Read the passage and answer the given question below
The house I grew up in was crowded. I had to share a bedroom with my three brothers and two of my cousins. In total, there were 13 of us in the same house. And that made it feel like I was constantly surrounded.
During the fall, winter, and spring, I would leave the house for an even more crowded school. We had a minimum of 30 students in each class, and two students had to share a locker. Then, I’d catch a bus home with 60 other students. There was hardly a second in a day that I was not in a swarm of people, unfortunately. Being somewhat shy by nature, crowds did not agree with me.
That’s why I loved the summer so much. In summer, I did not have to go to school, and I also did not have to stay home. Instead, I could go out anywhere in the city and find time alone.
My brothers and cousins would usually go someplace to play with 10 or 11 other kids. Not me. My favorite place to go in the summer was the park. It would be crowded, of course, but I could always find a place to sit by myself.
I would enter the park from the west side and make my way as deep into it as I could get. There, in the middle of the park, I could always find a bench isolated from the others. Or a tree that was so shaded as to create a sort of nook for me to hide in. Or even a spot on the grass in the middle of a wide field but hundreds of feet away from the nearest person.
There, in those spots, I would get lost in the pages of a novel or book of poetry. It was in those summers that I first learned to love the written word. And I know that had I not been able to find that solitude in the middle of the bustling crowds, I would not be the man I am today. For I would not have ever discovered the joys of reading, and with them, the joys of writing.
To read is to connect with another person. And yet it is a connection one must make in private and isolation. So without isolation, ironically, for me there would have been no community.
1. Juxtaposition is defined as the placement of two concepts that are parallel to each other in order to highlight the contrast between the two of them. Which concepts does the narrator primarily juxtapose in the passage?
a) having one’s own house and sharing it with a family
b) being surrounded by people and being alone
c) summertime and wintertime
d) the joys of reading and the joys of writing