Read the excerpt from Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington. The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized. It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercises of these privileges. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house. Read the excerpt from The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois. In answer to this, it has been claimed that the Negro can survive only through submission. Mr. Washington distinctly asks that black people give up, at least for the present, three things,— First, political power, Second, insistence on civil rights, Third, higher education of Negro youth,—and concentrate all their energies on industrial education, and accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South. This policy has been courageously and insistently advocated for over fifteen years, and has been triumphant for perhaps ten years. As a result of this tender of the palm-branch, what has been the return? In these years there have occurred: 1. The disfranchisement of the Negro. Which statement best compares the two arguments?
Read the excerpt from chapter 7 of Night . A piece fell into our wagon. I decided not to move. Anyway, I knew that I would not be strong enough to fight off dozens of violent men! I saw, not far from me, an old man dragging himself on all fours. He had just detached himself from the struggling mob. He was holding one hand to his heart. At first I thought he had received a blow to his chest. Then I understood: he was hiding a piece of bread under his shirt. With lightning speed he pulled it out and put it to his mouth. His eyes lit up, a smile, like a grimace, illuminated his ashen face. And was immediately extinguished. A shadow had lain down beside him. And this shadow threw itself over him. Stunned by the blows, the old man was crying: "Meir, my little Meir! Don't you recognize me . . . You're killing your father . . . I have bread . . . for you too . . . for you too . . .” In this passage, the author suggests that cruelty can occur when people face horrible conditions. Which evidence best supports this viewpoint? Choose two correct answers.
Read the passage and study the image from Sugar Changed the World . Expand Image Caption: Based on drawings from around 7000 BCE, this image depicts rock climbers finding honey in cliffs. This is the earliest known form of honey collecting. (Eva Crane, World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting ). . . . A rock drawing in Spain from about 7000 B.C. shows a man who has climbed a hillside, found a crevice holding a hive, and is reaching in to grab the honey. Indeed, a lucky wanderer in just about any part of Europe, Africa, or Asia that wasn’t covered with ice could stumble on a hive and—at the risk of some stings—come away with a treat. (People in the Americas had no bees, so used syrups made from maple trees, agave cactus, or mashed fruits for their sweeteners.) Then someone figured out that you didn't have to be lucky. You could hollow out a log near bees, and they would make it their home. You could "keep" bees—you didn't have to find them. How does the image support the text?
Read the passages from Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Passage 1 They set off again, the hunters bunched a little by fear of the mentioned beast, while Jack quested ahead. . . . Ralph leaned against a tree and at once the daydreams started swarming up. Jack was in charge of the hunt and there would be time to get to the mountain— Once, following his father from Chatham to Devonport, they had lived in a cottage on the edge of the moors. . . . When you went to bed there was a bowl of cornflakes with sugar and cream. And the books—they stood on the shelf by the bed, leaning together with always two or three laid flat on top because he had not bothered to put them back properly. They were dog-eared and scratched. There was the bright, shining one about Topsy and Mopsy that he never read because it was about two girls; there was the one about the magician, which you read with a kind of tied-down terror, skipping page twenty-seven with the awful picture of the spider; there was a book about people who had dug things up, Egyptian things; there was The Boy’s Book of Trains , The Boy’s Book of Ships . Vividly they came before him; he could have reached up and touched them, could feel the weight and slow slide with which The Mammoth Book for Boys would come out and slither down . . . Everything was all right; everything was good-humored and friendly. Passage 2 "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.” The universal theme of Passage 1 is the loss of innocence, and the universal theme of Passage 2 is the wisdom gained from experience. How do these universal themes relate to each other?
Read the passage from chapter 2 of Animal Farm . But at this moment the three cows, who had seemed uneasy for some time past, set up a loud lowing. They had not been milked for twenty-four hours, and their udders were almost bursting. After a little thought, the pigs sent for buckets and milked the cows fairly successfully, their trotters being well adapted to this task. Soon there were five buckets of frothing creamy milk at which many of the animals looked with considerable interest. "What is going to happen to all that milk?” said someone. "Jones used sometimes to mix some of it in our mash,” said one of the hens. "Never mind the milk, comrades!” cried Napoleon, placing himself in front of the buckets. "That will be attended to. The harvest is more important. Comrade Snowball will lead the way. I shall follow in a few minutes. Forward, comrades! The hay is waiting.” So the animals trooped down to the hayfield to begin the harvest, and when they came back in the evening it was noticed that the milk had disappeared. Which quotation from this passage is the best example of foreshadowing?
Read the excerpt from chapter 6 of Animal Farm . Afterwards Squealer made a round of the farm and set the animals’ minds at rest. He assured them that the resolution against engaging in trade and using money had never been passed, or even suggested. It was pure imagination, probably traceable in the beginning to lies circulated by Snowball. A few animals still felt faintly doubtful, but Squealer asked them shrewdly, "Are you certain that this is not something that you have dreamed, comrades? Have you any record of such a resolution? Is it written down anywhere?" Which statement best explains how the pacing in this passage helps reveal Squealer’s character?
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World . In the 1930s, reporters spread out across the American South to capture the voices of history. Some African Americans who had been born as slaves were still alive, and could describe how they had lived sixty years earlier. Through their words we can finally begin to hear about sugar slavery from those who lived it. Ellen Betts, who grew up as a slave on a sugar plantation in Louisiana, recalled that they worked "hour in, hour out, the sugar cane fields sure stretch from one end of the earth to the other." Ceceil George remembered that she "come up in hard times—slavery times." "Every body worked, young, an ole’, if yo’ could carry two or three sugar cane yo’ worked. Sunday, Monday, it all de same . . . it like a heathen part o’ de country." She meant that in other states slaves got Sunday off to worship God. Not in Louisiana: There, sugar was god, and work was the only religion. How do the historical details in this passage support the authors' claim?
Which event is part of the rising action in "Little Snow White"?
Read the excerpt from "The Three Questions" by Leo Tolstoy. All the answers being different, the King agreed with none of them, and gave the reward to none. But still wishing to find the right answers to his questions, he decided to consult a hermit, widely renowned for his wisdom. The hermit lived in a wood which he never quitted, and he received none but common folk. So the King put on simple clothes, and before reaching the hermit's cell dismounted from his horse, and, leaving his body-guard behind, went on alone. When the King approached, the hermit was digging the ground in front of his hut. Seeing the King, he greeted him and went on digging. The hermit was frail and weak, and each time he stuck his spade into the ground and turned a little earth, he breathed heavily. The King went up to him and said: "I have come to you, wise hermit, to ask you to answer three questions: How can I learn to do the right thing at the right time? Who are the people I most need, and to whom should I, therefore, pay more attention than to the rest? And, what affairs are the most important, and need my first attention?" The hermit listened to the King, but answered nothing. He just spat on his hand and recommenced digging. "You are tired," said the King, "let me take the spade and work awhile for you." Which paragraphs from the excerpt best support the conclusion that the author’s primary purpose is to teach a lesson? Choose two correct answers.
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World. No one interviewed the Africans who labored in the sugar fields to ask them about their hard labor. They were meant to work and die. But there is one way we can hear them. The Africans invented music, dances, and songs that carry on the pulse, the beat, of their lives. (To hear examples of music from the sugar lands, go to www.sugarchangedtheworld.com.) In Puerto Rico, bomba is a form of music and dance that the sugar workers invented. It is a kind of conversation in rhythm involving a woman, the man dancing with her, and the drummers who watch her and find the right rhythm for her movements. A master coming by would see dancing—no words of anger or rebellion. But as she moved and swayed, as the drummers "spoke" back in their beats, the workers were saying that they were not just labor, not just bodies born to work and die. Instead, they were alive and speaking to one another in movements and sounds that were all their own. In Cuba, sugar workers told their stories in the words and sounds of rumba. As one song said, "The boss does not want me to play the drum.” Overseers feared the slaves were using drums to send messages and spread thoughts of rebellion. Similarly, in Brazil there is a dance called Maculelê, which some trace to the sugar fields. Maculelê is danced with sticks or sugar cane stalks, and it looks very much like training for combat. On many of the sugar islands, Africans created similar dances in which people spin, jump, and seem to menace each other, then, just on the beat, click sticks and twirl away. The dances were a way of imitating warfare without actually defying the master. Which text evidence best supports the authors' claim and purpose that enslaved people were more than mercilessly treated workers?
Read the excerpt from Enrique’s Journey. The train passes into northern Chiapas . Enrique sees men with hoes tending their corn and women inside their kitchens patting tortillas into shape. Cowboys ride past and smile. Fieldworkers wave their machetes and cheer the migrants on: " Qué bueno! " Mountains draw closer . Plantain fields soften into cow pastures . Enrique’s train slows to a crawl. Monarch butterflies flutter alongside, overtaking his car . How do the underlined phrases support the author’s purpose?
Read the passage from Animal Farm. Suddenly, early in the spring, an alarming thing was discovered. Snowball was secretly frequenting the farm by night! The animals were so disturbed that they could hardly sleep in their stalls. Every night, it was said, he came creeping in under cover of darkness and performed all kinds of mischief. He stole the corn, he upset the milk-pails, he broke the eggs, he trampled the seedbeds, he gnawed the bark off the fruit trees. Whenever anything went wrong it became usual to attribute it to Snowball. If a window was broken or a drain was blocked up, someone was certain to say that Snowball had come in the night and done it, and when the key of the store-shed was lost, the whole farm was convinced that Snowball had thrown it down the well. Curiously enough, they went on believing this even after the mislaid key was found under a sack of meal. The cows declared unanimously that Snowball crept into their stalls and milked them in their sleep. The rats, which had been troublesome that winter, were also said to be in league with Snowball. Which statement about the passage best reflects the influence of a totalitarian dictator?
Read the excerpt from "How the Grimm Brothers Saved the Fairy Tale." Though brusque and raw, the Grimms’ tales of the first edition still resonate with us today because they indicate how we can transform ourselves and our conditions to live in a better world. As philologists, collectors, translators, researchers, editors, and mediators, the Grimms worked in the hope that their tales would benefit us in unimaginable ways, and, indeed, it is this hope that can still be felt when we read and listen to their tales. Which statement best explains the structure of this passage?
Read the excerpt from chapter 10 of Animal Farm . But the luxuries of which Snowball had once taught the animals to dream, the stalls with electric light and hot and cold water, and the three-day week, were no longer talked about. Napoleon had denounced such ideas as contrary to the spirit of Animalism. The truest happiness, he said, lay in working hard and living frugally. How does Orwell use irony in this excerpt?
How can a causal relationship affect the plot of a story?
Read the sentence. The students found the grammatical rules incredibly simple to understand and use. Which word does the underlined phrase modify?
What can a writer describe about two characters to help develop their personalities?
Which central ideas are developed in chapters 3 and 4 of Animal Farm ? Choose two correct answers.
Read the sentence. Because the high winds are blowing, the fire may spread rapidly, and we have been ordered to evacuate. What type of sentence is this?
Study the poster created during World War II. The poster advertises war savings stamps, which were sold to citizens to raise war revenue. Expand Image How does the poster best demonstrate the use of the glittering generalities technique?
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