Question

“Only minutes before his character was tested, he was sitting in the ordinary plane among the ordinary passengers, dutifully listening to the stewardess telling him to fasten his seat belt and saying something about the “No Smoking” sign. So our man relaxed with the others, some of whom would owe their lives to him. Perhaps he started to read, or to doze, or to regret some harsh remark made in the office that morning. Then suddenly he knew that the trip would not be ordinary. Like every other person on that flight, he was desperate to live, which makes his final act so stunning.” “...For at some moment in the water he must have realized that he would not live if he continued to hand over the rope and ring to others. He had to know it, no matter how gradual the effect of the cold. In his judgment he had no choice. When the helicopter took off with what was to be the last survivor, he watched everything in the world move away from him, and he deliberately let it happen. Yet there was something else about the man that kept our thoughts on him still. He was there, in the essential, classic circumstance. Man in nature. The man in the water. For its part, nature cared nothing about the five passengers. Our man, on the other hand, cared totally. So the timeless battle commenced in the Potomac. For as long as that man could last, they went at each other, nature and man: the one making no distinctions of good and evil, acting on no principals, offering no lifelines; the other acting wholly on distinctions, principles and one supposes, of faith.”
From the excerpt above, readers can infer that which of the following is NOT a characteristic of a hero, according to “The Man in the Water”?

Bravery

Selflessness

Intelligence

Empathy

Answer 1

The answer is Intelligence.

You would have to have empathy to think of something like that, you would have to be brave to carry through with it, and above all, you would be selfless if you gave yourself up to save others. So that leaves the only possible answer as C: Intelligence.

Answer 2

I believe it is selflessness. He seems upset about not giving up the rope anymore to save his own life.