"By the Waters of Babylon," Part 2: Analyzing Theme — Unit 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 passage from "By the Waters of Babylon.”Surely, that was enough to do, and live. Surely it was enough to spend the night upon the cliff. The Forest People themselves do not come near. Yet, all through the night, I knew that I should have to cross the river and walk in the places of the gods, although the gods ate me up. My magic did not help me at all and yet there was a fire in my bowels, a fire in my mind. When the sun rose, I thought, "My journey has been clean. Now I will go home from my journey." But, even as I thought so, I knew I could not. If I went to the Place of the Gods, I would surely die, but, if I did not go, I could never be at peace with my spirit again. It is better to lose one's life than one's spirit, if one is a priest and the son of a priest.

Question is locked

Question is locked

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 passage from "By the Waters of Babylon.”I went north—I did not try to hide myself. When a god or a demon saw me, then I would die, but meanwhile I was no longer afraid. My hunger for knowledge burned in me—there was so much that I could not understand.

Question is locked

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

Which excerpts from "Two Kinds” are examples of internal conflict? Select two options.“America was where all my mother's hopes lay. She had come here in 1949 after losing everything in China: her mother and father, her family home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls. But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better.”“In all of my imaginings, I was filled with a sense that I would soon become perfect. My mother and father would adore me. I would be beyond reproach. I would never feel the need to sulk for anything.”“Before going to bed that night, I looked in the mirror above the bathroom sink and when I saw only my face staring back—and that it would always be this ordinary face—I began to cry. Such a sad, ugly girl! I made high-pitched noises like a crazed animal, trying to scratch out the face in the mirror.”“My mother slapped me. ‘Who ask you be genius?’ she shouted. ‘Only ask you be your best. For you sake. You think I want you to be genius? Hnnh! What for! Who ask you!’“‘So ungrateful,’ I heard her mutter in Chinese, ‘If she had as much talent as she has temper, she would be famous now.’”“So maybe I never really gave myself a fair chance. I did pick up the basics pretty quickly, and I might have become a good pianist at that young age. But I was so determined not to try, not to be anybody different that I learned to play only the most ear-splitting preludes, the most discordant hymns.”

Read the passage from "By the Waters of Babylon.”When I saw my father again, I prayed and was purified. He touched my lips and my breast, he said, "You went away a boy. You come back a man and a priest." I said, "Father, they were men! I have been in the Place of the Gods and seen it! Now slay me, if it is the law—but still I know they were men."He looked at me out of both eyes. He said, "The law is not always the same shape—you have done what you have done. I could not have done it my time, but you come after me. Tell!"

Read the passage from "By the Waters of Babylon.”When I woke, the sun was low. Looking down from where I lay, I saw a dog sitting on his haunches. His tongue was hanging out of his mouth; he looked as if he were laughing. He was a big dog, with a gray-brown coat, as big as a wolf. I sprang up and shouted at him but he did not move—he just sat there as if he were laughing. I did not like that. When I reached for a stone to throw, he moved swiftly out of the way of the stone. He was not afraid of me; he looked at me as if I were meat. No doubt I could have killed him with an arrow, but I did not know if there were others. Moreover, night was falling.

What would most likely be discussed in a feminist criticism of Chinua Achebe’s work?

Read the passage from "Marriage Is a Private Affair" by Chinua Achebe. The first paragraph is a letter that Okeke sends to his son Nnaemeka.I have found a girl who will suit you admirably—Ugoye Nweke, the eldest daughter of our neighbour, Jacob Nweke. She has a proper Christian upbringing. When she stopped schooling some years ago, her father (a man of sound judgment) sent her to live in the house of a pastor where she has received all the training a wife could need. Her Sunday School teacher has told me that she reads her Bible very fluently. I hope we shall begin negotiations when you come home in December.On the second evening of his return from Lagos Nnaemeka sat with his father under a cassia tree. This was the old man’s retreat where he went to read his Bible when the parching December sun had set and a fresh, reviving wind blew on the leaves.

Read Rita Dove’s poem "Sonnet in Primary Colors,” then study Frida Kahlo’s painting Self-Portrait with Monkey and Parrot.This is for the woman with one black wingperched over her eyes: lovely Frida, erectamong parrots, in the stern petticoats of the peasant,who painted herself a present—wildflowers entwining the plaster corsether spine resides in, that flaming pillar—this priestess in the romance of mirrors.Each night she lay down in pain and roseto the celluloid butterflies of her Beloved Dead,Lenin and Marx and Stalin arrayed at the footstead.And rose to her easel, the hundred dogs pantinglike children along the graveled walks of the garden, Diego’slove a skull in the circular windowof the thumbprint searing her immutable brow.

What is the best definition of intrinsic motivation?