SRCC GBO 2015 Question Paper

Each of these questions has a text portion followed by four alternative summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the text.

Study the passages below and answer the questions that follow each passage?

Passage-I

Of the 197 million square miles making up the surface of the globe, 71 per cent is covered by the interconnecting bodies of marine water; the Pacific Ocean alone covers half the Earth and averages near 14,000 feet in depth. The continents — Eurasia, Africa, North America, South America Australia, and Antarctica — are the portions of the continental masses rising above sea level. The submerged borders of the continental masses are the continental shelves, beyond which lie the deep-sea basins. The oceans attain their greatest depths not in their central parts, but in certain elongated furrows, or long narrow troughs, called deeps. These profound troughs have a peripheral arrangement, notably around the borders of the Pacific and Indian oceans. The position of the deeps near the continental masses suggests that the deeps, like the highest mountains, are of recent origin, since otherwise they would have been filled with waste from the lands. This suggestion is strengthened by the fact that the deeps are frequently the sites of world-shaking earthquakes. For example, the “tidal wave” that in April, 1946, caused widespread destruction along Pacific coasts resulted from a strong earthquake on the floor of the Aleutian Deep. The topography of the ocean floors is not well known. Since in great areas, the available soundings are hundreds or even thousands of miles apart. However,the floor of the Atlantic is becoming fairly well known as a result of special surveys since 1920. A broad, well-defined ridge — the Mid-Atlantic ridge — runs north and south between Africa and the two Americas, and numerous other major irregularities diversify the Atlantic floor. Closely spaced soundings show that many parts of the oceanic floors are as tugged as mountainous regions of the continents. Use of the recently perfected method of echo sounding is rapidly enlarging our knowledge of submarine topography. During World War II, great strides were made in mapping submarine surfaces, particularly in many parts of the vast Pacific basin. The continents stand on the average 2870 feet —slightly more than half a mile — above sea level. North America averages 2300 feet; Europe averages only 1150 feet; and Asia, the highest of the larger continental sub-divisions, averages 3200 feet. The highest point on the globe, Mount Everest in the Himalayas, is 29,000 feet above the sea; and as the greatest known depth in the sea is over 35,000 feet, the maximum relief (that is, the difference in altitude between the lowest and highest points) exceeds 64,000 feet, or exceeds 12 miles. The continental masses and the deep-sea basins are relief features of the first order; the deeps, ridges, and volcanic cones that diversify the sea floor, as well as the plains, plateaus, and mountains of the continents, are relief features of the second Order. The lands are unendingly subject to a complex of activities summarized in the term erosion, which first sculptures them in great detail and then tends to reduce them ultimately to sea level. The modeling of the landscape by weather, running water, and other agents is apparent to the keenly observant eye and causes thinking people to speculate on what must be the final result of the ceaseless wearing down of the lands. Long before, there was a science of geology, Shakespeare wrote “the revolution of the times makes mountains level.”

Study the passages below and answer the questions that follow each passage?

Passage-II

Plato may have understood better what forms the mind of man than do some of our contemporaries who want their children exposed only to “real” people and everyday events —knew what intellectual experiences make for true humanity. He suggested that the future citizens of his ideal republic begin their literary education with the telling of myths, rather than with mere facts or so-called rational teachings. Even Aristotle, master of pure reason,said: “The friend of wisdom is also a friend of myth.” Modern thinkers who have studied myths and fairy tales from a philosophical or psychological viewpoint arrive at the same conclusion, regardless of their original persuasion. Mircea Eliade, describes these stories as “models for human behavior by that very fact, give meaning and value to life.’ Drawing on anthropological parallels, he and others suggest that myths and fairy tales were derived from, or given symbolic expression to, initiation rites or other rites of passage — such as metaphoric death of an old, inadequate self in order to be reborn on a higher plane of existence. He feels that this is why these tales meet a strongly felt need and are carriers of such deep meaning.

Other investigators with a depth psychological orientation emphasize the similarities between the fantastic events in myths and fairy tales and those in adult dreams and daydreams — the fulfillment of wishes, the winning out over all competitors, the destruction of enemies — and conclude that one attraction of this literature is its expression of that which is normally prevented from coming to
awareness. There are, of course, very significant differences between fairy tales and dreams. For example, in dreams more often than not the wish fulfillment is disguised, while in fairy tales much of it is openly expressed. To a considerable degree, dreams are the result of inner pressures which have found no relief, of problems which beset a person to which he knows no solution and to which the
dream finds none. The fairy tale does the opposite: it projects the relief of all pressures and not only offers ways to solve problems but promises that a “happy” solution will be found. We cannot control what goes on in our dreams. Although our inner censorship influences what we may dream, such control occurs on an unconscious level. The fairy tale, on the other hand, is very much the result of common conscious and unconscious content having been shaped by the conscious mind,not of one particular person, but the consensus of many in regard to what they view as universal human problems, and what they accept as desirable solutions.If all these elements were not present in a fairy tale, it would not be retold by generation after generation. Only if a fairy tale met the conscious and unconscious requirements of many people was repeatedly retold, and listened to with great interest. No dream of a person could arouse such persistent interest unless it was worked into a myth, as was the story of the pharaoh's dream as interpreted by Joseph in the Bible.