Comprehension Exercise – 3

Creative Writing – 29

Read this passage and answer the questions given below it by ticking in the right option

Passage

Kerry Wright didn’t feel hungry. Not in the way you might expect. Her tummy grumbled, yes, she could hear it. She just couldn’t feel it. She called it “starvation mode”. Wright, a mother of three living in Aberdeen, had hit a low point. But she needed to provide for her children, who then were just entering their teens.

By the time she was faced with the prospect of watching her own children go without, she had fallen out of contact with her parents and the rest of her family. She’d wanted a fresh start. Except that at that moment, in 2013, a fresh start was looking pretty far off. Her partner had left and her benefits were falling short. Now and again, she took paid housework jobs but never made enough money. She would scan her cupboards in despair, hoping there would be enough soup or tins of beans to at least get the next lunch together.

Because there was always so little to go around, it didn’t take long before she started skipping meals. The effects soon materialised. She was tired all the time – and yet she couldn’t sleep. She was hungry, but she didn’t want to eat, and, if she did, she would sometimes be sick. Her head was frazzled. It was hard to keep a string of thoughts together.

Wright was exhausted but desperate not to reveal the extent of her fatigue to her children. So she would walk around the house with one hand on the furniture, holding herself steady. A severe iron deficiency, she eventually learned, accounted for the terrible fatigue and it had also made her dizzy.

Questions

Pick the right answer from the three choices given.

i) Why didn’t Kerry Wright feel hungry?

1. She was not actually hungry.
2. She had a problem in her stomach.
3. She was inured to the pain of hunger.

ii) What was her major worry?

1. She worried about getting enough food to eat.
2. She had three growing-up daughters.
3. She worried about her future.

iii) What development aggravated her problem?

1. Her parents left her.
2. The children began to go hungry.
3. She had no one to support her.

iv) Why things looked so gloomy in 2013?

1. Getting back to her feet seemed a daunting task around that time.
2. She couldn’t get enough income from her sundry jobs.
3. Her needs had increased sharply.

v) What she did when she didn’t have enough food for the family.

1. She went to sleep to escape the pain.
2. She skipped meals.
3. She cursed her fate.

vi) What effect prolonged hunger had on her?

1. She walked around in the house with one hand on the furniture to hide her fatigue.
2. She became more determined to surmount the problem.
3. She became reluctant to reveal anything to her family.

Answers

i) 3, ii) 2, iii)  2, iv) 1, v) 2