Question 9 • CMS 2026-2027 English II CREDIT RECOVERY
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World. For an African, whether you were sent to the Caribbean or South America, you were now part of the sugar machine. And it did not much matter where your ship landed. You could be working the fertile fields of Brazil or the hills of Jamaica; the brutal cycle of making sugar was much the same. How does the use of the word machine support the authors' claim in this passage?
Answer
A
Its positive connotation indicates that plantations ran efficiently and produced huge amounts of sugar.
B
Its negative connotation indicates that enslaved people had to work like robots instead of human beings.
C
Its positive denotation indicates that it was easier for enslaved people to make sugar with machines.
D
Its negative denotation indicates that some people preferred handmade sugar over factory-produced sugar.
Explanation
The word “machine” compares the sugar-making system to something that runs through repetitive, relentless work. In this passage, enslaved Africans were forced into the same brutal cycle wherever they landed, treated as tools for production rather than as people. Thus “machine” has a negative connotation that supports the idea that they had to work like robots instead of human beings.
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