Unit Test — Cumulative exam Answers

What can a writer describe about two characters to help develop their personalities?

Read the passage and study the image from Sugar Changed the World.The owner of a sugar plantation built a home—called the Great House—usually high on a hill, where the tropical breezes blow. The open windows provided a kind of air conditioning, making even the hottest days more pleasant. These grand homes, with their high, cool rooms, their polished mahogany furniture, and their servants flitting between the main house and the separate cooking building, were meant to command attention, to show power and wealth. A plantation owner was a kind of god or king, ruling over his empire of sugar.In the Great House the owners could sit on the verandahs, rest their legs on special chairs made for pulling off high rubber boots, drink their rum swizzlers, while their slaves labored on hundreds and hundreds of acres of cane fields. The furniture was imported from abroad, along with all the other comforts—silverware, silk-covered chairs, white christening gowns, porcelain washing bowls.To this day, you can find the Great Houses of old plantations on hilltops throughout the Caribbean, and yet the strange thing is that the men who built and owned the homes hardly used them. For as soon as a sugar planter made enough money, he took his family and moved back to Europe. You can find the planters in the great English novels of the 1800s, such as Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, settled into their English homes and watching, through their account books, how the sugar crop was doing back in the Caribbean. While the masters enjoyed the life of wealth in Europe, the daily routine of the plantations was left in the hands of the overseers. Most often poor men who came to the New World to make their fortunes, the overseers had not the slightest sympathy for their enslaved workers.This is a picture of a Great House in Jamaica.

Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.The seeds for this system were sown in 1823 in the sugar colony of British Guiana—now Guyana—where John Gladstone, father of the future British prime minister William Gladstone, owned over a thousand slaves. John Smith, a young and idealistic English preacher who had recently come to the area, was becoming popular with those slaves. His inspiring sermons retold the story of Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt and to freedom. The sugar workers listened and understood: Smith was speaking not about the Bible, but about the present. That summer, after hearing one of Smith’s sermons, over three thousand slaves grabbed their machetes, their long poles, and rose up against their masters. The governor of the colony rushed toward the burning plantations, where he met a group of armed slaves, and asked them what they wanted."Our rights," came the reply. Here was Haiti—and for that matter America and France—all over again. The slaves insisted they were not property; like the Jews in Egypt, they were God's children, who were owed their basic human rights.

What qualities of the villain support the universal theme that women are as capable as men? Select two options.

Which phrases from the text best show the narrator’s attitude? Select three options.

Read the passage from chapter 1 of Animal Farm.Old Major cleared his throat and began to sing. As he had said, his voice was hoarse, but he sang well enough, and it was a stirring tune, something between 'Clementine' and 'La Cucaracha.' . . . .The singing of this song threw the animals into the wildest excitement. Almost before Major had reached the end, they had begun singing it for themselves. Even the stupidest of them had already picked up the tune and a few of the words, and as for the clever ones, such as the pigs and dogs, they had the entire song by heart within a few minutes. And then, after a few preliminary tries, the whole farm burst out into "Beasts of England" in tremendous unison. The cows lowed it, the dogs whined it, the sheep bleated it, the horses whinnied it, the ducks quacked it. They were so delighted with the song that they sang it right through five times in succession, and might have continued singing it all night if they had not been interrupted.

What qualities of the tragic heroine do both of these passages reveal? Select three options.

Read the passage from Animal Farm."Boxer!" cried Clover in a terrible voice. "Boxer! Get out! Get out quickly! They're taking you to your death!"All the animals took up the cry of "Get out, Boxer, get out!" But the van was already gathering speed and drawing away from them. It was uncertain whether Boxer had understood what Clover had said. But a moment later his face disappeared from the window and there was the sound of a tremendous drumming of hoofs inside the van. He was trying to kick his way out. The time had been when a few kicks from Boxer's hoofs would have smashed the van to matchwood. But alas! his strength had left him; and in a few moments the sound of drumming hoofs grew fainter and died away. In desperation the animals began appealing to the two horses which drew the van to stop. "Comrades, comrades!" they shouted. "Don't take your own brother to his death!" But the stupid brutes, too ignorant to realise what was happening, merely set back their ears and quickened their pace. Boxer's face did not reappear at the window. Too late, someone thought of racing ahead and shutting the five-barred gate; but in another moment the van was through it and rapidly disappearing down the road. Boxer was never seen again.

Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.No one interviewed the Africans who labored in the sugar fields to ask them about their hard labor. They were meant to work and die. But there is one way we can hear them. The Africans invented music, dances, and songs that carry on the pulse, the beat, of their lives. (To hear examples of music from the sugar lands, go to www.sugarchangedtheworld.com.) In Puerto Rico, bomba is a form of music and dance that the sugar workers invented. It is a kind of conversation in rhythm involving a woman, the man dancing with her, and the drummers who watch her and find the right rhythm for her movements. A master coming by would see dancing—no words of anger or rebellion. But as she moved and swayed, as the drummers "spoke" back in their beats, the workers were saying that they were not just labor, not just bodies born to work and die. Instead, they were alive and speaking to one another in movements and sounds that were all their own.In Cuba, sugar workers told their stories in the words and sounds of rumba. As one song said, "The boss does not want me to play the drum.” Overseers feared the slaves were using drums to send messages and spread thoughts of rebellion.Similarly, in Brazil there is a dance called Maculelê, which some trace to the sugar fields. Maculelê is danced with sticks or sugar cane stalks, and it looks very much like training for combat. On many of the sugar islands, Africans created similar dances in which people spin, jump, and seem to menace each other, then, just on the beat, click sticks and twirl away. The dances were a way of imitating warfare without actually defying the master.

Why is it helpful to examine the tone of a sonnet?

Select the verb or verb phrase that is the best option to replace the verb watched in the following sentence.Kimo watched the waves, hoping to see the whale breach again.

What evidence supports the conclusion that "The Storyteller” uses satire to impart the theme that adults should respect children’s intelligence? Select two options.

In Animal Farm, what does Squealer say will happen if the animals continue to have Sunday morning debates?

Read the passage from chapter 2 of Animal Farm.The pigs had an even harder struggle to counteract the lies put about by Moses, the tame raven. Moses, who was Mr. Jones's especial pet, was a spy and a tale-bearer, but he was also a clever talker. He claimed to know of the existence of a mysterious country called Sugarcandy Mountain, to which all animals went when they died. It was situated somewhere up in the sky, a little distance beyond the clouds, Moses said. In Sugarcandy Mountain it was Sunday seven days a week, clover was in season all the year round, and lump sugar and linseed cake grew on the hedges. The animals hated Moses because he told tales and did no work, but some of them believed in Sugarcandy Mountain, and the pigs had to argue very hard to persuade them that there was no such place.

After the high point of a story, what includes the resolution of the conflict?

Read the writing prompt.Drones are becoming a bigger part of everyday life. The rules and regulations for using drones are not yet fully established. Write a research-based essay discussing the many uses of drones, the potential future uses of drones, and the laws that are being discussed to regulate their use.

Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.In the Age of Honey, people tasted the neighborhood where they lived. From a light orange-blossom flavor that is almost a perfume to dark buckwheat with a hint of soil and grain, honey tastes like local flowers. And that was only part of its appeal. Bees work very hard, and it is easy to see that a queen bee is surrounded by worker bees that protect and serve her. To the ancients, a beehive was perfect, for it brought a gift of sweetness to people while being a mirror of their lives—a king or queen served by loyal subjects.

Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.The end of slavery was a great step for human rights. But what did it mean on the sugar plantations—which had depended on extremely cheap labor to keep up with the twenty-four-hour cycle from harvest to mill? In 1836, the same John Gladstone whose sugar estate had exhibited the chained body of the slave leader Quamina wrote to a shipping company. Gladstone asked it to provide a hundred workers (the slang name was "coolies") from India to labor on his plantations. Gladstone's first ships, the Whitby, carrying 249 passengers, and the Hesperus, carrying 244, sailed for Demerara in 1838.