Read the passage from "The Crab That Played with the Sea.”‘Ah!’ said the Eldest Magician. ‘Now I know who has been playing with the Sea;’ and he called out, ‘What are you doing, Pau Amma?’And Pau Amma, deep down below, answered, ‘Once a day and once a night I go out to look for my food. Once a day and once a night I return. Leave me alone.’Then the Eldest Magician said, ‘Listen, Pau Amma. When you go out from your cave the waters of the Sea pour down into Pusat Tasek, and all the beaches of all the islands are left bare, and the little fish die, and Raja Moyang Kaban, the King of the Elephants, his legs are made muddy. When you come back and sit in Pusat Tasek, the waters of the Sea rise, and half the little islands are drowned, and the Man’s house is flooded, and Raja Abdullah, the King of the Crocodiles, his mouth is filled with the salt water.’
Which excerpt from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn contains humor?
Read the passage from "Two Kinds.”"You want me to be something that I’m not!” I sobbed. "I’ll never be the kind of daughter you want me to be!”"Only two kinds of daughters,” she shouted in Chinese. "Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind! Only one kind of daughter can live in this house. Obedient daughter!”
Read the excerpt from Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban.I was only two years old when I left Cuba but I remember everything that’s happened to me since I was a baby, even word-for-word conversations. I was sitting in my grandmother’s lap, playing with her drop pearl earrings, when my mother told her we were leaving the country. Abuela Celia called her a traitor to the revolution. Mom tried to pull me away but I clung to the Abuela and screamed at the top of my lungs. My grandfather came running and said, “Celia, let the girl go. She belongs with Lourdes.” This was the last time I saw her.How does the structure of the excerpt add meaning to the passage?
Read the excerpt from Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. “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 use of simple and vigorous words in A Farewell to Arms reflects
Read the excerpt from "Daughter of Invention"."Maybe not. Maybe, just maybe, there's something they've missed that's important. With patience and calm, even a burro can climb a palm." This last was one of her many Dominican sayings she had imported into her scrambled English.
Read this excerpt from King Arthur's Socks: A Comedy in One Act.GUENEVERE: (unable to bear it) Please, Mary, please!What does the stage direction reveal about Guenevere?
Read the excerpt from Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden.What does this description about Gatsby’s house reveal about his character?
Read the excerpt from The Canterbury Tales.I preach just as you’ve heard me say; and tell A hundred taradiddles more as well.And then I do my best to stretch my neckAnd bob my head in every directionOver the folk, now this way, and now that,Just like a pigeon sitting on a barn. Both hands and tongue are busy, and so quickThat it’s a joy to watch me at my work.
Read the passage from "The Crab That Played with the Sea.”But towards evening, when people and things grow restless and tired, there came up the Man (With his own little girl-daughter?)—Yes, with his own best beloved little girl-daughter sitting upon his shoulder, and he said, ‘What is this play, Eldest Magician?’ And the Eldest Magician said, ‘Ho, Son of Adam, this is the play of the Very Beginning; but you are too wise for this play.’ And the Man saluted and said, ‘Yes, I am too wise for this play; but see that you make all the Animals obedient to me.’
Which statement best describes the purpose of the horse-drawn carriage imagery in "Because I Could Not Stop for Death."
Read the excerpt from Anthem, by Ayn Rand.Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds. I am not a sacrifice on their altars.I am a man. This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before!The imagery of servitude and sacrifice reinforces the theme that the moral purpose of a person’s life is to
Read the excerpt from "Daughter of Invention"."Maybe not. Maybe, just maybe, there's something they've missed that's important. With patience and calm, even a burro can climb a palm." This last was one of her many Dominican sayings she had imported into her scrambled English.
Read the first three paragraphs of "Two Kinds.”My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America. You could open a restaurant. You could work for the government and get good retirement. You could buy a house with almost no money down. You could become rich. You could become instantly famous."Of course you can be a prodigy, too," my mother told me when I was nine. "You can be best anything. What does Auntie Lindo know? Her daughter, she is only best tricky."America was where all my mother's hopes lay. She had come here in 1949 after losing everything in China: her mother and father, her family home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls. But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better.
Read the excerpt from Anthem.Here, on this mountain, I and my sons and my chosen friends shall build our new land and our fort. And it will become as the heart of the earth, lost and hidden at first, but beating, beating louder each day. And word of it will reach every corner of the earth. And the roads of the world will become as veins which will carry the best of the world’s blood to my threshold. And all my brothers, and the Councils of my brothers, will hear of it, but they will be impotent against me. The imagery of “the heart” suggests what relationship between the society the narrator plans to build on the mountain and the outside world?
Which detail in the excerpt identifies it as science fiction?
Read the excerpt from The Canterbury Tales.I only preach of avarice and the like,And in this way induce them to be freeIn giving cash—especially to me.Because my only interest is in gain;I’ve none whatever in rebuking sin.
Read the excerpt from "Annabel Lee," by Edgar Allan Poe.And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;How does Poe use a sound device in the excerpt?
What do readers learn about the setting in this excerpt?
Why does Vivien say that she isn’t bothered by Lancelot’s assertions about his current marriage in King Arthur's Socks: A Comedy in One Act?
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