Never

Read the following excerpt from Kenneth Follet's novel Never, a novel about the beginning of a nuclear war.  Pauline Green is the president of the United States of America in this novel and has just launched an attack on North Korea in retaliation for North Korea's attack on South Korea and Japan.

Pauline had killed hundreds of people, perhaps thousands, by bombing North Korean military bases, and more would have been maimed by the blast and ravaged by the radiation.  In her head she knew she had done the right thing: General Pak's murderous regime had to be closed down.  But no amount of reasoning could make her feel all right about it in her heart.  Every time she washed her hands she thought about Lady Macbeth trying to get the blood off. 

What is the purpose of the allusion in the above passage?

a. to show how Pauline was justified in taking the action she took
b. to show how Pauline feels guilty for the deaths of those caught in the US's bombing
c. to show how guilty General Pak is from his actions
d. to let the reader know that nuclear war is never a justifiable option

Scroll down for the answer

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In order to answer this question correctly, you must:

• know what an allusion in
• be able to find the allusion in the passage
• understand how the allusion relates to the passage

Allusions are often difficult to spot because you may have never read the book being alluded to.  Allusions that may appear on the state test will probably come from Shakespeare, mythology, or the Bible.  

So, how do you find the allusion in the above passage if you do not recognize the work it is coming from?  First thing to do is to look for anything that does not belong.  We have three names: Pauline, General Pak, and Lady Macbeth.  We know from reading the blurb before the passage that Pauline is a character in the book.  We can guess that General Pak is her adversary in North Korea.  That leaves Lady Macbeth, who doesn't seem to have a role here.  That could be our allusion.  We see she is washing blood off her hands.  Given that this was a missile strike, there would be no literal blood on anyone's hands, so we can read this to be figurative.  The phrase "blood on one's hands" deals with a guilty conscience, so armed with that knowledge, we can narrow the answers to B or C.  Since it is Pauline that the passage is focused on and not General Pak, we can narrow the answer to B.

Burn, Baby, Burn!

Read the following excerpt from Fahrenheit 451.  This is a book written in the 1950s that takes place in our future.

The little mosquito-delicate dancing hum in the air, the electrical murmur of a hidden wasp snug in its special pink warm nest. The music was almost loud enough so he could follow the tune.

Without turning on the light he imagined how this room would look. His wife stretched on the bed, uncovered and cold, like a body displayed on the lid of the tomb, her eyes fixed in the ceiling by invisible threads of steel, immovable. And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind. The room was indeed empty. Every night the waves came in and bore her off on their great tides of sound, floating her, wide-eyed, toward morning. There had been no night in the last two years that Mildred had not swum that sea, had not gladly gone down in it for the third time.

What is the purpose of the metaphor in this passage?

a. to explain how Mildred drowned
b. to show that Mildred cannot swim
c. to explain how Mildred listens to music
d. to show Mildred's unique fashion sense

Scroll down for the answer.








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This is a typical reading comprehension three part question. Part one, do you know what a metaphor is?  Part two, can you find the metaphor?  Part three do you understand what the metaphor means?  

The ocean is a metaphor showing how distant Mildred is when she uses the "seashell" radio.  Basically Ray Bradbury is envisioning ear buds way back in the 1950s.  Know that you know that, the other metaphor, the mosquito, makes more sense as well and adds to the understanding.  
C. is the correct answer.

 

Which Disney Character Is Especially Good at Expectorating?

Read the following sentences:

I tried something that my mom made for dinner.  It was so awful that before I realized what I was doing, I expectorated it.  My mom was furious with me.

The word expectorated as used in the above sentence probably means:

a. threw up
b. spit out
c. swallowed
d. chewed it up














Scroll down for the answer.






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a. is incorrect.  While it might fit with the idea of bad food, it does not fit as well with the mom being furious. 
b. is correct.
c. is incorrect.  Why would the mom be furious over swallowing her cooking?
d. is incorrect.  Why would the mom be furious over chewing your food?

By the way, Gaston is especially good at expectorating.  It says so right in the song that bears his name in Beauty and the Beast.


~

Look, in the sky! It's a bird. It's a plane! It's Superman!

 Look at the comic book panels below.  Batman and Robin are trapped and cannot free themselves, then...

This particular piece of poor story telling is an example of which literary device?

a. rhetorical device
b. deus ex machina
c. extended metaphor
d. verisimilitude








Scroll down for the answer.











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We have several terms that you may not be familiar with. 
Rhetorical Device - anything that makes the reader look at the text from a different perspective
Deus Ex Machina - a plot device that appears only to help a character out of a sticky situation
Extended Metaphor - a metaphor that keeps going through a long passage
Verisimiltude - resembling truth

Of these, the only one that fits is b. deus ex machina.  This plot device often cheapens the story so much, that it is rarely used by good writers.

It takes leadership to confront a nation's fear. It takes friendship to conquer your own.

Read this excerpt from The King's Speech" by King George VI as Great Britain was about to enter WWII and answer the following question:


"Such a principle, stripped of all disguise, is surely the mere primitive doctrine that might is right, and if this principle were established throughout the world, the freedom of our own country and of the whole British Commonwealth of nations would be in danger."


What is suggested by King George's use of the word PRIMITIVE?

a. Germany's pursuit of world domination is the prime reason for Great Britain joining the war
b. Germany's pursuit of world domination is crude and uncivilized
c. Great Britain needs to join the war for the prime reason that their freedom is in danger
d. Great Britain needs to join the war so they can obtain world domination before Germany

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Primitive means most basic and when applied here to civilized countries, King George VI is  calling them basic and uncivilized.  That makes B the correct answer.

Thank you to Ms. Willis from Manteo High School for the question.  Her students should thank her for being the most wonderful teacher in their school and should really consider getting her some Starbuck gift cards for teacher appreciation week.

Go Gawain!

 Read the following from J. R. R. Tolkien's work, The Fall of Arthur:

Greatest was Gawain,
   whose glory waxed
as times darkened,
   true and dauntless,
among knights peerless
   ever anew proven,
defence and fortress
   of a falling world


What word could replace "waxed" in the second line?
a. faded
b. increased
c. faltered
d. fearless

How cool is it that I own this book?

Scroll down for the answer.




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a. and c. are incorrect.  They both mean the same thing, so if one was correct, so would the other.
d. means nothing in this sentence.
b. is correct.  While others failed, Gawain just got stronger, braver, and better.  His glory increased.

Menace!

Read the following page from Menace #5 (Marvel comics 1953):

Based on how it is used in the opening blurb, what does the word "yarn" mean?

a. a type of string
b. a story
c. an undead creature
d. a type of comic book








Scroll down for the answer.













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The context of the opening blurb suggests that the word "yarn", as used in the blurb, means b. story.  However, if you put d. type of comic book, I would say that you at least got the best wrong answer.



You're still wrong, though.  :)