RC 3

Directions for questions 50 to 52: The passage given below is followed by a set of three questions.

Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.

"The lions had escaped, but the tiger was there. He was starving; one soldier tried to feed it and the other

soldier shot and killed it after it bit the soldier's hand off." In brief, that is the play's first scene.

From there, the action bursts into a plethora of issues, each more disturbing than the next. On one level,

it's a political drama about the war in Iraq, on another, an existential tract with the tiger as a contemporary

Godot, and on still another, it's a ghost story. When I ask Joseph about the ghosts, he is finally at home

and easily forthcoming as he delves into the story line. "The Tiger explains in his first monologue as a ghost

that suddenly the knowledge and the stuff of the universe is floating into him.

This is a basic reality of dying in this world that I've created, that once you're dead and you're a ghost, you

learn at an accelerated pace. Suddenly, the ghost knows about Dante and suddenly Kev (the Marineturned-

ghost) knows about the bones in his hand, about the Arabic roots of the word algebra, and all of a

sudden he's praying in Arabic."

In Bengal Tiger emotional reality is clouded by the problems of translation. By using Arabic dialogue

(without subtitles), Joseph underlines the failure of communication. As he points out, "US soldiers, by and

large, don't speak Arabic. When you're in a very stressful and violent situation, the act of translation takes

on huge importance. And yet, because those situations are so stressful, what is lost in translation in those

moments can be grave."

Indeed, the language barrier leads to a harrowing scene when Kev (Brad Fleischer), the Marine, who shot

the tiger, enters an Iraqi home in pursuit, he imagines, of the enemy. Upon entering, Kev draws his gun and

starts shouting at the women in English while they respond by screaming at him wildly in Arabic. The

miscommunication and the mass confusion it fuels make for a situation much more frightening than any

ghost story.

Much as I try to probe for the psychological roots to Joseph's often disturbing work, the playwright diverts

me from his personal experience to his aesthetic. "Story-telling", he imparts, "can get boring if you're not

dealing with the issues of life or death, or on the edge of something. Now that doesn't mean that every story

has to have violence in it, but I'm attracted to it for a number of reasons, and part of it is the movies that I

was raised on, most of which employed violence in some way."

50. It can be inferred that the purpose of the first paragraph is

(a) to describe the real-life incident on which the play is based.

(b) to inform the reader about the first scene of the play.

(c) to arouse interest about the article.

(d) to set the tone for the rest of the article.

51. Which of the following describes a technique that the author frequently uses in the passage?

(a) She frequently moves from the general to the specific.

(b) She frequently moves from the specific to the general and back again.

(c) She frequently starts with an analysis and then uses a quote to elaborate on a point.

(d) None of the above

52. According to the passage, why does Joseph refer to disturbing issues in his work?

(a) These issues resonate with contemporary political realities.

(b) It allows him to reflect on and critique harsh social realities.

(c) His audience have come to expect explorations of such issues in his work.

(d) He feels that they are important to the story-telling in his plays.