British Literature Unit 1 Test 2021

1. Read the beginning of George Orwell’s reflective essay “Shooting an Elephant.” I was subdivisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way an anti-European feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress . . .

All this was perplexing and upsetting. For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically—and secretly, of course—I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. The underlined sentence represents a shift from the

• incident to reflection.

• incident to response.

• response to incident.

• reflection to response.

Read the excerpt from George Orwell’s essay “Shooting an Elephant.” They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hand I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I would have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East. What is the most likely reason that Orwell includes this reflection in the middle of narrating the event?

• to explain why he suddenly feels compelled to kill the elephant

• to defend his decision for accepting the position as a police officer

• to demonstrate how he later regretted his decision to kill the elephant

• to introduce a sense of suspense that will continue until he kills the elephant

Tags

CCSS.RI.11-12.10

CCSS.RI.8.10

CCSS.RI.9-10.10

CCSS.RL.11-12.10

CCSS.RL.9-10.10

Which sentence best describes the theme of the essay “Shooting an Elephant”?

• “As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed to do so.”

• “He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of the sahib.”

• “I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.”

• “At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to.”

• “I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom he destroys.”

Tags

CCSS.RI. 9-10.9

CCSS.RI.11-12.9

CCSS.RL.11-12.2

CCSS.RL.8.2

CCSS.RL.9-10.2

Why did George Orwell write 'Shooting an Elephant'?

• To describe life in Burma

• To expose the evils of imperialism

• To argue for wildlife conservation

• To show the evil side that all men and women have

Tags

CCSS.RI. 9-10.6

CCSS.RI.11-12.6

CCSS.RL.11-12.6

CCSS.RL.8.6

CCSS.RL.9-10.6

Read the following “Lindo Jong: Double Face” (an excerpt from The Joy Luck Club) and answer the questions that follow:

1 My daughter wanted to go to China for her second honeymoon, but now she

is afraid.

2 “What if I blend in so well they think I’m one of them?” Waverly asked me. “What

if they don’t let me come back to the United States?”

3 “When you go to China,” I told her, “you don’t even need to open your mouth.

They already know you are an outsider.”

4 “What are you talking about?” she asked. My daughter likes to speak back. She likes

to question what I say.

5 “Aii-ya,” I said. “Even if you put on their clothes, even if you take off your makeup

and hide your fancy jewelry, they know. They know just watching the way you walk, the

way you carry your face. They know you do not belong.”

6 My daughter did not look pleased when I told her this, that she didn’t look Chinese.

She had a sour American look on her face. Oh, maybe ten years ago, she would have

clapped her hands—hurray!—as if this were good news. But now she wants to be

Chinese, it is so fashionable. And I know it is too late. All those years I tried to teach

her! She followed my Chinese ways only until she learned how to walk out the door by

herself and go to school. So now the only Chinese words she can say are shsh, houche,

chr fan, and gwan deng shweijyau. How can she talk to people in China with these

words? Pee-pee, choo-choo train, eat, close light sleep.

7 How can she think she can blend in? Only her skin and her hair are Chinese.

Inside—she is all American-made.

8 It’s my fault she is this way. I wanted my children to have the best combination:

American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these two things

do not mix?

9 I taught her how American circumstances work. If you are born poor here, it’s no

lasting shame. You are first in line for a scholarship. If the roof crashes on your head,

no need to cry over this bad luck. You can sue anybody, make the landlord fi x it. You

do not have to sit like a Buddha under a tree letting pigeons drop their dirty business

on your head. You can buy an umbrella. Or go inside a Catholic church. In America,

nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you.

10 She learned these things, but I couldn’t teach her about Chinese character. How

to obey parents and listen to your mother’s mind. How not to show your own

thoughts, to put your feelings behind your face so you can take advantage of hidden

opportunities. Why easy things are not worth pursuing. How to know your own worth

and polish it, never flashing it around like a cheap ring. Why Chinese thinking is best.

11 No, this kind of thinking didn’t stick to her: She was too busy chewing gum,

blowing bubbles bigger than her cheeks. Only that kind of thinking stuck.

12 “Finish your coffee,” I told her yesterday. “Don’t throw your blessings away.”

13 “Don’t be so old-fashioned, Ma,” she told me, finishing her coffee down the sink.

“I’m my own person.”

14 And I think, How can she be her own person? When did I give her up?

Which lines from Amy Tan’s “Lindo Jong: Double Face” from The Joy Luck Club develop the idea of “the stranger in the village”?

• “‘When you go to China,’ I told her, ‘you don’t even need to open your mouth. They already know you’re an outsider.'"

• “But now she wants to be Chinese-it is so fashionable.”

• “If you are born poor here, it’s no lasting shame. You are first in line for a scholarship.”

• “In America, nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you.”

Tags

CCSS.RL.2.6

CCSS.RL.8.3

6. Which sentence best summarizes the narrator’s point of view about her daughter in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club?

• She views her daughter as selfishly unconcerned about being part of either the American or Chinese culture.

• She blames herself for her daughter’s failure to adopt a Chinese mindset and preference for the American culture

• She prides herself on her daughter’s rapid assimilation into American culture despite her desire to maintain Chinese customs.

• She considers it her job as a mother to ensure that her daughter appreciates both the American and the Chinese cultures.

Tags

CCSS.RL.11-12.3

CCSS.RL.6.6

CCSS.RL.7.6

CCSS.RL.8.6

CCSS.RL.9-10.3

6. Read the excerpt from Ralph Ellison’s prologue to Invisible Man. That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality. I am not complaining, nor am I protesting either. It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves. The author’s use of the underlined sentence fragment calls attention to

• the ignorance of those who see the narrator as invisible.

• the fact that the claim made by the narrator is unsubstantiated.

• a striking image of the prejudice encountered by the narrator.

• a shift in emphasis from general discrimination to personal experience.

Tags

CCSS.RL.2.6

CCSS.RL.8.3

Read the following from: The Americanizing of Pau Tsu from Mrs. Spring Fragrance by Sui Sin Far

Pau Tsu came with the spring, and Wan Lin Fo was one of the happiest and proudest of bridegrooms. The tiny bride was really very pretty—even to American eyes. In her peach and plum colored robes, her little arms and hands sparkling with jewels, and her shiny black head decorated with wonderful combs and pins, she appeared a bit of Eastern coloring amidst the Western lights and shades.

The Misses Raymond called upon her soon after arrival, and she smiled and looked pleased. She shyly presented each girl with a Chinese cup and saucer, also a couple of antique vases, covered with whimsical pictures, which Lin Fo tried his best to explain.

Wan Lin Fo was a true son of the Middle Kingdom and secretly pitied all those who were born far away from its influences; but there was much about the Americans that he admired. He also entertained sentiments of respect for a motto which hung in his room which bore the legend: “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”

“What is best for men is also best for women in this country,” he told Pau Tsu when she wept over his suggestion that she should take some lessons in English from a white woman.

“It may be best for a man who goes out in the street,” she sobbed, “to learn the new language, but of what importance is it to a woman who lives only within the house and her husband’s heart?”

It was seldom, however, that she protested against the wishes of Lin Fo. As her mother-in-law had said, she was a docile, happy little creature. Moreover, she loved her husband. But as the days and weeks went by the girl bride whose life hitherto had been spent in the quiet retirement of a Chinese home in the performance of filial duties, in embroidery work and lute playing, in sipping tea and chatting with gentle girl companions, felt very much bewildered by the novelty and stir of the new world into which she had been suddenly thrown. She could not understand, for all Lin Fo’s explanations, why it was required of her to learn the strangers’ language and adopt their ways. Her husband’s tongue was the same as her own. So also her little maid’s. It puzzled her to be always seeing this, and hearing that—sights and sounds which as yet had no meaning for her. Why also was it necessary to receive visitors nearly every evening?—visitors who could neither understand nor make themselves understood by her, for all their curious smiles and stares, which she bore like a second Vashti—or rather, Esther. And why, oh! Why should she be constrained to eat her food with clumsy, murderous looking American implements instead of with her own elegant and easily manipulated ivory chopsticks?

Adah Raymond, who at Lin Fo’s request was a frequent visitor to the house, could not fail to observe that Pau Tsu’s small face grew daily smaller and thinner, and that the smile with which she invariably greeted her, though sweet, was tinged with melancholy.

If Lin Fo happened to come in before Adah Raymond left he would engage the visitor in bright and animated conversation. They had so much of common interest to discuss, as is always the way with young people who have lived any length of time in a growing city of the West. But to Pau Tsu, pouring tea and dispensing sweetmeats, it was all Greek, or rather, all American.

“Look, my pearl, what I have brought you,” said Lin Fo one afternoon as he entered his wife’s apartments, followed by a messenger boy, who deposited in the middle of the room a large cardboard box.

With murmurs of wonder Pau Tsu drew near, and the messenger-boy having withdrawn Lin Fo cut the string, and drew forth a beautiful lace evening dress and dark blue walking costume, both made in American style.

For a moment there was silence in the room. Lin Fo looked at his wife in surprise. Her face was pale and her little body was trembling, while her hands were drawn up into her sleeves.

“Why, Pau Tsu!” he exclaimed, “I thought to make you glad.”

At these words the girl bent over the dress of filmy lace, and gathering the flounce in her hand smoothed it over her knee; then lifting a smiling face to her husband, replied: “Oh, you are too good, too kind to your unworthy Pau Tsu. My speech is slow, because I am overcome with happiness.”

Then with exclamations of delight and admiration she lifted the dresses out of the box and laid them carefully over the couch.

“I wish you to dress like an American woman when we go out or receive,” said her husband. “It is the proper thing in America to do as the Americans do. You will notice, light of my eyes, that it is only on New Year and our national holidays that I wear the costume of our country and attach a queue. The wife should follow the husband in all things.”

A ripple of laughter escaped Pau Tsu’s lips.

“When I wear that dress,” said she, touching the walking costume, “I will look like your friend, Miss Raymond.” She struck her hands together gleefully, but when her husband had gone to his business she bowed upon the floor and wept pitifully .Use the following sentence to help answer question 8.

Adah Raymond, who at Lin Fo’s request was a frequent visitor to the house, could not fail to observe that Pau Tsu’s small face grew daily smaller and thinner, and that the smile with which she invariably greeted her, though sweet, was tinged with melancholy - Which choice best explains what the word “melancholy” means in this excerpt?

• an unrequited love

• a lasting friendship

• a joyful greeting

• a quiet sadness

Tags

CCSS.RI.11-12.4

CCSS.RI.8.4

CCSS.RI.9-10.4

CCSS.RL.11-12.4

CCSS.RL.9-10.4

Which statement best describes what the act of giving Pau Tsu American dresses reveals about Lin Fo’s character?

• It shows that he only married Pau Tsu out of convenience.

• It illustrates that he has a strong bond with Pau Tsu.

• It demonstrates that he is unaware of his wife’s real feelings.

• It indicates that he is not comfortable in America.

Tags

CCSS.RL.11-12.3

CCSS.RL.7.3

CCSS.RL.8.3

CCSS.RL.9-10.3

Which detail from the passage best supports the answer to Question #9?

• For a moment there was silence in the room. Lin Fo looked at his wife in surprise. Her face was pale and her little body was trembling, while her hands were drawn up into her sleeves.

• Then lifting a smiling face to her husband, replied: “Oh, you are too good, too kind to your unworthy Pau Tsu. My speech is slow, because I am overcome with happiness.”

• Then with exclamations of delight and admiration she lifted the dresses out of the box and laid them carefully over the couch.

• You will notice, light of my eyes, that it is only on New Year and our national holidays that I wear the costume of our country and attach a queue.

Tags

CCSS.RI. 9-10.1

CCSS.RI.11-12.1

CCSS.RI.8.1

CCSS.RL.11-12.2

CCSS.RL.9-10.2