But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense
crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long
distance on either side. I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes-faces all .
Happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. 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 hands I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I
realized that I should 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. Here was I, the white man with his gun,
standing in front of the unarmed native crowd--seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in
reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I
perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he
destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib.
For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the "natives," and
so in every crisis he has got to do what the "natives" expect of him. He wears a mask, and his
face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I
sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his
own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people
marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing--no, that was
impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man's life in the East,
was one long struggle not to be laughed at.
But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his
knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it
would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had
never shot an elephant and never wanted to. Besides, there was the beast's owner to be considered.
Alive, the elephant was worth
at least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds,
possibly. But I had got to act quickly. I turned to some experienced-looking Burmans who had
been there when we arrived, and asked them how the elephant had been behaving. They all
said the same thing: he took no notice of you if you left him alone, but he might charge if you
went too close to him.
It was perfectly clear to me what I ought to do. I ought to walk up to within, say, twenty-five
yards of the elephant and test his behavior. If he charged, I could shoot; if he took no notice of
me, it would be safe to leave him until the mahout came back. But also I knew that I was going
to do no such thing. I was a poor shot with a rifle and the ground was soft mud into which one
would sink at every step. If the elephant charged and I missed him, I should have about as
much chance as a toad under a steam-roller (fig lang. - maybe put a bunch of adjectives and ask what he
was feeling when he was going to shoot the elephant). But even then I was not thinking particularly of
my
own skin, only of the watchful yellow faces behind. For at that moment, with the crowd watching
me, I was not afraid in the ordinary sense, as I would have been if I had been alone. A white
man mustn't be frightened in front of "natives"; and so, in general, he isn't frightened. The sole
thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me
pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill. And if
that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh. That would never do.
1. The Main idea or purpose of this selection is.
a) Physical trauma of shooting an elephant.
b) Life in the east
c) Freedom
d) Peer Pressure
e) Emotional conflict of Orwell while serving in india
2. The speaker accomplishes all the following except:
a) Mans greatest struggle in the east
b) a good tone to ease and share speakers memories
c) answer to why empiricism is bad
d) emotional description of speakers thoughts
e) Why the speaker was so compelled to shooting the elephant
3. Orwell would most likely agree with which of the following statement?
a) Never shoot an elephant
b) Freedom is ultimately gained by colonization
c) Any man who tries to control someone or something else is only losing his own freedom
d) Life in the east is easy
e) Empiricism is good
4. The tone of the passage is?
a) Belligerent
b) Laudatory
c) Ghoulish
d) Cruel
e) Informative
5. In Orwells context what does Garish mean in line 3?
a) gaudy
b) drab
c) forlorn
d) perpetual
e) melancholy
6. In line 11 the quote: “that I first grasped the hollowness,
the futility of the white man's dominion in the East”, refers to…
a) Orwells realization of the fruitlessness of empiricism
b) Orwells hate for the brumans
c) Orwells realization of his loss of freedom
d) Orwells situation of having to shoot an elephant
e) orwells realization of what britain was doing to the natives.
7. In lines 40-41 orwell uses figurative language to convey what message.
a) his Physical stress
b) his playful attitude
c) his poetic skill
d) his responsibilities
e) use imagery to help describe the situation currently taking place.
8. According to orwell what was the long struggle every white man faced in the east?
a) not having enough money
b) not getting steam rolled by an elephant
c) protect themselves from the natives
d) free themselves from the natives pressure
e) not get laughed at
Valley Forge by Thomas Buchanan Read
O’ER town and cottage, vale and height,
Down came the Winter, fierce and white,
And shuddering wildly, as distraught
At horrors his own hand had wrought.
His child, the young Year, newly born,
5
Cheerless, cowering, and affrighted,
Wailed with a shivering voice forlorn,
As on a frozen heath benighted.
In vain the hearths were set aglow,
In vain the evening lamps were lighted,
10
To cheer the dreary realm of snow:
Old Winter’s brow would not be smoothed,
Nor the young Year’s wailing soothed.
How sad the wretch at morn or eve
Compelled his starving home to leave,
15
Who, plunged breast-deep from drift to drift,
Toils slowly on from rift to rift,
Still hearing in his aching ear
The cry his fancy whispers near,
Of little ones who weep for bread
Within an ill-provided shed!
20
But wilder, fiercer, sadder still,
Freezing the tear it caused to start,
Was the inevitable chill
Which pierced a nation’s agued heart,—
25
A nation with its naked breast
Against the frozen barriers prest,
Heaving its tedious way and slow
Through shifting gulfs and drifts of woe,
Where every blast that whistled by
30
Was bitter with its children’s cry.
Such was the winter’s awful sight
For many a dreary day and night,
What time our country’s hope forlorn,
Of every needed comfort shorn,
35
Lay housed within a hurried tent,
Where every keen blast found a rent,
And oft the snow was seen to sift
Along the floor its piling drift,
Or, mocking the scant blankets’ fold,
40
Across the night-couch frequent rolled;
Where every path by a soldier beat,
Or every track where a sentinel stood,
Still held the print of naked feet,
And oft the crimson stains of blood;
45
Where Famine held her spectral court,
And joined by all her fierce allies:
She ever loved a camp or fort
Beleaguered by the wintry skies,—
But chiefly when Disease is by,
50
To sink the frame and dim the eye,
Until, with seeking forehead bent,
In martial garments cold and damp,
Pale Death patrols from tent to tent,
To count the charnels of the camp.
Such was the winter that prevailed
Within the crowded, frozen gorge;
Such were the horrors that assailed
The patriot band at Valley Forge.
55
It was a midnight storm of woes
60
To clear the sky for Freedom’s morn;
And such must ever be the throes
The hour when Liberty is born.
1.) What would the attitude of the American soldiers have been at Valley Forge?
A.) Hopeful
B.) Despairing
C.) Rebellious
D.) Irate
E.) Honored
2.) From what point-of-view is the poem written in
A.) First-Person
B.) 3rd person Objective
C.) 3rd person Subjective
D.) 2nd person Objective
E.) 2nd person Subjective
3.) What is the tone being used throughout the poem?
A.) Disgruntled
B.) Solemn
C.) Morose
D.) Concerned
E.) Apathetic
4.) In line 29-31 it is referring to
A.) The children in the camps of Valley Forge
B.) The way the wind resembled the noise of children crying
C.) The groans of the men of the camp
D.) The bitter smoked pork that the soldiers had to eat
E.) the blasts of cannon fire making a whistling noise
5.) The figure of speech used in lines 1-5 is
A.) Metaphor
B.) Euphemism
C.) Synecdoche
D.) Personification
E.) Paronomasia
6.) In Line 55 what does the word Charnels most likely mean?
A.) Rations
B.) Troops
C.) Dead
D.) Rifles
E.) Prisoners
7.) All these qualities describe the passage except
A.) Informative
B.) Opinionated
C.) Factual
D.) Saddening
E.) Historical
Marie Winn TV Addiction
The word “addiction” is often used loosely and wryly in conversation. People will refer to themselves as
“mystery book addicts” or “cookie addicts.” E.B. White writes of his annual surge of interest in
gardening: “We are hooked and are making an attempt to kick the habit.” Yet nobody really believes
that reading mysteries or ordering seeds by catalogue is serious enough to be compared with addictions
to heroin or alcohol. The word “addiction” is here used jokingly to denote a tendency to overindulge in
some pleasurable activity.
People often refer to being “hooked on TV.” Does this, too, fall into the lighthearted category of
cookie eating and other pleasures that people pursue with usual intensity, or is there a kind of television
viewing that falls into the more serious category of destructive addiction?
When we think about addiction to drugs or alcohol, we frequently focus on negative aspects,
ignoring the pleasures that accompany drinking or drug-taking. And yet the essence of any serious
addiction is a pursuit of pleasure, a search for a “high” that normal life does not supply. It is only the
inability to function without the addictive substance that is dismaying, the dependence of the organism
upon a certain experience and an increasing inability to function normally without it. Thus a person will
take two or three drinks at the end of the day not merely for the pleasure drinking provides, but also
because he “doesn’t feel normal” without them.
An addict does not merely pursue a pleasurable experience and need to experience it in order to
function normally. He needs to repeat it again and again. Something about that particular experience
makes life without it less than complete. Other potentially pleasurable experiences are no longer
possible, for under the spell of the addictive experience, his life is peculiarly distorted. The addict craves
an experience and yet is never satisfied. The organism may be temporarily sated, but soon it begins to
crave again.
Finally a serious addiction is distinguished from a harmless pursuit of pleasure by its distinctly
destructive elements. A heroin addict, for instance, leads a damaged life: his increasing need for heroin
in increasing doses prevents him from working, from maintaining relationships, from developing in
human ways. Similarly an alcoholic’s life is narrowed and dehumanized by his dependence on alcohol.
Let us consider television viewing in the light of the conditions that define serious addictions.
Not unlike drugs or alcohol, the television experiences allows the participant to blot out the real
world and enter into a pleasurable and passive mental state. The worries and anxieties of reality are an
effectively deferred by becoming absorbed in a television program as by going on a “trip” induced by
drugs or alcohol. And just as alcoholics are only inchoately aware of their addiction, feeling that they
control their drinking more than they really do(“I can cut it out any time I want – I just like to have three
or four drinks before dinner”), people similarly overestimate their control over television watching.
Even as they put off other activities to spend hour after hour watching television, they feel they could
easily resume living in a different, less passive style. But somehow or other while the television set is
present in their homes, the click doesn’t sound. With television pleasures available, those other
experiences seem less attractive, more difficult somehow.
A heavy viewer (a college English instructor) observes:
“I find television almost irresistible. When the set is on, I cannot ignore it. I can't turn it off. I feel
sapped, will-less, enervated. As I reach out to turn off the set, the strength goes out of my arms. So I sit
there for hours and hours.”
The self-confessed television addict often feels he “ought” to do other things- but the fact that he
doesn’t read and doesn’t plant his garden or sew or crochet or play games or have conversations means
that those activities are no longer as desirable as television viewing. In a way a heavy viewer’s life is as
imbalanced by his television “habit” as a drug addict’s or an alcoholic’s. He is living in a holding pattern,
as it were, passing up the activities that lead to growth or development or a sense of accomplishment.
This is one reason people talk about their television viewing so ruefully, so apologetically. They are
aware that it is an unproductive experience, that almost any other endeavor is more worthwhile by any
human measure.
Finally it is the adverse effect of television viewing on the lives of so many people that defines it as
a serious addiction. The television habit distorts the sense of time. It renders other experiences vague
and curiously unreal while taking on a greater reality for itself. It weakens relationships by reducing and
sometimes eliminating normal opportunities for talking, for communicating.
And yet television does not satisfy, else why would the viewer continue to watch hour after hour,
day after day? “The measure of health.” Writes Lawrence Kubie, “is flexibility… and especially the
freedom to cease when sated.” But the television viewer can never be sated with his television
experiences – they do not provide the time that satiation requires – and thus he finds that he cannot
stop watching.
1. What style is the essay written as?
a) Persuasive
b) informative
c) instructional
d) analytical
e) Commanding
2. In paragraph one what does “wryly” mean?
a) With ironic humor.
b) relaxed
c) exasperating
d) vex
e) with stress
3. What is the main idea or thesis of this essay?
a) To inform readers of the two types of addictions
b) to suggest that watching tv is as bad as doing drugs
c) to spread awareness of the growing ATV addiction problem
d) to tell readers that TV is good
e) to give example of both sides of tv addiction loose and serious and to let the readers decide.
4. What does the word “enervated” mean?
a) invigorated
b) to deprive of force
c) galvanize
d) sluggish
e) languorous
5. Is the writer trying to get people to stop watching television?
A.) Yes, she is stating why people should refrain from watching television because it is addictive
B.) Yes, this is indirectly showing the reader why one should not watch television
C.) No, at no point does she suggest outright that watching television is bad
D.) No, she is saying that television is good for giving people safe escape from the real world
E.) Up for debate
6. Why does the writer compare television to drugs and alcohol?
A.) Television isn't hard to acquire
B.) It is highly addictive to people
C.) It is potentially dangerous to people
D.) It can lead to the gradual downfall of ordinary people
E.) It takes low effort to get
7. What tone defines the majority of this passage?
A.) Concerned
B.) Demanding
C.) Panicked
D.) Despairing
E.) Skeptical
8. What would the author of the passage most likely agree the television is?
A.) A government tool to keep its citizens in bad shape and unable to rebel
B.) A simple piece of technology that traps the unsuspecting
C.) There are quality programs one can watch on Television
D.) Spongebob will be funny at any age
E.) Once hooked to an addiction it is possible to break the need for it easily