Anticipating the Future through Texts: Visions — Cumulative exam Answers

Read the excerpt from "Perseus."But Perseus had Hermes with him, so that the road lay open to him, and he reached that host of happy people who are always banqueting and holding joyful revelry. They showed him great kindness: they welcomed him to their feast, and the maidens dancing to the sound of flute and lyre paused to get for him the gifts he sought.

Read the passage.Johnny was miserable. It was Saturday afternoon, the sun was shining brightly, and he was stuck in bed with the flu. His throat felt like sandpaper every time he swallowed, his head felt as if someone had dropped an anvil on it, and he couldn’t stop coughing. His mother had checked his temperature earlier in the day and announced that he was too sick to get out of bed, let alone go outside to enjoy the first warm spring day along with his friends and siblings. From his room, Johnny could hear his sisters' high-pitched squeals of delight and the ringing of their bicycle bells as they rode up and down the sidewalk. He could hear someone bouncing a basketball and the swoop of the ball as it swished through the net. He also heard his best friend, Noah, asking where Johnny was and his sisters' reply that he couldn't come out to play because he was sick. This was too much. Johnny pulled the soft, velvety covers over his aching head and turned to the wall in protest, realizing there was nothing he could do but wait for this virus to take its course. He swore to himself that he would be better by next Saturday and that he would be outside riding his bike and shooting baskets along with everyone else.

Read this excerpt from part 5 of Zeitoun.Progress is being made. It’s so slow sometimes, so terribly so sometimes, but progress is being made. We have removed the rot, we are strengthening the foundations. There is much work to do, and we all know what needs to be done. We can only do the work, he tells Kathy, and his children, and his crew, his friends, anyone he sees. So let us get up early and stay late, and, brick by brick and block by block, let us get that work done.Which word best describes the tone of this excerpt?

Read the excerpt from Chapter 5 of Wheels of Change.Some stated the liberating effects of the bicycle with less sarcasm. "The bicycle has brought to women a healthful, wholesome means of securing a degree of freedom and independence that no amount of discussion regarding 'women's rights' would ever have produced," wrote the L.A.W. Bulletin and Good Roads magazine in 1898. Meanwhile, Munseg's Magazine assessed the impact of the wheel on women in a special bicycle-themed issue. "If she has ridden her bicycle into new fields, becoming in the process a new creature, it has been gradually and unconsciously," the editors wrote. "She did not have to be born again in some mysterious fashion, becoming a strange creature, a new woman. She is more like the 'eternal feminine,' who has taken on wings, and who is using them with an ever increasing delight in her new power." Indeed, many bicycle companies at home and abroad did put wings on the women in their advertisements, emphasizing that they had taken flight.

Which event in Amaterasu does the author include to create suspense?

Which excerpt is part of the exposition of Robin Hood?

Which sentence from “Broken Chain” contains the most descriptive language?

Read the excerpt from Elie Wiesel’s All Rivers Run to the Sea.Why were those trains allowed to roll unhindered into Poland? Why were the tracks leading to Birkenau never bombed? I have put these questions to American presidents and generals and to high-ranking Soviet officers. Since Moscow and Washington knew what the killers were doing in the death camps, why was nothing done at least to slow down their “production”? That not a single Allied military aircraft ever tried to destroy the rail lines converging on Auschwitz remains an outrageous enigma to me.How does Wiesel’s choice of genre prove beneficial in the excerpt?

Read this excerpt from part 5 of Zeitoun.It was a test, Zeitoun thinks. Who among us could deny that we were tested? But now look at us, he says. Every person is stronger now. Every person who was forgotten by God or country is now louder, more defiant, and more determined. They existed before, and they exist again, in the city of New Orleans and the United States of America. What assumption does the narrator make in this excerpt?

Look at the image and read the caption.Caption: This is an image of a woman wearing a crinoline in the 1850s created by cartoonist George Cruikshank.

Read the excerpts.“Broken Chain”Alfonso sat on the porch trying to push his crooked teeth to where he thought they belonged. He hated the way he looked. Last week he did fifty sit-ups a day, thinking that he would burn those already apparent ripples on his stomach to even deeper ripples, dark ones, so when he went swimming at the canal next summer, girls in cutoffs would notice. And the guys would think he was tough, someone who could take a punch and give it back.“Fish Cheeks”I fell in love with the minister’s son the winter I turned fourteen. He was not Chinese, but as white as Mary in the manger. For Christmas I prayed for this blond-haired boy, Robert, and a slim new American nose.When I found out that my parents had invited the minister’s family over for Christmas Eve dinner, I cried. What would Robert think of our shabby Chinese Christmas? What would he think of our noisy Chinese relatives who lacked proper American manners? What terrible disappointment would he feel upon seeing not a roasted turkey and sweet potatoes but Chinese food?Which text evidence from the essay and short story best supports the theme that people often care what others think about them?

Read this excerpt from “First Generation” of Dreaming in Cuban.Square by square, she searches the night skies for adversaries then scrutinizes the ocean, which is roiling with nine straight days of unseasonable April rains.What is the meaning of the underlined word?

Which excerpt from "Math Curse" best helps the reader predict the narrator's main conflict?

How does the author of the letter to the editor feel about urban sprawl?

Which excerpt from “Soldier's Home” is the best example of irony?

Read the excerpt from Richard Wright’s Black Boy.“Mama, I’m hungry,” I complained one afternoon.“Jump up and catch a kungry,” she said, trying to make me laugh and forget.“What’s a kungry?”“It’s what little boys eat when they get hungry,” she said.“What does it taste like?”“I don’t know.”“Then why do you tell me to catch one?”“Because you said that you were hungry,” she said, smiling.Which best describes how Wright effectively conveys his personal experience?

Read the excerpt from Richard Wright’s Black Boy.Hunger stole upon me so slowly that at first I was not aware of what hunger really meant. Hunger had always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at me gauntly. The hunger I had known before this had been no grim, hostile stranger; it had been a normal hunger that had made me beg constantly for bread, and when I ate a crust or two I was satisfied. But this new hunger baffled me, scared me, and made me angry and insistent. Whenever I begged for food now my mother would pour me a cup of tea which would still the clamor in my stomach for a moment or two; but a little later I would feel hunger nudging my ribs, twisting my empty guts till they ached. I would grow dizzy and my vision would dim. I became less active in my play, and for the first time in my life I had to pause and think of what was happening to me.Which best describes why Wright includes this anecdote?

Which feature of a book introduction is reflected in the introduction to A State of War and Peace?

Read the excerpt from A State of War and Peace.Von Suttner encouraged Nobel's participation. He remained ambivalent, believing in more-efficient weapons to keep the peace:"All neutral countries should give a guarantee to an arbitrating court regarding the execution of its judgment—even including, if necessary, the use of force. Let us admit that anything at all is better than war. All borders would remain untouched, and a declaration should be made that any and every aggressor would have all of Europe against him."

Read the excerpt from A State of War and Peace.Most awards raise a cacophony of sentiment, from praise and admiration to protests or just plain head-scratching. In the entertainment industry, the Academy Awards regularly elicit outrage.