Home
II. Reading Comprehension (16 points in all, 4 for each)
Read the quoted parts carefully and answer the questions in English. Write your answers in the corresponding space on the answer sheet.
41. Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil?
Questions:
A. Identify the poet and the poem from which the lines are taken.
The author is Shelley and the poem is A Song : Men of England.
B. What do you know about the poem’ s writing background?
This poem was written in 1819, the year of the "Peterloo Massacre".
C. What do you think the poet intends to say in the poem?
It is not only a war cry calling upon all working people to rise up against their political oppressors,
but an address to them pointing out the intolerable injustice of economic exploitation.
42. Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half- deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one -night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster- shells:
(The lines above are taken from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S Eliot. )
Questions:
A. What does the poem present?
It presents the meditation of an aging young man over the business of proposing marriage.
B. What form is the poem composed in?
dramatic monologue.
C. What does the poem suggest?
The poem is in a form of dramatic monologue, suggesting an ironic contrast between a pretended
"Love Song" and a confession of the speaker's incapability of facing up to love and to life in a sterile
upper-class world.
43. This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me -
The simple News that Nature told -
With tender Majesty
Questions:
A. Identify the poet.
Emily Dickinson
B. What idea does the poem express?
Entitled thus, the poem expresses Dickinson's anxiety about her communication with the outside
world.
C. Why does the poet use dashes and capital letters in the poem?
In her poetry there is a particular stress pattern, in which dashes are used as a musical device to
create cadence and capital letters as a means of emphasis.
44. There was music from my neighbor’ s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men
and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high
tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motorboats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over
cataracts of foam. On week - ends his Rolls - Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from
the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a
brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled
all day with mops and scrubbing- brushes and hammers and garden - shears, repairing the ravages of
the night before.
(The passage above is taken from The Great Gatsby )
Questions:
A. What time does the story reflect?
the Jazz Age
B. What does the novel evoke?
A masterpiece in American literature, the Great Gatsby evokes a haunting mood of a glamorous, wild
time that seemingly will never come again.
C. What does Gatsby’ s failure magnify?
Gatsby's failure magnifies to a great extent the end of the American Dream.
Read the quoted parts carefully and answer the questions in English. Write your answers in the corresponding space on the answer sheet.
41. Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil?
Questions:
A. Identify the poet and the poem from which the lines are taken.
The author is Shelley and the poem is A Song : Men of England.
B. What do you know about the poem’ s writing background?
This poem was written in 1819, the year of the "Peterloo Massacre".
C. What do you think the poet intends to say in the poem?
It is not only a war cry calling upon all working people to rise up against their political oppressors,
but an address to them pointing out the intolerable injustice of economic exploitation.
42. Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half- deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one -night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster- shells:
(The lines above are taken from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S Eliot. )
Questions:
A. What does the poem present?
It presents the meditation of an aging young man over the business of proposing marriage.
B. What form is the poem composed in?
dramatic monologue.
C. What does the poem suggest?
The poem is in a form of dramatic monologue, suggesting an ironic contrast between a pretended
"Love Song" and a confession of the speaker's incapability of facing up to love and to life in a sterile
upper-class world.
43. This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me -
The simple News that Nature told -
With tender Majesty
Questions:
A. Identify the poet.
Emily Dickinson
B. What idea does the poem express?
Entitled thus, the poem expresses Dickinson's anxiety about her communication with the outside
world.
C. Why does the poet use dashes and capital letters in the poem?
In her poetry there is a particular stress pattern, in which dashes are used as a musical device to
create cadence and capital letters as a means of emphasis.
44. There was music from my neighbor’ s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men
and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high
tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motorboats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over
cataracts of foam. On week - ends his Rolls - Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from
the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a
brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled
all day with mops and scrubbing- brushes and hammers and garden - shears, repairing the ravages of
the night before.
(The passage above is taken from The Great Gatsby )
Questions:
A. What time does the story reflect?
the Jazz Age
B. What does the novel evoke?
A masterpiece in American literature, the Great Gatsby evokes a haunting mood of a glamorous, wild
time that seemingly will never come again.
C. What does Gatsby’ s failure magnify?
Gatsby's failure magnifies to a great extent the end of the American Dream.