Analysing Textual Passages 15

Read the following passage from the story, ‘Balthazar’s Marvellous
Afternoon’ and answer the questions that follow:
The cage was finished. Balthazar hung it under the eaves, from force of habit,
and when he finished lunch everyone was already saying that it was the most
beautiful cage in the world. So many people came to see it that a crowd formed
in front of the house and Balthazar had to take it down and close the shop.
‘You have to shave,’ Ursula, his wife, told him. ‘You look like a capuchin.’
‘It’s bad to shave in the afternoon.’
He had two weeks growth, short, hard, and bristly hair like the mane of a
mule and the general expression of a frightened boy. He did not know that
for some people the cage he had just made was the most beautiful one in the
world. For him, accustomed to making cages since childhood, it had been
hardly any more difficult than the others.
‘Rest for a while then,’ Ursula said to him.
1. Why did Ursula describe Balthazar as a capuchin?
2. Why did Balthazar hang the cage under the eaves?
3. Why didn’t Balthazar have the same feelings of others about the beauty of
the cage?
4. What reason did Balthazar say for not accepting Ursula’s suggestion to shave?
5. Look at the sentence: Maya is used to getting up early. Substitute the
underlined phrase with a suitable word/phrase from the passage.
6. Read the following sentence.
The cage was finished.
Begin the sentence with – Balthazar ....