Cleaning Reading Comprehension Narratives For Grade 11 ✓ Solved
CLEANED: Reading Comprehension Narrative Extract Grade 11 In
Reading Comprehension Narrative Extract Grade 11. In pairs, read the passage and answer all the questions below. 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 Aloneâ€. 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)
b) What figurative device is used in the following lines, “ a house that loomed gaunt and cockeyed†(lines 9-10)? (2 marks)
c) What family relationship was there between Uncle Arthur and the narrator? (1 mark)
d) What impression of Uncle Arthur did the narrator’s mother try to create? (2 marks)
e) What kind of person did Uncle Aurther appear to be to the children? (2 marks)
f) Give two adjectives that would describe Uncle Arthur, based on his actions and habits. (2 marks)
g) According to the passage, what made Uncle Arthur’s house mysterious? (2marks)
h) Why did the narrator forget about Uncle Arthur? (2 marks)
(Total 14 Marks)
Paper For Above Instructions
Introduction and overview. The passage under examination presents a spare, almost folkloric vignette about Uncle Arthur, a character who embodies isolation and a fragile social boundary between family affection and fear. The narrator’s memory of Uncle Arthur unfolds through a lens of childlike perception and a mother’s warnings, allowing us to explore how setting, relationship dynamics, and language shape interpretations of a mysterious reclusive figure. This analysis will address the character of Uncle Arthur, the mother’s influence, the children’s view, and the symbolic significance of the house on the hill, drawing on established theories of text comprehension and narrative symbolism to illuminate the passage's deeper meanings. (Collymore, 2001)
Character and relationship analysis. The opening lines establish a paradox: Uncle Arthur is described as a legend within the family, yet he is not an actual relative in the conventional sense. The narrator states that Uncle Arthur “wasn’t our uncle” but “some sort of elderly cousin.” This ambiguity foregrounds the tension between cultural naming conventions and actual social ties. From a readerly perspective, the label “Uncle” functions as a social signifier that simultaneously invites and suspends intimacy; it signals safety to the children while masking potential distance or danger. The mother’s threat—“I’ll send you to live with Uncle Arthur” or “A week with Uncle Arthur’ll do you good”—uses the figure of Uncle Arthur as a disciplinary tool, reinforcing social boundaries and the cycle of obedience and fear in childhood memory (Collymore, 2001). The mother’s framing thus suggests that Uncle Arthur represents a tested stillness, an austere but not inherently malevolent presence. The narrator’s later recollection, noting that “Uncle Arthur never invited anyone to his home,” reinforces his role as a solitary figure whose excluded status paradoxically elevates him to a legendary, almost mythic, outsider within the family narrative (Collymore, 2001). These aspects align with discourse on how family lore constructs moral and social boundaries through careful storytelling and selective memory (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983).
Setting as symbol and mechanism of mystery. The house on the hill functions as a focal point of atmosphere and symbolic weight. The house is described as “old,” “dilapidated,” “gaunt,” and “cockeyed,” perched against “the brooding background of the two huge twisted evergreens.” The natural environment—canes, evergreens—coupled with architectural decay, evokes a liminal space between safety and danger. The repeated use of negative descriptors and the neighbors’ limited access to the house reinforce the sense of otherness. The phrase “unaccountable isolation” applied to Uncle Arthur underscores his separation from ordinary family life. The evergreen trees are explicitly linked to the house’s mystery, as the text notes they “added their touch of mystery to Uncle Arthur’s unaccountable isolation.” From a reading- comprehension standpoint (Kintsch, 1998), the reader builds a mental model in which isolation, not brutality, is the core feature—an interpretation shaped by imagery and syntax that emphasize distance rather than overt threat (Kolody et al., 2000). This supports the idea that the house’s mystery arises from both architectural decay and the natural setting that frames the solitary figure (Kintsch, 1998; van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983).
Impressions of Uncle Arthur and the children’s view. The text complicates the initial maternal threat with the narrator’s own observation: “Not that Uncle Arthur was especially ogre-like or repulsive to our childish eyes. Far from it - a milder little man I never saw.” This tension demonstrates how memory can invert or temper early fear; the children’s perception does not align with a stereotype of the terrifying “uncle on the hill.” The children’s world is sheltered, and Uncle Arthur appears as a quiet, gentle, perhaps sad figure who inhabits a space that is removed from social life. The passage thus engages with a common literary device—childhood myth-making—where the unknown is both dangerous and fascinating (Collymore, 2001; Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995). Thematic implications include the fragility of memory and the way adults’ warnings can coexist with a child’s instinct to seek or reject curiosity about the extraordinary (Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000).
Two adjectives to describe Uncle Arthur. Based on his actions and habits, Uncle Arthur could be characterized as reclusive and enigmatic. His life “all alone” in the “dilapidated house” on the hill signals a deliberate withdrawal from social life. The diction surrounding his character—gentle, nonthreatening, yet surrounded by mystery—supports a dual portrayal: a benign, possibly kind figure whose solitude becomes a source of legend and fear (Collymore, 2001). A secondary descriptor might be “stoic” or “reserved,” reflecting a man who accepts isolation as a lifestyle, not a consequence of malice.
The memory arc and forgetting Uncle Arthur. The narrator notes that Uncle Arthur’s visits “grew fewer and fewer till there was no in between,” and it was only later that the narrator “ever gave him a thought again.” This sentence captures the natural attenuation of childhood memory: once the external spark (visits, threat) fades, the figure drifts into obscurity, recalled only in fragments when triggered by reading or reflection. The forgetfulness is not a moral judgment but a cognitive consequence of time, distance, and the changing social environment (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). The passage thus subtly interrogates how memory preserves fragments of fear while discarding the routine, ordinary details of a person’s life (Collymore, 2001).
Implications for teaching reading comprehension. This text offers rich opportunities to discuss sequence, characterization, symbolism, and the interplay between narrator reliability and memory. Students can examine how the setting (the hill house, the evergreen trees) shapes mood and meaning; how the mother’s rhetoric operates as a social mechanism; and how memory can transform perception over time. From a cognitive-literature perspective, this aligns with construction-integration models of comprehension, where readers build an ongoing mental representation of the story by integrating vocabulary, imagery, and prior knowledge (Kintsch, 1998; van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). The unit also invites discussion of cultural and regional storytelling, given the Caribbean context and the anthology’s framing (Collymore, 2001).