CAT 2003 Slot 1 — VARC Question 39
The verse given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
As you set out for Ithaka
hope the journey is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon – don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon – you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope the voyage is a long one,
may there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbours seen for the first time:
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind –
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting lthaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey,
without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean
Each of the questions below consists of a set of labelled sentences. These sentences, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Choose the most logical order of sentences from the options.
- I am much more intolerant of a human being's shortcomings than I am of an animal's, but in this respect I have been lucky, for most of the people I have come across have been charming.
- Then you come across the unpleasant human animal-the District Officer who drawled, 'We chaps are here to help you chaps,' and then proceeded to be as obstructive as possible.
- In these cases of course, the fact that you are an animal collector helps; people always seem delighted to meet someone with such an unusual occupation and go out of their way to assist you.
- Fortunately, these types are rare, and the pleasant ones I have met more than compensated for them-but even so, I think I will stick to animals.
- When you travel round the world collecting animals you also, of necessity, collect human beings.
Answer & solution
EACBD
- B
ABDCE
- C
ECBDA
- D
ACBDE
Statement E begins the paragraph, because it is here that the author introduces his occupation of collecting animals and ‘collecting’ people and therefore would logically proceed to speak about his experiences with both people and animals. That eliminates options 2 and 4.
AC is a pair. Most people the author has met have been charming as mentioned in statement A and the reason for this has been cited in C.
Similarly, BD is a pair. B speaks of the ‘unpleasant human animals’ and D reasons out how these are rare and do not matter much to the author. The keyword ‘then’ in B indicates that statement B will come after AC. Therefore, the logical flow of the paragraph is E-A-C-B-D.
Hence, the correct answer is option 1.