GRE Literature in English (REA) (51 page)

Lullay, lullay, litel child, why weepestou so sore?
Needes most thou weepe, it was y-yarked thee yore
Evere to live in sorwe, and siken everemore,
As thine eldren dide er this, whil they alives wore.
Lullay, lullay, litel child, child, lullay, lullow,
Into uncouth world yeomen so art thou.

 

Beestes and thise fowles, the fishes in the flood,
and eech sheef alives, ymaked of boon and blood,
Whan they cometh to the world they dooth hemself some good—
Al but the wrecche brol that is of Adames blood.
Lullay, lullay, litel child, to care art thou bimet:
Thous noost nat this worldes wilde bifore thee is yset.

“Wrecche brol” in line 10 is best understood as meaning

1. unhappy brood.
   
2. miserable composure.
   
3. rich broth (of Adam's blood).
   
4. wretched brat.
   
5. wrenching misery.
   

Though the content of this stanza may seem inappropriate, it represents a

1. love lyric.
   
2. love complaint.
   
3. signature tune.
   
4. lullaby.
   
5. Heatho-Bardic Lay.
   

According to this selection, humans differ from animals in that

1. only humans can find Christian salvation.
   
2. only humans can truly experience high and low points in life.
   
3. only humans are predestined to suffer.
   
4. both animals and humans live in sorrow.
   
5. animals are biblically proscribed to serve humans.
   

“As thine eldren dide er this, whil they alives wore,” (line 4) might be paraphrased:

1. Your ancestors suffered this way too.
   
2. Suffering is the oldest thing in the world.
   
3. You will suffer more as you get older.
   
4. Parents suffer most because they witness their children's pain.
   
5. Your children will suffer just like you.
   

The implication is that the speaker is not surprised at the “litel child's” crying because

1. that is a natural reaction to pain, much as in the animal kingdom.
   
2. that is what the child's ancestors have had to do since the days of Adam.
   
3. that is the condition of humankind because of Original Sin.
   
4. children are trusting by nature, and do not understand the vagaries of life.
   
5. all Christians are “pilgrims” in an “uncouth world.”
   

When the friend shows his inmost heart to his friend... then deem me a monster, for the symbol beneath which I have lived and die! I look around me, and lo! on every visage a Black Veil.

 

The “black veil” is a metaphor for

1. the inevitability of death.
   
2. the “veil” that separates one person from another.
   
3. the need to separate oneself from the sin of one's neighbors.
   
4. the evil that lurked in the speaker's heart.
   
5. the stained soul from Original Sin.
   

When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west,
And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb
Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time.

The crisis which this first stanza of a long poem addresses is

1. the Civil War.
   
2. the First World War.
   
3. the War of 1812.
   
4. the Annexation of Texas.
   
5. the Barbary Piracy.
   

The stanza is governed by

1. awkward use of metaphor.
   
2. personification of geography.
   
3. didacticism.
   
4. biblical reference.
   
5. grammatical parallelism.
   

(Her) career has covered less ground, for she began far above Main Street. What she tried to do at the start was to imitate the superficial sophistication of Edith Wharton and Henry James—a deceptive thing, apparently realistic in essence, but actually as conventional as table manners or the professional buffooneries of a fashionable rector. She had extraordinary skill as a writer, and so her imitation was scarcely to be distinguished from the original, but in the course of time she began to be aware of its hollowness. Then she turned to first-hand representation—to pictures of the people she actually knew.

The author of this passage states

1. that the writer was satisfied with imitation early in her career.
   
2. that the writer was inept at imitating the writing styles of others.
   
3. that the writer switched from imitation to first-hand representation.
   
4. that all of her attempts at imitation were really first-hand representation.
   
5. that she was too daring early in her career.
   

This quote refers to

1. Edith Wharton.
   
2. Gertrude Stein.
   
3. Virginia Woolf.
   
4. Willa Cather.
   
5. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.
   

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

 

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

 

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

 

Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

The poem may be classified as

1. a prolonged metaphor.
   
2. a Frottola.
   
3. an extended simile.
   
4. a lengthened parallelism.
   
5. an allegory.
   

To the poet, “Death in Life” could best be described as a result of

1. having lived too long.
   
2. having regretted too much.
   
3. having most of life's intense emotions in the past.
   
4. not being capable of experiencing intense emotion.
   
5. enveloping loneliness.
   

The poet's philosophical response to life is similar to

1. Poe's.
   
2. Swinburne's.
   
3. Rossetti's.
   
4. Coleridge's.
   
5. Wordsworth's.
   

The poem is written in

1. mimetic verse.
   
2. elegiac verse.
   
3. accentual verse.
   
4. free verse.
   
5. blank verse.
   

O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
But not possess'd it, and, though I am sold,
Not yet enjoy'd: so tedious is this day
As in the night before some festival
To an impatient child that hath new robes 5
And may not wear them.

“Mansion of a love” is a metaphor for

1. an emotional commitment.
   
2. an engagement.
   
3. a marriage.
   
4. an extramarital affair.
   
5. a reawakening of love.
   

In lines 2 and 3, the speaker

1. compares herself to a slave.
   
2. refers to herself as a woman with a fine dowry.
   
3. says she has not enjoyed the relationship thus far.
   
4. compares herself to a commodity that can bring pleasure.
   
5. refers to herself as an emotion waiting.
   

FAUSTUS

MEPHISTOPHELES

FAUSTUS

Faustus implies that

1. affection blinds a person to pain.
   
2. affection cannot guard against pain in the afterlife.
   
3. he does not believe there is an afterlife at all.
   
4. he does not believe that the afterlife is painful.
   
5. selling one's soul to the Devil is the most painful thing a person can do.
   

The caged bird sings
With a fearful trill
Of things unknown
But longed for still
And his tune is heard
On the distant hill
For the caged bird
Sings of freedom.

 

The above excerpt is from Maya Angelou's
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
. The caged bird most likely represents what?

1. Psychological imprisonment
   
2. Literal imprisonment
   
3. A bird in a cage
   
4. Social and racial oppression
   
5. (A), (B), and (D)
   

In
Atlas Shrugged
, I explain the philosophical, psychological and moral meaning of the men who value their own lives and of the men who don't. I show that the first are Prime Movers of mankind and that the second are metaphysical killers, working for an opportunity to become social ones.

 

In the above excerpt from the forward to her novel
We The Living
, Ayn Rand points to a persistent theme in her work that can best be described as

1. altruism.
   
2. egoism.
   
3. epicurianism.
   
4. decadence.
   
5. naturalism.
   

About that Purgatory of mine in New York City: I was in it for fifteen years. I disappeared from Germany at the end of the Second World War. I reappeared, unrecognized, in Greenwich Village. There I rented a depressing attic apartment with rats squeaking and scrabbing in the walls. I continued to inhabit that attic until a month ago, when I was brought to Israel for trial.

There was a pleasant thing about my ratty attic: the back window of it overlooked a little private park, a little Eden formed by joined back yards. That Park, that Eden, was walled off from the streets by houses on all sides.

It was big enough for children to play hide-and-seek in.

I often heard a cry from that little Eden, a child's cry that never failed to make me stop and listen. It was the sweetly mournful cry that meant a game of hide-and-seek was over, that those still hiding were to come out of hiding and that it was time to go home.

The cry was this: “Olly-olly-ox-in-free.”

And I, hiding from many people who might want to hurt or kill me, often longed for someone to give that cry for me, to end my endless game of hide and seek with a sweet and mournful “Olly-olly-ox-in-free.”

The speaker in the passage is most likely a former

1. Nazi.
   
2. U. S. foot soldier.
   
3. Prisoner of war.
   
4. Marine.
   
5. Policeman.
   

The figures in the garden, “that Eden,” represent what kind of longing for the speaker?

1. Material ambition
   
2. Sexual desire
   
3. A return to a state of innocence
   
4. Legal vindication
   
5. A redress of grievances
   

The prose style of the passage would best be characterized as

1. ornamental.
   
2. plain.
   
3. experimental.
   
4. epic.
   
5. derivative.
   

At that moment when the world around him melted away, when he stood alone like a star in the heavens, he was overwhelmed by a feeling of icy despair, but he was more firmly himself than ever. That was the last shudder of his awakening, the last pains of birth. Immediately he moved on again, and began to walk quickly and impatiently, no longer homewards, no longer to his father, no longer looking backwards.

 

Which of the choices below best describes the theme of this passage from Herman Hesse's novel
Siddhartha
?

1. The individual's struggle for autonomy
   
2. The search for meaning in community
   
3. The pain of childbirth
   
4. The quest to fight evil
   
5. The fear of the unknown
   

The two young Guardians salute us, raising three fingers to the rims of their berets. Such tokens are accorded to us. They are supposed to show respect, because of the nature of our service.

We produce our passes, from the zippered pockets in our wide sleeves, and they are inspected and stamped. One man goes into the righthand pillbox, to punch our numbers into the Compuchek.

 

Based on this passage, what best describes the setting of Margaret Atwood's
The Handmaid's Tale
?

1. A court setting in the distant past
   
2. A futuristic, totalitarian-militaristic society
   
3. World War II
   
4. The American Civil War
   
5. The present