Question

Difficulty: HardDrawing Inferences and Deductions from Unseen Passages

Read the extract below carefully:

CHIEF ADO: The drums of Alaro have fallen silent, yet you urge me to dance to a tune played by shadows?
KALE: Silence is not the absence of sound, my Lord, but the heavy breathing of a storm taking rest.
CHIEF ADO: Then let the storm sleep! A king who stirs a sleeping tempest inherits only ruins.

Statement: Based on the extract, Chief Ado's reluctance to act stems from a conviction that intervening during a precarious lull will trigger widespread devastation.

Answer: Answer

Answer

The statement is True. Chief Ado's metaphor of stirring a sleeping tempest to inherit ruins directly supports the inference that he avoids action to prevent triggering disastrous consequences.
Chief Ado responds to Kale's assertion that silence is a resting storm by warning that disturbing it brings ruin. This implicitly confirms that his refusal to act is driven by the fear of provoking disaster during a fragile peace.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze Chief Ado's opening remark ('The drums of Alaro have fallen silent...') and Kale's metaphor describing silence as a 'storm taking rest'.
Identify that the passage describes a tense, quiet lull in an ongoing conflict.
Establishing the contextual setting is necessary before evaluating character motives.
2
Examine Chief Ado's response ('Then let the storm sleep! A king who stirs a sleeping tempest inherits only ruins').
Deduce Chief Ado's reasoning: disturbing the current quiet ('stirring a sleeping tempest') brings catastrophe ('inherits only ruins').
Determining the implicit cause-and-effect relationship reveals the character's core motivation.
3
Compare the deduction with the given statement.
Confirm that 'intervening during a precarious lull' matches stirring the tempest, and 'trigger widespread devastation' matches inheriting ruins.
Matching textual deductions to the statement validates its truth value.

Key Concept

Deducing character motivation and unstated consequences from dramatic dialogue metaphors
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