i. When he stroked its neck, the touch made him “delirious”.
ii. When he got the feeling that it was his fawn now, he was “lightheaded with his joy”.
iii. When he brought it to his house, Penny thought that “the boy’s eyes were as bright as the fawn’s”.

The deer drank the milk from Jody’s hands. When Jody gave it milk to the in a gourd, it butted it, smelled it but could not understand what to do with it. Seeing this Jody put his fingers in the milk and put them into its malleable wet mouth so that it could drink milk.

As deer is a wild animal, it is habitual of forest life. But when the fawn reached Jody’s house, it did not follow Jody up the steps because that environment was absolutely new for it and everything seemed to be different and strange to it, even the stairs. That is why it didn’t follow Jody up the steps. Same reaction was shown by the fawn when it was given the milk in the gourd. It actually did not know what to do.

Penny allowed Jody to go and find the fawn and look after it because it seemed unfair to him to leave the fawn to go hungry. He agreed with what Jody thought that as they had killed the doe and the fawn was left all alone with no one to look after without any mistake, it was their responsibility to look after it now. They could not leave the fawn starve, so they thought of raising it.

Penny had killed the doe to save his own life. Therefore for whatever the doe had done, it got punishment for the same but its fawn had to be taken care of and saved from dying due to starvation. It would be unjust to leave it all alone, with no one to take care of it. This was what Doc. Wilson was trying to convey when he said that nothing in the world came for free.

After Jody understood his responsibility and agreed to look after the fawn, he took care of it as its own mother would. When he found it, he kept his hand on its soft neck. Then he put both his arms around its body to give him comfort. When he took it home, he protected its face from the pointed vines. He carried it in his arms on his way to home in spite of being tired. When he reached home, he made it drink milk with his own hands. When he refused to climb the steps, he carried it in his arms. Hence, we can say that Jody took up the entire responsibilities quite well.

When Jody’s mother heard that he was going to bring the fawn home, she was a little taken aback. She asked Jody about the fawn. He then narrated the entire incident that it was the fawn whose mother had been killed by them to save Penny. She was not very happy to hear this but had to agree to it. She then told him that as they had nothing else to give it to eat so he would have to forgo his milk for the fawn.
She reacted in this way because she was not there when all this happened, where Penny had been bitten and they had to kill the doe. She had not seen the fawn and so was not as worried and disturbed about the fawn as Penny and Jody were. Moreover, she might have been concerned about how would she give the fawn something to eat as they did not have too many things to feed it at their home.