Untied

Directions: Read the passage and select appropriate contextual meanings for the words underlined.

Once there was a farmer. He had five sons. All of them were selfish and quarrelsome. The farmer advised them not to quarrel, but in vain. When he was about to die, he asked his sons to bring a bundle of sticks. Then he asked them one by one to break the bundle. They tried hard but could not break the bundle.
After that the farmer untied the bundle. Again he asked his sons one by one to break the sticks. The youngest son got up and broke the sticks quite easily.
“You”, said the farmer, “could not break the sticks, when they were united. Your younger brother could break them when they were not united. Thus none can harm you, when you stand together. Know that “Union is Strength.”
Thus the old farmer asked his sons “to be united like the bundle of sticks and always to remember that united they stand divided they fall.”