Directions: Read the extract given below and answer the questions by selecting…
2019
Directions: Read the extract given below and answer the questions by selecting the correct/most appropriate options:
The work of hunters is another thing :
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance :
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned !’
The gaps in the wall are made by :
- A.
rabbits
- B.
dogs
- C.
hunters
- D.
nature
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C
A reading-comprehension question that asks for the cause of a stated effect wants the agent or activity the passage itself names as producing that effect — not just something present in the scene, and not something drawn from outside the given extract. The choice must be tied to an explicit cause-and-effect statement in the text.
This extract opens with: “The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair / Where they have left not one stone on a stone, / But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, / To please the yelping dogs.” This sentence names hunters as the ones whose activity disturbs the stones while chasing the rabbit out of hiding — the very damage the speaker says he comes after and repairs. Among the four options, hunters is the agent this extract explicitly credits with making the gaps.
rabbits — named only as what is being chased out of hiding; the extract never shows a rabbit displacing a stone.
dogs — named only as being pleased by the outcome of the hunt; the extract never shows a dog touching the wall.
nature — this extract names spring only as when the damage is discovered and mended each year; it does not mention frost, weather, or ground movement causing any gaps here.
Robert Frost’s full poem “Mending Wall” elsewhere also blames a mysterious natural force for some of the wall’s gaps, and the following line — “The gaps I mean, / No one has seen them made” — hints that not all damage is the hunters’ doing. Within this specific extract, however, the explicit cause-and-effect statement about hunters, and the CTET (July 2019, Paper 2) official answer key, both confirm hunters as the intended answer.