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Reading Comprehension Test 49

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Reading Comprehension Test 49
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Weekly Quiz Competition
  • Question 1
    1 / -0

    Directions For Questions

    The passage below is excerpted from the introduction to a collection of essays published in $$1994$$.

    My entry into Black women's history was serendipitous. In the preface to Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, I recount the story of exactly how Shirley Herd(who, in addition to teaching in the local school system, was also president of the Indianapolis chapter of the National Council of Negro Women) successfully provoked me into changing my research and writing focus. Although I dedicate this volume to her and to her best friend, fellow club woman and retired primary school teacher Virtea Downey, I still blush at the fact that I went to graduate school to become a historian in order to contribute to the Black Struggle for social justice and yet met her request to write a history of Black women in Indiana with condescension. I had never even thought about Black women as historical subjects with their own relations to a state's history and I thought her invitation and phone call extraordinarily intrusive. Only later did I concede how straightforward and reasonable had been her request to redress a historical omission. Black women were conspicuous by their absence. None of the social studies texts or state histories that Herd and Downey had used to teach their students made mention of the contributions of Black women. Since historians had left them out, Herd reasoned, only a "real" historian could put them in, and since I was the only tenured$$\ast$$ Black woman historian in the state of Indiana at that time, the task was mine.

    Herd rejected my reservations and completely ignored my admonitions that she could not call up a historian and order a book the way you drive up to a fast-food restaurant and order a hamburger. In spite of my assertions of ignorance about the history of Black women in Indiana and my confession of having never studied the subject in any history course or examined any manuscript sources pertaining to their lives, Herd preserved. Black women, as historical subjects and agents, were as invisible to me as they had been to school textbook writers. Undaunted by my response, Herd demanded that I connect(thankfully without perfect symmetry) my biology and autobiography, my race, and gender, my being a Black woman, to my skill as a historian, and write for her and for the local chapter members of the National Council history of Black women in Indiana. I relented and wrote the book When the Truth Is Told: Black Women's Culture and Community in Indiana, $$1875-1950$$, as requested. In the process, I was both humbled and astounded by the array of rich primary source materials Herd, Downey, and the other club women had spent two years collecting. There were diaries, club notes, church souvenir booklets, photographs, club minutes, birth, death, and marriage certificates, letters, and handwritten country and local histories. Collectively this material revealed a universe I never knew existed in spite of having lived with Black women all of my life and being one myself. Or perhaps more accurately, I knew a universe of Black women existed. I simply had not envisioned its historical meaning. $$\ast$$ tenure: a permanent position, often granted to a teacher after a specified number of years of demonstrated competence.

    ...view full instructions

    The author initially responded to Herd's request "with condescension" (para 1) because the author____.
    Solution
    The author initially viewed Herd's proposal that she [the author] write a history of Black women with "condescension" because she thought the subject to be relevant; she had never thought of Black women as historical subjects and she also thought that Herd's call to her was "extraordinarily intrusive". In this context, E is thus the best answer to the question asked.
  • Question 2
    1 / -0

    Directions For Questions

    $$[(1)]$$ Not many children leave elementary school and they have not heard to Pocahontas' heroic rescue of John Smith from her own people, the Powhatans.
    $$[(2)]$$ Generations of Americans have learned the story of a courageous Indian princess who threw herself between the Virginia colonist and the clubs raised to end his life.
    $$[(3)]$$ The captive himself reported the incident.
    $$[(4)]$$ According to that report, Pocahontas held his head in her arms and laid her own upon his to save him from death.
    $$[(5)]$$ But can smith's account be trusted?
    $$[(6)]$$ Probably it cannot say several historians interested in dispelling
    myths about Pocahontas.
    $$[(7)]$$ According to these experts, in his eagerness to find patrons for future expeditions, Smith changed the facts in order to enhance his image.
    $$[(8)]$$ Portraying himself as the object of a royal princess devotion may have merely been a good public relations ploy. 
    $$[(9)]$$ Research into Powhatan culture suggests that what Smith described as an execution might have been merely a ritual display of strength.
    $$[(10)]$$ Smith may have been a character in a drama in which even Pocahontas was playing a role.
    $$[(11)]$$ As an ambassador from the Powhatans to the Jamestown settlers, Pocahontas headed off confrontations between mutually suspicious parties. 
    $$[(12)]$$ Later, after her marriage to colonist John Rolfe, Pocahontas traveled to England, where her diplomacy played a large part in gaining support for the Virginia Company.

    ...view full instructions

    What information is most logical to add immediately after sentence $$12$$?
    Solution
    Option E is the only choice that befits the context because the events discussed center around Pocahontas and other public events that occurred in her life. As the other choices do not serve the same purpose as E, they don't fit into the given context of the passage and therefore are not the correct answer.
  • Question 3
    1 / -0

    Directions For Questions

    The passage below is excerpted from the introduction to a collection of essays published in $$1994$$.

    My entry into Black women's history was serendipitous. In the preface to Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, I recount the story of exactly how Shirley Herd(who, in addition to teaching in the local school system, was also president of the Indianapolis chapter of the National Council of Negro Women) successfully provoked me into changing my research and writing focus. Although I dedicate this volume to her and to her best friend, fellow club woman and retired primary school teacher Virtea Downey, I still blush at the fact that I went to graduate school to become a historian in order to contribute to the Black Struggle for social justice and yet met her request to write a history of Black women in Indiana with condescension. I had never even thought about Black women as historical subjects with their own relations to a state's history and I thought her invitation and phone call extraordinarily intrusive. Only later did I concede how straightforward and reasonable had been her request to redress a historical omission. Black women were conspicuous by their absence. None of the social studies texts or state histories that Herd and Downey had used to teach their students made mention of the contributions of Black women. Since historians had left them out, Herd reasoned, only a "real" historian could put them in, and since I was the only tenured$$\ast$$ Black woman historian in the state of Indiana at that time, the task was mine.

    Herd rejected my reservations and completely ignored my admonitions that she could not call up a historian and order a book the way you drive up to a fast-food restaurant and order a hamburger. In spite of my assertions of ignorance about the history of Black women in Indiana and my confession of having never studied the subject in any history course or examined any manuscript sources pertaining to their lives, Herd preserved. Black women, as historical subjects and agents, were as invisible to me as they had been to school textbook writers. Undaunted by my response, Herd demanded that I connect(thankfully without perfect symmetry) my biology and autobiography, my race, and gender, my being a Black woman, to my skill as a historian, and write for her and for the local chapter members of the National Council history of Black women in Indiana. I relented and wrote the book When the Truth Is Told: Black Women's Culture and Community in Indiana, $$1875-1950$$, as requested. In the process, I was both humbled and astounded by the array of rich primary source materials Herd, Downey, and the other club women had spent two years collecting. There were diaries, club notes, church souvenir booklets, photographs, club minutes, birth, death, and marriage certificates, letters, and handwritten country and local histories. Collectively this material revealed a universe I never knew existed in spite of having lived with Black women all of my life and being one myself. Or perhaps more accurately, I knew a universe of Black women existed. I simply had not envisioned its historical meaning. $$\ast$$ tenure: a permanent position, often granted to a teacher after a specified number of years of demonstrated competence.

    ...view full instructions

    The comparison in lines $$27-30$$("Herd.... hamburger") primarily demonstrates the author's belief that historians.
    Solution
    The author initially thought that Herd's call to her requesting she writes a book on Black women as historical subjects were "extraordinarily intrusive" and she rejected it saying that Herd could not simply "call up a historian and order a book the way you drive up to a fast-food restaurant and order a hamburger" implying that historians do not write books on requests. In this context D is the best answer to the given question.
  • Question 4
    1 / -0

    Directions For Questions

    This passage, from a short story published in $$1978$$, describes a visit to a planetarium, a building in which images of stars, planets, and other astronomical phenomena are projected onto a domed ceiling.

    Inside, we sat on wonderfully comfortable seats that were tilted back so that you lay in a sort of a hammock, attention directed to the bowl of the ceiling, which soon turned dark blue, with a faint rim of light around the edge. There was some splendid, commanding music. The adults all around were shushing the children, trying to make them stop cracking their potato chip bags. Then a man's voice, an eloquent professional voice, began to speak slowly, out of the walls. The voice reminded me a little of the way radio announcers used to introduce a piece of classical music or describe the progress of the Royal Family to Westminster Abbey on one of their royal occasions. There was a faint echo-chamber effect. The dark ceiling was filled with stars. They came out not all at once but one after another, the way stars really do come out at night, though more quickly. The Milky Way galaxy appeared, was moving closer; stars swam into brilliance and kept on going, disappearing beyond the edges of the sky-screen or behind my head. While the flow of light continued, the voice presented stunning facts. From a few light-years away, it announced, the sun appears as a bright star, and the planets are not visible.
    From a few dozen light-years away, the Sun is not visible, either, to the naked eye. And that distance-a few dozen light-years-is only about a thousandth part of the distance from the Sun to the center of our galaxy, one galaxy, which itself contains about two hundred billion stars. And is, in turn, one of the millions, perhaps billions, of galaxies. Innumerable repetitions, innumerable variations. All this rolled past my head, too, like balls of lightning. Now realism was abandoned, for familiar artifice. A model of the solar system was spinning away in its elegant style. A bright bug took off from the Earth, heading for Jupiter. I set my dodging and shrinking mind sternly to recording facts. The mass of Jupiter two and a half times that of all the other planets put together. The Great Red Spot. The thirteen moons. Past Jupiter, a glance at the eccentric orbit of Pluto, the icy rings of Saturn. Back to Earth and moving into hot and dazzling Venus. Atmospheric pressure ninety times ours. 23129Moonless Mercury rotating three times while circling the Sun twice; an odd arrangement, not as satisfying as what they used to tell us -that it rotated once as it circled the Sun.57553 No perpetual  darkness after all. Why did they give out such confident information, only to announce later that it was quite wrong? Finally, the picture already familiar from magazines: the red soil of Mars, the blooming pink sky. When the show was over I sat in my seat while children clambered over me, making no comments on anything they had just seen or heard. They were pestering their keepers for eatables and further entertainments. An effort had been made to get their attention, to take it away from canned drinks and potato chips and fix it on various knowns and unkowns and 92598, and it seemed to have failed. A good thing, too, I thought. Children have natural immunity, most of them, and it shouldn't be tampered with. As for the adults who would deplore it, the ones who promoted this show, weren't they immune themselves to the extent that they could put in the echo-chamber effects, the music, the solemnity, simulating the awe that they supposed they ought to feel? Awe- what was that supposed to be? A fit of the shivers when you looked out the window? Once you knew what it was, you wouldn't be courting it.

    ...view full instructions

    In line $$6$$, "progress" most nearly means.
    Solution
    In the given passage, 'progress' is used to describe how the voice reminded the author of the way radio announcers introduced a piece of classical music or announced the forward movement of the Royal Family towards Westminster Abbey on one of their royal occasions. In this context, option E - advance- is the best meaning of 'progress'. Thus E is the answer.
  • Question 5
    1 / -0

    Directions For Questions

    This passage, from a short story published in $$1978$$, describes a visit to a planetarium, a building in which images of stars, planets, and other astronomical phenomena are projected onto a domed ceiling.

    Inside, we sat on wonderfully comfortable seats that were tilted back so that you lay in a sort of a hammock, attention directed to the bowl of the ceiling, which soon turned dark blue, with a faint rim of light around the edge. There was some splendid, commanding music. The adults all around were shushing the children, trying to make them stop cracking their potato chip bags. Then a man's voice, an eloquent professional voice, began to speak slowly, out of the walls. The voice reminded me a little of the way radio announcers used to introduce a piece of classical music or describe the progress of the Royal Family to Westminster Abbey on one of their royal occasions. There was a faint echo-chamber effect. The dark ceiling was filled with stars. They came out not all at once but one after another, the way stars really do come out at night, though more quickly. The Milky Way galaxy appeared, was moving closer; stars swam into brilliance and kept on going, disappearing beyond the edges of the sky-screen or behind my head. While the flow of light continued, the voice presented stunning facts. From a few light-years away, it announced, the sun appears as a bright star, and the planets are not visible.
    From a few dozen light-years away, the Sun is not visible, either, to the naked eye. And that distance-a few dozen light-years-is only about a thousandth part of the distance from the Sun to the center of our galaxy, one galaxy, which itself contains about two hundred billion stars. And is, in turn, one of the millions, perhaps billions, of galaxies. Innumerable repetitions, innumerable variations. All this rolled past my head, too, like balls of lightning. Now realism was abandoned, for familiar artifice. A model of the solar system was spinning away in its elegant style. A bright bug took off from the Earth, heading for Jupiter. I set my dodging and shrinking mind sternly to recording facts. The mass of Jupiter two and a half times that of all the other planets put together. The Great Red Spot. The thirteen moons. Past Jupiter, a glance at the eccentric orbit of Pluto, the icy rings of Saturn. Back to Earth and moving into hot and dazzling Venus. Atmospheric pressure ninety times ours. 23129Moonless Mercury rotating three times while circling the Sun twice; an odd arrangement, not as satisfying as what they used to tell us -that it rotated once as it circled the Sun.57553 No perpetual  darkness after all. Why did they give out such confident information, only to announce later that it was quite wrong? Finally, the picture already familiar from magazines: the red soil of Mars, the blooming pink sky. When the show was over I sat in my seat while children clambered over me, making no comments on anything they had just seen or heard. They were pestering their keepers for eatables and further entertainments. An effort had been made to get their attention, to take it away from canned drinks and potato chips and fix it on various knowns and unkowns and 92598, and it seemed to have failed. A good thing, too, I thought. Children have natural immunity, most of them, and it shouldn't be tampered with. As for the adults who would deplore it, the ones who promoted this show, weren't they immune themselves to the extent that they could put in the echo-chamber effects, the music, the solemnity, simulating the awe that they supposed they ought to feel? Awe- what was that supposed to be? A fit of the shivers when you looked out the window? Once you knew what it was, you wouldn't be courting it.

    ...view full instructions

    The first paragraph of the passage establishes a mood of.
    Solution
    The first paragraph, by describing the atmosphere and setting of the planetarium, sets a mood of anticipation for the reader: 'what is going to happen next?' Thus C is the best answer. The first paragraph definitely does not set a mood of dismissal, apprehension, concern or routine.
  • Question 6
    1 / -0

    Directions For Questions

    Enter LORD MAYOR (Sir Roger Otley) and EARL OF LINCOLN
    LINC: My Lord Mayor you have 40118sundry times feasted myself, and many courtiers more; Seldom or never can we be so kind to make requital of your courtesy. But, leaving this, I hear my cousin Lacy is much 67505affected to your daughter Rose.
    L. MAYOR: True, my good Lord, and she loves him so well that I mislike her boldness in the chase.
    LINC: Why, my Lord Mayor, think you it then a shame to join a Lacy with an Otley's name?
    L. MAYOR: Too mean is my poor girl for 44751his high birth: 29414Poor citizens must not with courtiers wed, who will in silks arid gay apparel spend more in one year than I am worth by far; Therefore your honour need not doubt my girl.
    LINC: Take need, my Lord, advise you what you do: A verier 85487unthrift lives not in the world than is my cousin: for I'll tell you what, 'Tis now almost a year since he requested to travel countries for experience; I furnish'd him with coins, bills of exchange, letters of credit,men to wait on him, solicited my friends in Italy well to respect him but to see the end: Scant had be journey'd, through half Germany, But all his coin was spent, his men cast off, His bills embezzl'd and my 24050jolly coz asham'd to show his bankrupt presence here, become a shoemaker in Wittenberg. A goodly science for a gentleman of such descent! Now judge the rest by this: Suppose your daughter have a thousand pound, He did consume me more in one half-year; And make him heir to all the wealth you have, One twelve month's rioting will waste it all. The seek, my Lord, some honest citizen to wed your daughter so.
     L. MAYOR: I thank your lordship. (Aside.) 70992Well, fox, I understand your subtlety. As for your nephew, let your lordship's eye but watch his actions, and you need not fear, for I have sent my daughter far enough. And yet your cousin Rowland might do well how he hath learn'd an occupation: (Aside.) And yet I scorn call him son-in-law.
     LINC: Ay, but I have better trade for him; I thank His Grace he hath appointed him Chief colonel of all those companies Muster'd in London and the shires about to serve His Highness in those wars of France. See where he comes.

    ...view full instructions

    The main effect of the Earl of Lincoln's first four lines is to-
    Solution
    The correct answer would be option D, where the Earl is trying to flatter the Mayor in order to get his cousin married to the latter's daughter. He already acknowledges the latter's generosity and his indebtedness to him. But the objective is to flatter him. Their difference is already establishes, so there is no effort to further emphasize them. Hence, options A,B,C and E are incorrect. 
  • Question 7
    1 / -0

    Directions For Questions

    [passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]1. For four days, I walked through the narrow lanes of the old city, enjoying the romance of being in a city where history still lives - in its cobblestone streets and in its people riding asses, carrying vine leaves and palm as they once did during the time of Christ.
    2. This is Jerusalem, home to the sacred sites of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. This is the place that houses the church of the Holy Sepulchre, the place where Jesus was finally laid to rest. This is also the site of Christ's crucifixion, burial, and resurrection.
    3. Built by the Roman Emperor Constantine at the site of an earlier temple to Aphrodite, it is the most venerated Christian shrine in the world. And justifiably so. Here, within the church, are the last five stations of the cross, the 10th station where Jesus was stripped of his clothes, the 11th where he was nailed to the cross, the 12th where he died on the cross, the 13th where the body was removed from the cross, and the 14th, his tomb.
    4. For all this weighty tradition, the approach and entrance to the church are nondescript. You have to ask for directions. Even to the devout Christian pilgrims walking along the Via Dolorosa - The Way of Sorrow - the first nine stations look clueless. Then a courtyard appears, hemmed in by other buildings and a doorway to one side. This leads to a vast area of huge stone architecture.
    5. Immediately inside the entrance is your first stop. It's the stone of anointing: this is the place, according to Greek tradition, where Christ was removed from the cross. The Roman Catholics, however, believe it to the spot where Jesus' body was prepared for burial by Joseph.
    6. What happened next? Jesus was buried. He was taken to a place outside the city of Jerusalem where other graves existed and there, he was buried in a cave. However, all that is long gone, destroyed by continued attacks and rebuilding; what remains is the massive - and impressive - Rotunda (a round building with a dome) that Emperor Constantine built. Under this, and right in the center of the Rotunda, is the structure that contains the Holy Sepulchre.
    7. "How do you know that this is Jesus' tomb?" I asked one of the pilgrims standing next to me. He was clueless, more interested, like the rest of them, in the novelty of it all and in photographing it, than in its history or tradition.
    8. At the start of the first century, the place was a disused quarry outside the city walls. According to the gospels, Jesus' Crucifixion occurred' at a place outside the city walls with graves nearby .....'. Archaeologists have discovered tombs from that era, so the site is compatible with the Biblical period.
    9. The structure at the site is a marble tomb built over the original burial chamber. It has two rooms, and you enter four at a time into the first of these, the Chapel of the Angel. Here the angle is supposed to have sat on a stone to recount Christ's resurrection. A low door made of white marble, partly worn away by pilgrims' hands, leads to a smaller chamber inside. This is the 'room of the tomb', the place where Jesus was buried.
    10. We entered in single file. On my right was a large marble slab that covered the original rock bench on which the body of Jesus was laid. A woman knelt and prayed. Her eyes were wet with tears. She pressed her face against the slab to hide them, but it only made it worse.

    ...view full instructions

    Why does one have to constantly ask for directions to the church?
    Solution
    Option B is the right answer because it is clearly mentioned in 4th paragraph of the passage that - 'For all this weighty tradition, the approach and entrance to the church are nondescript. You have to ask for directions.'
    There is no evidence in the passage to suggest that Options A, C, and D are the right answers.
    Hence, these are incorrect.

  • Question 8
    1 / -0

    Directions For Questions

    This passage, from a short story published in $$1978$$, describes a visit to a planetarium, a building in which images of stars, planets, and other astronomical phenomena are projected onto a domed ceiling.

    Inside, we sat on wonderfully comfortable seats that were tilted back so that you lay in a sort of a hammock, attention directed to the bowl of the ceiling, which soon turned dark blue, with a faint rim of light around the edge. There was some splendid, commanding music. The adults all around were shushing the children, trying to make them stop cracking their potato chip bags. Then a man's voice, an eloquent professional voice, began to speak slowly, out of the walls. The voice reminded me a little of the way radio announcers used to introduce a piece of classical music or describe the progress of the Royal Family to Westminster Abbey on one of their royal occasions. There was a faint echo-chamber effect. The dark ceiling was filled with stars. They came out not all at once but one after another, the way stars really do come out at night, though more quickly. The Milky Way galaxy appeared, was moving closer; stars swam into brilliance and kept on going, disappearing beyond the edges of the sky-screen or behind my head. While the flow of light continued, the voice presented stunning facts. From a few light-years away, it announced, the sun appears as a bright star, and the planets are not visible.
    From a few dozen light-years away, the Sun is not visible, either, to the naked eye. And that distance-a few dozen light-years-is only about a thousandth part of the distance from the Sun to the center of our galaxy, one galaxy, which itself contains about two hundred billion stars. And is, in turn, one of the millions, perhaps billions, of galaxies. Innumerable repetitions, innumerable variations. All this rolled past my head, too, like balls of lightning. Now realism was abandoned, for familiar artifice. A model of the solar system was spinning away in its elegant style. A bright bug took off from the Earth, heading for Jupiter. I set my dodging and shrinking mind sternly to recording facts. The mass of Jupiter two and a half times that of all the other planets put together. The Great Red Spot. The thirteen moons. Past Jupiter, a glance at the eccentric orbit of Pluto, the icy rings of Saturn. Back to Earth and moving into hot and dazzling Venus. Atmospheric pressure ninety times ours. 23129Moonless Mercury rotating three times while circling the Sun twice; an odd arrangement, not as satisfying as what they used to tell us -that it rotated once as it circled the Sun.57553 No perpetual  darkness after all. Why did they give out such confident information, only to announce later that it was quite wrong? Finally, the picture already familiar from magazines: the red soil of Mars, the blooming pink sky. When the show was over I sat in my seat while children clambered over me, making no comments on anything they had just seen or heard. They were pestering their keepers for eatables and further entertainments. An effort had been made to get their attention, to take it away from canned drinks and potato chips and fix it on various knowns and unkowns and 92598, and it seemed to have failed. A good thing, too, I thought. Children have natural immunity, most of them, and it shouldn't be tampered with. As for the adults who would deplore it, the ones who promoted this show, weren't they immune themselves to the extent that they could put in the echo-chamber effects, the music, the solemnity, simulating the awe that they supposed they ought to feel? Awe- what was that supposed to be? A fit of the shivers when you looked out the window? Once you knew what it was, you wouldn't be courting it.

    ...view full instructions

    In lines 27-29 ("Moonless....Sun"), the narrator's comment about the "arrangement" demonstrates a preference for.
    Solution
    Moonless Mercury rotating three times while circling the Sun twice; an odd arrangement, not as satisfying as what they used to tell us- that it rotated once as it circled the Sun." - the use of 'not as satisfying' with reference to the "odd arrangement" of Mercury rotating thrice while circling the Sun twice suggests that the author has a preference for perfect symmetry. It definitely does not suggest a preference for irony, inventiveness, ornamentation or ambiguity. Thus C is the answer.
  • Question 9
    1 / -0

    Directions For Questions

    This passage, from a short story published in $$1978$$, describes a visit to a planetarium, a building in which images of stars, planets, and other astronomical phenomena are projected onto a domed ceiling.

    Inside, we sat on wonderfully comfortable seats that were tilted back so that you lay in a sort of a hammock, attention directed to the bowl of the ceiling, which soon turned dark blue, with a faint rim of light around the edge. There was some splendid, commanding music. The adults all around were shushing the children, trying to make them stop cracking their potato chip bags. Then a man's voice, an eloquent professional voice, began to speak slowly, out of the walls. The voice reminded me a little of the way radio announcers used to introduce a piece of classical music or describe the progress of the Royal Family to Westminster Abbey on one of their royal occasions. There was a faint echo-chamber effect. The dark ceiling was filled with stars. They came out not all at once but one after another, the way stars really do come out at night, though more quickly. The Milky Way galaxy appeared, was moving closer; stars swam into brilliance and kept on going, disappearing beyond the edges of the sky-screen or behind my head. While the flow of light continued, the voice presented stunning facts. From a few light-years away, it announced, the sun appears as a bright star, and the planets are not visible.
    From a few dozen light-years away, the Sun is not visible, either, to the naked eye. And that distance-a few dozen light-years-is only about a thousandth part of the distance from the Sun to the center of our galaxy, one galaxy, which itself contains about two hundred billion stars. And is, in turn, one of the millions, perhaps billions, of galaxies. Innumerable repetitions, innumerable variations. All this rolled past my head, too, like balls of lightning. Now realism was abandoned, for familiar artifice. A model of the solar system was spinning away in its elegant style. A bright bug took off from the Earth, heading for Jupiter. I set my dodging and shrinking mind sternly to recording facts. The mass of Jupiter two and a half times that of all the other planets put together. The Great Red Spot. The thirteen moons. Past Jupiter, a glance at the eccentric orbit of Pluto, the icy rings of Saturn. Back to Earth and moving into hot and dazzling Venus. Atmospheric pressure ninety times ours. 23129Moonless Mercury rotating three times while circling the Sun twice; an odd arrangement, not as satisfying as what they used to tell us -that it rotated once as it circled the Sun.57553 No perpetual  darkness after all. Why did they give out such confident information, only to announce later that it was quite wrong? Finally, the picture already familiar from magazines: the red soil of Mars, the blooming pink sky. When the show was over I sat in my seat while children clambered over me, making no comments on anything they had just seen or heard. They were pestering their keepers for eatables and further entertainments. An effort had been made to get their attention, to take it away from canned drinks and potato chips and fix it on various knowns and unkowns and 92598, and it seemed to have failed. A good thing, too, I thought. Children have natural immunity, most of them, and it shouldn't be tampered with. As for the adults who would deplore it, the ones who promoted this show, weren't they immune themselves to the extent that they could put in the echo-chamber effects, the music, the solemnity, simulating the awe that they supposed they ought to feel? Awe- what was that supposed to be? A fit of the shivers when you looked out the window? Once you knew what it was, you wouldn't be courting it.

    ...view full instructions

    The phrase "horrible immensities" (line 35) primarily indicates.
    Solution
    In line 53, the author says that the adults had made an attempt to divert the children's attention with the planetarium and distract them from potato chips and scanned goods by making them concentrate on the information that the planetarium provided. The author then goes on to say that this trick of the adults is not successful. He uses the term "horrible immensities" with reference to the information provided by the planetarium and probably indicates the incomprehensible realities of the universe that the mentioned information is made up of. Thus E is the best answer.
  • Question 10
    1 / -0

    Directions For Questions

    This passage, from a short story published in $$1978$$, describes a visit to a planetarium, a building in which images of stars, planets, and other astronomical phenomena are projected onto a domed ceiling.

    Inside, we sat on wonderfully comfortable seats that were tilted back so that you lay in a sort of a hammock, attention directed to the bowl of the ceiling, which soon turned dark blue, with a faint rim of light around the edge. There was some splendid, commanding music. The adults all around were shushing the children, trying to make them stop cracking their potato chip bags. Then a man's voice, an eloquent professional voice, began to speak slowly, out of the walls. The voice reminded me a little of the way radio announcers used to introduce a piece of classical music or describe the progress of the Royal Family to Westminster Abbey on one of their royal occasions. There was a faint echo-chamber effect. The dark ceiling was filled with stars. They came out not all at once but one after another, the way stars really do come out at night, though more quickly. The Milky Way galaxy appeared, was moving closer; stars swam into brilliance and kept on going, disappearing beyond the edges of the sky-screen or behind my head. While the flow of light continued, the voice presented stunning facts. From a few light-years away, it announced, the sun appears as a bright star, and the planets are not visible.
    From a few dozen light-years away, the Sun is not visible, either, to the naked eye. And that distance-a few dozen light-years-is only about a thousandth part of the distance from the Sun to the center of our galaxy, one galaxy, which itself contains about two hundred billion stars. And is, in turn, one of the millions, perhaps billions, of galaxies. Innumerable repetitions, innumerable variations. All this rolled past my head, too, like balls of lightning. Now realism was abandoned, for familiar artifice. A model of the solar system was spinning away in its elegant style. A bright bug took off from the Earth, heading for Jupiter. I set my dodging and shrinking mind sternly to recording facts. The mass of Jupiter two and a half times that of all the other planets put together. The Great Red Spot. The thirteen moons. Past Jupiter, a glance at the eccentric orbit of Pluto, the icy rings of Saturn. Back to Earth and moving into hot and dazzling Venus. Atmospheric pressure ninety times ours. 23129Moonless Mercury rotating three times while circling the Sun twice; an odd arrangement, not as satisfying as what they used to tell us -that it rotated once as it circled the Sun.57553 No perpetual  darkness after all. Why did they give out such confident information, only to announce later that it was quite wrong? Finally, the picture already familiar from magazines: the red soil of Mars, the blooming pink sky. When the show was over I sat in my seat while children clambered over me, making no comments on anything they had just seen or heard. They were pestering their keepers for eatables and further entertainments. An effort had been made to get their attention, to take it away from canned drinks and potato chips and fix it on various knowns and unkowns and 92598, and it seemed to have failed. A good thing, too, I thought. Children have natural immunity, most of them, and it shouldn't be tampered with. As for the adults who would deplore it, the ones who promoted this show, weren't they immune themselves to the extent that they could put in the echo-chamber effects, the music, the solemnity, simulating the awe that they supposed they ought to feel? Awe- what was that supposed to be? A fit of the shivers when you looked out the window? Once you knew what it was, you wouldn't be courting it.

    ...view full instructions

    The words "dodging and shrinking" (line 20) primarily suggest that the narrator was.
    Solution
    In line 20, the author states that he sets his "dodging and shrinking mind sternly to recording facts". This suggests that the author was overwhelmed and intimidated by the amount of information provided- Thus B is the best answer.
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