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?
Read the excerpt from The Great Gatsby.My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor's lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there. What message do phrases such as “the consoling proximity of millionaires” and “white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered” convey to the reader?
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?
Read the excerpt from The Great Gatsby.For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.Based on this excerpt, what inference can be made about Daisy Buchanan?
Which sentence best summarizes the central idea of the song, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”
Read the sentence from Flannery O’Connor’s “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.”The ugly words settled in Mr. Shiftlet’s head like a group of buzzards in the top of a tree.How does the simile in the sentence develop the Southern gothic character of Mr. Shiftlet?
Read the excerpt from Flannery O’Connor’s “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.”“It’s nothing so sweet,” Mr. Shiftlet continued, “as a boy’s mother. She taught him his first prayers at her knee, she give him love when no other would, she told him what was right and what wasn’t, and she seen that he done the right thing. Son,” he said, “I never rued a day in my life like the one I rued when I left that old mother of mine.”What is ironic about Mr. Shiftlet’s comments?
My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.
Read the excerpt from the song, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”They used to tell me I was building a dream, And so I followed the mob—When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear I was always there—right on the job. Which best restates the main idea of these lines?
We parked the cars beyond the brickyard. The ovens and some deep holes had been equipped as dressing stations. There were three doctors that I knew. I talked with the major and learned that when it should start and our cars should be loaded we would drive them back along the screened road and up to the main road along the ridge where there would be a post and other cars to clear them.
Read the excerpt from the interview with E.Y. (Yip) Harburg.Everybody picked up the song in ’30 and ’31. Bands were playing it and records were made. When Roosevelt was a candidate for President, the Republicans got pretty worried about it. Some of the network radio people were told to lay low on the song. In some cases, they tried to ban it from the air. But it was too late. The song had already done its damage.Based on the excerpt and your knowledge of American history, which statement is most accurate?
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.
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?
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.What effect does Hemingway’s limited use of adjectives have?
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?
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 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?
Which excerpt from O’Connor’s “Good Country People” best reveals the irony of the main character’s name, Joy?
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?
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