Human Experience Test Answers

Read the passage from Amy Tan's "Rules of the Game.”My parents made many concessions to allow me to practice. One time I complained that the bedroom I shared was so noisy that I couldn’t think. Thereafter, my brothers slept in a bed in the living room facing the street. I said I couldn’t finish my rice; my head didn’t work right when my stomach was too full. I left the table with half-finished bowls and nobody complained. But there was one duty I couldn’t avoid. I had to accompany my mother on Saturday market days when I had no tournament to play. My mother would proudly walk with me, visiting many shops, buying very little. "This my daughter Wave-ly Jong,” she said to whoever looked her way.One day after we left a shop I said under my breath, "I wish you wouldn’t do that, telling everybody I’m your daughter.” My mother stopped walking. Crowds of people with heavy bags pushed past us on the sidewalk, bumping into first one shoulder, then another.

Read the excerpt from act 3 of A Doll's House.Helmer: How unreasonable and how ungrateful you are, Nora! Have you not been happy here?Nora: No, I have never been happy. I thought I was, but it has never really been so.Helmer: Not—not happy!Nora: No, only merry. And you have always been so kind to me. But our home has been nothing but a playroom. I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I was papa's doll-child; and here the children have been my dolls. I thought it great fun when you played with me, just as they thought it great fun when I played with them. That is what our marriage has been, Torvald.

Read the passage from Amy Tan's "Rules of the Game."One day, after we left a shop I said under my breath, "I wish you wouldn’t do that, telling everybody I’m your daughter.” My mother stopped walking. Crowds of people with heavy bags pushed past us on the sidewalk, bumping into first one shoulder, then another."Aiii-ya. So shame be with mother?” She grasped my hand even tighter as she glared at me.I looked down. "It’s not that, it’s just so obvious. It’s just so embarrassing.”"Embarrass you be my daughter?” Her voice was cracking with anger."That’s not what I meant. That’s not what I said.”"What you say?”I knew it was a mistake to say anything more, but I heard my voice speaking, "Why do you have to use me to show off? If you want to show off, then why don’t you learn to play chess?”My mother’s eyes turned into dangerous black slits. She had no words for me, just sharp silence.I felt the wind rushing around my hot ears. I jerked my hand out of my mother’s tight grasp and spun around, knocking into an old woman. Her bag of groceries spilled to the ground."Aii-ya! Stupid girl!” my mother and the woman cried. Oranges and tin cans careened down the sidewalk. As my mother stooped to help the old woman pick up the escaping food, I took off.

Read the excerpt from act 3 of A Doll’s House.Nora: In all these eight years—longer than that—from the very beginning of our acquaintance, we have never exchanged a word on any serious subject.Helmer: Was it likely that I would be continually and forever telling you about worries that you could not help me to bear?Nora: I am not speaking about business matters. I say that we have never sat down in earnest together to try and get at the bottom of anything.Helmer: But, dearest Nora, would it have been any good to you?Nora: That is just it; you have never understood me. I have been greatly wronged, Torvald—first by papa and then by you.

Which conflicts occur in this passage? Select three options.

Which details most reveal the setting of the passage? Select three options.

Read the lines from "Girl Powdering Her Neck” by Cathy Song, then look at the artwork by Kitagawa Utamaro.Her hair is blackwith hints of red,the color of seaweedspread over rocks.Morning begins the ritualwheel of the body,the application of translucent skins.She practices pleasure:the pressure of three fingertipsapplying powder.Fingerprints of pollensome other hand will trace.The peach-dyed kimonopatterned with maple leavesdrifting across the silk,falls from right to leftin a diagonal, revealingthe nape of her neckand the curve of a shoulderlike the slope of a hillset deep in snow in a countryof huge white solemn birds.Her face appears in the mirror,a reflection in a winter pond,rising to meet itself.

Which excerpt from the poem "Girl Powdering Her Neck” by Cathy Song is an example of a simile?

Read the passage from A Doll’s House.Nora: But it was absolutely necessary that he should not know! My goodness, can't you understand that? It was necessary he should have no idea what a dangerous condition he was in. It was to me that the doctors came and said that his life was in danger, and that the only thing to save him was to live in the south. Do you suppose I didn't try, first of all, to get what I wanted as if it were for myself? I told him how much I should love to travel abroad like other young wives; I tried tears and entreaties with him; I told him that he ought to remember the condition I was in, and that he ought to be kind and indulgent to me; I even hinted that he might raise a loan. That nearly made him angry, Christine. He said I was thoughtless, and that it was his duty as my husband not to indulge me in my whims and caprices—as I believe he called them. Very well, I thought, you must be saved—and that was how I came to devise a way out of the difficulty— Mrs. Linde: And did your husband never get to know from your father that the money had not come from him? Nora: No, never. Papa died just at that time. I had meant to let him into the secret and beg him never to reveal it. But he was so ill then—alas, there never was any need to tell him.Mrs. Linde: And since then have you never told your secret to your husband?Nora: Good Heavens, no! How could you think so? A man who has such strong opinions about these things! And besides, how painful and humiliating it would be for Torvald, with his manly independence, to know that he owed me anything! It would upset our mutual relations altogether; our beautiful happy home would no longer be what it is now.

Read the excerpt from act 2 of A Doll’s House.Nurse: Oh well, young children easily get accustomed to anything. Nora: Do you think so? Do you think they would forget their mother if she went away altogether?Nurse: Good heavens!—went away altogether?Nora: Nurse, I want you to tell me something I have often wondered about—how could you have the heart to put your own child out among strangers?Nurse: I was obliged to, if I wanted to be little Nora's Nurse.Nora: Yes, but how could you be willing to do it?Nurse: What, when I was going to get such a good place by it? A poor girl who has got into trouble should be glad to. Besides, that wicked man didn't do a single thing for me.

Read the excerpt from act 1 of A Doll's House.Helmer: Nora! [Goes up to her and takes her playfully by the ear.] The same little featherhead! Suppose, now, that I borrowed fifty pounds today, and you spent it all in the Christmas week, and then on New Year's Eve a slate fell on my head and killed me, and—Nora: [putting her hands over his mouth]. Oh! don't say such horrid things.Helmer: Still, suppose that happened, —what then?Nora: If that were to happen, I don't suppose I should care whether I owed money or not.Helmer: Yes, but what about the people who had lent it?Nora: They? Who would bother about them? I should not know who they were.Helmer: That is like a woman! But seriously, Nora, you know what I think about that. No debt, no borrowing. There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt. We two have kept bravely on the straight road so far, and we will go on the same way for the short time longer that there need be any struggle.Nora: [moving towards the stove]. As you please, Torvald.

Read the passage from A Doll’s House.Nora: Nurse, I want you to tell me something I have often wondered about—how could you have the heart to put your own child out among strangers?Nurse: I was obliged to, if I wanted to be little Nora's Nurse.Nora: Yes, but how could you be willing to do it?Nurse: What, when I was going to get such a good place by it? A poor girl who has got into trouble should be glad to. Besides, that wicked man didn't do a single thing for me.Nora: But I suppose your daughter has quite forgotten you.Nurse: No, indeed she hasn't. She wrote to me when she was confirmed, and when she was married.

Which details from the text best support the analysis that the narrator is in awe of the city at night? Select three options.