Dark Romanticism: American Gothic — Test Answers

Which best explains why Melville begins Chapter 41 of Moby-Dick with a detailed description of the White Whale?

Read this excerpt from chapter 41 of Moby-Dick . And, when running into more sufferable latitudes, the ship, with mild stun'sails spread, floated across the tranquil tropics, and, to all appearances, the old man's delirium seemed left behind him with the Cape Horn swells, and he came forth from his dark den into the blessed light and air; even then, when he bore that firm, collected front, however pale, and issued his calm orders once again; and his mates thanked God the direful madness was now gone; even then, Ahab, in his hidden self, raved on. Which words from the excerpt best convey the mood?

Read the excerpt from the beginning of Chapter 1 of Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson. SQUIRE TRELAWNEY, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof. Which best explains Stevenson’s reason for beginning the chapter with this paragraph?

Read the excerpt from “The Oval Portrait,” by Edgar Allan Poe. The chateau into which my valet had ventured to make forcible entrance, rather than permit me, in my desperately wounded condition, to pass a night in the open air, was one of those piles of commingled gloom and grandeur which have so long frowned among the Appennines, not less in fact than in the fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe. To all appearance it had been temporarily and very lately abandoned. We established ourselves in one of the smallest and least sumptuously furnished apartments. It lay in a remote turret of the building. Which statement best describes the effect of the narration on the story?

Read the excerpt from “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe. The disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. What is the effect of parallelism in this excerpt?