Read the passage carefully and select the answer from the four alternatives: I…
2015
Read the passage carefully and select the answer from the four alternatives:
I am a Robot. My registration number is CL-123X. My master Mr. Northrop, calls me ‘Cal’. The ‘X’ means I am a special robot for my master. He is a writer.
I am a simple Robot. I just pick up after him, run his printers, stack his discs and so on and so forth. He says, I do not talk back. I just do what I am told. That is good. Master is happy. I am happy.
I want to be a writer like my master. My master says, he writes mysteries. He tells about people who do wrong things, who hurt others. I feel very bad when I hear that. How can one think of hurting people?
My master says, ‘In my stories people who do wrong are punished’.
I think, that is bad too. It hurts people. My master has three different typewriters for writing stories. One is very old. He does not use it. I push its keys at night. Words are printed on paper. In the morning my master sees them and smiles. He says, ‘This is not a story, this is gibberish. But I’ll have you reprogrammed if you really want to be a writer’.
What is the passage about?
- A.
Writer
- B.
Robot
- C.
Printer
- D.
People
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B
Concept: In a reading-comprehension question that asks what a passage is about, the central idea is the subject the passage is organised around from start to finish - the entity whose voice, actions, and feelings the whole text follows - not a supporting detail mentioned only in passing.
Application: This passage is written in the first person by a narrator who names itself, gives its own registration number, describes its master, lists its own daily duties (picking up after its master, running the printers, stacking discs), and shares its own feelings about wanting to become a writer and about its master's stories. Every paragraph returns to this narrator's own identity, actions, and thoughts.
Cross-check: Re-reading the passage confirms that the narrator's own self-description carries every paragraph, while the master's profession, the printers, and the people in the master's stories are each mentioned only briefly, in service of describing the narrator.
The narrator's master, a writer of mystery stories, is a supporting character described only through the narrator's own account of him.
The printers are one item in the narrator's list of its own routine tasks, not the subject of the passage.
The people referred to are characters inside the master's stories, mentioned only to explain why the narrator feels bad about those stories.
The passage is a first-person account by a robot describing its own identity, duties, and feelings, so it is about a Robot.