The following text is from Rachel Heng's 2023 novel The Great Reclamation. Ah Boon is fishing off the coast of Singapore. When he pulled up the nets, they contained only one kind of fish—black pomfrets, the flat diamonds of their bodies slick in the morning light. This uniformity did not surprise him; over the years, he'd learned that the waters here were temperamental. They could be relied upon for a good catch, but from time to time threw up only prawns or squid, and other times colorful varieties of fish that weren't even supposed to be found in this region. He'd grown to accept the unpredictability, embracing it as a game to be played, like the reading of tea leaves or the grooves of a palm.
©2023 by Rachel Heng
Taken together, the three underlined portions most clearly serve which function in the text as a whole?
Explanation
Context: Ah Boon pulls up a net holding only black pomfrets and reflects on what these waters have handed him over the years.
Answer: A) They illustrate the changeable nature of the fishing grounds where Ah Boon is.
Why? The three items come from three different occasions, not one: pomfrets today, prawns or squid "from time to time," and unexpected colorful species "other times." Taken together they are the evidence for the passage's own terms for these waters — "temperamental," marked by an "unpredictability" he has learned to accept.
Traps:
- B) His lack of surprise at out-of-region species → his composure is stated separately; the listed catches show the variation itself, not his reaction to it.
- C) Variety caught on this particular trip → today's net contained "only one kind of fish"; the other two items come from past outings.
- D) What he most frequently catches → the passage stresses that the catch cannot be predicted and gives no frequencies.