What conflict is the narrator facing in this excerpt from Robert Cormier’s “The Moustache”?
“Listen . . .” I began. I wanted to say: “Nana, this is Mike your grandson, not Mike your husband.”
“Sh . . . sh . . .” she whispered, placing a finger as long and cold as a candle against my lips. “Don’t say anything. I’ve waited so long for this moment. To be here. With you. I wondered what I would say if suddenly you walked in that door like other people have done. I’ve thought and thought about it. And I finally made up my mind—I’d ask you to forgive me. I was too proud to ask before.” Her fingers tried to mask her face. “But I’m not proud anymore, Mike.” That great voice quivered and then grew strong again. “I hate you to see me this way—you always said I was beautiful. I didn’t believe it. The Charity Ball when we led the grand march and you said I was the most beautiful girl there . . .”
“Nana,” I said. I couldn’t keep up the pretense any longer, adding one more burden to my load of guilt, leading her on this way, playing a pathetic game of make-believe with an old woman clinging to memories. She didn’t seem to hear me.A.
whether to tell his sick grandmother that he doesn't care about her anymore
B.
whether he should go along with his grandmother’s confused view of reality
C.
that he had not treated his grandmother with the respect she deserved
D.
that he did not have the courage to refuse to visit his sick grandmother
Answers
Answer:
3 The “Measurement” ProblemIn the strange world of electrons, photons and other fundamental particlesquantum mechanics is law. Particles do not behave like little bullets, butas waves spread over a large region. Each particle is described by a wavefunction that tells what its location, speed and other characteristics are morelikely to be, but not what these properties are. The particle instead hascountless opportunities for each, until one experimentally measures one ofthem - location, for example - then the particle wave function “collapses” and,apparently at random, a single well-defined position is observed. But howand why does a measurement on a particle make its wave function collapse,which in turn produces the concrete reality we perceive? This issue, theMeasurement Problem in quantum physics [3], may seem esoteric, but ourunderstanding of what reality is, or if it even exists, depends on the answer.Even worse: according to quantum physics it should be impossible to everget a certain value for anything. It is characteristic of quantum physicsthat many different states coexist. The problem is that quantum mechanicsis supposed to be universal, that is, should apply regardless of the size ofthe things we describe. Why then do we not see ghostly superpositionsof objects even at our level? This problem is still unsolved. When cansomething be said to have happened at all? Without additional assumptionsbeyond quantum physics, nothing can ever happen! This is because the wavefunction mathematically is described by so-called linear equations, wherestates that have ever coexisted will do so forever. Despite this, we knowthat specific outcomes are entirely possible, and moreover happen all thetime. Another strange thing is that the uncertainty in quantum physicsarises only in the measurement. Before that, quantum mechanics is just asdeterministic as classical physics, or even more so, because it is exactly linearand thus “simple”. Only when we understand how our objective macroscopicworld arises from the ghostly microscopic world, where everything that is notstrictly forbidden is compulsory, can we say that we truly know how natu