Read the passage from Lord of the Flies by William Golding. He passed his tongue across dry lips and scanned the uncommunicative forest. Then again he stole forward and cast this way and that over the ground. The silence of the forest was more oppressive than the heat, and at this hour of the day there was not even the whine of insects. Only when Jack himself roused a gaudy bird from a primitive nest of sticks was the silence shattered and echoes set ringing by a harsh cry that seemed to come out of the abyss of ages. Jack himself shrank at this cry with a hiss of indrawn breath, and for a minute became less a hunter than a furtive thing, ape-like among the tangle of trees. Then the trail, the frustration, claimed him again and he searched the ground avidly. What is the universal theme of this passage?
Read the passages from Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Passage 1 Simon poked his head out carefully. "You’re chief. You tell ’em off.” Ralph lay flat and looked up at the palm trees and the sky. "Meetings. Don’t we love meetings? Every day. Twice a day. We talk.” He got on one elbow. "I bet if I blew the conch this minute, they’d come running. Then we’d be, you know, very solemn, and someone would say we ought to build a jet, or a submarine, or a TV set. When the meeting was over they’d work for five minutes, then wander off or go hunting.” Jack flushed. "We want meat.” "Well, we haven’t got any yet. And we want shelters. Besides, the rest of your hunters came back hours ago. They’ve been swimming.” Passage 2 "Jack! Jack! You haven’t got the conch! Let him speak.” Jack’s face swam near him. "And you shut up! Who are you, anyway? Sitting there telling people what to do. You can’t hunt, you can’t sing—” "I’m chief. I was chosen.” "Why should choosing make any difference? Just giving orders that don’t make any sense—” "Piggy’s got the conch.” "That’s right—favor Piggy as you always do—” "Jack!” Jack’s voice sounded in bitter mimicry. "Jack! Jack!” The universal theme of Passage 1 is the tension between freedom and responsibility, and the universal theme of Passage 2 is society’s dependence on authority. How do these universal themes relate to each other?
Read the passage from Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Jack stood there, streaming with sweat, streaked with brown earth, stained by all the vicissitudes of a day’s hunting. Swearing, he turned off the trail and pushed his way through until the forest opened a little and instead of bald trunks supporting a dark roof there were light grey trunks and crowns of feathery palm. Beyond these was the glitter of the sea and he could hear voices. Ralph was standing by a contraption of palm trunks and leaves, a rude shelter that faced the lagoon and seemed very near to falling down. He did not notice when Jack spoke. "Got any water?” Ralph looked up, frowning, from the complication of leaves. He did not notice Jack even when he saw him. "I said have you got any water? I’m thirsty.” Ralph withdrew his attention from the shelter and realized Jack with a start. What is the universal theme of this passage?
Read the passages from Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Passage 1 Indignation took away Ralph’s control. "I was talking about smoke! Don’t you want to be rescued? All you can talk about is pig, pig, pig!” "But we want meat!” "And I work all day with nothing but Simon and you come back and don’t even notice the huts!” "I was working too—” "But you like it!” shouted Ralph. "You want to hunt! While I—” They faced each other on the bright beach, astonished at the rub of feeling. Ralph looked away first, pretending interest in a group of littluns on the sand. From beyond the platform came the shouting of the hunters in the swimming pool. On the end of the platform, Piggy was lying flat, looking down into the brilliant water. "People don’t help much.” He wanted to explain how people were never quite what you thought they were. Passage 2 "You got to be tough now. Make 'em do what you want.” Ralph answered in the cautious voice of one who rehearses a theorem. "If I blow the conch and they don’t come back, then we’ve had it. We shan’t keep the fire going. We’ll be like animals. We’ll never be rescued.” "If you don’t blow, we’ll soon be animals anyway. I can’t see what they’re doing but I can hear.” The dispersed figures had come together on the sand and were a dense black mass that revolved. They were chanting something and littluns that had had enough were staggering away, howling. Ralph raised the conch to his lips and then lowered it. The universal theme of Passage 1 is the conflict between an individual’s desires and the community’s needs, and the universal theme of Passage 2 is the importance of hope to human happiness. How do these universal themes relate to each other?
Read the excerpt from Enrique’s Journey . Most freight cars have two ladders on a side, each next to a set of wheels. Enrique always chooses a ladder at the front. If he misses and his feet land on the rails, he still has an instant to jerk them away before the back wheels arrive. But if he runs too slowly, the ladder will yank him forward and send him sprawling. Then the front wheels, or the back ones, could take an arm, a leg, perhaps his life. " Se lo comió el tren, '' other migrants will say. " The train ate him up ." The purpose of using personification in the excerpt is to show how
Read the excerpt from Enrique’s Journey . The river, the Río Suchiate, forms the border. Behind him is Guatemala. Ahead is Mexico, with its southernmost state of Chiapas. " Ahora nos enfrentamos a Ia bestia, ” migrants say when they enter Chiapas. "Now we face the beast." Painfully, Enrique, seventeen years old, has learned a lot about "the beast." In Chiapas, bandits will be out to rob him, police will try to shake him down, and street gangs might kill him. But he will take those risks, because he needs to find his mother. What purposes does the author’s use of setting support? Choose two correct answers.
Read the passage from Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Ralph is speaking. "The trouble is: Are there ghosts, Piggy? Or beasts?” "’Course there aren’t.” "Why not?” "’Cos things wouldn’t make sense. Houses an’ streets, an’—TV—they wouldn’t work.” The dancing, chanting boys had worked themselves away till their sound was nothing but a wordless rhythm. "But s’pose they don’t make sense? Not here, on this island? Supposing things are watching us and waiting?” Ralph shuddered violently and moved closer to Piggy, so that they bumped frighteningly. "You stop talking like that! We got enough trouble, Ralph, an’ I’ve had as much as I can stand. If there is ghosts—” "I ought to give up being chief. Hear 'em.” "Oh lord! Oh no!” Piggy gripped Ralph’s arm. "If Jack was chief he’d have all hunting and no fire. We’d be here till we died.” How are the universal themes "humanity’s search for meaning in the world” and "the importance of hope to human happiness” best developed in this passage?
Read the passage from Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Ralph is speaking. "The fire is the most important thing on the island. How can we ever be rescued except by luck, if we don’t keep a fire going? Is a fire too much for us to make?” He flung out an arm. "Look at us! How many are we? And yet we can’t keep a fire going to make smoke. Don’t you understand? Can’t you see we ought to—ought to die before we let the fire out?” There was a self-conscious giggling among the hunters. Ralph turned on them passionately. "You hunters! You can laugh! But I tell you the smoke is more important than the pig, however often you kill one. Do all of you see?” He spread his arms wide and turned to the whole triangle. "We’ve got to make smoke up there—or die.” How is the universal theme of the tension between freedom and responsibility developed in this passage?
Read the passage from Lord of the Flies by William Golding. "I’m scared of him,” said Piggy, "and that’s why I know him. If you’re scared of someone you hate him but you can’t stop thinking about him. You kid yourself he’s all right really, an’ then when you see him again, it’s like asthma an’ you can’t breathe. I tell you what. He hates you too, Ralph—” "Me? Why me?” "I dunno. You got him over the fire; an’ you’re chief an’ he isn’t.” "But he’s, he’s, Jack Merridew!” "I been in bed so much I done some thinking. I know about people. I know about me. And him. He can’t hurt you: but if you stand out of the way he’d hurt the next thing. And that’s me.” What is the universal theme of this passage?
Which statement best supports the author’s purpose in "Children of the Drug Wars,” which is to persuade readers that the United States should do more to help immigrant children from Honduras?
Read the excerpt from "Children of the Drug Wars." He also asked Congress to grant powers that could eliminate legal protections for children from Central America in order to expedite removals, a change that Republicans in Congress have also advocated. This would allow life-or-death decisions to be made within hours by Homeland Security officials, even though studies have shown that border patrol agents fail to adequately screen Mexican children to see if they are being sexually exploited by traffickers or fear persecution, as the agents are supposed to do. Why would they start asking Central American children key questions needed to prove refugee status? Which element of the excerpt indicates that it is an editorial?
Read the excerpt from "Children of the Drug Wars.” By sending these children away, "you are handing them a death sentence ,” says José Arnulfo Ochoa Ochoa, an expert in Honduras with World Vision International, a Christian humanitarian aid group. This abrogates international conventions we have signed and undermines our credibility as a humane country. It would be a disgrace if this wealthy nation turned its back on the 52,000 children who have arrived since October, many of them legitimate refugees. The underlined words and phrases have strong negative connotations. How do they support the author’s purpose?
Read the excerpt from "Children of the Drug Wars." If many children don’t meet strict asylum criteria but face significant dangers if they return, the United States should consider allowing them to stay using humanitarian parole procedures we have employed in the past, for Cambodians and Haitians. It may be possible to transfer children and resettle them in other safe countries willing to share the burden. What is the author’s purpose in this excerpt?
Read the excerpt from chapter 2 of Night . Lying down was not an option, nor could we all sit down. We decided to take turns sitting. There was little air. The lucky ones found themselves near a window; they could watch the blooming countryside flit by. After two days of travel, thirst became intolerable, as did the heat. What is the purpose of this passage?
Read the excerpt from chapter 2 of Night . And so an hour or two passed. Another scream jolted us. The woman had broken free of her bonds and was shouting louder than before: "Look at the fire! Look at the flames! Flames everywhere . . .” Once again, the young men bound and gagged her. When they actually struck her, people shouted their approval: "Keep her quiet! Make that madwoman shut up. She’s not the only one here . . .” She received several blows to the head, blows that could have been lethal. Her son was clinging desperately to her, not uttering a word. He was no longer crying. In this excerpt, the author shows how terrible conditions can cause people to be unsympathetic to the pain of others. How does the memoir genre enable the author to achieve this purpose?
Which quotation from chapter 2 of Night by Elie Wiesel best demonstrates the author’s viewpoint about the dehumanization of the passengers?
Read the excerpt from chapter 2 of Night by Elie Wiesel. There was a woman among us, a certain Mrs. Schächter. She was in her fifties and her ten-year-old son was with her, crouched in a corner. Her husband and two older sons had been deported with the first transport, by mistake. The separation had totally shattered her. How does the word shattered affect the tone of the excerpt?
Read the excerpt from chapter 2 of Night . It took us a long time to recover from this harsh awakening. We were still trembling, and with every screech of the wheels, we felt the abyss opening beneath us. Unable to still our anguish, we tried to reassure each other. How does the fact that Night is a memoir rather than a biography or informational text help the author achieve his purpose in this excerpt?
The following sentence has a misplaced modifier. The group members met on Saturday working on the project together. Which revision corrects the error in the sentence?
Which underlined phrases are infinitive phrases? Choose two correct answers.
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