Unseen Passage for Class 5: The Keeper of the Light

  • 190 words
  • 5 questions
  • Ages 10–11
  • With answers

Leo reads the passage out loud and highlights each word, then asks whether your child would like to try the questions. Free, no sign-up.

Read the passage

For thirty-one years Joseph climbed the hundred and forty steps of the lighthouse at Kanyakumari twice a day. He trimmed the wick when there was a wick, and later he checked the bulbs and the rotating lens that replaced it.

When the light was finally automated, the department sent him a letter of thanks and a pension. The machines, the letter explained, were more reliable than any person could be.

Joseph did not argue. But he kept climbing the steps every evening, without pay and without being asked, because the automatic system could tell when a bulb had failed and nothing else.

On a night in August the lens motor seized during a storm. The alarm did not sound, because the bulb was burning perfectly well; it simply was not turning. From the shore the light looked steady and correct.

Joseph noticed from his window that the beam was not sweeping. He climbed the hundred and forty steps in the rain and turned the lens by hand for six hours until the storm passed. Two fishing boats came in that night. Neither crew ever knew why the light kept moving.

Questions

  1. How long had Joseph worked at the lighthouse?

    1. Thirteen years
    2. Twenty-one years
    3. Thirty-one years
    4. Forty years

  2. Why did the department send Joseph a letter?

    1. To promote him
    2. To tell him the light had been automated and he was being retired
    3. To ask him to work longer hours
    4. To thank him for the storm

  3. Why did the alarm fail to sound on the night of the storm?

    1. The alarm was broken
    2. The power had gone
    3. The system only checked the bulb, and the bulb was working — it was the motor that had seized
    4. Joseph had switched it off

  4. Why was a steady light dangerous for the boats?

    1. It was too bright
    2. A lighthouse beam must sweep; a steady light could be mistaken for an ordinary shore light
    3. It used too much power
    4. It attracted birds

  5. What is the writer's main purpose in telling this story?

    1. To explain how lighthouses work
    2. To show that machines can replace people entirely
    3. To show that experience can catch what a machine is not built to notice
    4. To describe a storm at Kanyakumari

Answers

Show the answer key
  1. Thirty-one yearsThe passage opens with "For thirty-one years".
  2. To tell him the light had been automated and he was being retiredWhen the light was automated they sent a letter of thanks and a pension, explaining the machines were more reliable.
  3. The system only checked the bulb, and the bulb was working — it was the motor that had seizedThis is the key detail. The automatic system could only detect a failed bulb, so a stopped lens went unnoticed.
  4. A lighthouse beam must sweep; a steady light could be mistaken for an ordinary shore lightThe passage says that from the shore the light "looked steady and correct" — but a lighthouse is recognised by its sweeping beam.
  5. To show that experience can catch what a machine is not built to noticeThe letter claimed machines were more reliable. The storm proved that a man who knew the lighthouse saw a failure the system was blind to.

Use your child's own textbook

Photograph any page from your child's school book — CBSE, ICSE or any state board — and BrainyLeo turns it into a passage Leo reads aloud, followed by questions written for Class 5.

📸 Try it with your book