Brute Neighbors

Brute Neighbors

Multiple Choice

Read the excerpt from paragraph 3.

It was a pretty game, played on the smooth surface of the pond, a man against a loon. Suddenly your adversary’s checker disappears beneath the board, and the problem is to place yours nearest to where his will appear again. Sometimes he would come up unexpectedly on the opposite side of me, having apparently passed directly under the boat.

How does the author use rhetoric to advance his point of view of the loon?

• by using a metaphor to express enjoyment in his futile attempts to outsmart the loon

• by using a simile to express frustration that he cannot get close to the loon

• by using imagery to express confusion as to why the loon is darting around the boat

• by using symbolism to express curiosity about why the loon is so agitated

Multiple Choice

4It is said that loons have been caught in the New York lakes eighty feet beneath the surface, with hooks set for trout—though Walden is deeper than that. How surprised must the fishes be to see this ungainly visitor from another sphere speeding his way amid their schools! Yet he appeared to know his course as surely under water as on the surface, and swam much faster there. Once or twice I saw a ripple where he approached the surface, just put his head out to reconnoiter, and instantly dived again. I found that it was as well for me to rest on my oars and wait his reappearing as to endeavor to calculate where he would rise; for again and again, when I was straining my eyes over the surface one way, I would suddenly be startled by his unearthly laugh behind me.

6His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like that of a water-fowl; but occasionally, when he had balked me most successfully and come up a long way off, he uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like that of a wolf than any bird; as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground and deliberately howls. This was his looning, perhaps the wildest sound that is ever heard here, making the woods ring far and wide. I concluded that he laughed in derision of my efforts, confident of his own resources.

In paragraphs 4 and 6, what effect do the phrases “unearthly laugh” and “demoniac laughter” have on the meaning of the text?

• They create a mocking and negative tone to describe the loon.

• They develop the idea that the loon is taunting the author.

• They direct focus to the loon and its struggle to survive.

• They relay technical information about the loon in an entertaining way.

Multiple Choice

8For hours, in fall days, I watched the loons cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman; tricks which they will have less need to practice in Louisiana bayous. When compelled to rise they would sometimes circle round and round and over the pond at a considerable height, from which they could easily see to other ponds and the river, like black motes in the sky; and, when I thought they had gone off thither long since, they would settle down by a slanting flight of a quarter of a mile on to a distant part which was left free; but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.

• It provides important information about the migration patterns of loons.

• It answers the question as to why loons keep to the middle of Walden Pond.

• It reinforces the idea that loons are equally comfortable both in the water and in the air.

• It highlights a similarity between the author and loons in their shared love of Walden Pond.