Multiple choice: select the best answer and click "submit."read the following summary:

a man writes a letter every day to his father, who disowned him years ago. although he never hears back, he faithfully continues writing. in the end, the father passes away, and the man is given a box of the unopened letters that his father had been saving.

which of the following most clearly analyzes the two themes of the story?

a. it comments on the effects of stubbornness and promotes self-indulgence.

b. it investigates the pain of broken relationships and the comfort in routine.

c. it illustrates the consequences of pride and promotes forgiveness.

d. it shows the importance of personal satisfaction and the pain of losing a loved one.

The correct option is C: IT ILLUSTRATES THE CONSEQUENCES OF PRIDE AND PROMOTES FORGIVENESS.

Explanation:

The correct option is C: IT ILLUSTRATES THE CONSEQUENCES OF PRIDE AND PROMOTES FORGIVENESS. The explanation is related to the information that we have about what happened. In the first place, the man that was writing letters for years without having an answer from his father should felt really sad when he saw that the letters never were opened, but what we could infer following the father’s action? It is that he had a lot of pain and anger inside him and his pride didn’t allow it to read what does his son had to tell, so he died and never read his words. At this respect, and taking into account that we really don’t know the reasons that led him to act, we just can think in the man and how he had to learn to forgive his own father for never giving him the chance to express his feelings. At the same time we can think in the father’s position and how his pride and absence of forgiveness impeded him to stay in touch with his own son.

As we can see, these short lines permit us to analyse how it is really important to consider (and reconsider if it is necessary) all the actions that we do just for pride and if it worth it.

The other options cannot be the correct ones for different reasons:

A. It comments on the effects of stubbornness and promotes self-indulges.

Besides we can think that the person who acts in a bad way was the father, we don’t know what happened before he decided to stop talking to his son, so it is risky to say that the father was stubborn. At the same time, we can affirm that the text is not promoting self-indulges, saying that will be an error.

B. It investigates the pain of broken relationships and comfort in routine.

The error in this option is related to the second component: the routine because the text doesn’t make us think that there is comfort in routine; the man wrote letters during years, but it didn’t help him to feel happy or comfortable.

D. It shows the importance of personal satisfaction and the pain of losing a loved one.

Option D is hard to evaluate because we, as lectors, could agree with the sentence, but if we think in the text presented before we can see that the main topic of it doesn’t have relation with what is said here, so although it can be seen as a correct phrase it is not related to the text, making it wrong.

the two answers are

get thee back into the tempest and the night's plutonian shore

on the pallid bust of pallas just above my chamber door