Read the passage and answer the questions given below it.
No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy.
I have good memories of St Cyprian's, among a horde of bad ones. Sometimes on summer afternoons there were wonderful expeditions across the Downs to a village called Birling Gap, or to Beachy Head, where one bathed dangerously among the boulders and came home covered with cuts. And there were still more wonderful midsummer evenings when, as a special treat, we were not driven off to bed as usual but allowed to wander about the grounds in the long twilight, ending up with a plunge into the swimming bath at about nine o'clock. There was the joy of waking early on summer mornings and getting in an hour's undisturbed reading in the sunlit, sleeping dormitory. There was also cricket, which I was no good at but with which I conducted a sort of hopeless love affair up to the age of about eighteen. And there was the pleasure of keeping caterpillars, which could be illicitly purchased for sixpence at a shop in the town, and, when one could escape long enough from the master who was ‘taking the walk’, there was the excitement of dredging the dew-ponds on the Downs for enormous newts with orange-coloured bellies. This business of being out for a walk, coming across something of fascinating interest and then being dragged away from it by a yell from the master, like a dog jerked onwards by the leash, is an important feature of school life, and helps to build up the conviction, so strong in many children, that the things you most want to do are always unattainable.
The comparison “like a dog jerked onwards by the leash” suggests that the boy
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → was pulled away from what interested him, with no say in the matter
The boy comes across something of “fascinating interest”.
- Then a yell from the master drags him away from it.
- The writer says this is “like a dog jerked onwards by the leash”. A leash is the strap tied to a dog's collar. Jerked means pulled with a sudden, sharp movement.
- A dog on a leash cannot choose where to stop. It must go where it is pulled.
- In the same way, the boy had no choice. He was pulled away from what he wanted to see.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: was punished like an animal for wandering off — Incorrect. Not mentioned: The boy is not punished. He is only called back by “a yell from the master”.
Option 2: behaved as badly as an untrained puppy on the walks — Incorrect. Wrong focus: The comparison is about being pulled away. It says nothing about how the boy behaved.
Option 3: enjoyed the walks as much as a dog enjoys going out — Incorrect. Wrong meaning: The dog in the comparison is jerked, not happy. The line shows the boy's unhappiness at being dragged away.