Read the excerpt from “A Visit from the Goon Squad.” Scotty climbed onto the platform and sat on the stool. Without a glance at the audience or a word of introduction, he began to play “I Am a Little Lamb,” a tune whose childishness was belied by the twanging filigree of his slide guitar, its gushy metallic complexity. He followed that with “Goats Like Oats” and “A Little Tree Is Just Like Me.” The amplification was fine and powerful enough to eclipse the chopper throb and deliver the sound even to the distant reaches of the crowd, where it disappeared between buildings. Alex listened in a sort of cringe, expecting a roar of rejection from these thousands he’d managed secretly to assemble, whose goodwill had already been taxed by the long wait. But it didn’t happen; the pointers, who already knew these songs, clapped and screeched their approval, and the adults seemed intrigued, attuned to double meanings and hidden layers, which were easy to find. Which of the following choices best describes the structure used in this excerpt?
Which of these best explains the paradox presented in the poem "Homework"?
Read this excerpt from “Not a Dove, But No Longer a Hawk.” I remember distinctly the thrill of climbing aboard a U.S. Army helicopter in the cool of the morning and taking off across the rice fields with a South Vietnamese battalion for a day’s jousting with the Vietcong guerillas. There was hope then that the non-Communist Vietnamese might win their war. I was proud of the young American pilots sitting at the controls in the cockpit and I was grateful for the opportunity to witness this adventure and to report it. We are fighting now, I used to think, and some day we will triumph and this will be a better country. Which choice best describes how the author builds conflict in this excerpt?
Read this excerpt from "Look Homeward, Angel."And whatever he touched in that rich fortress of his soul sprang into golden life: as the years passed, the fruit trees—the peach, the plum, the cherry, the apple—grew great and bent beneath their clusters. His grape vines thickened into brawny ropes of brown and coiled down the high wire fences of his lot, and hung in a dense fabric, upon his trellises, roping his domain twice around. They climbed the porch end of the house and framed the upper windows in thick bowers. And the flowers grew in rioting glory in his yard—the velvet-leaved nasturtium, slashed with a hundred tawny dyes, the rose, the snowball, the redcupped tulip, and the lily.The author uses sensory details in this excerpt to create images of
Read this excerpt from "A Visit from the Goon Squad."At last he found Rebecca, smiling, holding Cara-Ann in her arms. She was dancing. They were too far away for Alex to reach them, and the distance felt irrevocable, a chasm that would keep him from ever again touching the delicate silk of Rebecca’s eyelids, or feeling, through his daughter’s ribs, the scramble of her heartbeat. Without the zoom, he couldn’t even see them. In desperation, he T’d Rebecca, pls wAt 4 me, my bUtiful wyf, then kept his zoom trained on her face until he saw her register the vibration, pause in her dancing, and reach for it.Which of these is the best question to address the societal issue raised in this excerpt?
Read this excerpt from "A Visit from the Goon Squad."Whatever the reason, a swell of approval palpable as rain lifted from the center of the crowd and rolled out toward its edges, where it crashed against buildings and water wall and rolled back at Scotty with redoubled force, lifting him off his stool, onto his feet (the roadies quickly adjusting the microphones), exploding the quavering husk Scotty had appeared to be just moments before and unleashing something strong, charismatic, and fierce. Anyone who was there that day will tell you the concert really started when Scotty stood up.How does the author portray Scotty in this excerpt?
How does Thomas Wolfe organize the text "Look Homeward, Angel"?
Read this excerpt from "Look Homeward, Angel."Like all the older children of Major Pentland she had, since her twentieth year, begun the slow accretion of land: from the savings of her small wage as teacher and book-agent, she had already purchased one or two pieces of earth. From this excerpt, Eliza can best be described as a
Read this excerpt from "A Visit from the Goon Squad."That’s when he began singing the songs he’d been writing for years underground, songs no one had ever heard, or anything like them—“Eyes in My Head,” “X’s and O’s,” “Who’s Watching Hardest”—ballads of paranoia and disconnection ripped from the chest of a man you knew just by looking had never had a page or a profile or a handle or a handset, who was part of no one’s data, a guy who had lived in the cracks all these years, forgotten and full of rage, in a way that now registered as pure. Untouched.How does the author use satire in this excerpt?
Read the excerpt from Dispatches.Because, really, what a choice there was; what a prodigy of things to be afraid of! The moment that you understood this, really understood it, you lost your anxiety instantly. Anxiety was a luxury, a joke you had no room for once you knew the variety of deaths and mutilations the war offered.The purpose of the paradox in the excerpt is to
Which best describes the sequencing of “Ambush”?
In "Harrison Bergeron," Vonnegut includes the character of Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, to
Read the excerpt from "Harrison Bergeron."He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren’t really very good—no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sash-weights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn’t be handicapped. This excerpt best illustrates Kurt Vonnegut’s message that
Which best describes the central conflict in “Ambush”?
Which element is used in both “Ambush” and “Facing It” to create tension and conflict?
Which excerpt from Dispatches uses imagery to reflect the conflicting emotions that soldiers face during a war?
Which excerpt from A Rumor of War contains the best example of sensory language?
Which pair of sentences from “Ambush” best reflects that a flashback, or a shift in time, has occurred?
In the story “Ambush,” what is revealed to the reader through the frame-story structure?
Which of the following slogans would most likely appeal to parents of young children?
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