NCERT Solutions for English Class 12 Prose (Flamingo) Chapter 7: The Interview
By Christopher Silvester & Umberto Eco
NCERT Solutions for Class 12 English Chapter 7 The Interview provide detailed explanations of the role and importance of interviews in modern communication. The chapter presents different viewpoints and encourages students to think critically about media interactions. These NCERT Class 12 English Solutions help learners understand key ideas, themes, and textbook questions in a simple manner. Students can improve comprehension and answer-writing skills while preparing for examinations. The chapter-wise explanations follow the latest academic requirements, making these NCERT Solutions for Class 12 English valuable for revision and exam success. Check out all subjects NCERT Solutions for class 12 and NCERT solutions for class 12 English prepared by MyClass24 Experts.
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A Chapter in Two Parts
The Interview is an unusual chapter because it is structured in two complementary parts. The first part is an essay by Christopher Silvester on the history and ethics of the interview as a journalistic form. The second part is an excerpt from an actual interview of the Italian novelist and semiotician Umberto Eco, conducted by Mukund Padmanabhan of The Hindu.
Together, these two pieces create a rich, layered text that simultaneously theorises about interviewing as a practice and demonstrates that practice in action. Students of Class 12 benefit enormously from reading both parts together, as the second part illustrates many of the tensions and negotiations that Silvester describes in the first.
Silvester's Essay: The Birth and Ethics of the Interview
Silvester traces the journalistic interview back to the 1850s in America, when figures like Horace Greeley began publishing verbatim conversations with public figures. He charts how the form gained legitimacy over decades and eventually became the dominant mode of journalism. Yet from its very beginning, the interview was a contested form — many eminent individuals, including Rudyard Kipling and Lewis Carroll, despised being interviewed.
Silvester presents the interview as an inherently problematic form: it reduces complex human beings to a snapshot, it can be distorted by selective editing, and it gives power to the interviewer to shape another person's public image. At the same time, he acknowledges that the interview is now indispensable to public life, having become "one of the most potent methods of communication" in the modern world.
The Umberto Eco Interview: Craft and Personality
The interview with Eco is fascinating not just for what Eco says but for how he says it. He is asked about the paradox of being a serious academic who writes immensely popular fiction. His answer — that he writes in the "interstices" of his busy schedule, the gaps and empty spaces in his day — reveals a mind that is always active, always productive, never waiting for inspiration.
Eco's most striking observation is about what he calls the "non-fictional narrative" quality of his academic work. He insists that even his dense scholarly texts are structured like narratives and require the same precision of language as fiction. This collapses the boundary between academic and creative writing that most people take for granted.
Key Concept: Umberto Eco on Interstices
When asked how he manages to write so prolifically alongside his academic work, Eco explains that he uses interstices — small gaps of time that most people waste — to write. This reflects a disciplined creative philosophy that treats even idle moments as opportunities.
What the Chapter Teaches About Communication
Beyond its content, The Interview teaches students to read critically — to understand that interviews are constructed texts with power dynamics. The interviewer chooses what to ask, how to frame questions, and what to retain in the final published version. The interviewee, however articulate, is always partially at the mercy of the form. This critical media literacy is one of the most valuable takeaways from this chapter for today's students.