Table of Contents
- Poetry Passage: Stephen Spender's "Daybreak"
- Question 91: Matching Imagery to Objects
- Question 92: Identifying Literary Devices
- Question 93: Description of the Lady's Face
- Prose Passage 1: Immanuel Kant on Logic
- Question 94: Why Logic Cannot be Empirical
- Question 95: Natural vs. Moral Philosophy
- Prose Passage 2: Shakespeare's King Lear
- Question 96: The Hypocrisy of the Beadle
- Question 97: Identifying Speaker and Listener
- Question 98: The Palpability of Sin and Vice
- Prose Passage 3: Dickens's Oliver Twist
- Question 99: Identifying the "Face"
- Question 100: The Implication of "Strangers"
Reading Comprehension: Poetry (Questions 91-93)
Read the given poem and answer the questions that follow:
Daybreak
At Dawn she lay with her profile at that angle
Which, when she sleeps, seems the carved face of an angel.
Her hair a harp, the hand of a breeze follows
And plays, against the white cloud of the pillows.
Then, in a flush of rose, she woke, and her eyes that opened
Swam in blue through her rose flesh that dawned.
From her dew of lips, the drop of one word
Fell like the first of fountains: murmured
'Darling', upon my ears the song of the first bird.
'My dream becomes my dream,' she said, 'come true.
I waken from you to my dream of you.'
Oh, my own wakened dream then dared assume
The audacity of her sleep. Our dreams
Poured into each other's arms, like streams.
— Stephen Spender
Question 91
Match List I and List II:
| List I (Item) | List II (Example/Metaphor) |
|---|---|
| A. ‘Her Hair’ | I. player |
| B. ‘pillows’ | II. ‘a harp’ |
| C. ‘breeze’ | III. ‘rose’ |
| D. ‘cheeks’ | IV. ‘cloud’ |
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
Matching the items in the poem to the specific poetic imagery Spender uses to describe them:
A. 'Her hair' — (II) 'a harp'. ("Her hair a harp...")
B. 'pillows' — (IV) 'cloud'. ("...against the white cloud of the pillows.")
C. 'breeze' — (I) player. The breeze acts as the player of the instrument ("the hand of a breeze follows / And plays").
D. 'cheeks' (flesh) — (III) 'rose'. ("...in a flush of rose... her rose flesh that dawned.")
Question 92
Match List I and List II:
| List I (Item) | List II (Literary Device) |
|---|---|
| A. ‘Her Hair a harp’ | I. Simile |
| B. ‘the hand of a breeze’ | II. Metaphor |
| C. ‘seems the carved face’ (raw data says stone face, functionally same) | III. Oxymoron |
| D. ‘my wakened dream’ | IV. Personification / Synecdoche (raw data lists Synecdoche, which applies contextually) |
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
Matching the poetic lines to their correct literary devices:
A. 'Her Hair a harp' — (II) Metaphor. A direct comparison between her hair and an instrument without using 'like' or 'as'.
B. 'the hand of a breeze' — (IV) Synecdoche. Using a part ("hand") to represent the whole action/force of the breeze (also strongly functioning as Personification).
C. 'seems the carved face' — (I) Simile. The word "seems" functions similarly to "like" or "as," drawing an explicit, non-literal comparison.
D. 'my wakened dream' — (III) Oxymoron. Placing two inherently contradictory words together (you cannot be both awake and dreaming simultaneously in a literal sense).
Question 93
Which among the following best describes the lady’s face as “At dawn she lay…” asleep?
The poem states: "At Dawn she lay with her profile at that angle / Which, when she sleeps, seems the carved face of an angel."
The word "profile" explicitly means the side-view of her face. The phrase "carved face" implies that it is perfectly sculpted or chiseled like marble, giving it the serene, statuesque beauty of a sculpted angel.
Reading Comprehension: Philosophy (Questions 94-95)
Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow:
Logic cannot have any empirical part; that is, a part in which the universal and necessary laws of thought should rest on grounds taken from experience; otherwise, it would not be logic, i.e., a canon for the understanding or the reason, valid for all thought, and capable of demonstration. Natural and moral philosophy, on the contrary, can each have their empirical part, since the former has to determine the laws of nature as an object of experience; the latter, the laws of the human will, so far as it is affected by nature: the former, however, being laws according to which everything does happen; the latter, laws according to which everything ought to happen. Ethics, however, must also consider the conditions under which what ought to happen frequently does not.
— Immanuel Kant
Question 94
“Logic cannot have any empirical part”, because:
A. laws of thought are subjective.
B. it propounds laws whose applicability can be shown.
C. its laws are valid for all thought.
D. its laws are valid for everyone’s experience.
Choose the most appropriate answer from the options given below:
According to the passage from Kant, Logic is fundamentally different from science or ethics.
Logic cannot be based on "empirical" (real-world, sensory) experience because its laws must be purely structural. The passage states logic is "valid for all thought" (Statement C) and is "capable of demonstration" (meaning its applicability can be proven purely through mathematical/rational formulas, Statement B). If logic relied on human experience (which is flawed and subjective), it would cease to be a universal, unbreakable law of reason.
Question 95
Based on the given passage which two of the following statements are correct?
A. For natural philosophy, nature influences the laws.
B. For moral philosophy, nature is to be experienced.
C. Natural philosophy does not describe how things actually do happen.
D. Moral philosophy accounts for what should be.
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
The passage explicitly defines the realms of natural and moral philosophy:
- (A) True: The passage states that natural philosophy "has to determine the laws of nature as an object of experience," meaning observable nature dictates the laws.
- (D) True: The passage states that moral philosophy involves "laws according to which everything ought to happen" (i.e., what should be/how humans should behave).
Why B and C are wrong: Moral philosophy focuses on human will, not experiencing nature (B). Natural philosophy explicitly does describe how things "actually do happen" in reality (C).
Reading Comprehension: Drama (Questions 96-98)
Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow:
And the creature run from the cur?
There thou mightst behold the great image of authority: a dog’s obeyed in office.—
Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand!
Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back;
Thou hotly lust’st to use her in that kind for which thou whipp’st her.
The usurer hangs the cozener.
Through tatter’d clothes small vices do appear;
Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;
Arm it in rags, a pigmy’s straw doth pierce it.
— William Shakespeare, King Lear
Question 96
In the passage, the church officer (beadle) is asked to whip his own back rather than the prostitute’s because:
The passage is a blistering critique of authority and hypocrisy. A "beadle" (a parish officer) is whipping a prostitute in the street. Lear commands him to stop and whip his own back instead, because the beadle is deeply corrupt: he is secretly lusting to sleep with her ("use her in that kind") while publicly punishing her for doing exactly that.
Question 97
Who speaks these lines and to whom?
These lines occur in Act 4, Scene 6 of King Lear.
The mad, deposed King Lear is wandering the heath wearing a crown of weeds. He encounters the blind Earl of Gloucester. In his "reason in madness," Lear delivers this profound speech analyzing the total corruption and hypocrisy of the world's justice system, explaining to Gloucester that rich people can buy their way out of any crime, while poor people are brutally punished for minor offenses.
Question 98
The two sentences in the lines from - "Through tatter’d clothes..." to - "...straw doth pierce it" deal with two foibles, (i) vice and (ii) sin. About these two, the speaker says that:
The core meaning of the metaphor is about visibility (palpability) and social class.
Lear says: "Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear; / Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold, / And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks."
If you are poor (wearing tattered clothes), even tiny vices are highly visible ("palpable") and you are easily punished by the law (the straw pierces you). If you are rich (wearing fur gowns and plating your sins with gold), your massive sins become invisible ("impalpable") to the law, and the "lance of justice" shatters against your wealth without hurting you.
Reading Comprehension: Fiction (Questions 99-100)
Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow:
The surgeon deposited it in her arms. She imprinted her cold, white lips passionately on its forehead; passed her hands over her face; gazed wildly around; shuddered; fell back — and died. They chafed her breast, hands, temples; but the blood had stopped forever. They talked of hope and comfort. They had been strangers too long. ‘It’s all over, Mrs Thingummy!’, said the surgeon at last.
— Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
Question 99
In the expression, “passed her hands over her face”, the ‘face’ is of:
The grammar of the sentence firmly establishes that the subject ("She") is the dying mother (the patient).
The surgeon (who is male) hands the baby ("it") to the mother. The mother kisses the baby's forehead, then passes her hands over her own face in a moment of exhaustion and wild delirium before she shudders, falls back, and dies. This is the tragic opening scene of the novel where Oliver's mother passes away in the workhouse.
Question 100
The implication of ‘they had been strangers too long’ is:
This is a classic example of Dickens's biting, tragic irony.
After the destitute, nameless mother dies, the doctors and nurses talk about "hope and comfort." Dickens notes that "They [the concepts of hope and comfort] had been strangers too long." He implies that the patient lived a life completely devoid of any hope or comfort. Speaking of them now, after her harsh life in poverty has killed her, is entirely useless because those concepts were alien ("strangers") to her throughout her entire life.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an Oxymoron?
An oxymoron is a figure of speech in which two apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction (e.g., "jumbo shrimp," "deafening silence," or as seen in the poem, "wakened dream"). It creates a paradoxical image that forces the reader to think deeply about a complex emotional state.
What is Immanuel Kant's distinction between natural and moral philosophy?
In Kant's framework, Natural Philosophy focuses on what is (the observable, empirical laws of physics and nature that control how objects act). Moral Philosophy (Ethics) focuses on what ought to be (the laws of human will and morality), acknowledging that humans have free will and often fail to do what they "ought" to do.
Why does Lear talk about "robes and furr'd gowns"?
This is one of Shakespeare's most profound critiques of social class and the justice system. Lear is pointing out that the legal system is blind to the sins of the wealthy elite. A rich man wearing a fur gown can commit terrible crimes but buy his way out of justice, whereas a poor man in rags will be brutally executed for stealing a piece of bread.
