Study Island Copyright 2014 Edmentum - All rights reserved. Generation Date: 12/02/2014 Generated By: Cheryl Shelton Title: Eng III American Literature Blizzard Bag 2014 2015 The Song of the Friend (From the Paiute Indian Dialect, Translated by Mary Austin) This is the song of the Friend, Made by the Medicine Man In the young dusk of the spring, Moonless and tender, At the hour when the balm-giving herbs Begin to be musky and sweet along the creek borders, When the smell of the sage is sharp in the trails of the cattle And the ants run busily still Up the poles of the pine trees; The shuffle and beat of his feet We heard in the dust by his doorway. Out and aside from the hut The pound of his feet and the roll of the ram's-horn rattle Was more loud than the purr of the creek Or the wings of the night hawk, And the drone of his singing sweet And the night desirous. All night he sang till the young, thin moon came out, And about the wolf hour of the morning The earth by his hut was beaten to dust by his dancing, And the eyes of the Medicine Man Were pale as the sloughs before sun-dawn, And the shadow of all his songs Lay under them and in the cheek hollows Like ash on the hearthstone; And his voice was bitter and thick As the dust stirred up by his dancing. And still in my heart I hear the throb of his singing
When I go by the sweet-smelling trails In the moonless evenings of April. My pulse is full of the whisper and beat, Over-full and aching with song, When the smell of the campfire comes out by the creeks And the nights are young and desirous. 1. The author of this poem assumes that readers will know A. what the dance moves are. B. what a Medicine Man is. C. the tune of the song. D. the sound of the creek. 2. Mary Austin is listed as the translator of this work. What is the most likely reason she is credited? A. The Paiute Indians did not record or write their literature in English. B. The Paiute Indians let Mary Austin pay money to have her name appear. C. Mary Austin is a better writer than the original Native American author. D. Mary Austin was one of the co-writers of the piece with the Paiute Indians.
from Passage to India by Walt Whitman How should I think how breathe a single breath how speak if, out of myself, I could not launch, to those, superior universes? Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God, At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and Death, But that I, turning, call to thee, O soul, thou actual Me, And lo! thou gently masterest the orbs, Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death, And fillest, swellest full, the vastnesses of Space. Greater than stars or suns, Bounding, O soul, thou journeyest forth; What love, than thine and ours could wider amplify? What aspirations, wishes, outvie thine and ours, O soul? What dreams of the ideal? what plans of purity, perfection, strength? What cheerful willingness, for others sake, to give up all? For others sake to suffer all? 3. How does this poem reflect the movement of Transcendentalism? A. The speaker has a pure faith-based belief of the universe taught by a specific religion. B. The speaker show little interest in the philosophical meanings beyond the natural world. C. The speaker has a strict scientific understanding of the universe with no room for interpretation. D. The speaker pursues thoughts about religion and nature from an individual perspective. 4. What poetic form does Whitman use in this poem? A. free verse B. sonnet C. villanelle D. ballad
from The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells After dropping Bartley Hubbard at the Events building, Lapham drove on down Washington Street to Nankeen Square at the South End, where he had lived ever since the mistaken movement of society in that direction ceased. He had not built, but had bought very cheap of a terrified gentleman of good extraction who discovered too late that the South End was not the thing, and who in the eagerness of his flight to the Back Bay threw in his carpets and shades for almost nothing. Mrs. Lapham was even better satisfied with their bargain than the Colonel himself, and they had lived in Nankeen Square for twelve years. They had seen the saplings planted in the pretty oval round which the houses were built flourish up into sturdy young trees, and their two little girls in the same period had grown into young ladies; the Colonel's tough frame had expanded into the bulk which Bartley's interview indicated; and Mrs. Lapham, while keeping a more youthful outline, showed the sharp print of the crow's-foot at the corners of her motherly eyes, and certain slight creases in her wholesome cheeks. The fact that they lived in an unfashionable neighbourhood was something that they had never been made to feel to their personal disadvantage, and they had hardly known it till the summer before this story opens, when Mrs. Lapham and her daughter Irene had met some other Bostonians far from Boston, who made it memorable. They were people whom chance had brought for the time under a singular obligation to the Lapham ladies, and they were gratefully recognisant of it. They had ventured a mother and two daughters as far as a rather wild little Canadian watering-place on the St. Lawrence, below Quebec, and had arrived some days before their son and brother was expected to join them. Two of their trunks had gone astray, and on the night of their arrival the mother was taken violently ill. Mrs. Lapham came to their help, with her skill as nurse, and with the abundance of her own and her daughter's wardrobe, and a profuse, single-hearted kindness. When a doctor could be got at, he said that but for Mrs. Lapham's timely care, the lady would hardly have lived. He was a very effusive little Frenchman, and fancied he was saying something very pleasant to everybody. 5. What structure of fiction does the author use in this passage? A. chronological order B. frame narrative C. epistolary narrative D. in media res
The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I've known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. 6. What American literary period does this poem represent? A. Realism B. Naturalism C. Transcendentalism D. Harlem Renaissance 7. African America poet Langston Hughes attended New York's Columbia University in the early 1920s. How does the culture of the author relate to his poem, which was written in 1922? A. Langston Hughes is writing of the importance of African American contributions. B. Langston Hughes cannot relate to the migration of people from Africa to America. C. Langston Hughes thought the culture of African Americans was not widespread. D. Langston Hughes traveled far across the world to study ancient rivers.
The House on the Hill by Edwin Arlington Robinson They are all gone away, The House is shut and still, There is nothing more to say. Through broken walls and gray The winds blow bleak and shrill: They are all gone away. Nor is there one to-day To speak them good or ill: There is nothing more to say. Why is it then we stray Around that sunken sill? They are all gone away, And our poor fancy-play For them is wasted skill: There is nothing more to say. There is ruin and decay In the House on the Hill: They are all gone away, There is nothing more to say. 8. What characteristic of the poem connects it to traditional influences? A. It follows a particular form. B. The language follows a particular dialect. C. The imagery used is classical. D. It is about a historical subject.
9. John Adams attended the Second Continental Congress to help in the formation of the Declaration of Independence, which was approved on July 4, 1776. While he was away, his wife Abigail Adams wrote the following to him in a letter dated March 31, 1776. "I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And, by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation." In terms of the historical context of this letter, why is it significant that Abigail Adams asked her husband to "remember the ladies"? The creation of a new form of government was an opportunity to make the legal status A. of women equal to that of men. B. C. D. She wanted him to know that women were planning to rebel against the government if women's rights were stripped away. It was a warning that the British government would not recognize the Declaration of Independence as a legal document. She believed that women should be recognized for their intellectual competence and be able to educate their daughters.
10. From every circumstance it is evident, that it was the determination of the British court to have nothing to do with America but to conquer her fully and absolutely. They were certain of success, and the field of battle was the only place of treaty. I am confident there are thousands and tens of thousands in America who wonder now that they should ever have thought otherwise; but the sin of that day was the sin of civility; yet it operated against our present good in the same manner that a civil opinion of the devil would against our future peace. Independence was a doctrine scarce and rare, even towards the conclusion of the year 1775; all our politics had been founded on the hope of expectation of making the matter up a hope, which, though general on the side of America, had never entered the head or heart of the British court. Their hope was conquest and confiscation. Good heavens! what volumes of thanks does America owe to Britain? What infinite obligation to the tool that fills, with paradoxical vacancy, the throne! Nothing but the sharpest essence of villany, compounded with the strongest distillation of folly, could have produced a menstruum that would have effected a separation. The Congress in 1774 administered an abortive medicine to independence, by prohibiting the importation of goods, and the succeeding Congress rendered the dose still more dangerous by continuing it. Had independence been a settled system with America, (as Britain has advanced,) she ought to have doubled her importation, and prohibited in some degree her exportation. And this single circumstance is sufficient to acquit America before any jury of nations, of having a continental plan of independence in view; a charge which, had it been true, would have been honorable, but is so grossly false, that either the amazing ignorance or the wilful dishonesty of the British court is effectually proved by it. Which historical event most likely influenced this literary work? A. the American Revolutionary War B. the colonization of the Americas C. the American Civil War D. the American Civil Rights Movement
11. from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass An American Slave by Frederick Douglass My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant before I knew her as my mother. It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age. Frequently, before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field labor. For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder the development of the child's affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child. This is the inevitable result. I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times in my life; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at night. She was hired by a Mr. Stewart, who lived about twelve miles from my home. She made her journeys to see me in the night, travelling the whole distance on foot, after the performance of her day's work. She was a field hand, and a whipping is the penalty of not being in the field at sunrise, unless a slave has special permission from his or her master to the contrary a permission which they seldom get, and one that gives to him that gives it the proud name of being a kind master. I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of day. She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone. Very little communication ever took place between us. Death soon ended what little we could have while she lived, and with it her hardships and suffering. She died when I was about seven years old, on one of my master's farms, near Lee's Mill. I was not allowed to be present during her illness, at her death, or burial. She was gone long before I knew any thing about it. Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of her death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger. How is the relationship between Douglass and his mother affected by the historical context of the story? As in Douglass' case, slave children were often shielded from experiencing the death of a A. parent. B. C. D. Douglass' early separation from his mother kept him from developing emotional feelings toward her. Knowing they would be separated, Douglass' mother chose to not develop a parental bond with him. If Douglass' mother had been given approval to visit her son, then she would not have become ill.
A Girl by Ezra Pound The tree has entered my hands, The sap has ascended my arms, The tree has grown in my breast- Downward, The branches grow out of me, like arms. Tree you are, Moss you are, You are violets with wind above them. A child - so high - you are, And all this is folly to the world. 12. What elements of this poem reflect the movement of Modernism? A. Its form is rigidly structured, and it is set within a specific time period. B. Its subject matter is of the natural world, it is brief, and it is repetitive. C. Its structure is formal, it is traditional, and it presents relatable characters. D. Its form is unconventional, it is unrealistic, and it is unemotional.