Cumulative Exam Answers

Read the excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.What is the author’s purpose for including these sentences?

Read the excerpts from “Take the Tortillas Out of Your Poetry” and “Speaking Arabic.”My friend had concluded that if he took his language and culture out of his poetry, he stood a better chance of receiving a fellowship. He took out his native language, the poetic patois of our reality, the rich mixture of Spanish, English, pachuco and street talk which we know so well. In other words, he took the tortillas out of his poetry, which is to say he took the soul out of his poetry. At a neighborhood fair in Texas, somewhere between the German Oom-pah Sausage Stand and the Mexican Gorditas booth, I overheard a young man say to his friend, “I wish I had a heritage. Sometimes I feel—so lonely for one.” And the tall American trees were dangling their thick branches right down over his head.Which best states how the structures of both excerpts support ideas about cultural diversity?

Read this excerpt from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.I knew I could never let Mom hear the messages, because protecting her is one of my most important raisons d’être, so what I did was I took Dad’s emergency money from on top of his dresser, and I went to the Radio Shack on Amsterdam. It was on a TV there that I saw that the first building had fallen. I bought the exact same phone and ran home and recorded our greeting from the first phone onto it. I wrapped up the old phone in the scarf that Grandma was never able to finish because of my privacy, and I put that in a grocery bag, and I put that in a box, and I put that in another box, and I put that under a bunch of stuff in my closet, like my jewelry workbench and albums of foreign currencies.Which word best describes the tone of this excerpt?

Roosevelt’s Executive Order No. 9066 was based on

Having a counterclaim in an argumentative essay allows the author of the essay to

Read the excerpt from Wiesel’s All Rivers Run to the Sea.No, let us go no further. Decency and custom forbid it. I said it earlier, when speaking of my grandfather: In Jewish tradition a man’s death belongs to him alone. Let the gas chambers remain closed to prying eyes, and to the imagination. We will never know all that happened behind those doors of steel.Read the text and study the images from Spiegelman’s Maus.Which theme is addressed in both excerpts?

By signing Executive Order No. 9066, President Roosevelt assumed that

How does Michio Kaku develop the idea of an impending scientific revolution in “Choreographers of Matter, Life, and Intelligence”?

Read the excerpt from Pericles’s funeral oration by Thucydides.Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people. When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law; when it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which the man possesses. No one, so long as he has it in him to be of service to the state, is kept in political obscurity because of poverty.

Read the excerpt from Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. “Tenente,” Passini said. “We understand you let us talk. Listen. There is nothing as bad as war. We in the auto-ambulance cannot even realize at all how bad it is. When people realize how bad it is they cannot do anything to stop it because they go crazy. There are some people who never realize. There are people who are afraid of their officers. It is with them the war is made.” “I know it is bad but we must finish it.” “It doesn’t finish. There is no finish to a war.” “Yes there is.” Passini shook his head. “War is not won by victory. What if we take San Gabriele? What if we take the Carso and Monfalcome and Trieste? Where are we then? Did you see all the far mountains to-day? Do you think we could take all them too? Only if the Austrians stop fighting. One side must stop fighting. Why don’t we stop fighting? If they come down into Italy they will get tired and go away. They have their own country. But no, instead there is a war.”Which best describes the effect of Passini’s long pieces of dialogue?

Read the sentence.In chapter three, Joseph feels confused about the way things happened at the court house.Which is the best revision of this sentence using academic vocabulary?

Which accurately describes a contrast between Wiesel’s All Rivers Run to the Sea and Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel, Maus?

Which is a feature of dialect?

Read the excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application.How does King support this claim?

Read the excerpt from "Harrison Bergeron." “I think I’d make a good Handicapper General.”“Good as anybody else,” said George.“Who knows better’n I do what normal is?” said Hazel.“Right,” said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one-gun salute in his head stopped that.How does the dialogue between George and Hazel develop Kurt Vonnegut’s message that advanced technology dehumanizes individuals?

Read the excerpt from “The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica.”plain ham and cheesethat would cost less at the A&P, but it would not satisfythe hunger of the fragile old man lost in the foldsof his winter coat, who brings her lists of items that he reads to her like poetry, or the others,whose needs she must divine, conjuring up productsfrom places that now exist only in their hearts—closed ports she must trade with.Which best describes how the author’s word choice affects the tone of the poem?

Read the sentence.The speaker of Okita’s poem tries to present herself in ways that have little to do with her customs.Which is the best revision of this sentence using academic vocabulary?

Read this excerpt from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.She said, “Ron is a great person,” which was an answer to a question I didn’t ask. So I asked again. “True or false: you are in love with Ron.” She put her hand with the ring on it in her hair and said, “Oskar, Ron is my friend.” Which statement best describes the ambiguity in this excerpt?

Read the excerpt from Pericles’s funeral oration by Thucydides.Mighty indeed are the marks and monuments of our empire which we have left. Future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now. We do not need the praises of a Homer, or of anyone else whose words may delight us for the moment, but whose estimation of facts will fall short of what is really true. For our adventurous spirit has forced an entry into every sea and into every land; and everywhere we have left behind us everlasting memorials of good done to our friends or suffering inflicted on our enemies.

Read the excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. How does King support this claim in the rest of his letter?

Read the excerpt from Brown v. Board of Education.Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.Why does the Supreme Court conclude that the plaintiffs have been denied their rights?

What is deductive reasoning?

Read the following excerpt from Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics.There is a tale, “The Ring of Gyges,” that Feldman sometimes tells his economist friends. It comes from Plato’s Republic. A student named Glaucon offered the story in response to a lesson by Socrates—who, like Adam Smith, argued that people are generally good even without enforcement. Glaucon, like Feldman’s economist friends, disagreed. He told of a shepherd named Gyges who stumbled upon a secret cavern with a corpse inside that wore a ring. When Gyges put on the ring, he found that it made him invisible. With no one able to monitor his behavior, Gyges proceeded to do woeful things—seduce the queen, murder the king, and so on. Glaucon’s story posed a moral question: could any man resist the temptation of evil if he knew his acts could not be witnessed? Glaucon seemed to think the answer was no. But Paul Feldman sides with Socrates and Adam Smith—for he knows the answer, at least 87 percent of the time, is yes.Feldman reaches the conclusion that most people are honest without receiving an incentive by

Read the excerpt from Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight, and turning my head to watch it, I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbor’s mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens. The appearance of Gatsby from the shadows suggests that

Read this excerpt from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.I stood on all of that and it worked for a second. But then I had the tips of my fingers on the vase, and the tragedies started to wobble, and the tuxedo was incredibly distracting, and the next thing was that everything was on the floor, including me, and including the vase, which had shattered. “I didn’t do it!” I hollered, but they didn’t even hear me, because they were playing music too loud and cracking up too much. How does the narration shape Oskar’s characterization in this excerpt?