Unit Test — Cumulative exam Answers

Read the excerpt from "A Quilt of a Country."What is the point of this splintered whole? What is the point of a nation in which Arab cabbies chauffeur Jewish passengers through the streets of New York—and in which Jewish cabbies chauffeur Arab passengers, too, and yet speak in theory of hatred, one for the other? What is the point of a nation in which one part seems to be always on the verge of fisticuffs with another, blacks and whites, gays and straights, left and right, Pole and Chinese and Puerto Rican and Slovenian? Other countries with such divisions have in fact divided into new nations with new names, but not this one, impossibly interwoven even in its hostilities.

Read the excerpt from Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy.He had seen the island from the far ledges, standing with his father and Sheriff Elwell and Deacon Hurd and everyone else important in the town. A stony beach, a stony ledge or two, some pines—a few toppled over with their heads in the water, a few tilted, most of them still straight. There had seemed nothing on the island that would set anyone but a gull to wishing that he could live there.But coming on it now, from the water, with Lizzie stroking and angling her way to the point, Turner felt as if he was on the brink of a discovery. . . . Turner felt the world moving slowly and anciently beneath him, and he began to sway back and forth with the waves, with the trees, with the rolling globe itself.

Read the excerpt from The Code Book.More than a hundred million e-mails are sent around the world each day, and they are all vulnerable to interception. Digital technology has aided communication, but it has also given rise to the possibility of those communications being monitored. According to Zimmermann, cryptographers have a duty to encourage the use of encryption and thereby protect the privacy of the individual:A future government could inherit a technology infrastructure that's optimized for surveillance, where they can watch the movements of their political opposition, every financial transaction, every communication, every bit of e-mail, every phone call. Everything could be filtered and scanned and automatically recognized by voice recognition technology and transcribed. It's time for cryptography to step out of the shadows of spies and the military, and step into the sunshine and be embraced by the rest of us.

Read the excerpt from "A Latina Judge’s Voice” by Sonia Sotomayor.America has a deeply confused image of itself that is in perpetual tension. We are a nation that takes pride in our ethnic diversity, recognizing its importance in shaping our society and in adding richness to its existence. Yet, we simultaneously insist that we can and must function and live in a race and color-blind way that ignore these very differences that in other contexts we laud.

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Nate is writing an essay arguing that the football program at his school should be canceled for safety reasons. Which is the most effective claim for his argument?

Read the excerpt from "Choice: A Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” by Alice Walker.He was The One, The Hero, The One Fearless Person for whom we had waited. I hadn’t even realized before that we had been waiting for Martin Luther King, Jr., but we had. And I knew it for sure when my mother added his name to the list of people she prayed for every night.I sometimes think that it was literally the prayers of people like my mother and father, who had bowed down in the struggle for such a long time, that kept Dr. King alive until five years ago. For years we went to bed praying for his life, and awoke with the question "Is the ‘Lord’ still here?”

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Read the excerpt from Warriors Don't Cry."That's strange," Mama mumbled as she waved to people who didn't bother waving back. "No matter, maybe they didn't see me." Our neighbors had always been so friendly, but now they peered at us without their usual smiles. Then I saw Kathy and Ronda, two of my school friends, standing with their mothers. Anxious to catch their attention, I waved out the window with a loud "Hi." Their disapproving glances matched those of the adults.

Which theme is best expressed in "The Gift of the Magi"?

Which best defines a sonnet?

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Read this line from the prologue of Romeo and Juliet.Is now the two hours’ traffick of our stage;

Read the excerpt from "Choice: A Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” by Alice Walker.There is a cemetery near our family church where she is buried, but because her marker was made of wood and rotted years ago, it is impossible to tell exactly where her body lies. In the same cemetery are most of my mother’s people, who have lived in Georgia for so long nobody even remembers when they came. And all of my great-aunts and -uncles are there, and my grandfather and grandmother, and, very recently, my own father.

Which lines spoken by Romeo in Act III, scene i of Romeo and Juliet best support the inference that Romeo desires future peace between the Montagues and Capulets?