Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow. We were walking…
2024
Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.
We were walking across the garden when my daughter spotted a cluster of familiar red flowers. She pulled me to one side and then, looking excitedly at me as though she had a secret to share, she pulled me down to her height and whispered in my ears. I shot up straight almost as soon as she had finished her sentence. With my mouth ajar, I was about to tell her that it was probably not a good idea to do so when I was transported to the time when I was around her age.
It had been a rather long day from school and I was dead tired. I was walking along the pathway that was lined with many ixora plants when my friend grabbed me by the arm. Before I could do anything, he gleefully plucked a single flower from the cluster and showed it to me. Unimpressed, I was not about to be swayed by a puny flower and was about to admonish him when he turned the flower upside down to show me a tiny almost invisible thread-like thing that protruded out from its stalk.
He pulled the faint yellowish thread and right at the end of it, a tiny drop of nectar appeared. At least, that was what I think it was, as it was really quite sweet. That day we raided the ixora plants. We really had a lot of fun. I could still taste the sweetness till today. My daughter’s urgent tug brought me back to reality. I turned to my daughter and decided that she too needed to know the joy of tasting sweet nectar from beautiful blooms.
Read the following sentences :
(a) The writer is traumatised by the memories of her childhood.
(b) The daughter’s secret brings back nostalgic memories of the school days.
(c) The writer wants her child to be connected to the sweet pleasures of nature.
- A.
(a) and (c) are correct, (b) is incorrect
- B.
(b) and (c) are incorrect, (a) is correct
- C.
(a) and (b) are correct, (c) is incorrect
- D.
(b) and (c) are correct, (a) is incorrect
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: D
In a reading-comprehension item that asks whether given statements are correct or incorrect, each statement must be checked strictly against what the passage explicitly states or unmistakably implies through the narrator's own words and actions, not against a reading the passage does not support.
Statement (a) claims the writer is traumatised by memories of her own childhood. The passage instead calls that memory sweet and describes it with "We really had a lot of fun," so the passage does not support (a).
Statement (b) claims the daughter's secret brings back nostalgic memories of school days. The daughter's whisper is what "transported" the narrator back to being around her age, and the flashback itself opens with "It had been a rather long day from school," so the passage supports (b).
Statement (c) claims the writer wants her child connected to the sweet pleasures of nature. The narrator explicitly decides that her daughter "too needed to know the joy of tasting sweet nectar from beautiful blooms," so the passage directly supports (c).
Since (a) is unsupported while (b) and (c) are both supported by explicit textual evidence, the combination that matches the passage is: (b) and (c) are correct, (a) is incorrect.
The combination pairing (a) and (c) as correct while treating (b) as incorrect wrongly accepts the traumatic reading of (a) despite the passage's own "we really had a lot of fun," and wrongly rejects (b) despite the narrator being "transported to the time when I was around her age."
The combination accepting (a) as correct while treating both (b) and (c) as incorrect compounds the same wrong reading of (a) with a further rejection of the narrator's closing wish that her daughter know the same "joy of tasting sweet nectar."
The combination pairing (a) and (b) as correct while treating (c) as incorrect again wrongly accepts (a) and wrongly rejects (c), despite the narrator's stated decision that her daughter "too needed to know" that joy.