The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at every one, and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but I doubt if even Miss Baker, who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy skepticism, was able utterly to put this fifth guest’s shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.
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.”In typical Hemingway style, the excerpt
The major asked me to have a drink with him and two other officers. We drank rum and it was very friendly. Outside it was getting dark. I asked what time the attack was to be and they said as soon as it was dark. I went back to the drivers. They were sitting in the dugout talking and when I came in they stopped. I gave them each a package of cigarettes, Macedonias, loosely packed cigarettes that spilled tobacco and needed to have the ends twisted before you smoked them. Manera lit his lighter and passed it around. The lighter was shaped like a Fiat radiator. I told them what I had heard.
It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York—and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land.
“It could not be worse,” Passini said respectfully. “There is nothing worse than war.” “Defeat is worse.” “I do not believe it,” Passini said still respectfully. “What is defeat? You go home.” “They come after you. They take your home. They take your sisters.”
Read the excerpt from Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.Based on this description of the Buchanans’ house, what inference can be made about many East Egg residents?
Read the excerpt from Flannery O’Connor’s “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.”The boy bent over her and stared at the long pink-gold hair and the half-shut sleeping eyes. Then he looked up and stared at Mr. Shiftlet. “She looks like an angel of Gawd,” he murmured.“Hitch-hiker,” Mr. Shiftlet explained. “I can’t wait. I got to make Tuscaloosa.” The boy bent over again and very carefully touched his finger to a strand of the golden hair and Mr. Shiftlet left.Which statement most accurately represents the excerpt’s larger idea?
The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm season, and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month.
Which statements about this passage are true? Check all that apply.
best
Read the excerpt from Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.The major was a little man with upturned mustaches. He had been in the war in Libya and wore two wound-stripes. He said that if the thing went well he would see that I was decorated. I said I hoped it would go well but that he was too kind. I asked him if there was a big dugout where the drivers could stay and he sent a soldier to show me. I went with him and found the dugout, which was very good. The drivers were pleased with it and I left them there.In the excerpt, what does the diction, or words used to express an idea, show about the narrator?
“There is nothing worse than war.” “Defeat is worse.” “I do not believe it,” Passini said. . . . “What is defeat? You go home.” “They come after you. They take your home. They take your sisters.” “I don’t believe it,” Passini said. “They can’t do that to everybody. Let everybody defend his home. Let them keep their sisters in the house.”
Which excerpt from “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” contains an example of a simile?
Read the passage from part 2 of "For the Win.”Jake loaded the dog onto his sled. "You get to be a rider, not a runner this time, girl,” he said. He could drop her off at the next checkpoint and then get on with his race. Clearly, he was well ahead of Dean and bound to beat him now. Then Jake shook his head. Thinking about Dean gave him an awful sinking feeling. "Should I press on or turn back?” he wondered.At last Jake climbed back onto his sled and shouted, "Come haw!” At first his lead dog, Sasha, looked confused, but then she led the team in a wide circle to the left, and they headed back down the same trail they had cut just a few hours before. Jake searched left and right for any sign of Dean, but he saw only white on white.
“I believe we should get the war over,” I said. “It would not finish it if one side stopped fighting. It would only be worse if we stopped fighting.” “It could not be worse,” Passini said respectfully. “There is nothing worse than war.” “Defeat is worse.” “I do not believe it,” Passini said still respectfully. “What is defeat? You go home.” “They come after you. They take your home. They take your sisters.” “I don’t believe it,” Passini said. “They can’t do that to everybody. Let everybody defend his home. Let them keep their sisters in the house.” “They hang you. They come and make you be a soldier again. Not in the auto-ambulance, in the infantry.”
The major was a little man with upturned mustaches. He had been in the war in Libya and wore two wound-stripes. He said that if the thing went well he would see that I was decorated. I said I hoped it would go well but that he was too kind. I asked him if there was a big dugout where the drivers could stay and he sent a soldier to show me. I went with him and found the dugout, which was very good. The drivers were pleased with it and I left them there.
Which type of Southern gothic character is represented in O’Connor’s “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”?
Read the excerpt from Ernest Hemingway’s “Soldier's Home.”In the evening he practiced on his clarinet, strolled down town, read and went to bed. He was still a hero to his two young sisters. His mother would have given him breakfast in bed if he had wanted it. She often came in when he was in bed and asked him to tell her about the war, but her attention always wandered.What important detail about Krebs’s sisters and mother is revealed?
Which excerpt from O’Connor’s “Good Country People” best reveals the irony of the main character’s name, Joy?
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?
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