GRE Literature in English (REA) (50 page)

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth;
whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul;
whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin
warehouses and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet;
and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of
me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me
from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically
knocking people's hats off—then I account it high time

 

 

The passage is completed with the words

1. “...pause and consider my condition.”
   
2. “...get to the sea as soon as I can.”
   
3. “...light out for the Territories.”
   
4. “...consider the words of Cato.”
   
5. “...return to the roots I was raised from.”
   

If the autumn would
End!! If the sweet season,
The late light in the tall trees would
End! If the fragrance, the odor of
Fallen apples, dust on the road,
Water somewhere near, the scent of
Water touching me; if this would end
I could endure the absence in the night,
The hands beyond the reach of hands, the name
Called out and never answered with my name:
The image seen but never seen with sight.
I could endure this all
If autumn ended and the cold light came.

An underlying contrast is presented between

1. images of light and of darkness.
   
2. images of coolness and of warmth.
   
3. expressions of life and of death.
   
4. sensations of contact and of loss.
   
5. impressions of fall and of winter.
   

The poet implies that

1. death would be preferable to his present state.
   
2. he would be more comfortable if he could not experience the everday sensations of life.
   
3. knowing more about the absent person's fate would alleviate his guilt.
   
4. only a return of his absent companion can bring happiness.
   
5. only the passage of time can heal his grief.
   

I met the Bishop on the road
And much said he and I.
“Those breasts are flat and fallen now,
Those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion,
Not in some foul sty.”

 

“Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,” I cried.
“My friends are gone, but that's a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied,
Learned in bodily lowliness
And in the heart's pride.”

“A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.”

 

The author indicates a belief in all of the following EXCEPT

1. the paradox that wisdom may reside with fools and beggars.
   
2. the presentation and resolution of opposites.
   
3. the lack of understanding by representatives of orthodoxy.
   
4. the recognition of the destructive potential of self-indulgence.
   
5. the necessity of familiarity with suffering.
   

Which is a parody of Albert Camus?

Which is a parody of Willa Cather?

1. By chance, blew up Perpigan Airport killing 3,000 people including my mother. It was a gloriously sunny day and if it hadn't been for the fact of stepping over the mutilated bodies the walk back to the boat would have been quite agreeable. I whistled to myself, thinking about the way I moved my tongue to vary the notes, and my benign disinterest stretched on to the limbless corpses that were strewn over the runway.
   

2. I took a pull from the bottle. The whiskey was good. It burned my mouth and felt good and warm going down my esophagus and into my stomach. From there it was digested, and went to my kidneys and my bladder and into my intestines, and was good.
   

3. I was just thinking around in my sad backyard, looking at those little drab careless starshaped clumps of crabgrass and beautiful chunks of some old bicycle crying out without words of the American Noon and half a newspaper with an ad about lotion for people with dry skins and dry souls,when my mother opened our frantic banging screen door and shouted, “Gogi Himmelman's here.”
   

4. I dropped off a Burlington train at Sweet Water one afternoon last fall to call on Marian Forrester. It was a lovely day. October stained the hills with quiet gold and russet, and scarlet as violent as the blood spilled not far away so many years ago along the banks of the Little Big Horn.
   

5. The room was hot. Glancing round, Guy sensed that all eight of his companions were strangers to each other as well as to himself. Why had he, and they, come? What was his Lordship's motive in inviting this heterogeneous assembly to Motley Hall today?
   

In which of the following excerpts is the “I” Thomas Hardy's Jude?

1. I have heard that in violent fevers, men, all ignorance, have talked in ancient tongues; and that when the mystery is probed, it turns out always that in their wholly forgotten childhood those ancient tongues had been really spoken in their hearing by some lofty scholars.
   

2. I mean from henceforth to lead a life of extreme seclusion; you must not be surprised, nor must you doubt my friendship, if my door is closed to you. You must suffer me to go my own dark way. I have brought on myself a punishment and a danger that I cannot name.
   

3. I am to blame—more than you think. I was quite aware that you did not suspect till within the last meeting or two what I was feeling about you. I admit that our meeting as strangers prevented a sense of relationship, and that it was a sort of subterfuge to avail I myself of you. But don't you think I deserve a little consideration for concealing my wrong, very wrong, sentiments, since I couldn't help having them?
   

4. I am a stranger, and have been a wanderer, sorely against my will. I have met with grievous mishaps by sea and land, and have been long held in bonds among the heathen-folk.
   

5. At first I'd a sor o' feeling come across me now and then, as if you might be changed into the gold again; for some times, turn my head which way I would, I seemed to see the gold, and I thought I should be glad if I could feel it.
   

Stick your patent name on a signboard
brother—all over—going west—young man
Tintex—Japalac—Certain-teed Overalls ads
and land sakes! under the new playbill ripped
in the guaranteed corner—see Bert Williams what?
Minstrels when you steal a chicken just
save me the wing, for if it isn't
Erie it ain't for miles around a
Mazda—and the telegraphic night coming on Thomas

 

The language of this poem is an example of

1. stream-of-consciousness.
   
2. free-form.
   
3. beat poetry.
   
4. free association.
   
5. the New York School.
   

Had (he) written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man's life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.

Consistent with the author's established attitude toward his subject, it is most likely that he will attribute the subject's failure to write an autobiography to

1. his uneventful life.
   
2. his inexperience in biographical forms.
   
3. his lack of diligence.
   
4. his belief that no one would be really interested.
   
5. his egocentricity.
   

The author of this passage is referring to

1. Benjamin Franklin.
   
2. Izaak Walton.
   
3. John Milton.
   
4. Samuel Johnson.
   
5. William Shakespeare.
   

Meanwhile the South, rising with dabbled wings,
A sable cloud athwart the welkin flings,
That swilled more liquor than it could contain,
And, like a drunkard, gives it up again.

The governing device in this excerpt is

1. a parallelism between the South and a bird-like creature.
   
2. a metaphor between a drunk cloud and a drunkard.
   
3. an allusion to revolution in nature.
   
4. a simile, in the last line.
   
5. a paradox in the inability of natural objects to become drunk.
   

This excerpt most closely resembles a famous passage in

1. Paradise Lost
   .
   
2. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”
   
3. “The Tiger.”
   
4. “The Rape of the Lock.”
   
5. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
   

Now she was absolutely alone. Her father had long been dead, and his armchair lay in the attic, covered with dust and lame of one leg. She got thinner and plainer, and when people met her in the street they did not look at her as they used to, and did not smile to her; evidently her best years were over and left behind, and now a new sort of life had begun for her, which did not bear thinking about. In the evening Olenka sat in the porch, and heard the band playing and the fireworks popping in the Tivoli, but now the sound stirred no response. She looked into her yard without interest, thought of nothing, wished for nothing, and afterwards, when night came on she went to bed and dreamed of her empty yard. She ate and drank as it were unwillingly.

And what was worst of all, she had no opinons of any sort. She saw the objects about her and understood what she saw, but could not form any opinion about them, and did not know what to talk about. And how awful it is not to have any opinions! One sees a bottle, for instance, or the rain, or a peasant driving in his cart, but what the bottle is for, or the rain, or the peasant, and what is the meaning of it, one can't say, and could not even for a thousand roubles. When she had Kukin, or Pustovalov, or the veterinary surgeon, Olenka could explain everything, and give her opinion about anything you like, but now there was the same emptiness in her brain and in her heart as there was in her yard outside. And it was as harsh and as bitter as wormwood in the mouth.

What is the author's attitude toward Olenka?

1. Sarcastic
   
2. Patronizing
   
3. Contemptuous
   
4. Sympathetic
   
5. Bitter
   

What does Chekhov imply about opinions?

1. There is no difference between intuitive understanding and the ability to express one's ideas.
   
2. Opinions are often nothing more than a thoughtless repetition of other people.
   
3. Social oppression is often a cause of alienation from life and from knowledge.
   
4. One must contemplate “meaningful” ideas in order to formulate any kind of valid opinion.
   
5. Contact with people often causes a loss of understanding of self.
   

For, while he fascinated many, there were not a few who distrusted him. He was very nearly blackballed at a West End club of which his birth and social position fully entitled him to become a member, and it was said that on one occasion, when he was brought by a friend into the smoking-room of the Churchill, the Duke of Berwick and another gentleman got up in a market manner and went out. Curious stories became current about him after he had passed his twenty-fifth year. It was rumoured that he had been seen brawling with foreign sailors in a low den in the distant parts of Whitechapel, and that he consorted with thieves and coiners and knew the mysteries of their trade. His extraordinary absences became notorious, and, when he used to reappear again in society, men would whisper to each other in corners, or pass him with a sneer, or look at him with cold searching eyes, as though they were determined to discover his secret.

The individual described above is being criticized by his contemporaries for

1. committing immoral acts.
   
2. not observing the behavioral codes of his birthright.
   
3. being a hypocrite.
   
4. engaging in social behavior with the underclasses.
   
5. attempting to engage with both classes at the same time.
   

In its fascination with “secret lives,” the author of this passage is reflecting

1. the emerging study of psychology at the beginning of the twentieth century.
   
2. the rebellion against Victorian restraints through an interest in “novel experiences” during the English Decadence of the 1890s.
   
3. the possibility of multiple personalities as explored in the 1930s and 1940s.
   
4. the study of the nature of evil popular in the early to mid-1800s.
   
5. the disillusionment with the upper classes as a result of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1800s.