Narrative Writing

Reading Comprehension: Narrative Extract                                       Grade 11 

 

Names:  ____________________________             ______________________________

 

Instructions: In pairs, read the passage and answer all the questions below. (14 marks)

 

Some people are meant to live alone. Take for instance, Uncle Arthur. We called him Uncle Arthur, all of us, but he wasn’t our uncle. He was really some sort of elderly cousin and he was almost a legend in the family.

 

‘I’ll send you to live with Uncle Arthur,’ was mother’s threat when one of us had been particularly unruly or ‘A week with Uncle Arthur’ll do you good.’.

 

Not that Uncle Arthur was especially ogre-like or repulsive to our childish eyes. Far from it – a milder little man I never saw, although his visits to our home in those days were few and far between. No, it was the fact that he lived all alone; alone in the old dilapidated house on the hill, a house we could see when the canes were cut, a house that loomed gaunt and cockeyed against the brooding background of the two huge twisted evergreens that added their touch of mystery to Uncle Arthur’s unaccountable isolation.

 

None of us had ever been there. Uncle Arthur never invited anyone to his home. So the threat of being sent to Uncle Arthur’s never lost its sting, even though at Christmas time we could always expect a large, clumsily wrapped box of toffee or butterscotch from the house on the hill.

 

Uncle Arthur’s visits grew fewer and fewer till there was no in between, and it wasn’t till I’d grown up that I ever gave him a thought again.

 

Frank Collymore, “Some People are Meant to Live Alone”. 

                                                    The Oxford Book of Caribbean Stories, Oxford University Press,2001

                                                    Extract and Questions from: CSEC English A  paper 2, Jan. 2009

 

a) Identify a synonym of the word ‘ decrepit’ in the passage. (1 mark)

Your Response:

 

b) What figurative device is used in the following lines, “ a house that loomed gaunt and cockeyed” (lines 9-10)? (2 marks)

Your Response:

 

c) What family relationship was there between Uncle Arthur and the narrator? (1 mark)

Your Response:

d) What impression of Uncle Arthur did the narrator’s mother try to create? (2 marks)

Your Response:

 

e) What kind of person did Uncle Aurther appear to be to the children? (2 marks)

  Your Response:

 

f) Give two adjectives that would describe Uncle Arthur, based on his actions and habits. (2 marks)

Your Response:

 

g) According to the passage, what made Uncle Arthur’s house mysterious? (2marks)

Your Response:

 

h) Why did the narrator forget about Uncle Arthur? (2 marks)

Your Response:

 

(Total 14 Marks)