COMPREHENSION TEST
has long been an enigma. She was so reclusive that the               (1) Red                     (2) White
townsfolk of Amherst, Massachusetts, where she spent her             (3) Black                   (4) Blue
life, called her “the myth”, as if her very existence were in 943. What was Emily Dickinson, called by her town folk?
question. Few got so much as a glimpse of her white dress—           (1) Amherst                 (2) Enigma
as an adult she only wore white—and only ten of her poems
                                                                     (3) Reclusive               (4) “the myth”
were published in her lifetime. After her death in 1886,
hundreds of others were discovered in a wooden chest,         944. Whose arrival in Dickinson’s family did bring about
and a new legend grew up, sweet with pathos, of a woman              unrest and chaos in her life?
too delicate for this world, disappointed in love.                   (1) Ms Gordon               (2) Austin
      Emily Dickinson lived with her unmarried sister Lavinia        (3) Mabel Loomis Todd       (4) Lavinia
in an elegant house called The Homestead. Next door, at       945. What was the cause of Sue’s devastation?
Evergreens, was the family home of her brother Austin; his           (1) Losing her job
wife, Sue, was Emily’s intimate, and she addressed much              (2) Mabel’s affairs with Austin
of her poetry to her. But their comparative Eden was                 (3) Emily’s illness
shattered by the arrival in Amherst of Mabel Loomis Todd,            (4) Emily’s doctor
a young faculty wife. Musical, artistic and ambitious, the
                                                                     Directions (946-950) : In the following questions, you
ruthless Mabel insinuated herself into the Dickinsons’ lives.
                                                              have a brief passage with 5 questions following the passage.
In 1882 she embarked on an affair with Emily’s brother
                                                              Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to
Austin, who ensured Mr Todd’s compliance by promoting
                                                              each question out of the four alternatives.
his academic career. The lovers thought their passion was
                                                                            (SSC CGL Tier-I (CBE) Exam. 06.06.2016 Ist sitting)
so special that normal rules did not apply. The spurned
wife, Sue, was devastated, and the resulting family feud                                 PASSAGE
would echo down the generations.                                   Antarctica is shedding 160 billion tonnes a year of ice
      Mabel effectively destroyed the Dickinson family. The   into the ocean, twice the amount of a few years ago,
irony is, however, that she was one of the only people to     according to new satellite observations. The ice loss is adding
recognise Emily’s originality and brilliance in her lifetime. to the rising sea levels driven by climate change and even
After Emily died, Mabel determined that the public should     east Antarctica is now losing ice.
read the poetry, and devoted herself to editing, publishing        The new revelations follows the recent announcement
and promoting it. In doing so, she suppressed some of its     that the collapse of the western Antarctica ice sheet has
originality, conventionalising Emily’s odd punctuation. She   already begun and is unstoppable, although it may take
also constructed the sentimental view of the mythic poetess   many centuries to complete.
and her milieu which Ms Gordon’s biography has now so              Global warming is pushing up sea level by melting the
effectively dispelled.                                        world’s major ice caps and by warming and expanding
                                                              oceans waters. The loss of the entire western Antarctica
       MEANINGS OF DIFFICULT WORDS/PHRASES                    ice sheet would eventually cause up to 4 metres (13ft) of
   (1) enigma (N.) : mystery                                  sea-level rise, devastating low-lying and coastal areas around
   (2) reclusive (Adj.) : seeking solitude                    the world.
   (3) pathos (N.) : a style that has the power to evoke           The new data, published in journal Geophysical
       feelings                                               Research Letters, comes from the European Space Agency’s
   (4) insinuated (V.) : give to understand                   CryoSat-2 satellite, which was launched in 2010.
   (5) embarked (V.) :proceed some where despite the risk          It shows that the western Antarctica ice sheet is where
       of possible dangers                                    87% of the lost ice is being shed, with the east Antarctic
   (6) compliance (N.) : surrendering power to another        and the Antarctic peninsula shedding the rest. The data
   (7) spurned (Adj.) : rejected by a lover without warning   collected from 2010-2013 was compared to that from 2005-
                                                              2010.
   (8) devastated (V.) : to make somebody feel extremely
                                                                   The satellite measures changes in the height of the ice
       shocked and sad
                                                              and covers virtually the whole of the frozen continent, far
   (9) feud (N.) : a bitter quarrel between two parties
                                                              more of than previous altimeter missions.
 (10) irony (N.) : the amusing/strange aspect of a situation
                                                                   CryoSat-2 collected five times more data than before
       that is very different from what you expect
                                                              in the crucial coastal regions where ice losses are
 (11) conventionalising (V.) : normalising                    concentrated and found key glaciers were losing many
 (12) mythic (Adj.) : that has become very famous, like       metres in height every year. The Pine Island, Thwaites and
       somebody/something in a myth                           Smith Glaciers in west Antarctica were losing between 4m
 (13) dispelled (V.) : to make something, especially a        and 8m annually.
       feeling/belief, go away/disappear                      946. What is the main reason for the shedding of ice?
941. Emily Dickinson lived in an elegant house called                (1) Global warming          (2) Rise in the water level
       (1) The sweet home          (2) The Homestead                 (3) Melting of ice          (4) Mystery
       (3) Sweet Patho             (4) Dream house            947. What are the new revelations made?
942. What colour of dress did Dickinson prefer to wear as            (1) It may take centuries.
       an adult?                                                     (2) The ice will melt in West Antarctica.
                                                          SEE–997