CAT Model Paper 5 Questions and Answers with Explanation Part 10

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Answer the questions based on the passage given below.

My father grew up in Vienna. His childhood was poor and precarious. He writes in his autobiography, Interesting Times, that his own father collapsed and died on the doorstep, aged 48, after “another of his increasingly desperate visits to town in search of money to earn or borrow”. Within two years his mother had died, aged 36, from lung disease and he was moved to stay with relatives in Berlin. Watching the rise of Adolf Hitler to power first-hand, he wrote “the months in Berlin made me a life-long communist”. He came to Britain to stay with relatives in 1933. He won a scholarship to Cambridge, and went up in 1936.

He must have felt an affinity with the hospital workers because he would introduce them to us admiringly as we visited: they were from the Philippines or Nigeria; they had a PhD. I think that he saw in them the thing he valued greatly as someone who started poor and worked his way up in life through his curiosity and ability to learn. I think they reminded him of the students he loved during a 65-year association with Birkbeck College, University of London, which specialises in evening degrees for daytime workers. The life of the immigrant, of the émigré, of the student, lifting themselves from desperate lives through education, was what he understood. In return the ward nurses and nursing assistants leaned in close to him as they did dressings and lifts, saying cheerfully “Hello, professor!” and mostly doing their very best.

A grim routine of psyching myself up for “the end” through much of 2010, 2011 and 2012 was accompanied by relief when he rallied, force of spirit – both his and my mother’s – and modern medicine keeping him alive. But on the periphery of my senses was a lonely tinge of something which felt a bit like let-down: knowing this angst would return, knowing he would die, inevitably, and in the meantime waiting, powerless. There was guilt and shame in my desperation to know when, as if knowing could somehow stave off or ameliorate the loss, which of course was a pointless exercise. I called this period of time “Jewish Waiting for Godot”.

When he had hospital appointments and was waiting around he always chose a pocketbook-size book to read in case he was kept in. Food he could do without; ideas not. One winter night my mother slipped and fell in the street and he called an ambulance to take her to hospital. In his anxiety he forgot his pocketbook routine. I arrived mid-evening to find them at A&E with nothing to do except wait. After a while they took her to X-ray. By now it looked more like a bad sprain but the process was going to take several more hours. He was being stoic but I was in a panic about him as much as her: how will he manage with just the windowless wall of a green hospital curtain to occupy his brain? Then I remembered. I had just downloaded The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal on to my iPad. So I showed him how to navigate the touchpad. His long finger traced the words and he muttered softly in something close to wonderment: an ancient E.T. in a world whose modernity was becoming strangely alien.

On Sundays towards the end we would visit and I would bring, like contraband, newspapers “from the right”: The Sunday Telegraph and The Sunday Times or The Spectator. While the children played swing ball in the garden he would lay down The Observer and read hungrily, enjoying his dislike of their politics and often pronouncing witheringly on David Cameron with his worst criticism: “He’s a lightweight.” Not that this stopped him lapping up news of my encounters with people who were not of “the left”, including the prime minister. Dad was refreshingly un-tribal. After his death I received a very kind handwritten note from Boris Johnson, recalling a conversation he had recently had with Dad in the green room at Hay.

Q: 47. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?

(A) The author father hated Hitler because he was a Jew

(B) The incident involving the author mother was serious

(D) The author father only read material that supported his political ideology

Ans: (C)

Solution

Refer to the line: ‘The author’s father hated Hitler because he was a Jew’ is wrong. In the first paragraph, we are told he hated Hitler and became a lifelong communist. His jewishness has nothing to do with it.

‘Boris Johnson does not have left leanings’ is correct. In the last paragraph, the author says dad was refreshingly un-tribal which means Johnson did not belong to the left

‘The incident involving the author’s mother was serious’ is wrong. The mother had only a bad sprain.

‘The author’s father only read material that supported his political ideology’ is incorrect as the passage mentions ‘he would lay down The Observer and read hungrily, enjoying his dislike of their politics’

Hence option C

Q: 48. The passage might have been taken from which of the following?

(A) A scientific journal

(B) A literary journal

(D) A critical review

Ans: (C)

Solution

A scientific journal is clearly wrong.

A literary journal is not entirely correct. The passage mentions books only in passing. Further, the passage is not obviously about an author or a literary work for it to have appeared in a literary journal. A claim of that kind would be far-fetched.

An obituary is fine. It is written by the author in memory of his or her dead father.

A critical review is also wrong.

Q: 49. Which of the following best captures the tone of the third paragraph?

(A) Somnambulant

(B) Sepulchral

(D) Sombre

Ans: (D)

Solution:

Somnambulant is wrong, since it means sleep inducing.

Sepulchral is partly correct because it means gloomy. But the tone is not so much gloomy as preparatory for the death of the father, hence sombre.

Stimulant is used for drugs and other banned substances.

End Passage

Q: 50. Identify the INCORRECT sentence(s) in terms of grammar, spelling and punctuation.

(A) The first official conversation between India and China on Afghanistan was long overdue.

(B) Delhi and Beijing had not talked to each other until now on such an important issue points to the huge gaps in their expanding political engagement.

(C) The rival nature of Sino-Indian relations has meant there has been a little incentive for an honest engagement on regional security issues.

(D) Worse still, China’s enduring strategic partnership with the Pakistani army has prevented Beijing from talking to Delhi on issues deemed sensitive for Rawalpindi.

(A)

(B)

(C)

(D)

Ans: (B)

Solution:

In B, That Delhi and Beijing...

In C, ‘little’ instead of ‘a little’. The author says there is little reason, meaning not enough reason. When the connotation is negative, the article is dropped.

Q: 51. The question has a sentence with two blanks followed by four pairs of words as choices. From the choices, select the pair of words that can best complete the given sentence.

One way to understand the fundamental difference between nonfiction and fiction is to consider the elements of structure, pacing, and __________ enough believability that reality is free to _______, but a fiction writer is not.

(A) Fundamentally, overlook

(B) Paradoxically, ignore

(D) Deviously, outsmart

Ans: (B)

Solution:

The author is talking about the fundamental difference between fiction and non-fiction. Now when we speak of the elements, the author mentions believability that reality is free to...what? The thing about reality, or non-fiction, is that it has the stamp of existence, and therefore does not have to prove itself. Therefore, reality can ignore believability which a fiction writer cannot. This is paradoxical because it is fiction which is imaginative and one would assume that fiction would take liberties with reality.