Unseen comprehension-Grade 8-February

Unseen Comprehension-Grade-8

 

Chris remembered then that time last year that the Government had taken his class to the Rainbow-National Wildlife Preserve out north. They'd been watching a lion pride eating their weekly impala. His cousin had told him once that the game rangers shot the impala in the leg first so that visitors were guaranteed to see a kill. The Government communicator had been lecturing about teamwork and unity and sacrifice or something. He hadn't been listening. He'd been looking for bullet holes in the impala. When he couldn't find any, he'd looked up, bored, and seen the jackal. No one else had. You had to look through the other window of the game viewing bus. It had been a pretty ragged jackal, scrawny and young with dust tipping its thin fur.

 

For a while it had just looked at him with its cool, golden eyes. It hadn't been the eyes that fascinated him, or the fact that it was a jackal. He'd seen lots of those scavenging in city bins before the Pest Control Programme. It hadn't been any physical characteristic of the small canine, unless you counted placement. The jackal had been on the wrong side of the fence.

 

The girl was still leaning against the fence, her hand clasped at her side, her beads glinting in the sun. Suddenly he remembered where he'd seen those colours before, the blue, green, black and white of the girl's beads. They were Rebel colours. The pit of Chris's stomach went cold. She was a rebel. He turned slowly to stare at her. The girl on the other side of the fence was a rebel. A wanted criminal. His cousin would have said freedom fighter. Dad would've said terrorist. The rebel on the fence wasn't looking at him anymore. She turned her face, lightning quick to the top of the road and froze.

 

Chris looked too, trying to see what she saw. It was a tank. One of the Urban models, grey and silenced. Chris stood up, open-mouthed. The tank glided to a halt behind her. Its gun turret began swinging round and stopped as its computer guidance registered the school. Educator Whatever was yelling at him, but he didn't care. She barked out an order and every child was out of their chair, and curling into the memory-foam Bomb Pods below their desks. The jackal-girl was climbing desperately now, already almost at the top. The soldiers took aim behind her. The girl pulled herself to the top and balanced for a moment gasping. "–Don't be scared! It's okay! They're not going to shoot you. They don't–" Not even the classroom's bulletproof windows muffled the guns' report

 

Questions:

1.     Why did Chris think of the jackal incident at this time?

 

2.     What clues does the author give the reader to make it clear that the story takes place in South Africa?

 

3.     Are the words 'terrorist' and 'freedom fighter' synonyms? Why does the author use these words to describe the same thing?

 

4.     Why do you think the rebel hid at a school?

 

5.     Why do you think the girl was attacked?