Question

the boy and the whale by mordicai gerstein 1 every day, i loved to watch the sun rise out of the sea. one morning i saw something in the water. something big. \thats a whale out there,\ said papa. \it looks dead!\ we jumped into our panga for a closer look. \oh no!\ yelled papa. he cursed the whale with words id never heard him say. \its tangled in our net! our only net! i hope we can save it!\ \save the whale, papa?\
o, my son, save our net! the whale is dead!\ 2 we dived into the water. i had never been so close to an animal so huge. wrapped by the net in a hopeless tangle, the whale must have died unable to move. i had been tangled in a net once, too. i almost drowned. papa saved me. the whales closed eye 1. in paragraph 1, papa says, \our only net!\ why is the word only written in italics? it shows how important the net is to papa. it shows how happy papa is that they caught a whale. it shows how much papa wants another net. 2. what does paragraph 4 show about abelardo? that he makes foolish decisions that he knows how to save a whale

Explanation:

Question 1

• Analyze each option: The first option says the italicized "only" shows the net's importance to Papa. Since it's their only net, losing it would be a problem, so emphasizing "only" highlights its importance. The second option is wrong because they didn't catch the whale (it was dead and tangled, and Papa wanted to save the net, not that they caught it). The third option is wrong as "only" emphasizes it's their sole net, not that they want another. So the first option is correct.

Answer:

It shows how important the net is to Papa.

Question 2 (Note: The second option text is cut off, but assuming a typical reading comprehension context, if we consider the visible part and the first option: The first option "that he makes foolish decisions" – but from the given text (paragraph 2: the boy had been tangled in a net and Papa saved him, now the whale is tangled), if the second option was about empathy (since he was tangled too), but with the given visible first option, if we have to choose based on the partial info, but likely the correct one would relate to his empathy or past experience. However, since the second option is cut, but following the format, if we assume the correct option (e.g., if the second option was about him showing empathy because he was tangled before), but with the given first option being incorrect (making foolish decisions doesn't fit as he's acting out of past experience), but since the text is partial, we'll proceed with the first question's answer and note the second's text issue. But for the first question, the answer is as above.