In this section, you have short passages. After each passage, you will find some items based on the passage. Read the passage carefully and answer the items based on it. You are required to select your answers based solely on the contents of the passage and the opinion of the author.
Passage:
Mr. Rowland Hill, when a young man, was walking through the Lake district, when he one day saw the postman deliver a letter to a woman at a cottage door. The woman turned it over and examined it, and then returned it, saying she could not pay the postage, which was a shilling. Hearing that the letter was from her brother, Mr. Hill paid the postage, in spite of the manifest unwillingness of the woman. As soon as the postman was out of sight, she showed Mr. Hill how his money had been wasted, as far as she was concerned. The sheet was blank. There was an agreement between her brother and herself that as long as all went well with him, he should send a blank sheet in this way once a quarter, and she thus had tidings of him without expense of postage.
The story uses irony as a technique because
- Athe woman returned her own brother’s letter without opening it
- Bthe woman broke the agreement of receiving blank letters to convey well being of her brother
- CMr. Hill accepted the letter addressed to the woman
- Din the modem times a brother has no time to write a letter to his own sister
Explanation
The irony is that Rowland Hill, meaning well, paid the postage and accepted a letter addressed to the woman that turned out to be a blank sheet. His kind act was completely wasted, since the blank sheet itself was the whole message under the siblings’ agreement. The woman did not return the letter unopened; she refused it because she already knew its contents. The irony lies in the uselessness of Rowland Hill’s generosity, not in the woman’s conduct. Hence option (c) is correct.