State the role of base case and recursive case in a recursive method.

Base case: The terminating condition of a recursive method — the simplest instance of the problem that is solved directly, without making any further recursive call. It stops the chain of recursive calls, preventing infinite recursion (and stack overflow), and is where the results start being returned/unwound back up the call chain. Recursive case: The part of the method where it calls itself with a smaller/simpler version of the original problem, moving the problem progressively closer to the base case with every call. Together, the recursive case breaks the problem down step by step, and the base case stops that breakdown and begins building up the final result.