<span>Being a teacher means having many benefits: personal job fulfillment, a strong union, supportive friends and colleagues, and many holidays and breaks off during the school year.</span>
Answer:
fend means
Explanation:
verb: look after and provide for oneself, without any help from others.
verb 2: defend oneself from a blow, attack, or attacker.
I believe these parts provide direct characterization: "<span>Endowed with commonsense, as massive and hard as blocks of granite, fastened together by stern rigidity of purpose, as with iron clamps, he followed out his original design, probably without so much as imagining an objection to it."
The writer clearly and directly describes the character's personal features, as well as his internal motivation for an action. It is opposed to indirect characterization, where we can grasp the character's traits or motivation through his/her actions or speech.</span>
If you don't have answer choices, I would say either peer editing or reading it aloud and listening for errors.