I. Read the following passage and answer the questions given below
The Makings of a Man
Those woods make people feel small and vulnerable. Even the toughest can turn into a fearful child when the sun's in the treetops two hundred feet above your head, and the nearest doctor is a hundred miles off. When you can't sleep because of the howling of wolves, when the only light is the moon and the eyes in the brush that reflect it.
I've only known two people who feel at home in these woods: me and Copper. Of course he feels comfortable. I raised him in a crib of elk bones, bedded in ferns. I diapered him in poison oak to toughen him up. The boy was climbing redwoods before he could walk. When Copper was four, a rattlesnake crept out of the log he was playing on and nearly bit him on the foot. He came crying, but I told him he'd get no sympathy from me. "Only one way to make yourself feel better," I said. Before sundown I heard him singing "Git Along, Little Dogies," accompanying himself with his new rattle.
He used to ask me questions. "Mom, where's the moon come from?"
"The sky made a promise it couldn't keep," I replied. "You ever make a promise and
don't keep it, Copper, you get a hole in your head too."
"Mom, is this poisonous?"
"Try it and see."
"Mom, what is the nature of evil?" he asked another time.
"Evil is the blight of weakness in the trunk of strength," I said. "Evil is disease's desire for life. Because you are strong, Copper, evil is inside you, and you must never let down your guard or it will consume you as rot consumes a tree."
I was a serious mother, and Copper was a serious little boy.
He spent his eleventh year with moose antlers lashed to his head, 70 inches across and 70 pounds heavy. He would listen for the loud grunts of the young bulls itching for battle, crash through the brush, and surprise them with a blow to the ribs. To be fair, this was a 6'10", 285‐pound eleven‐year‐old.
I'm over seven feet myself, and Copper's dad was right about eight feet before he got
himself killed in a game of chicken with a big rig. (He wasn't in a vehicle.) But by sixteen Copper had us both beat. When he bathed, the river flooded. He left his impression where he slept. I saw him jump from a tree onto a rock and leave a footprint. That was the year he didn't shave. On his seventeenth birthday he cut off his beard and with it fashioned a coat.
It was in his eighteenth year that he took offense with the sun. Early, while it was still
dark, he climbed to the highest peak in the area. On that rocky outcropping he waited for the sun to rise, and when it did, he bellowed curses in the language of the black bear so foul that the bear population migrated north, not to return for a decade. He gave me any number of reasons for his hatred: the sun would neither listen nor speak; the sun was too far, or too close; the sun was lazy and daytime too short. But I knew the real reason: Copper was lonely.
So I sent him off into the world, though I knew heartbreak awaited him, and myself as well. We spent one last bittersweet month in the woods, hunting, fishing, climbing, and swimming. We read philosophy and debated with zeal. I cooked him his favorite meal, boiled bear claws dipped in honey. Before he left, I cut his hair, in the tangles of which burrowed whole ecosystems of critters, bugs and beetles, and the occasional small bird.
No one is sadder than the mother who outlives her son. Copper's brilliance made his loss all the more great, though somehow more bearable as well, as though the world took a good look at him, and admitted its inferiority. After he died, animals passed by to pay tribute, leaving berries and salmon so that I wouldn't have to cook in my grief. I could eat nothing, though, and for a long time I climbed the highest peak in the area, and cursed the sun as it rose.
Q1. Where does the story take place?
Q2. Read these sentences from the story.
"When he bathed, the river flooded. He left his impression where he slept. I saw him
jump from a tree onto a rock and leave a footprint. That was the year he didn't shave.
On his seventeenth birthday he cut off his beard and with it fashioned a coat."
Based on this evidence, what can you conclude about Copper?
Q3. What made the place where Copper grew up to be a scary little place
4. Read these sentences from the story.
"When Copper was four, a rattlesnake crept out of the log he was playing on and nearly bit him on the foot. He came crying, but I told him he'd get no sympathy from me. 'Only one way to make yourself feel better,' I said. Before sundown I heard him singing 'Git Along, Little Dogies,' accompanying himself with his new rattle."
What can you infer about Copper's new rattle?
Or
What was peculiar / strange about Copper's new rattle?
6. Read the sentences and answer the question.
"So I sent him off into the world, though I knew heartbreak awaited him, and myself as well. We spent one last bittersweet month in the woods, hunting, fishing, climbing, and swimming. We read philosophy and debated with zeal. I cooked him his favorite meal,boiled bear claws dipped in honey."
What does the word "bittersweet" mean as used in this text?
7. What happens to Copper at the end of the story?
8. Describe two ways Copper's mom tried to toughen him up when she was raising him.
Q.9 Pick out a word from the passage which means
1. defenseless –
2. strengthen –
Q10. Pick out a word from the passage which is the antonym of
1. stayed x
2. stupidity x
II Summary
a. Pick out ten points from the passage which talks about life of Copper from the time he was born till his death.
b. Then using your own words as far as possible, write a summary in 130 – 150 words based on the above points.
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