There was scarcely________ hope left after multiple failures.

Explanation:

The sentence is:
"There was scarcely ______ hope left after multiple failures."

• The word "hope" is a singular, countable noun in a general sense here.

• The phrase “scarcely a” is a common collocation in English, meaning “almost no”.

So, the correct sentence is:
"There was scarcely a hope left after multiple failures." ✅

Why not the other options?

• an → Used before words starting with a vowel sound (hope starts with consonant ‘h’)

• the → Refers to something specific (not general here)

• no article → Would be grammatically incorrect in this structure

Answer: a