GRE Literature in English (REA) (39 page)

 

109.
(C)

The passage is from Tennyson's dramatic monologue, “Ulysses.” Coleridge (A) was not known for utilizing mythology, while Keats (B) and Arnold (E) utilize a more introspective tone. Although the use of dramatic monologue is similar to Browning (D), he preferred to use Renaissance settings.

 

110.
(A)

Jim Burden, Cather's narrator, returns to the scene of his and Antonia's childhood in Nebraska at the end of the novel; the passage stresses the extent to which life's early circumstances and experiences shape adult destinies. Passages (C) and (E) can be eliminated readily because the language of these passages does not match that of the twentieth-century author.

 

111.
(A)

In these lines from a sonnet by Sidney, love is personified (i.e., an abstraction given human attributes). Metonymy (B) is a technique in which a concept is identified by a readily recognizable word, while synecdoche (C) is the use of a part to represent a whole. Apostrophe (D) is a technique where one addresses a person who is either dead or absent. A dead metaphor (E) is a metaphor that, through constant use, has lost its original meaning and become a standard phrase in English.

 

112.
(A)

If the speaker rides his horse, he in turn is ridden by love (“a horse to Love”), which controls him as completely as he controls his horse. The relationship is not properly expressed by any of the other choices.

 

113.
(B)

Bigger asserts his identity (“I am”) only after committing murder and defines his identity through acts of violence. Unlike Max, who attempts to “explain” Bigger in terms of class struggle, Bigger attaches individual (not class) meaning to his acts. He does not see himself as a sociological phenomenon or an illustration of communist doctrine, but as someone who has been awakened to a sense of self only after exercising personal control of others, however violent.

 

114.
(D)

The passage is from the conclusion of
Native Son
. (A) deals with a man coming to terms with his homosexuality. Ralph Ellison's novel (B) is written in the first person. (C) is non-fiction. (E) ends with the protagonist hiding the fact that he has murdered someone.

 

115.
(D)

Browning's “Porphyria's Lover” is a dramatic monologue delivered by a deranged speaker who has strangled Porphyria, whose only crime has been acts of kindness to the speaker. The speaker in a dramatic monologue is a character other than the poet, eliminating (A), (B), and (E), and the focus of the work is some sort of secret about the speaker unwittingly revealed to the reader, which eliminates choice (C).

 

116.
(A)

The villanelle consists of five tercets and a quatrain, all on two rhymes; it also systematically repeats the first and third lines of the first tercet. Thomas' poem is surprising for its depth of emotion conveyed in such an elaborate, self-conscious stanzaic form.

 

117.
(E)

The author is describing a battle between red and black ants in his woodpile; he unflatteringly compares man's militaristic tendencies or behavior to the behavior of the ants. Although the author makes reference to Greek heroes, the participants in the fight are clearly not human [eliminate choices (A), (B), and (C)], and ants are perhaps a better reflection of man's behavior in society than dogs (D).

 

118.
(D)

Patroclus, Achilles' friend, was killed in the Trojan War while Achilles sulked. The latter then returns to battle to avenge Patroclus' death. Since Achilles fought the Trojans, choices (A) and (B) can be easily eliminated, as can (C) if one is aware that Paris slew Achilles.

 

119.
(D)

The passage is from
Walden
. The philosophical, introspective piece is not similar to the tone of Irving (B) or Hawthorne (C). The passage does not exhibit the economic wit of Franklin (A) or the fervor of Holmes (E).

 

120.
(B)

As the narrator says, dead letters sound like “dead men,” especially Bartleby, whose hopeless and ineffectual life has been a kind of death-in-life. The references to government in this passage are secondary, thus eliminating answers (A) and (C). The introspective tone of the piece eliminates answers (D) and (E) .

 

121.
(A)

Melville wrote
Benito Cereno as well as Bartleby
, the Scrivener. The narrator does have a voice that resembles some of Poe's characters (D), but the setting of the tale does not match.

 

122.
(A)

Lines 3 and 4 tell us that long before this action was completed, their hats swam above them (that is, the men drowned). Action (B), (C), or (D) would not result in their hats being in the water, and action (E) does not make sense in the context of the poem.

 

123.
(D)

The excerpt is from one of the best of the medieval popular ballads, “Sir Patrick Spens.” The language is not so far removed from our present-day tongue as Middle English (C); a broadside ballad (A) is more limited to the description of events; and elegies (E) usually focus on the death of one important figure.

 

124.
(C)

The fabliau was popular in France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and in England during the fourteenth century. Chaucer's “The Miller's Tale” is a fabliau. Parables (A), beast fables (B), allegories (D) and exempla (E) are variants of short, didactic tales.

 

125.
(C)

Naipaul grew up in Trinidad, but visited India, the country his family had left two generations earlier. E. M. Forster (A), Kipling (B), and Lessing (E) all wrote about the relationship of England to its colonies, with various degrees of sympathy to those colonies, but usually from the perspective of the English. Gordimer (D) focused on life in South Africa.

 

126.
(B)

The townspeople felt sorry for Miss Emily (the narrator consistently displays a compassionate understanding of her position in society), but their compassion is tempered by self-congratulation about being right that she had not received numerous marriage proposals (that is, they feel vindicated in their belief that “the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were”).

 

127.
(C)

The horse-whip is to drive away Miss Emily's suitors while Miss Emily stands behind him; she is thus both protected and dominated by her father. The reader can discern that the horsewhip is used on Emily's suitors because the next sentence concerns Emily's marital status [eliminate answer (A)]. Although the narrator does find Emily's family pretentious (B), the tableau does not suggest that. Answers (D) and (E) cannot be inferred from the information in the passage.

 

128.
(E)

The story is Faulkner's A
Rose for Emily
. This passage does not contain the sympathy for female characters that Porter (A) and Welty (C) usually display, nor does it contain the comically grotesque behavior evident in many of O'Connor's (D) works.

 

129.
(D)

This poem is Surrey's adaptation of a Petrarchan sonnet, to which it owes its subject matter. Unrequited love is a common subject in poems imitative of Petrarch.

 

130.
(B)

The narrator urges the building of a rainbow bridge that connects the two sides of man's being, his “prosaic” half and his “passionate” half, in order to achieve wholeness. If man consists only of “prose,” he becomes a monk and is “grey”; if he consists only of “passion,” he becomes a “beast,” an uncontrolled fire. When the two are connected, man achieves wholeness as opposed to complete self-denial or unbridled lust. The narrator associates “passion” with “beasts” and “fire,” while associating “prose” with “monks” and “grey.”

 

131.
(A)

The narrator says that Mr. Wilcox, while appearing reliable and brave on the outside, has never examined his inner life—his motives, beliefs, feelings. Having failed to engage in self-examination and self-criticism, his attitudes toward such matters as personal relations and sexual desire are muddled.

 

132.
(D)

Although the narrator argues for the wholeness that comes from connecting passion (including sexual desire) with prose, he also asserts that the absolute rejection of carnality is preferable to Mr. Wilcox's incomplete asceticism, which leads him to be ashamed of loving his wife. One can say that the narrator most admires the man who successfully builds a rainbow bridge and is thus complete, but one can also admire the Saints' complete rejection of carnality because it is based on absolute conviction, whereas Mr. Wilcox's view of sexual desire lacks conviction and prevents him from achieving fully satisfying personal relationships. The narrator believes that sexual desire is fully compatible with marital love, need not be guilt-ridden, and is an important part of spiritual wholeness.

 

133.
(D)

Aristophanes' play addressed actual conditions. War with Sparta threatened the fabric of Athenian life. Aristophanes' comic solution might have had as good a chance as any other to stop the war.

 

134.
(A)

Creon had only recently been crowned, so Antigone's refusal to abide by his decree forbidding the burial of one of her brothers constitutes a challenge, from his point of view, to his authority. He sees the conflict as one between duty to family and duty to state, with the latter taking priority. Antigone broadens the terms of the conflict, appealing to the laws of the gods, which require burial of the dead and which take priority over the laws of the state.

 

135.
(B)

Tartuffe
is one of the best-known works of the French neoclassical theater. It relies on satire, brilliant dialogue and characterization, and the ingenuity of its plot to achieve its effects.

 

136.
(E)

Euripedes' material is drawn from Greek mythology, but reshaped to underscore the contrast between Medea's powerful character and the relatively weak Jason. The play is especially remarkable for its characterization of Medea, whose acts repel and whose strength and sense of betrayal attract audiences.

 

137.
(E)

The speaker is Edmund in
King Lear.
Edmund says that men blame the sun, the moon, and the stars when things go wrong, when in fact man's disasters result from his own character and behavior. This tendency to claim that we cannot control what we are or what we do, to claim that we are what we are because of some external influence or necessity, is “the excellent foppery” (foolishness) of the world, designed to avoid responsibility for the consequences of one's own action.

 

138.
(C)

Edmund says that he would have been lecherous regardless of the constellations in ascendance at his birth. The term “whoremaster” in the same line is a clue as to the meaning of “goatish.”

 

139.
(D)

Edmund has no belief in the influence of the stars, sun, and moon on man's life and character. While statement (D) is probably inaccurate, Edmund is not making direct references to astrology in his speech, although he is using similar terms to describe Providence.

 

140.
(B)

Robert Browning's poem “Fra Lippo Lippi” is set at the beginning of the Renaissance in Italy, at a time when medieval attitudes were beginning to give way to a greater appreciation of earthly pleasures. Lippo Lippi was a Florentine painter and friar, who lived from 1406 to 1469; the Medici were a powerful banking family and virtual rulers of Florence.

 

141.
(E)

Lippo Lippi is caught in an alley where “sportive ladies” (i.e., prostitutes) leave their doors ajar (to welcome business). Statements (A), (B), and (E) are all supported in the passage. Choices (A) and (B) are based upon misinterpretations of Lippi's use of words, and answers (C) and (D) are based upon the literal interpretation of Lippi's description of this “place of business.”

 

142.
(A)

After the grip on his throat has been relaxed, Lippo Lippi says to the policeman who had held him by the throat that he was “best” (i.e., most thorough in carrying out his role). From the term “you go the rounds” (line 4), it can be determined that Lippi is speaking to a policeman of some kind, which eliminates choices (B), (D), and (E). (C) can be eliminated because Lippi makes specific reference to the officer in charge later.