regentstasks.wikispaces.comregentstasks.wikispaces.com/...student+booklet.docx · Web viewHolly took her usual place in the bow while I ... when her own child—with or without

Part 3: (1)Directions: Read the passages on the following pages (an excerpt from an essay and a poem) about separation. Answer the multiple-choice questions on the answer sheet provided for you. Then write your response for question 26 on page 1 of your essay booklet and question 27 on page 2 of your essay booklet.

Passage I

It was a summertime Saturday morning, and I was up before dawn to go fishing. I tiptoed out of the house so I wouldn’t disturb anyone, but when I reached my car, someone was already up and waiting for me—my seventeen-year-old daughter, Holly. She was dressed in jeans, a blue denim shirt, and a khaki fishing vest, and she was checking out her tackle box. I knew that she had something important on her mind.

Holly first became my fishing buddy when she was about six years old. For years, I couldn’t go fishing without taking her along, but when she reached her teens, she began to develop other interests. After a while, the only time she’d go with me was when she needed to have a private talk; the most private place we had was our little boat on a remote lake at dawn.

We reached the lake, near West Des Moines, Iowa, before the sun was up, unloaded our boat, and slid it into the water. Holly took her usual place in the bow while I pushed off. I switched on the electric motor, and it propelled us quietly across the calm water. The night mist was just beginning to lift, slowly unveiling the pines and birches that lined the shore. A beaver, irritated by our intrusion, slapped the water with his strong, broad tail to show his displeasure.

“The usual starting place?” Holly asked.“The usual.”I steered the boat to a quiet inlet dotted with tree stumps and came to a stop. Bass country.“The usual bet?” Holly asked. She smiled, but her dark-brown eyes were serious, almost sad.“The usual,” I said. That was a dollar for the first fish and a dollar for the largest. Silently, with studied care, she attached a plug to her line. Then, with a delicate but sure hand, she

cast the plug alongside one of the stumps and began a slow retrieve, twitching the plug along to put it in lifelike motion. I picked out two stumps set fairly close together and cast an imitation minnow between them.

We fished around the stumps for several minutes without getting a bite. I couldn’t help wondering what was on Holly’s mind, but I knew she would talk to me when she was ready—it would only hurt to try to hurry her. At times, being a parent demands as much patience as fishing.

“Let’s try drifting the bottom,” my daughter said. “I have a feeling they’re swimming very deep this morning.”

I steered the boat out into open water, and we rigged our lures to run deep. I switched off the motor and let the boat drift very slowly, our lines trailing behind us. Now the sun was rising, and the lake and woods were bathed in the pure, clear light of dawn. Holly put on an old, battered fishing hat to shade her eyes. I looked around. There were no other boats on the lake. It was as though we were the only human beings on earth.

“Dad …”I knew from her tone that the moment had come. “Yes?”“You know my plans for college—to go to junior college in town this fall, then transfer after two

years to the state university ...”“They’re good plans,” I said. “Among other benefits, we’ll be able to do this for another two years.”She looked away, and I looked at the long, brown hair that curled out from under the old fishing

hat. She looked so little—so fragile. Two short years, and she would be gone. “Dad, would you be mad if I changed my plans?”

My throat seemed to close. My words had to be forced out. “Don’t tell me you don’t want to go to college ...”

“I do, Dad. It’s just … well, I don’t want you to think I’m unhappy at home or anything, but I want to go away to the university this fall.”

“Well,” I said, grasping at straws, “I suppose we’d still have our summers to do a little fishing.”She turned to look at me. “I wouldn’t be home in the summer. I’d like to stay in school all year long

and finish in three years. That way, I’ll have my education and be ready for a job a year earlier.”And that was it. All of a sudden, good-bye forever to my big little girl. My feelings must have shown

in my face, because she gave me an out. “It’s up to you, Dad. I know it will cost more, and I’ll be away most of the time. If you don’t want me to go, I’ll stay here.”

Before I could answer, the fishing rod jerked almost out of my hands as the tip plunged into the water. I could tell by the strength of the pull that I had a big one hooked. Holly forgot everything in the excitement of pulling in the big fish. She grabbed the net and dipped it into the water so she could get it under him when he neared the boat. Slowly, with the line taut almost to the breaking point, I worked the fish in. Holly netted him and used both hands to hoist him into the boat. What we had was the most beautiful bass I’d ever tangled with.

“Oh, Dad,” Holly said, “this is one you have to take home and have mounted for your study wall. It’s the biggest bass I’ve ever seen!”

Her words sank in, and I took a long, hard look at that bass, considering. Finally, I unhooked him carefully, lifted him, and, as Holly stared in disbelief, put him gently back into the lake. In an instant, he was gone.

“Honey,” I said, “I’ve always dreamed of having a fish like that mounted on my wall, where I could look at him whenever I wanted to. But a fish on a wall is a lifeless thing, no matter how much you prize it. That fish was so full of life and fought so hard for his freedom that I had to let him go back where he belonged, to live his own life.”

Our lines went back into the water again, and we resumed our drifting and fishing. Holly’s back was toward me. “Thanks, Dad,” she said, without turning around. “I knew you’d understand.”

But she didn’t know. And she couldn’t know. And she won’t know until some day in the future, when her own child—with or without a word of warning—turns a back on home and walks out into the grown-up world forever.

—Henry G. Felsen“A Private Talk with Holly”

from Seventeen, September 1981

Passage II

Wild Boy of the Road

A boy came by the house today,he asked for food.He couldn’t pay anything, but Ma set him downand gave him biscuitsand milk.He offered to work for his meal,Ma sent him out to see Daddy.The boy and Daddy came back late in the afternoon.The boy walked two steps behind,in Daddy’s dust.He wasn’t more than sixteen.Thin as a fence rail.I wondered whatLivie Killian’s brother looked like now.I wondered about Livie herself.Daddy asked if the boy wanted a bath,a haircut,a change of clothes before he moved on.The boy nodded.I never heard him say more than “Yes, sir” or“No, sir” or“Much obliged.”

We watched him walk awaydown the road,in a pair of Daddy’s mended overalls,his legs like willow limbs,his arms like reeds.Ma rested her hands on her heavy stomach,Daddy rested his chin on the top of my head.“His mother is worrying about him,” Ma said.“His mother is wishing her boy would come home.”

Lots of mothers wishing that these days,while their sons walk to California,where rain comes,and the color green doesn’t seem like such a miracle,and hope rises daily, like sap in a stem.And I think, some day I’m going to walk there too,through New Mexico and Arizona and Nevada.Some day I’ll leave behind the wind, and the dustand walk my way Westand make myself to home in that distant placeof green vines and promise.

July 1934—Karen Hesse

from Out of the Dust, 1997Scholastic Inc.

Multiple Choice Questions

Directions (1–10): Select the best suggested answer to each question and record your answer, using a No. 2 pencil, on the separate answer sheet provided for you.

Directions (26-27): Write your response to question 26 on page 1 of your essay booklet and question 27 on page 2 of your essay booklet. Be sure to answer both questions.

26. Write a well-developed paragraph in which you use ideas from both passages to establish a controlling idea about separation. Develop your controlling idea using specific examples and details from each passage.

27. Choose a specific literary element (e.g. theme, characterization, structure, point of view, etc.) or a literary technique (e.g. symbolism, irony, figurative language, etc.) used by one of the authors. Using specific details from that passage, in a well-developed paragraph, show how the author uses that element of technique to develop the passage.

Part 3: (2)Directions: Read the passages on the following pages (an excerpt from an essay and a poem) about kindness. Answer the multiple-choice questions on the answer sheet provided for you. Then write your response for question 26 on page 1 of your essay booklet and question 27 on page 2 of your essay booklet.

Passage I

“A Gift for Two”by Andrea Hensley

It was a beautiful day for sightseeing around downtown Portland. We were a bunch of counselors on our day off, away from the campers, just out for some fun. The weather was perfect for a picnic, so when lunch time came, we set our sights on a small park in town. Since we all had different cravings, we decided to split up, get what each of us wanted, and meet back on the grass in a few minutes.

When my friend Robby headed for a hot dog stand, I decided to keep her company. We watched the vendor put together the perfect hot dog, just the way Robby wanted it. But when she took out her money to pay him, the man surprised us.

"It looks a little on the cool side," he said, "so never mind paying me. This will be my freebie of the day."

We said our thanks, joined our friends in the park, and dug into our food. But as we talked and ate, I was distracted by a man sitting alone nearby, looking at us. I could tell that he hadn't showered for days. Another homeless person, I thought, like all the others you see in cities. I didn't pay much more attention than that.

We finished eating and decided to head off for more sightseeing. But when Robby and I went to the garbage can to throw away my lunch bag, I heard a strong voice ask, "There isn't any food in the bag, is there?"

It was the man who had been watching us. I didn't know what to say. "No, I ate it already."

"Oh," was his only answer, with no shame in his voice at all. He was obviously hungry, couldn't bear to see anything thrown away, and was used to asking this question.

I felt bad for the man, but I didn't know what I could do. That's when Robby said, "I'll be right back. Please wait for me for a minute," and ran off. I watched curiously as she went across to the hot dog stand. Then I realized what she was doing. She bought a hot dog, crossed back to the trash can, and gave the hungry man the food.

When she came back to us, Robby said simply, "I was just passing on the kindness that someone gave to me."

That day I learned how generosity can go farther than the person you give to. By giving, you teach others how to give also.

Passage II

Untitled

by Tara Jacoby

In gratitude, I write.For you have given me gladness.Your small act of kindness, has made my heart feel light.You, who opened the door for me, when my hands were full.You, who gave me a seat, when you noticed I looked faint.I felt I might soon fall, it's true.I just wanted to write this note, in gratitude to you.Thanks for smiling into my eyes, when you saw the frown on my face.Thanks for lending me a hand, when you noticed I was so busy.Thanks for holding me, when you saw the tear fall from my eye.You lifted my spirits with your humor, when you heard me sigh.Thanks...one million thanks to all of you, for what you've done.A simple act of kindness, doesn't take long.It makes each heart happy, and gives us a cheerful song.Together, we can brighten this world of gray.Let's make a pact to show kindness, to everyone we meet.I offer you my heartfelt thanks, for the kindness you've shown me.



Answer these multiple choice questions on Passage I:

1. The author’s feelings towards the day’s events in Portland can best be described as

(1) Content(2) Grateful(3) Envious(4) Pity

2. The author describes the homeless man in order to

(1) Explain to the reader that he was like every other homeless person in the city

(2) Emphasize her hatred towards him(3) Provide a contrast to her opinion of him

later in the story(4) To prove to the reader that she was

wealthy

3. The author’s attitude towards her friend, Robby’s action, can best be summed up by which statement?

(1) “I watched curiously as she went across to the hot dog stand.”

(2) “We were a bunch of counselors on our day off, away from the campers, just out for some fun.”

(3) "’No, I ate it already.’"

(4) “By giving, you teach others how to give also.”

Answer these multiple choice questions on Passage II:

4. This poem’s form can best be described as a

(1) Sonnet(2) Free Verse(3) Haiku(4) Acrostic

5. The narrator says, “A simple act of kindness, doesn't take long” to emphasize that:

(1) Everyone must help each other(2) People who don’t have time can’t do

nice things for each other(3) We must change the way we do things(4) Helping others is easy

6. The theme of this poem can be best summarized by which quotation?

(1) “You can never do a kindness too soon for you never know when it will be too late”

(2) “No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted”

(3) “Kindness is always returned”(4) “Treat others the way you want to be

treated”


26. Write a well-developed paragraph in which you use ideas from both passages to establish a controlling idea about kindness. Develop your controlling idea using specific examples and details from each passage.


Part 3: (3)Directions: Read the passages on the following pages (an excerpt from an essay and a poem) about parenting. Answer the multiple-choice questions on the answer sheet provided for you. Then write your response for question 26 on page 1 of your essay booklet and question 27 on page 2 of your essay booklet.

Passage I

My father was tall. His shoes, in the glinty gravel, could have belonged to a giant. I saw them through the sparkle of water drops as I floated on my back in the section of the pool called Perch. My father wore a suit and tie, and in the summer sun he stood, his hands in his pockets, his suit coat bunched back lightly at the hips. Frog-kicking, spreading my arms out and down, I moved my way along, my father’s huge shoes in sight.

“I ’spect you can do it,” he said when I stepped from the pool and stood shivering. He meant he thought I could pass the test required to be able to swim in the deeper section of the pool, called Salmon. I must have been eight years old at the time. “Maybe I’ll try tomorrow,” I said. But as soon as my father went back to his office, I asked the lifeguard if I could take the test for Salmon. The lifeguard watched, his arms crossed, as I swam on my back the length of Perch. While I had asked my father to come to the pool to watch the dress rehearsal, I was afraid to take the actual test in front of him. It was not his displeasure I feared, if I failed — I don’t imagine he would have experienced any displeasure. I imagine, in fact, he would have shrugged and told me to try again another day. But I would have felt, I think, an almost unbearable level of shame to fail in front of my father. I passed into Salmon that day, and a week later I could swim in Shark. That’s where the big kids were, and the diving board.…

My father was a parasitologist1 at the University of New Hampshire, and during the years I’m speaking of, when I was seven, eight, nine, and ten, his office was in Nesmith Hall. This was an old building with a large front lawn, and since his office was in a sort of half basement, the windows looked out directly onto the lawn. I could squat down in my wet bathing suit and call to him through the open window. In my memory, he was always glad to see me, but I know too that he was often distracted, his mind frequently somewhere else.

At that time my father was on twelve-month appointment, which meant he worked through the summer. Every summer weekday I would go with him into town, either riding on the back baskets of his bicycle or, when I was old enough, riding my own bicycle. He went to his office, I went to the swimming pool. There was always that little taste of chlorine on my lips; the tips of my blond hair would turn green from it. The swimming pool was where I wanted to be, and whenever I learned something new, a different way to roll over under water, to dive without holding my nose, my father was the one I wanted watching me. I felt sad on the days it rained, as though I had been shut out of a sparkling mansion filled with sunlit rooms.

I don’t remember my father ever once getting into what he called the “cesspool.” But he did love the water. He loved being on the water, especially the ocean. Any kind of boat ride seemed to give him pleasure. And he loved to fish. He had a few men he would go fishing with, and sometimes he took me along. Three men sitting in a small outboard motorboat, and very seldom was a fish pulled in. One day a man named Jack — who liked to collect old glass bottles — suddenly said to me, “Stop talking so much, you’re scaring the fish away.” I sat silently on the pile of rope at the front of the boat, and then leaned forward and whispered to my father to ask if that was true: could the fish really hear me that far under the water? “No,” he said, shaking his head, “you’re all right.”

But I never really liked being on the water, the way my father did. I liked being in the water, moving through it, having it all around me. I was not an especially strong swimmer, or one who

learned to swim early; I had my fears. But I loved being in the swimming pool at the university, and those summer days spent there are bound up with my father, who would come by on a break if I asked him to. I needed him to see what the latest thing was I could do, whether it was swimming on my back in Perch or, later, a somersault off the diving board. My father would stand there in his suit, the only person not in bathing attire.

The pool was not far from my father’s office, and at four o’clock, in order to avoid crossing the main street, which included corners of busy traffic, I would take a path around behind the dairy barn, under a bridge by the railroad tracks, and arrive at my father’s office, dripping wet. If he still had work to do, I would play on the front lawn out front, trying out my cartwheels, or trying to whistle through a blade of grass, or looking for a four-leaf clover, which I don’t believe I ever found. Sometimes I would go inside and sit on the wooden swivel chair in front of his big wooden desk, where he let me play with anything I found in his top desk drawer.…

Sometimes, if I was left alone at his desk while he worked in the lab, a lab assistant or a student might come in and tell me perhaps I shouldn’t be peeling back that red pencil or using so much paper. But my father always showed up and said easily, “Oh, no, it’s fine.” At work he wore a white lab coat over his suit. In the pockets would be peppermint LifeSavers, and in his desk drawer Licorice Nibs. “Sure,” he would say when I asked for one. Sometimes he handed me coins and told me to run over and get myself an ice cream cone. Barefoot, I would walk back under the railroad bridge and get my ice cream at the dairy barn. I got chocolate: my favorite, and his.

In the vast terrain of memory, many things live. The poet Louise Glück has said, “We look at life once, in childhood; the rest is memory.” There is much to look at once; and the sunlit lawns, the sparkle of the pool’s water, the red pencil’s thick, oily line on paper, the bottom of a soggy, chocolate-soaked waffle cone — all these things seem to present to me, in middle age, the most innocent part of my childhood. They have come to represent, in fact, what I call joy. What I call hope. There are times when we need to remember the feelings of joy and hope.And I think it is not only what we “look at once, in childhood” that determines our memories, but who, in that childhood, looks at us….

—Elizabeth Stroutexcerpted from “The Swimming Pool,”

Dream Me Home Safely, 2003Houghton Mifflin

Passage II

Night Light

Only your plastic night light dusts its pinkon the backs and undersides of things; your mother,head resting on the nightside of one arm,floats a hand above your cradleto feel the humid tendril1 of your breathing.Outside, the night rocks, murmurs … Crouchedin this eggshell light, I feel my heartslowing, opened to your tiny flameas if your blue irises mirrored meas if your smile breathed and warmedand curled in your face which is only asleep.There is space between me, I know,and you. I hang above you like a planet—you’re a planet, too. One planet loves the other.

1tendril — something resembling a long, slender, coiling extension on a plant stem

—Anne Wintersfrom The Key to the City, 1986

The University of Chicago Press




26. Write a well-developed paragraph in which you use ideas from both passages to establish a controlling idea about parenting. Develop your controlling idea using specific examples and details from each passage.


Part 3: (4)Directions: Read the passages on the following pages (an excerpt from an essay and a poem) about the power of reading. Answer the multiple-choice questions on the answer sheet provided for you. Then write your response for question 26 on page 1 of your essay booklet and question 27 on page 2 of your essay booklet.

Passage I

The Reader

She is going back, these days, to the great storiesThat charmed her younger mind. A shaded lightShines on the nape half-shadowed by her curls,And a page turns now with a scuffing sound.Onward they come again, the orphans reachingFor a first handhold in a stony world,The young provincials who at last look downOn the city’s maze, and will descend into it,The serious girl, once more, who would live nobly,The sly one who aspires to marry so,The young man bent on glory, and that otherWho seeks a burden. Knowing as she doesWhat will become of them in bloody fieldOr Tuscan garden, it may be that at timesShe sees their first and final selves at once,As a god might to whom all time is now.Or, having lived so much herself, perhapsShe meets them this time with a wiser eye,Noting that Julien’s calculating headIs from the first too severed from his heart.But the true wonder of it is that she,For all that she may know of consequences,Still turns enchanted to the next bright pageLike some Natasha in the ballroom door—Caught in the flow of things wherever bound,The blind delight of being, ready stillTo enter life on life and see them through.

—Richard Wilburfrom The New Yorker

October 1, 2001

Passage II

One day, in the illustrious nation of Panduria, a suspicion crept into the minds of top officials: that books contained opinions hostile to military prestige. In fact trials and enquiries had revealed that the tendency, now so widespread, of thinking of generals as people actually capable of making mistakes and causing catastrophes, and of wars as things that did not always amount to splendid cavalry charges towards a glorious destiny, was shared by a large number of books, ancient and modern, foreign and Pandurese.

Panduria’s General Staff met together to assess the situation. But they didn’t know where to begin, because none of them was particularly well-versed in matters bibliographical. A commission of enquiry was set up under General Fedina, a severe and scrupulous official. The commission was to examine all the books in the biggest library in Panduria.…

The military took over the library one rainy morning in November. The general climbed off his horse, squat, stiff, his thick neck shaven, his eyebrows frowning over pince-nez1; four lanky lieutenants, chins held high and eyelids lowered, got out of a car, each with a briefcase in his hand. Then came a squadron of soldiers who set up camp in the old courtyard, with mules, bales of hay, tents, cooking equipment, camp radio, and signalling flags.…

Of the library staff, only one little old man, Signor Crispino, was kept so that he could explain to the officers how the books were arranged. He was a shortish fellow, with a bald, eggish pate and eyes like pinheads behind his spectacles.…

Then duties were assigned. Each lieutenant was allotted a particular branch of knowledge, a particular century of history. The general was to oversee the sorting of the volumes and the application of an appropriate rubber stamp depending on whether a book had been judged suitable for officers, NCOs2, common soldiers, or should be reported to the Military Court.

And the commission began its appointed task. Every evening the camp radio transmitted General Fedina’s report to HQ. ‘So many books examined. So many seized as suspect. So many declared suitable for officers and soldiers.’ Only rarely were these cold figures accompanied by something out of the ordinary: a request for a pair of glasses to correct short-sightedness for an officer who had broken his, the news that a mule had eaten a rare manuscript edition of Cicero left unattended.

But developments of far greater import were under way, about which the camp radio transmitted no news at all. Rather than thinning out, the forest of books seemed to grow ever more tangled and insidious. The officers would have lost their way had it not been for the help of Signor Crispino. Lieutenant Abrogati, for example, would jump to his feet and throw the book he was reading down on the table: ‘But this is outrageous! A book about the Punic Wars that speaks well of the Carthaginians and criticizes the Romans! This must be reported at once!’ (It should be said here that, rightly or wrongly, the Pandurians considered themselves descendants of the Romans.) Moving silently in soft slippers, the old librarian came up to him. ‘That’s nothing,’ he would say, ‘read what it says here, about the Romans again, you can put this in your report too, and this and this,’ and he presented him with a pile of books. The lieutenant leafed nervously through them, then, getting interested, he began to read, to take notes. And he would scratch his head and mutter: ‘For heaven’s sake! The things you learn! Who would ever have thought!’ Signor Crispino went over to Lieutenant Lucchetti who was closing a tome3 in rage, declaring: ‘Nice stuff this is! These people have the audacity to entertain doubts as to the purity of the ideals that inspired the Crusades! Yessir, the Crusades!’ And Signor Crispino said with a smile: ‘Oh, but look, if you have to make a report on that subject, may I suggest a few other books that will offer more details,’ and he pulled down half a shelf-full. Lieutenant Lucchetti leaned forward and got stuck in, and for a week you could hear him flicking through the pages and muttering: ‘These Crusades though, very nice I must say!’

1pince-nez — eyeglasses clipped to the nose by a spring2NCOs — noncommissioned officers

In the commission’s evening report, the number of books examined got bigger and bigger, but they no longer provided figures relative to positive and negative verdicts. General Fedina’s rubber stamps lay idle. If, trying to check up on the work of one of the lieutenants, he asked, ‘But why did you pass this novel? The soldiers come off better than the officers! This author has no respect for hierarchy!’, the lieutenant would answer by quoting other authors and getting all muddled up in matters historical, philosophical and economic. This led to open discussions that went on for hours and hours. Moving silently in his slippers, almost invisible in his grey shirt, Signor Crispino would always join in at the right moment, offering some book which he felt contained interesting information on the subject under consideration, and which always had the effect of radically undermining General Fedina’s convictions.…

Not much is known about the progress of the commission’s work: what happened in the library through the long winter weeks was not reported. All we know is that General Fedina’s radio reports to General Staff headquarters became ever more infrequent until finally they stopped altogether. The Chief of Staff was alarmed; he transmitted the order to wind up the enquiry as quickly as possible and present a full and detailed report.

In the library, the order found the minds of Fedina and his men prey to conflicting sentiments: on the one hand they were constantly discovering new interests to satisfy and were enjoying their reading and studies more than they would ever have imagined; on the other hand they couldn’t wait to be back in the world again, to take up life again, a world and a life that seemed so much more complex now, as though renewed before their very eyes; and on yet another hand, the fact that the day was fast approaching when they would have to leave the library filled them with apprehension, for they would have to give an account of their mission, and with all the ideas that were bubbling up in their heads they had no idea how to get out of what had become a very tight corner indeed.…One bright morning the commission finally left the library and went to report to the Chief of Staff; and Fedina illustrated the results of the enquiry before an assembly of the General Staff. His speech was a kind of compendium4 of human history from its origins down to the present day, a compendium in which all those ideas considered beyond discussion by the right-minded folk of Panduria were attacked, in which the ruling classes were declared responsible for the nation’s misfortunes, and the people exalted as the heroic victims of mistaken policies and unnecessary wars. It was a somewhat confused presentation including, as can happen with those who have only recently embraced new ideas, declarations that were often simplistic and contradictory. But as to the overall meaning there could be no doubt. The assembly of generals was stunned, their eyes opened wide, then they found their voices and began to shout. General Fedina was not even allowed to finish. There was talk of a court-martial, of his being reduced to the ranks. Then, afraid there might be a more serious scandal, the general and the four lieutenants were each pensioned off for health reasons, as a result of ‘a serious nervous breakdown suffered in the course of duty’. Dressed in civilian clothes, with heavy coats and thick sweaters so as not to freeze, they were often to be seen going into the old library where Signor Crispino would be waiting for them with his books.

3tome — large book4compendium — summary

—Italo Calvinoexcerpted from “A General in the Library”

Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories, 1995Jonathan Cape Ltd.




26. Write a well-developed paragraph in which you use ideas from both passages to establish a controlling idea about the power of reading. Develop your controlling idea using specific examples and details from each passage.


Part 3: (5)Directions: Read the passages on the following pages (an excerpt from an essay and a poem) about attitudes towards nature. Answer the multiple-choice questions on the answer sheet provided for you. Then write your response for question 26 on page 1 of your essay booklet and question 27 on page 2 of your essay booklet.

Passage I

The Trees are Gone

Rebecca Avenue has lost its trees:the willow that would brush against my window,and the spruce that cooled our porch out back,the ginko I would rake in mid-October,with its matted leaves like Oriental fans.Even the beech has been cut down,that iron pillar of my mother’s garden,with its trunk so smooth against one’s cheek.The dirt I dug in has been spreadwith blacktop: tar and oil. They’ve rolled itblithely over sidewalk slatewhere cracks once splintered into island tufts.Even leafy hills beyond the townhave been developed, as they like to say:those tinsel woods where I would rinse myselfin drizzle, in the pinwheel fall.You can stand all day here without knowingthat it once knew trees: green over greenbut gamely turning violet at dusk,then black to blue-vermillion in the dawn.It’s sentimental, but I miss those trees.I’d like to slip back through the decadesinto deep, lush days and lose myself againin leaves like hands, wet thrash of leaves.

—Jay Parinifrom The Art of Subtraction, 2005

George Braziller, Inc.

Passage II

The Serengetti Plains spread from Lake Nyaraza, in Tanganyika, northward beyond the lower boundaries of Kenya Colony. They are the great sanctuary of the Masai People and they harbour more wild game than any similar territory in all of East Africa. In the season of drought they are as dry and tawny1 as the coats of the lion that prowl them, and during the rains they provide the benison2 of soft grass to all the animals in a child’s picture book.

They are endless and they are empty, but they are as warm with life as the waters of a tropic sea. They are webbed with the paths of eland3 and wildebeest and Thompson’s gazelle and their hollows and valleys are trampled by thousands of zebra. I have seen a herd of buffalo invade the pastures under the occasional thorn tree groves and, now and then, the whimsically fashioned figure of a plodding rhino has moved along the horizon like a grey boulder come to life and adventure bound. There are no roads. There are no villages, no towns, no telegraph. There is nothing, as far as you can see, or walk, or ride, except grass and rocks and a few trees and the animals that live there.…

From the open cockpit I could see straight ahead, or peer backward and down, past the silver wings. The Serengetti lay beneath me like a bowl whose edges were the ends of the earth. It was a bowl full of hot vapours that rose upward in visible waves and exerted physical pressure against the Avian, lifting her, as heat from a smouldering fire lifts a flake of ash.…

About noon I reached Rothschild’s Camp4 and circled over it. But there was no activity, no life — not even the compact, slow-moving silhouette of a lion. There was nothing but the distinguishing formation of high, grey rocks piled against each other, jutting from the earth like the weather-worn ruins of a desert cathedral.…

But, if there was no smoke to mark the site of a hearthstone or a camp, there were at least other signs of life, not human, but scarcely less welcome for that.

In a hundred places, as far as I could see and in all directions, little puffs of dust sprang suddenly into being, rolled across the plain and disappeared again. From the air they were like so many jinni5, each bursting from the confines of his fabulous and bewitched jar to rush off with the wind on the urgent accomplishment of a long-plotted evil deed, or maybe a good one.

But when the dust puffs cleared, I could see that small bands of animals were running this way and that, looking everywhere but upward, trying to escape the sound of the plane.

Between Magadi and Narok I watched a yellow cloud take shape beneath me and just ahead. The cloud clung close to the earth and grew as I approached it into a swaying billow that blunted the sunlight and obscured the grass and mimosa trees in its path.

Out of its farthest edge the forerunners of a huge herd of impala, wildebeest, and zebra plunged in flight before the shadow of my wings. I circled, throttled down and lost height until my propeller cut into the fringe of the dust, and particles of it burned in my nostrils.

As the herd moved it became a carpet of rust-brown and grey and dull red. It was not like a herd of cattle or of sheep, because it was wild, and it carried with it the stamp of wilderness and the freedom of a land still more a possession of Nature than of men. To see ten thousand animals untamed and not branded with the symbols of human commerce is like scaling an unconquered mountain for the first time, or like finding a forest without roads or footpaths, or the blemish of an axe. You know then what you had always been told — that the world once lived and grew without adding machines and newsprint and brick-walled streets and the tyranny of clocks.

1tawny — a warm sandy color2benison — a blessing3eland — an African antelope4Rothschild’s Camp — a camping site for hunters5jinni — genie

In the forefront of the herd I could see impala leaping as they ran, and wildebeest flaunting their brittle horns, or flinging themselves on the ground with the abandon of mad dervishes. I do not know why they do this, but whether it is a faulty sense of balance or merely a shameless recourse to the melodramatic, the wildebeest, if frightened by a plane, will always react in the manner of the circus clown in his frantic attempts to escape the trained spotted dog around and around the sawdust arena….

—Beryl Markhamexcerpted from West with the Night, 1942

The Riverside Press




26. Write a well-developed paragraph in which you use ideas from both passages to establish a controlling idea about attitudes towards nature. Develop your controlling idea using specific examples and details from each passage.


Part 3: (6)Directions: Read the passages on the following pages (an excerpt from an essay and a poem) about accomplishments. Answer the multiple-choice questions on the answer sheet provided for you. Then write your response for question 26 on page 1 of your essay booklet and question 27 on page 2 of your essay booklet.

Passage I

Two days before my first novel was to be published, while I was packing to leave the small Vermont town in which I live to go to New York, the telephone rang, and when I snatched it up irritably and said, “Hello,” a sweet old lady’s voice answered me, “Hello, who’s this?” which is a common enough Vermont telephone greeting.

“This is Shirley Jackson,” I said, a little soothed because my name reminded me of my book.“Well,” she said vaguely, “is Mrs. Stanley Hyman there, please?”I waited for a minute and then, “This is Mrs. Hyman,” I said reluctantly.Her voice brightened. “Mrs. Hyman,” she said, pleased, “This is Mrs. Sheila Lang of the

newspaper. I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for days.”“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’ve been terribly busy—my book, and all.”“Yes,” she said. “Well, Mrs. Hyman, this is what I wanted. You read the paper, of course?”“Of course,” I said, “and I’ve been sort of expecting—”“Well, then, surely, you read the North Village Notes column?”“Yes, indeed,” I said warmly.“That’s my column,” she said. “I write that column.”“Of course, I’m a North Village resident,” I said, “but I rather thought that for a thing of this

importance—”“Now, what I’m doing is this. I’m calling up a few people in town who I thought might have

items of news for me—”“Certainly,” I said, and reached for one of the numerous copies of the book jacket lying around

the house. “The name of the book—”“First of all,” she said, “where exactly in town do you live, Mrs. Hyman?”“On Prospect Street,” I said. “The Road Through the Wall.”“I see,” she said. “Just let me take that down.”“That’s the name of the book,” I said.“Yes,” she said. “Which house would that be, I wonder?”“The old Elwell place,” I said.“On the corner of Mechanic? I thought the young Elwells lived there.”“That’s next door,” I said. “We’re in the old Elwell place.”“The old Thatcher place?” she said. “We always call that the old Thatcher place; he built it, you

know.”“That’s the one,” I said. “It’s going to be published the day after tomorrow.”“I didn’t know anyone lived there,” she said. “I thought it was empty.”“We’ve lived here three years,” I said, a little stiffly.“I don’t get out much anymore,” she said. “Now, what little items of local news do you have for

me? Any visitors? Children’s parties?”“I’m publishing a book next week,” I said. “I am going down to New York for my publication

day.”“Taking your family?” she asked. “Any children, by the way?”“Two,” I said. “I’m taking them.”“Isn’t that nice,” she said. “I bet they’re excited.”

“You know,” I said madly, “I’ve been asked to do the Girl Scout column for your paper.”“Really?” She sounded doubtful. “I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. It’s such an informal newspaper.”“Yes,” I said. “Would you like to hear about my book?”“I certainly would,” she said. “Anytime you have any little newsy items for me, you be sure and

call me right up. My number’s in the book.”“Thank you,” I said. “Well, my book —”“I have so much enjoyed our little talk, Mrs. Hyman. Imagine me not knowing anyone was

living in the old Thatcher place!”“The Road Through the Wall,” I said. “Farrar and Straus.”“You know,” she said, “now that I don’t get out any more, I find that doing this column keeps

me in touch with my neighbors. It’s social, sort of.”“Two-seventy-five,” I said. “It’ll be in the local bookstore.”“You’ll probably find the same thing with the Girl Scout column,” she said.“Thank you so much, Mrs. Hyman. Do call me again soon.”“I started it last winter,” I said.“Goodbye,” she said sweetly, and hung up.I kept the column that appeared as the North Village Notes of the newspaper the next day.

Several people remarked on it to me. It was on the last page of the four!

NORTH VILLAGE NOTES

Mrs. Royal Jones of Main Street is ill.Miss Mary Randall of Waite Street is confined to her home with chicken pox.One of the hooked rug classes met last evening with Mrs. Ruth Harris. Hurlbut Lang of Troy

spent the weekend with his parents in North Village, Mr. and Mrs. R. L. Lang.The food sale of the Baptist Church has been postponed indefinitely due to weather conditions.Mrs. Stanley Hyman has moved into the old Thatcher place on Prospect Street. She and her

family are visiting Mr. and Mrs. Farrarstraus of New York City this week.Mrs. J. N. Arnold of Burlington spent the weekend in town with Mr. and Mrs. Samuel

Montague.Little Lola Kittredge of East Road celebrated her fifth birthday on Tuesday.Six little friends joined to wish her many happy returns of the day, and ice cream and cake

were served.

—Shirley Jackson“Fame”

from Writer, August 1948

Passage II

Soybeans

The October air was warm and musky, blowingOver brown fields, heavy with the fragranceOf freshly combined beans, the breath of harvest.

He was pulling a truckload onto the scalesAt the elevator near the rail siding north of townWhen a big Cadillac drove up. A man stepped out,Wearing a three-piece suit and a gold pinky ring.The man said he had just invested a hundred grandIn soybeans and wanted to see what they looked like.

The farmer stared at the man and was quiet, reachingFor the tobacco in the rear pocket of his jeans,Where he wore his only ring, a threadbare circle rubbedBy working cans of dip and long hours on the backsideOf a hundred acre run. He scooped up a handfulOf small white beans, the pearls of the prairie, saying:

Soybeans look like a foot of water on the field in AprilWhen you’re ready to plant and can’t get in;Like three kids at the kitchen tableEating macaroni and cheese five nights in a row;Or like a broken part on the combine whenYour credit with the implement dealer is nearly tapped.

Soybeans look like prayers bouncing off the ceilingWhen prices on the Chicago grain market start to drop;Or like your old man’s tears when you tell himHow much the land might bring for subdivisions.Soybeans look like the first good night of sleep in weeksWhen you unload at the elevator and the kids get Christmas.

He spat a little juice on the tire of the Cadillac,Laughing despite himself and saying to the man:Now maybe you can tell me what a hundred grand looks like.

—Thomas Alan Orrfrom Hammers in the Fog, 1995

Restoration Press




26. Write a well-developed paragraph in which you use ideas from both passages to establish a controlling idea about accomplishments. Develop your controlling idea using specific examples and details from each passage.


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