Read the passage and answer the questions given below it.
In 1962, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko slipped a new character into the last issue of a comic that was about to be cancelled. Little was expected of him. He was Peter Parker, a thin, bookish teenager from Queens, and when a spider bite left him with great strength, his first idea was a pragmatic one: earn some money.
I think that small, slightly shabby choice explains why he has outlasted so many grander heroes. Superman came from another planet. Batman had a fortune. Peter had the rent to worry about. His powers solved almost nothing in his own life. If anything, they opened a running tab: a missed class, a lost job, a friend let down, a bruise hidden from his aunt at breakfast. No rescue ever cleared it, and each fight only added to it.
A sceptic will say the character lasts because he sells. That is partly true. Since 2002, three actors have played Peter in live-action films, and the mask stares out from lunch boxes and school bags. But merchandise was once just as ubiquitous for heroes nobody remembers today. Sales can keep a name alive. They cannot make a teenager in Nagpur feel that the boy in the suit has the same mundane troubles she has.
The mask matters here more than the muscles. Because it hides the whole face, almost anyone could be under it. In a 2018 animated film, the suit passed to Miles Morales, a Brooklyn teenager with school and family worries of his own, and the film became one of the best-loved in the character’s history. Perhaps audiences had never come for Peter himself, only for his kind of trouble.
The phrase ‘running tab’, as used in the second paragraph, refers to
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → a growing heap of private losses caused by his heroics
A running tab is a bill at a shop or café that keeps growing until it is paid. Here the writer uses it for the price Peter pays for being a hero.
- The writer lists what is on the tab: “a missed class, a lost job, a friend let down, a bruise hidden from his aunt”. These are private losses, not money.
- “No rescue ever cleared it”, and each fight “only added to it”. So the cost keeps growing, like an unpaid bill. Example: Each late night at the office added to the running tab of tiredness he carried into the week.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: a growing list of strangers he has rescued from danger in the city — Incorrect. Misread: The tab holds what Peter loses, not the people he saves. Rescues never clear it.
Option 2: a growing sum of money he owes for the rent — Incorrect. Wrong meaning: This takes “tab” as a real bill. The rent is mentioned just before, but the items on the tab are a class, a job, a friend and a bruise.
Option 3: a growing number of enemies who want revenge on him — Incorrect. Not mentioned: The passage says nothing about enemies seeking revenge.