Vietnam Literary Journalism

Question 1 • ELA 11B-CR

Which sentence from Dispatches contains the best example of sensory language?

Answer

Sometimes you’d step from the bunker, all sense of time passing having left you, and find it dark out.

There would be dozens of them at once sometimes, trailing an intense smoke, dropping white-hot sparks, and it seemed as though anything caught in their range would be made still, like figures in a game of living statues.

Once in a while—I guess I saw it happen three or four times in all—there would be a secondary explosion, a direct hit on a supply of NVA ammunition.

If they did, when they did, it might not matter that you were in the best bunker in the DMZ, wouldn’t matter that you were young and had plans, that you were loved, that you were a noncombatant, an observer.

Explanation

Choice B uses vivid sensory details: “intense smoke” and “white-hot sparks” appeal to sight and suggest the force of the explosions. The comparison to “figures in a game of living statues” also helps readers picture what happens. The other choices mainly describe time, events, or thoughts without as many concrete sensory details.

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