NCERT Solutions for Class 9th English Chapter 8 Believe in Yourself (poem by Robert Langley) — Critical Reflection

Book page 250–251 Updated on2026-09-08

Q1.

I. Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow. 1. Step up to the challenge There is no crowd to see, It’s just you and the future And where you want to be. (i) What does the line, ‘There is no crowd to see’ suggest about facing challenges?

Answer

It suggests that a real challenge is faced alone and unwitnessed — there is no audience to applaud you, no onlookers to blame, and nobody who can take the step for you.

Three things follow from the empty street, and a full answer names at least two:

No applause. Whatever you do here, it will not be seen or praised at the time. The reward must be the doing itself, so the motivation has to come from inside.
No excuses. A crowd is something to blame — nerves, pressure, being watched. Take the crowd away and nothing stands between you and your own choice.
No help. The next line makes it explicit: “It’s just you and the future.” There is no one to consult and no one to lean on.

Why Langley chose an absence rather than a presence. He could have written “You are alone.” Instead he tells you what is not there — “There is no crowd to see” — and lets you notice the emptiness. Describing a challenge by what is missing from it is far more unsettling than describing what is present, because the reader has to supply the picture: an empty hall, a track with no spectators, a staircase nobody is watching you climb. The device also quietly corrects a wrong idea we carry about challenges — that they are dramatic, public occasions. Most are not; most are decided when no one is looking.

Set it against the other piece in this chapter. Irene Chua writes: “for one winner, there is a group of people who stood by him/her.” Both are true, and they are true of different moments. A career is built with others; the decision to begin one is taken alone. Being able to hold both statements at once is what a Class 9 reading of this chapter looks like.

Q2.

(ii) Complete the following suitably. The line ‘It’s just you and the future’ suggests that _________.

Answer

… the outcome depends on nobody but you — the only two parties in the matter are the person you are now and the life you want, and no one else can be part of that transaction.

The word that does the work is just. It is a word of reduction. Remove it — “It’s you and the future” — and the line merely states a fact. Keep it, and the line clears the stage: no parents, no friends, no teachers, no crowd. Two participants, and one of them is not even a person.

Notice what has been left out of the pair. The line does not say “it’s just you and the challenge”, nor “just you and your fear”. It says the future — which is what the next line then defines: “And where you want to be.” So the confrontation is not with an obstacle at all; it is between the person you are and the person you intend to become. The opponent in this poem is the gap between the two. That is why stanza 2 can then say the future may “pull you forward” — an enemy does not pull you towards itself; a destination does.

Other acceptable completions: “…that there is no one else to depend on, and no one else to blame”; “…that the responsibility for one’s future rests entirely with oneself”; “…that the choice is a private one between what a person is now and what he or she wants to become.”

Q3.

(iii) Fill in the blank with the appropriate word/phrase from the extract. Latha will ________ her efforts to improve her vocal performance by practicing harder each day.

Answer

step up

Latha will step up her efforts to improve her vocal performance by practising harder each day.

The source: the extract’s first line, “Step up to the challenge.”

The same phrasal verb, two different senses — which is exactly what the question is testing.

In the poem: step up to (something) = to come forward and face it
In Latha’s sentence: step up (something) = to increase it, to raise its level

Both come from the same physical picture — moving up — but they behave differently in grammar. The poem’s version needs the preposition to and takes no object; Latha’s version takes a direct object (her efforts). The clue that tells you which is wanted is the object “her efforts”, and the phrase “by practising harder each day”, which explains what the increase consists of. A phrasal verb can shift its meaning entirely depending on what follows it.

Related uses: step up production, step up security, step up the pace. In every case something is being increased. And note that no other word in the extract could fill the blank — see, want and be will not take ‘her efforts’ as an object.

Q4.

(iv) Select the most suitable title for the extract. A. The Struggles of Change B. Facing the Future Alone C. A Journey of Growth D. The Power of Fear

Answer

B. Facing the Future Alone

Test each word of the title against the four lines. The extract contains exactly three ideas — a challenge to be faced, the absence of any crowd, and the future you want. Option B names all three: facing ← “Step up to the challenge”; the future ← “It’s just you and the future / And where you want to be”; alone ← “There is no crowd to see”.

Option	Verdict	Why
A. The Struggles of Change	Wrong	Change is not mentioned in this stanza — it belongs to stanza 3 (“status quo … how we grow”). Nor is any struggle described here; the difficulty arrives in stanza 2.
B. Facing the Future Alone	Correct	Every element of the title is present in the four lines, and the stanza’s most striking image — the missing crowd — is what the word alone names.
C. A Journey of Growth	Wrong	A fair title for the whole poem, but not for this extract. No journey has begun and no growth is spoken of yet; the speaker is still at the starting point.
D. The Power of Fear	Wrong	The word fear does not appear until stanza 2, and nothing in these four lines is frightening. This option belongs to a different extract.

The rule for title questions on an extract. The title must fit the extract given, not the poem it comes from. Option C is the trap: it is true, admirable and about the right poem — and it is wrong here. Ask of each option: can I point to the words in these lines that justify it? For B you can point to three phrases; for C you can point to none.

Q5.

(v) Complete the analogy by using a word from the extract. achieve: goal : : face : ___________

Answer

challenge

achieve : goal :: face : challenge
(verb : the thing that verb naturally takes as its object)

How the relation works. You achieve a goal — the noun is what the verb acts on. Apply the same relation to the second pair: you face a challenge. The word is in the extract’s opening line, “Step up to the challenge”, as the instruction requires.

Check the other nouns in the extract before you commit. The extract offers only crowd, future and challenge as candidates. You can face a crowd and you can face the future — both are real English — but neither makes the analogy work, because the pairing must mirror achieve : goal, where the noun names the difficulty or objective that the verb exists to deal with. A goal is what achieving is for; a challenge is what facing is for. A crowd and a future are things you may happen to face, not things the verb is defined by.

Method for analogy questions: put the first pair into a full sentence — “You achieve a goal” — then say the same sentence with the second pair and try each candidate word in turn. The one that produces the most natural, most standard collocation is the answer.

Q6.

II. Answer the following questions. 1. What is the significance of the metaphor, ‘The first step is the hardest’ in the context of personal growth?

Answer

Its significance is that it locates the real difficulty of growth at the beginning rather than in the middle — and by doing so it makes growth manageable, because a beginning is small.

Three things the metaphor establishes about personal growth:

The obstacle is internal, not external. Nothing about the second or twentieth step is easier in any physical sense; what makes the first hardest is the fear, the doubt and the comfort you must leave. Langley makes this explicit in the same stanza — “There is no turning back” — and in the one before it, “push you back in fear”. Growth is blocked by the mind before it is blocked by circumstances.
Growth is a sequence, not an event. The word step smuggles in a whole staircase. You are not asked to become a different person; you are asked to move once, and then again. That is why the metaphor is encouraging rather than daunting — it breaks an intimidating change into units small enough to attempt.
Difficulty is front-loaded, and therefore finite. If the hardest part is first, then every remaining part is easier than what you have already done. The metaphor is a promise disguised as a warning.

The physics behind the image, which is what makes it true. To begin walking from a standstill you must overcome inertia — the first movement takes more force than continuing does. Langley borrows that fact about bodies and applies it to intentions, and it holds: the effort of joining a class, entering a competition or asking for help is out of all proportion to the effort of continuing once you have. A metaphor persuades when the thing borrowed and the thing described genuinely behave alike.

Its limitation, worth mentioning if you are asked to evaluate. The first step is not always the hardest. Anyone who has begun something enthusiastically and abandoned it in the third month knows that persistence can cost more than beginning. Irene Chua’s letter makes precisely that point — “When stamina is running out” — and asks for ten years. Langley’s metaphor is exactly right about starting and silent about lasting.

Q7.

II. 2. What message does the antithesis in the poem convey about the nature of personal development?

Answer

The message is that personal development admits no middle ground: at every point you are either moving forward or being pushed back, and staying comfortably where you are counts as the second.

The two antitheses and what each contributes:

Antithesis	What it says about development
“Will it pull you forward / Or push you back in fear?”	The same future produces opposite effects depending on how you meet it. The future is not the variable — your response is. Development is therefore a matter of choice, not of circumstance.
“There is such ease in comfort… / But this isn’t how we grow”	Ease and growth are opposites, not companions. Whatever is comfortable is, by that fact, not developing you.

Why the device carries this particular message so well. Antithesis removes the middle by design — it offers two terms and no third. Applied to personal development, that produces the poem’s sharpest and most uncomfortable claim: there is no neutral position. Not choosing is itself a choice, and the fear that pushes you back does so whether or not you notice it happening.

The message stated plainly. Personal development is

directional — forward or back, never still;
governed by fear, not by ability — what pushes you back is fear, and nothing in the poem suggests a lack of talent;
bought at the price of comfort — “this isn’t what we are made for” makes comfort a betrayal of one's nature, not merely an inefficiency.

And notice that the first antithesis is a question while the second is a statement. The poem asks you which way the future will move you, and then tells you which way comfort will. The choice is genuinely open; the consequence of refusing to choose is not.

Q8.

II. 3. Do you think the poet’s message is realistic in the context of real-world struggles? (Clue: Evaluate whether simply ‘believing in yourself’ is enough to overcome obstacles or other factors are also necessary.)

Answer

The message is psychologically true but practically incomplete. Self-belief is necessary — nothing begins without it — but it is not sufficient, and the poem’s word “just” (“You just need to believe in yourself”) is where it overstates its case.

Where the poem is right

The first obstacle really is internal. Long before money or opportunity becomes the problem, most people are stopped by not applying, not asking, not trying. The listening passage on page 253 shows it exactly: Karan has rehearsed for weeks and still says, “I feel like I’m not good enough, even though I’ve put in the work.” His obstacle is not preparation; it is belief.
Nothing else works without it. Talent, coaching and money are all useless to a person who will not begin. In that sense self-belief is genuinely the first step, as the poem says.
Comfort really does prevent growth. “There is such ease in comfort… This isn’t how we grow” is not motivational exaggeration; it is a plain description of how skill is built — by working at the edge of what you can already do.

Where the poem is incomplete

Structural obstacles do not yield to belief. A student whose family cannot pay the fees, whose village school has no science teacher, or who must earn for younger siblings is not short of self-belief. Irene Chua, in the very same chapter, gives two such cases — the Raffles College dream ended by “the Japanese invasion during World War II”, and those who “had to go out to work so that they could support their siblings through school.” Neither of those dreams failed for want of confidence.
Preparation is missing from the poem. Self-belief without competence is what Chua calls wishful thinking. Even Ananya in the listening passage does not tell Karan to believe blindly — she grounds it in evidence: “you’ve been practising for weeks… You’ve practised this more than anyone else!”
“There is no crowd to see” is only half true. Almost every real achievement rests on teachers, families, scholarships and institutions — Chua’s “group of people who stood by him/her”. The poem writes them out.
Belief can even be harmful when it replaces judgement. Persisting in the face of clear evidence, out of pure self-belief, is how people lose years. Chua’s remedy is the honest arithmetic: “Count the cost.”

The fair verdict. A poem of sixteen lines is not a plan; it treats one link in a chain, and it treats it accurately. Self-belief is the necessary condition for beginning, not the sufficient condition for succeeding. The honest formula the chapter as a whole supports is: self-belief + preparation + support + opportunity + persistence. Langley supplies the first and Chua supplies the rest, which is presumably why the book prints them side by side. Read alone, the poem is inspiring but thin; read against the letter, it is exactly right about the one thing it claims.

How to write this answer in an exam: take a position in the first sentence, concede the strongest point on the other side, then argue your own with two pieces of evidence — one from the poem, one from outside it. An answer that only agrees, or only disagrees, is worth less than one that weighs.

Q9.

II. 4. Consider a situation where you or someone you know had to take a difficult first step towards a goal. How does the poem’s message about the importance of self-belief apply to this situation?

Answer

This asks for a personal example plus an application of the poem, and the marks lie in the second half — the connection, not the story.

What a good answer needs.

One situation, told in three or four sentences. Enough detail to be believable; no more.
The first step named exactly. Not “I decided to work hard” but “I walked up to the notice board and wrote my name on the list.” A first step is a single, datable action.
At least two lines of the poem, quoted and applied — not decorating the answer but doing work in it.
An honest verdict. Say where self-belief was enough and where something else was also needed. Question 3 has just taught you that the poem overstates; do not forget it here.

Sample answer:

My cousin Meera stammers, and until Class 9 she had never spoken in a school assembly. When her class was assigned the Republic Day speech, she asked to be excused; the teacher left her name on the list and said she could decide on the morning itself. The difficult first step was not the speech — it was the moment three weeks earlier when she stopped asking to be removed from the list and began practising in front of a mirror instead.

The poem describes that moment precisely. “The first step is the hardest / There is no turning back”: once Meera had told her friends she was going to try, withdrawing would have cost more than continuing, and that closed exit was what kept her practising. “There is such ease in comfort / To maintain the status quo” fits the years before it — everyone, including our family, found it easier to leave her out of speaking, and calling that kindness made it invisible.

But the poem is only half the story. Meera did not succeed because she believed in herself; she believed in herself because a speech therapist in Erode taught her breathing techniques for four months, and because her teacher quietly gave her the shortest slot in the programme. Self-belief opened the door; preparation and one adult’s planning carried her through it. She spoke for ninety seconds, blocked twice, and finished. In Langley’s words her future was “on track” — but the track had been laid by more people than the poem allows for.

Notice the shape of the sample. Paragraph 1 — the situation and the exact first step. Paragraph 2 — the poem applied, with quotations. Paragraph 3 — the honest qualification. That is a reliable structure for any “apply the text to your own experience” question.

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