“Living Like Weasels” Practice Test
For each question, choose the best answer from among the choices provided.
Part ONE: Comprehension
1. Which of the following is the best example of the Problem/Question/Claim of this thought journey?
a. “A weasel is wild. Who knows what he thinks?”
b. “I startled a weasel who startled me, and we exchanged a long glance.”
c. “I tell you I’ve been in that weasel’s brain for sixty seconds, and he was in mine.”
d. “What does a weasel think about? He won’t say. His journal is tracks in clay, a spray of feathers, mouse
blood and bone: uncollected, unconnected, loose leaf, and blown.”
2. Which of the following is the best example of the Realization/New Understanding of this thought journey?
a. “Brains are private places, muttering through unique and secret tapes—but the weasel and I both plugged
into another tape simultaneously, for a sweet and shocking time.”
b. “People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience—even of silence—by choice.”
c. “I could very calmly go wild. I could live two days in the den, curled, leaning on mouse fur, sniffing bird
bones, blinking, licking, breathing musk, my hair tangled in the roots of grass.”
d. “I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go,
to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.”
3. What is the dominant mode being used in paragraph 14?
a. Narrative
b. Expository
c. Definition
d. Compare/Contrast
Part TWO: Literature Study
4. Reread paragraphs 4 and 5. Which if the following best describes the dominant mode being used and its purpose?
a. Descriptive mode to illustrate the blending of wildness and suburban elements in the area around Hollins
Pond.
b. Process Mode to indicate how one gets from Dillard’s house to Hollins Pond.
c. Descriptive mode to illustrate how close Dillard lives to raw wilderness.
d. Process Mode to indicate the transition from the suburban environment to wilderness.
5. Reread paragraph 10. Which of the following best represents the author’s intention for blending modes?
a. The author blends description and definition modes to clarify what she means to truly “look” at something
or someone.
b. The author blends description and narrative modes to indicate to the reader what it felt like to be so close
to a wild animal.
c. The author blends description and compare/contrast modes to express the intensity of the “long glance”
shared by her and the weasel.
d. The author blends descriptive and argument modes to persuade the reader that humans do not look at each
other in meaningful ways.
“Living Like Weasels” Practice Test
For each question, choose the best answer from among the choices provided.
6. Reread the following passage from paragraph 15:
I missed my chance. I should have gone for the throat. I should have lunged for that streak of white under the
weasel's chin and held on, held on through mud and into the wild rose, held on for a dearer life. We could live
under the wild rose wild as weasels, mute and uncomprehending. I could very calmly go wild.
Which of the following best represents the meaning of the metaphor “I should have gone for the throat”?
a. Dillard is using symbolism to indicate that the weasel represents a threat to the human ability to “live by
choice.”
b. Dillard is using a metaphor to indicate that she should have taken more advantage of her opportunity to
learn from the weasel.
c. Dillard is using hyperbole to suggest that she shouldn’t have let the weasel leave.
d. Dillard is using foreshadowing to suggest that the weasel will die violently, as is its nature.
Part THREE: Word Study
7. Re-read paragraph 6. By referring to the log as “upholstered,” the writer is suggesting that
a. she is as comfortable sitting on the log in the woods as she would be sitting on a couch at home.
b. even at the quiet spot near the pond, there are still signs of human development.
c. comfortable benches have been placed around the pond so hikers and rest.
d. the log is covered in slime and no good for sitting.
8. Re-read paragraph 10. By saying that the “look” between the writer and the weasel “felled the forest,” the writer is
suggesting that
a. she could think of nothing else besides the weasel.
b. she felt like she had been rocked off balance, like a tree being cut down.
c. the look they shared was more powerful than the entire universe around them.
d. by interfering with the weasel, she was somehow destroying it’s natural habitat.
9. Re-read paragraph 2. In this context, the most accurate meaning of the word supposition is
a. realization
b. theory
c. estimate
d. finding
10. Re-read paragraph 11. In this context, the most accurate meaning of the word careening is
a. leaning heavily towards.
b. swaying dramatically at.
c. changing direction quickly.
d. tipping over suddenly.