Writing Workshop: Comparing Texts — Unit test

Question 1

Read the excerpt from Elie Wiesel’s All Rivers Run to the Sea.It is unbelievable how fast people adapt. It hurts to admit it, but within hours of first breathing the cattle car’s nauseating air, we began to feel at home. ‘Home’ was the edge of the wooden plank I sat on as I dreamed of the Jewish exiles of antiquity and the Middle Ages. More curious than afraid, I thought of myself as their brother. Mixed into my sadness there was undeniable excitement, for we were living a historic event, a historic adventure.Which best describes the author at this point in his life?

Revolt · Accepted Answer

He is too young and naive to truly understand what is happening.

Question 2

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

Revolt · Accepted Answer

he is a man of mystery and secrets.

Question 3

Roosevelt’s Executive Order No. 9066 was based on

Revolt · Accepted Answer

the assumption that Japanese Americans posed a threat to national security.

Question 4

Which excerpt from The Great Gatsby best indicates that Nick is not fully content with his life?

Revolt · Accepted Answer

Instead of being the warm center of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business.

Question 5

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?

Revolt · Accepted Answer

They indicate that Passini feels passionately about his beliefs.

Question 6

Read the excerpt from The Great Gatsby.Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They were not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size. I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them.The use of words such as “fashionable,” “superficial,” “bizarre,” and “sinister” provide

Revolt · Accepted Answer

a sense of artificiality in the world the narrator finds himself in.

Question 7

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

Revolt · Accepted Answer

Wiesel’s story includes his thoughts and feelings, whereas Spiegelman’s novel illustrates his father’s horrific experiences.

Question 8

Read the excerpt from "In Response to Executive Order 9066".My best friend is a white girl named Denise—we look at boys together. She sat in front of meall through grade school because of our names:O’Connor, Ozawa.In the excerpt, Okita reveals significant details about

Revolt · Accepted Answer

race and friendship.

Question 9

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?

Revolt · Accepted Answer

Some truths are too difficult to fathom if one has not experienced them.

Question 10

Which incident taken from O’Connor’s “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” is the best example of irony?

Revolt · Accepted Answer

Mrs. Crater thinks she is gaining a son-in-law, when in fact Mr. Shiftlet takes her car, her money, and abandons her daughter at a diner.

Writing Workshop: Comparing Texts — Unit test Answers

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