From passage: "Recycling plastic is to saving the Earth what hammering a nail is to halting a falling skyscraper. You struggle to find a place to do it and feel pleased when you succeed. But your effort is wholly inadequate and distracts from the real problem of why the building is collapsing in the first place." The author uses this comparison to show how inadequate recycling is -> just like hammering a nail can't stop a huge skyscraper from falling, recycling can't solve the massive plastic problem -> the real issue is why the building is falling (production of single-use plastics), not trying to fix it with tiny actions. The phrase represents something that feels good but is completely inadequate for the actual size of the problem.

Now let's eliminate the wrong options by understanding what each one means: 🔴 Option 1 -> irrelevant -> talks about "emerging technologies" but the analogy is specifically about recycling behavior being inadequate, not about technology solutions 🔴 Option 2 -> scope-error -> focuses only on "single-use plastic bags" when the analogy is about the broader inadequacy of consumer actions like recycling 🔴 Option 3 -> context-shift -> this would actually be the solution the author wants (fixing production), but the analogy represents the inadequate approach we currently use 🟢 Option 4 -> correct -> captures exactly what the analogy means - focusing on consumer behavior (like recycling) is as useless as hammering a nail to stop a falling skyscraper, when the real problem is production itself The key insight: the analogy shows something that feels helpful but is actually totally inadequate for the real problem.

CAT (VARC) PYQs

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