Read the excerpt from the interview with E.Y. (Yip) Harburg.When I lost my possessions, I found my creativity. I felt I was being born for the first time. So for me the world became beautiful.With the Crash, I realized that the greatest fantasy of all was business. The only realistic way of making a living was versifying. Living off your imagination.Based on the excerpt, which best describes Harburg’s view of the Great Depression?
Read the excerpt from the interview with E.Y. (Yip) Harburg.We thought American business was the Rock of Gibraltar. We were the prosperous nation, and nothing could stop us now. A brownstone house was forever. You gave it to your kids and they put marble fronts on it. There was a feeling of continuity. If you made it, it was there forever. Suddenly the big dream exploded. How do Harburg’s words reflect the experience of many Americans during the Great Depression?
Which of the following sentences contains a misplaced modifier?
Read the text and study the image from Art Spiegelman’s Maus.What message is Spiegelman trying to convey in the panel?

Read the sentence.In the story “Mericans,” Micaela thinks her grandmother is awful.Which is the best revision of this sentence using academic vocabulary?
Read the sentence.During the pizza party, Mrs. Saint-Claire served the children on paper plates.What is the best way to revise this sentence?
We arrived at the station, where the cattle cars were waiting. Ever since my book Night I have pursued those nocturnal trains that crossed the devastated continent. Their shadow haunts my writing. They symbolize solitude, distress, and the relentless march of Jewish multitudes toward agony and death. I freeze every time I hear a train whistle.

Read the paragraph from a student’s essay comparing Sandra Cisneros’s “Mericans” and Dwight Okita’s “In Response to Executive Order 9066.”(1) Sandra Cisneros’s “Mericans” is about a young American girl of Mexican descent who is struggling between her cultural heritage and American identity. (2) Cisneros illustrates this through a number of images and ideas. (3) For example, the speaker, Micaela, calls her grandmother “awful,” and seems to resent the woman’s strict views and religious ideals. (4) The speaker also mentions how she and her brother emulate characters from popular American television programs when they play make-believe. (5) Lastly, she describes physically standing outside her family’s church, an act that symbolizes the fact that she feels like an outsider to Mexican culture. (6) Although Micaela is of Mexican descent, she seems to feel a stronger connection to the United States. Which is the best thesis statement for the entire essay?
When writing a compare-and-contrast essay about a common theme, the writer must
Read the excerpt from Flannery O’Connor’s “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.”He was more depressed than ever as he drove on by himself. The late afternoon had grown hot and sultry and the country had flattened out.Which best describes the irony in the excerpt?
Which excerpt from the song, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” best emphasizes the idea that average Americans felt abandoned by the wealthy elite and the government?
To this day I am shaken when I see a child, for behind him I glimpse other children. Starving, terrified, drained, they march without a backward glance toward truth and death—which are perhaps the same. Uncomplaining, unprotesting, asking no one’s pity, it is as if they have had enough of living on a planet so cruel, so vile and so filled with hate that their very innocence has brought their death.

Read the passage.The Blackwood Manor had always been a place of darkness and despair, its once-grand halls now crumbling into ruin. For generations, the family had been plagued by madness and tragedy, each heir to the estate more tormented than the last. But none were as haunted as Delilah Blackwood, the current mistress of the manor. With her sunken eyes, pallid skin, and tangled black hair, she cuts an eerie, ghostly figure as she wanders the decaying halls of her once-grand ancestral home. The manor itself seems to whisper dark secrets, the shadows shifting and writhing as if alive with malevolent spirits. Delilah can feel their presence, the weight of her family's sins pressing down upon her like a physical force. At night, the manor comes alive with unearthly howls and the sound of shattering glass, as if the very walls are crying out in anguish. Delilah knows she should leave this cursed place, but she is bound to it by blood and by the demons that haunt her own mind. As she drifts through the manor's halls, she wonders if she will ever escape the darkness that has consumed her family for generations, or if she is doomed to become another tragic chapter in the Blackwood legacy.Which excerpt best exemplifies why Delilah is a traditional Southern gothic character?
Read the passage.The Blackwood Manor had always been a place of darkness and despair, its once-grand halls now crumbling into ruin. For generations, the family had been plagued by madness and tragedy, each heir to the estate more tormented than the last. But none were as haunted as Delilah Blackwood, the current mistress of the manor. With her sunken eyes, pallid skin, and tangled black hair, she cuts an eerie, ghostly figure as she wanders the decaying halls of her once-grand ancestral home. The manor itself seems to whisper dark secrets, the shadows shifting and writhing as if alive with malevolent spirits. Delilah can feel their presence, the weight of her family's sins pressing down upon her like a physical force. At night, the manor comes alive with unearthly howls and the sound of shattering glass, as if the very walls are crying out in anguish. Delilah knows she should leave this cursed place, but she is bound to it by blood and by the demons that haunt her own mind. As she drifts through the manor's halls, she wonders if she will ever escape the darkness that has consumed her family for generations, or if she is doomed to become another tragic chapter in the Blackwood legacy.Which phrase is the best example of figurative language?
Read the excerpt from “Good Country People.”Mrs. Hopewell liked to tell people...how she had happened to hire the Freemans in the first place and how they were a godsend to her and how she had had them four years. The reason for her keeping them so long was that they were...good country people...Before the Freemans she had averaged one tenant family a year...Mrs. Hopewell, who had divorced her husband long ago, needed someone to walk over the fields with her; and when Joy had to be impressed for these services, her remarks were usually so ugly and her face so glum... that Mrs. Hopewell would say, “If you can’t come pleasantly, I don’t want you at all,” to which the girl, standing square and rigid-shouldered with her neck thrust slightly forward, would reply, “If you want me, here I am—LIKE I AM.”Based on the excerpt, what inferences can be made about the story’s setting?
Read the passage.Camellias drooped from thick bushes, their once-pristine white petals browning in the oppressive summer heat. The heady fragrance of the flowers' decay hung like a veil over the crumbling antebellum mansion. Through shattered windows, faded brocade curtains undulated lazily, beckoning whispers of the home's faded opulence. In the shadowed recesses of the drawing room, young Henley Beauregard sat primly in a tattered hoop skirt, her pale hands folded over the worn damask. Her sunken eyes stared unseeingly at the thick coating of dust on the Chippendale table before her. She had been raised to make a prestigious match, to secure her family's legacy. Instead, she found herself the last raggedy branch on her family's withered tree, soon to be consumed by the relentless Southern earth, her fortunes and delicate beauty devoured without preamble.Which excerpt contains an example of irony?
Which excerpt from the Joint Statement by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill addresses the safety of those traveling by ship?
Read the excerpt from the Joint Statement by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill.Sixth, after the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want;Which statement best summarizes the central idea of the excerpt?
Read the excerpt from Rena's Promise: Two Sisters in Auschwitz.“I have a favor to ask of you, Andrzej . . . This is very difficult for me, but I must ask. It is no longer safe in Tylicz for Rena. Her mother and I are worried for her safety every day.” “I heard what happened last night, Mr. Kornreich. I understand your concern.” “I have no money to pay you for this favor.” “Sir, I would not take any money from you. She is my friend since childhood. I will do whatever you ask to help your daughter.” “Thank you.” Papa paused, stroking his chin where his beard should have been. “You seem like a man of your word. If you would bring Rena across the border to Slovakia, her mother and I might find sleep at night.” Which sentence best summarizes the excerpt?
Read the excerpt from Rena Kornreich Gelissen’s Rena's Promise: Two Sisters in Auschwitz.That night changed everything. It had become dangerous for me to live in Tylicz. . . . Papa deliberated long and hard over whom to contact about smuggling me across the border.Andrzej had been fighting the Germans when Poland had first been invaded, but he’d been fortunate enough to escape capture; returning secretly to Tylicz, he was now working for the Polish resistance.Who knew the border better than Andrzej?...“I have a favor to ask of you, Andrzej . . . This is very difficult for me, but I must ask. It is no longer safe in Tylicz for Rena. Her mother and I are worried for her safety every day.”What assumptions can be made about the setting described in the excerpt?
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