Read the excerpt from Antigone.

GUARD: Do I have your permission to speak now,
or do I just turn around and go away?

CREON: But I find your voice so irritating—
don’t you realize that?

GUARD: Where does it hurt? Is it in your ears or in your mind?

CREON: Why try to question where I feel my pain?

GUARD: The man who did it—he upsets your mind.
I offend your ears.

CREON: My, my, it’s clear to see
it’s natural for you to chatter on.

GUARD: Perhaps. But I never did this.

CREON: This and more—you sold your life for silver. '

GUARD: How strange and sad when the one who sorts this out gets it all wrong.

CREON: Well, enjoy your sophisticated views.
But if you don’t reveal to me who did this,
you’ll just confirm how much your treasonous gains
have made you suffer.

Exit CREON back into the palace. The doors close behind him

GUARD: Well, I hope he’s found.
That would be best. But whether caught or not—
and that’s something sheer chance will bring about—
you won’t see me coming here again.
This time, against all hope and expectation,
I’m still unhurt. I owe the gods great thanks.

Exit the GUARD away from the palace

Which line or lines from the excerpt best show that the guard has changed in his sense of obligation to the king?

Read the excerpt from Antigone.

CREON: You there—you snake lurking in my house,
sucking out my life’s blood so secretly.
I’d no idea I was nurturing two pests,
who aimed to rise against my throne. Come here.
Tell me this—do you admit you played your part
in this burial, or will you swear an oath
you had no knowledge of it?

ISMENE: I did it—I admit it, and she’ll back me up. So I bear the guilt as well.

ANTIGONE: No, no—justice will not allow you to say that.
You didn’t want to. I didn’t work with you.

ISMENE: But now you’re in trouble, I’m not ashamed
of suffering, too, as your companion.

ANTIGONE: Hades and the dead can say who did it—
I don’t love a friend whose love is only words.

ISMENE: You’re my sister. Don’t dishonour me.
Let me respect the dead and die with you.

ANTIGONE: Don’t try to share my death or make a claim
to actions which you did not do. I’ll die—
and that will be enough.

ISMENE: But if you’re gone, what is there in life for me to love?

ANTIGONE: Ask Creon. He’s the one you care about.

ISMENE: Why hurt me like this? It doesn’t help you.

ANTIGONE: If I am mocking you, it pains me, too.

ISMENE: Even now is there some way I can help?

ANTIGONE: Save yourself. I won’t envy your escape.

ISMENE: I feel so wretched leaving you to die.

ANTIGONE: But you chose life—it was my choice to die.

ISMENE: But not before I’d said those words just now.

ANTIGONE: Some people may approve of how you think—others will believe my judgment’s good.

ISMENE: But the mistake’s the same for both of us.

ANTIGONE: Be brave. You’re alive. But my spirit died some time ago so I might help the dead.

The dialogue between characters best helps to develop the play's

Read the Fifth Ode from Antigone.

Fifth Ode

CHORUS—Strophe 1: In her brass-bound room fair Danae as well
endured her separation from the heaven’s light,
a prisoner hidden in a chamber like a tomb,
although she, too, came from a noble line.
And she, my child, had in her care
the liquid streaming golden seed of Zeus.
But the power of fate is full of mystery.
There’s no evading it, no, not with wealth,
or war, or walls, or black sea-beaten ships.

Antistrophe 1: And the hot-tempered child of Dryas,
king of the Edonians, was put in prison,
closed up in the rocks by Dionysus,
for his angry mocking of the god.
There the dreadful flower of his rage
slowly withered, and he came to know
the god who in his frenzy he had mocked
with his own tongue. For he had tried
to hold in check women in that frenzy
inspired by the god, the Bacchanalian fire.
More than that—he’d made the Muses angry,
challenging the gods who love the flute.

Strophe 2: Beside the black rocks where the twin seas meet,
by Thracian Salmydessos at the Bosphorus,
close to the place where Ares dwells,
the war god witnessed the unholy wounds
which blinded the two sons of Phineus,
inflicted by his savage wife—the sightless holes
cried out for someone to avenge those blows
made with her sharpened comb in blood-stained hands.

Antistrophe 2: In their misery they wept, lamenting
their wretched suffering, sons of a mother
whose marriage had gone wrong. And yet,
she was an offspring of an ancient family,
the race of Erechtheus, raised far away,
in caves surrounded by her father’s winds,
Boreas’ child, a girl who raced with horses
across steep hills—child of the gods.
But she, too, my child, suffered much
from the immortal Fates.

Why does the Chorus discuss other Greek figures who met tragic ends, such as Danae and the two sons of Phineus?

Read the excerpt from the novel Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton.

Another day, on getting into my train at the Flats, I missed a volume of popular science—I think it was on some recent discoveries in bio-chemistry—which I had carried with me to read on the way. I thought no more about it till I got into the sleigh again that evening, and saw the book in Frome's hand. "I found it after you were gone," he said. I put the volume into my pocket and we dropped back into our usual silence; but as we began to crawl up the long hill from Corbury Flats to the Starkfield ridge I became aware in the dusk that he had turned his face to mine. "There are things in that book that I didn't know the first word about," he said. I wondered less at his words than at the queer note of resentment in his voice. He was evidently surprised and slightly aggrieved at his own ignorance. "Does that sort of thing interest you?" I asked. "It used to." “There are one or two rather new things in the book: there have been some big strides lately in that particular line of research." I waited a moment for an answer that did not come; then I said: "If you'd like to look the book through I'd be glad to leave it with you." He hesitated, and I had the impression that he felt himself about to yield to a stealing tide of inertia; then, "Thank you—I'll take it," he answered shortly.

Which quotation from this excerpt best supports the idea that Frome is curious?

Read the excerpt from A Sport of Nature by Nadine Gordimer.

I wish I knew what I did wrong—what I didn’t do for you, darling Hilly. But I never understood Ruthie—I adored her but I couldn’t … I just never … And now I’ve let my sister down again, I know it. It’s not your fault, I don’t blame you for anything, please believe that, I blame myself, you are like my own child, but sometimes you can’t do the right thing even for your own—you see that with lots of parents. There must be something I should have done, something I didn’t understand. But I just have to face the fact that maybe we’re not right for you …You know your Aunt Pauline and I don’t have much to do with each other—not because we don’t love each other, we do, we do!—and anyway we both still love our sister whatever anyone says about her—but maybe, well, we agree perhaps you’ll fit in better with Pauline’s family. Pauline doesn’t like Arthur, or our kind of friends or this house—you must have sensed it, even in the few times the whole family has been brought together. She thinks (a cough of laughter among the tears)—she says what you need is ‘a breath of air’, the kind we don’t breathe here. So you see how it is. Maybe you’ll have more to occupy your interests. Keep your mind busy. Pauline leads a more varied life—oh yes, I’m the first to admit it. My temperament is different. In that way, she and Ruthie were alike—adventurous. But of course with Pauline, I mean Pauline’s serious minded … Anyway—it’s out of the question you should be in the care of someone like Billie—

Which statement best reflects the theme of this excerpt?

Read this sentence from a student’s narrative essay.

She remembered her grandmother’s chicken casserole, mashed potatoes, and apple pie, how the butter melted down the sides of the potatoes, staining the tablecloth, and how every bite tasted better at Grandma’s house.

Which revision places a semicolon in the correct location(s)?

Read the excerpt from Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone. 

ISMENE: All right then, go, if that’s what you think right.
But remember this—even though your mission
makes no sense, your friends do truly love you.

Exit ANTIGONE and ISMENE. Enter the CHORUS of Theban elders

Based on the role of the Chorus in a Greek tragedy, what will the Chorus of Theban elders most likely say or do next?