27. Reading Skills Comprehension: Beauty

BEAUTY

There was a time in my life when beauty meant something special to me. I guess that would have been when I was about six or seven years old, just several weeks or maybe a month before the orphanage turned me into an old man.

 I would get up every morning at the orphanage, make my bed just like the little soldier that I had become and then I would get into one of the two straight lines and march to breakfast with the other twenty or thirty boys who also lived in my dormitory.

 After breakfast one Saturday morning I returned to the dormitory and saw the house parent chasing the beautiful monarch butterflies that lived by the hundreds in the bushes strewn around the orphanage.

 I carefully watched as he caught these beautiful creatures, one after the other, and then took them from the net and then stuck straight pins through their head and wings, pinning them onto a heavy cardboard sheet. I-low cruel it was to kill something of such beauty. I had walked many times out into the bushes, all by myself, just so the butterflies could land on my head, face and hands so I could look at them up close. When the telephone rang the house parent laid the large cardboard paper down on the back cement step and went inside to answer the phone. I walked up to the cardboard and looked at the one butterfly who he had just pinned to the large paper. It was still moving about so I reached down and touched it on the wing causing one of the pins to fall out. It started flying around and around trying to get away but it was still pinned by the one wing with the other straight pin. Finally, its wing broke off and the butterfly fell to the ground and just quivered.

I picked tip the torn wing and the butterfly and I spat on its wing and tried to get it to stick back on so it could fly away and be free before the house parent came back. But it would not stay on him.

The next thing I knew the house parent came walking hack out of the back door by the garbage room and started yelling at me. I told him that I did not do anything but he did not believe me. He picked up the cardboard paper and started hitting me on the top of the head. There were all kinds of butterfly pieces going everywhere. He threw the cardboard down on the ground and told me to pick it up and put it in the garbage can inside the back room of the dormitory and men he left.

 I sat then’ it I the dirt, by that big old tree, for the longest time trying to fit all the butterfly pieces back together so I could bury them whole, but it was too hard to do. So I prayed for them and then I put them in an old torn up shoe box and I buried them in the bottom of the fort that I had built in the ground, out by the large bamboos, near the blackberry bushes.

 Even’ year when the butterflies would return to the orphanage and try to land on me I would try and shoo them away because they did not know that the orphanage was a had a place to live and a very bad place to die.

1. In the passage what has the author compared the orphanage to?

 (a) An educational institute

 (b) An old age home

 (c) A nursery

(d) A military school

2. Why had the author walked into the bushes many times?

 (a) So that he could save the butterflies

(b) So that the butterflies could sit on his head, face and hands

 (c) So that he could give the butterflies to the house parent

(d) So that he could kill the butterflies

 3. Why would the author try to shoo away the butterflies which tried to land on him?

 (a) Because he thought that the butterflies would suffer a very had death if they stayed in the orphanage

(b) Because the house parent had warned him against it

(c) Because the butterflies were too many in number

(d) Because the author did not like the butterflies sitting on him

4. Which of the following words can be used to describe the author?

(a) Cruel                      (b) Adventurous

(c) Daring                    (d) Caring

5. Why was the author trying to fit all the butterfly pieces back together?

 (a) Because he was told to do so by the houseparent

(b) Because he was responsible for the death of the butterflies

(c) Because the house parent would yell at him otherwise

(d) None of the above

6. Why did the butterfly’s wing break off?

(a) Because the’ house parent had broken it

(b) Because the author broke one wing

(c) Because one of its wings was still pinned to the cardboard and it tried to fly away

(d) Because the butterfly fell on the ground

7. Why were butterfly pieces flying everywhere?

(a) Because the author realized that the house parent was not doing the right thing

 (b) Because the house parent went to attend a phone call

 (c) Because the house parent did not pin the butterflies correctly

 (d) None of the above

8. What did the author do with all the butterfly pieces?

(a) He stuck all the pieces together

 (b) He put them in a shoebox and buried them in the ground

(c) He gave them away to the house parent

(d) He threw them away in the garbage can

 9. Which of the following is NOT true in the context of the passage?

(a) The author liked watching the house parent stick the butterflies on the cardboard

 (b) The author felt that killing butterflies was a cruel thing to do

(c) The house parent stuck the butterflies on the cardboard paper

(d) The author tried to repair one wing of the butterfly

ANSWERS:-

1. (d)               2. (a)

3. (a)               4. (d)

 5. (d)              6. (c)

7. (d)               8. (b)

9. (a)

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