Reading literrature 3

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– GED LITERATURE AND THE ARTS, READING PRACTICE QUESTIONS – myself completely loose then. For the moment, Questions 1 through 5 refer to the following excerpt. (46) though, I’d better get up, since my train goes at ﬁve. What Has Happened to Gregor? As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from —Franz Kafka, from The Metamorphosis (1912) (1) uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in 1. his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on When Gregor Samsa wakes up, he realizes that he his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when a. has been having a nightmare. (5) he lifted his head a little he could see his dome- b. is late for work. like brown belly divided into stiff arched seg- c. has turned into a giant bug. ments on top of which the bed quilt could d. dislikes his job. hardly keep in position and was about to slide e. needs to make a change in his life. off completely. His numerous legs, which were 2. (10) pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, Which of the following best describes Gregor’s job? waved helplessly before his eyes. a. magician What has happened to me? he thought. It was b. traveling clothing salesman no dream. His room, a regular human bedroom, c. advertisement copywriter only rather too small, lay quiet between the four d. clothing designer (15) familiar walls. Above the table on which a col- e. magazine editor lection of cloth samples was unpacked and 3. spread out—Samsa was a commercial traveler— Why must Gregor keep his current job for sev- hung the picture which he had recently cut out eral more years? of an illustrated magazine and put into a pretty a. His parents owe his boss money. (20) gilt frame. It showed a lady, with a fur cap on b. Gregor is an apprentice and must complete and a fur stole, sitting upright and holding out his program. to the spectator a huge fur muff into which the c. Gregor wants to take over the chief ’s job. whole of her forearm had vanished! d. His parents own the company he works for. .... e. He needs to earn enough money to buy a big- He slid down again into his former position. ger house for his family. (25) This getting up early, he thought, makes one 4. quite stupid. A man needs his sleep. Other com- Based on the passage, which is the most logical mercials live like harem women. For instance, conclusion to draw about Gregor’s personality? when I come back to the hotel of a morning to a. Gregor is lazy and stupid. (30) write up the orders I’ve got, these others are b. Gregor is a very successful salesman. only sitting down to breakfast. Let me just try c. Gregor resents being told what to do by peo- that with my chief; I’d be sacked on the spot. ple in authority. Anyhow, that might be quite a good thing for d. Gregor is hardworking and reliable. me, who can tell? If I didn’t have to hold my e. Gregor is very close to his family. (35) hand because of my parents I’d have given notice long ago, I’d have gone to the chief and told him exactly what I think of him. That would knock him endways from his desk! It’s a queer way of doing, too, this sitting on high at a (40) desk and talking down to employees, especially when they have to come quite near because the chief is hard of hearing. Well, there’s still hope; once I’ve saved enough money to pay back my parents’ debts to him—that should take another (45) ﬁve or six years—I’ll do it without fail. I’ll cut 351
– GED LITERATURE AND THE ARTS, READING PRACTICE QUESTIONS – 5. the sun can describe a shadow, a In lines 47–48, Gregor tells himself, “I’d better (33) gesture can paint a moment, get up, since my train goes at ﬁve.” This suggests (35) a scent could ﬁll an entire village with words and that color and sound, a. Gregor has woken up as a bug before and is used to it. a perfect little grape tomato can be the most b. the other characters in the story are also bugs. beautiful thing in the world, c. Gregor is still dreaming. d. Gregor is going to be late. (40) seen through the right eyes. e. Gregor does not yet realize how serious his condition is. —Marco A. Annunziata (2002) Reprinted by permission of the author. Questions 6 through 10 refer to the following poem. 6. In line 5, the speaker says, “I inherited my trade from my zio, Alfonso.” What trade did the What Did the Speaker Learn from speaker inherit? Alfonso? a. painting Alfonso b. ﬁshing I am not the ﬁrst poet born to my family. (1) c. writing poetry We have painters and singers, actors and d. singing carpenters. e. carpentry I inherited my trade from my zio, Alfonso. (5) 7. What is the relationship between the speaker and Zio maybe was the tallest man Alfonso? in the village, he certainly was a. Alfonso is his uncle. the widest. He lost b. Alfonso is his father. his voice to cigarettes before I was born, but still c. Alfonso is his best friend. (10) d. Alfonso is his brother. he roared e. Alfonso is a neighbor. with his hands, his eyes, with his brow, and his deafening smile. 8. Which of the following statements about Alfonso is true? He worked the sea with my nonno (15) a. He was a poet. ﬁshing in silence among the grottoes b. He could not speak. so my father could learn to write and read c. He could speak many languages. and not speak like the guaglione, d. He was a farmer. ﬁlled with curses and empty pockets. e. He was also a painter. (20) He would watch me write with wonder, 9. In lines 11–13, the speaker says that Alfonso I could hear him on the couch, he looked at “roared / with his hands, his eyes, / with his the lines over my shoulder, tried to teach himself to brow, and his deafening smile.” These lines sug- read gest that Alfonso (25) late in the soft Adriatic darkness. a. was a very loud person. Wine-stained pages gave him away. b. was always angry. c. was like a lion. But I learned to write from Zio— d. was always yelling. He didn’t need words, still he taught me the e. was very expressive with his body. language (30) of silence, the way 352
– GED LITERATURE AND THE ARTS, READING PRACTICE QUESTIONS – 10. point of view. What sort of worker do you think Which of the following best sums up what the (35) is the best from a practical point of view? speaker has learned from Alfonso? a. how to appreciate the beauty of the world HELENA: The best? Perhaps the one who is b. how to listen to others most honest and hard-working. c. how to appreciate his family d. how to understand himself (40) DOMAIN: No, the cheapest. The one whose e. how to read poetry needs are the smallest. Young Rossum invented a worker with the minimum amount of require- Questions 11 through 14 refer to the following excerpt. ments. He had to simplify him. He rejected everything that did not contribute directly to How Are Robots Different from (45) the progress of work. In this way he rejected Humans? everything that made man more expensive. In [Helena is talking to Domain, the general man- fact, he rejected man and made the Robot. My ager of Rossum’s Universal Robots factory.] dear Miss Glory, the Robots are not people. Mechanically they are more perfect than we are, DOMAIN: Well, any one who’s looked into (1) (50) they have an enormously developed intelligence, anatomy will have seen at once that man is too but they have no soul. Have you ever seen what complicated, and that a good engineer could a Robot looks like inside? make him more simply. So young Rossum (5) began to overhaul anatomy and tried to see HELENA: Good gracious, no! what could be left out or simpliﬁed. In short— (55) but this isn’t boring you, Miss Glory? DOMAIN: Very neat, very simple. Really a beau- tiful piece of work. Not much in it, but every- HELENA: No; on the contrary, it’s awfully thing in ﬂawless order. The product of an interesting. (10) engineer is technically at a higher pitch of per- (60) fection than a product of nature. DOMAIN: So young Rossum said to himself: A man is something that, for instance, feels happy, HELENA: Man is supposed to be the product of plays the ﬁddle, likes going for walks, and, in nature. (15) fact, wants to do a whole lot of things that are really unnecessary. (65) DOMAIN: So much the worse. ˇ HELENA: Oh! —Karel Capek, from R.U.R. (1923, translated by P. Selver) DOMAIN: Wait a bit. That are unnecessary (20) 11. According to the passage, why are robots better when he’s wanted, let us say, to weave or to workers than humans? count. Do you play the ﬁddle? a. Robots have a very simple anatomy. b. Robots are more intelligent. HELENA: No. c. Robots are more honest and hard-working. (25) d. Robots do not have a soul. DOMAIN: That’s a pity. But a working machine e. Robots want things that are unnecessary. must not want to play the ﬁddle, must not feel happy, must not do a whole lot of other things. A petrol motor must not have tassels or orna- (30) ments, Miss Glory. And to manufacture artiﬁcial workers is the same thing as to manufacture motors. The process must be of the simplest, and the product of the best from a practical 353
– GED LITERATURE AND THE ARTS, READING PRACTICE QUESTIONS – 12. sion is probably an erosion of trust in the televi- Rossum created robots because (22) sion medium itself. a. humans are complicated and inefﬁcient. Since joy is the message of all commercials, it b. humans are not honest enough. (25) is as well they breed skepticism. Every story has c. robots are always happy. a happy ending, gratiﬁcation is guaranteed by d. he wanted to see if he could. the conventions of the commercial form, which e. there weren’t enough people to do the work. contributes no end to the pervasive unreality of 13. it all. Indeed, it is the chronic bliss of everybody Which of the following best expresses Rossum’s (30) in the commercials that creates their ﬁnal view of nature? divorce from effective life as we know it. a. Nature is beautiful. Grumpy mum, frowning dad, are soon all smiles b. It is dangerous to try to improve upon nature. again after the ingestion of some pill or potion; c. Nature is imperfect and unnecessarily minimal concessions are made to mild frustra- complicated. (35) tion (as they are, occasionally, to lust), but none d. Mother Nature is the greatest engineer of all. at all to despair or consummation. In fact, if the e. Machines are also a part of nature. form is reminiscent of the limerick and the 14. presentation of the music-hall, the overall Based on the passage, Rossum is most likely mood—in its absolute and unrufﬂed deco- a. a robot. (40) rum—is that of the uplift fables in the Sunday b. a part-time inventor. school picture books of my childhood. c. a retired doctor. d. a foreman in the factory. —Angela Carter, from Shaking a Leg (1997) e. a very intelligent engineer. 15. According to the author, what is the main differ- ence between commercial channels and public Questions 15 through 17 refer to the following excerpt. television stations like the BBC? a. Commercial television is very artiﬁcial. What’s Wrong with Commercial b. Public television is more informal and Television? uplifting. Kids who watch much commercial television (1) c. Commercial television teaches viewers not to ought to develop into whizzes at the dialect; you believe what they see on TV. have to keep so much in your mind at once d. Commercial television is more like the movies because a series of artiﬁcially short attention than public television. (5) spans has been created. But this in itself means e. Commercial television portrays people in a that the experience of watching the commercial more realistic manner. channels is a more informal one, curiously more ‘homely’ than watching BBC [British Broadcast- 16. Which of the following would the author most ing Corporation]. likely recommend? This is because the commercial breaks are (10) a. Don’t watch any television at all; read instead. constant reminders that the medium itself is b. Watch only the BBC. artiﬁcial, isn’t, in fact, “real,” even if the gesticu- c. Watch only commercial television. lating heads, unlike the giants of the movie d. Watch what you like, but don’t believe what screen, are life-size. There is a kind of built-in commercials claim. (15) alienation effect. Everything you see is false, as e. Watch what you like, but don’t watch more Tristan Tzara gnomically opined. And the young than an hour a day. lady in the St. Bruno tobacco ads who currently concludes her spiel by stating categorically: “And if you believe that, you’ll believe anything,” is (20) saying no more than the truth. The long-term effect of habitually watching commercial televi- 354
– GED LITERATURE AND THE ARTS, READING PRACTICE QUESTIONS – 17. and that time, that I had so effectively According to the author, what is the main thing (35) renounced. [ . . . . ] that makes commercials unrealistic? Like it or not, each of us is made, less by a. Everyone in commercials always ends up blood or genes than by a process that is largely happy. accidental, the impact of things seen and heard b. The background music is distracting. (40) and smelled and tasted and endured in those c. Commercials are so short. few years before our clay hardens. Offhand d. The people in commercials are always sick. remarks, things glimpsed in passing, jokes and e. The claims commercials make are unrealistic. commonplaces, shop displays and climate and ﬂickering light and textures of walls are all con- Questions 18 through 22 refer to the following excerpt. (45) sumed by us and become part of our ﬁber, just as much as the more obvious effects of upbring- What Happened When He Came to ing and socialization and intimacy and learning. America? Every human being is an archeological site. My parents lost friends, lost family ties and pat- (1) terns of mutual assistance, lost rituals and habits —Luc Sante, from The Factory of Facts (1998) and favorite foods, lost any link to an ongoing 18. The author came to America when he was social milieu, lost a good part of the sense they a. an infant. (5) had of themselves. We lost a house, several b. a toddler. towns, various landscapes. We lost documents c. in his early teens. and pictures and heirlooms, as well as most of d. in his late teens. our breakable belongings, smashed in the nine e. a young adult. packing cases that we took with us to America. (10) We lost connection to a thing larger than our- 19. In the ﬁrst paragraph, the writer lists more than selves, and as a family failed to make any signiﬁ- a dozen things that he and his family lost when cant new connection in exchange, so that we they immigrated to America. He does this in were left aground on a sandbar barely big order to enough for our feet. I lost friends and relatives a. convince others not to immigrate. (15) and stories and familiar comforts and a sense of b. show how careless his family was when continuity between home and outside and any packing. sense that I was normal. I lost half a language c. show how much he missed his homeland. through want of use and eventually, in my late d. show how many intangible and important teens, even lost French as the language of my things were left behind. (20) internal monologue. And I lost a whole network e. prove that you are never too old to change. of routes through life that I had just barely glimpsed. 20. According to the author, our personalities are Hastening on toward some idea of a future, I formed mostly by only half-realized these losses, and when I did a. our genes. (25) realize I didn’t disapprove, and sometimes I b. our education. actively colluded. At some point, though, I was c. our environment. bound to notice that there was a gulf inside me, d. our parents and caregivers. with a blanketed form on the other side that e. our peers. hadn’t been uncovered in decades. My project of (30) self-invention had been successful, so much so that I had become a sort of hydroponic veg- etable, growing soil-free. But I had been formed in another world; everything in me that was essential was owed to immersion in that place, 355