English 11 – Study Guide

3rd Quarter Test: March 2015

From “Self-Reliance” and “Nature”:

  • What does Emerson say is the only wrong in “Self-Reliance”?
  • What tenet of transcendentalism does the following quotation from “Nature” best demonstrate? “The waving of the boughs in the storm is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.”
  • What does Emerson mean by the following aphorism in “Nature”? “Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.”
  • Vocabulary:
  • Aphorism
  • Nonconformist
  • Importune
  • Exhilaration
  • Decorum
  • Occult

From “The Devil and Tom Walker”:

  • What convinces Tom that what the devil has told him in the swamp is true?
  • The narrator describes the devil’s face as “begrimed with soot, as if he had been accustomed to toil among fires and forges.” Irving most likely chose this imagery because?
  • Reread the statement that Tom makes after he finds his wife’s apron. What does Tom’s comment reveal about him? “ ‘Let us get hold of that property,’ said he consolingly to himself,

‘and we will endeavor to do without the woman.’”

  • Who is Irving creating a satire of in the following passage from the end of the story? “The good people of Boston shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders, but had been so much accustomed to witches and goblins and tricks of the devil, in all kinds of shapes, from the first settlement of the colony, that they were not so much horror-struck as might have been expected.”
  • Vocabulary:
  • Persecution
  • Usurer
  • Speculating
  • Censurer
  • Explain one way that Irving shows Tom’s pride and stinginess after gaining his wealth.

From “Masque of the Red Death”:

  • Why does Prince Prospero invite a thousand people to his large mansion?
  • What direction/instruction does Prospero give about the costumes of the party?
  • Choose the paraphrase that best clarifies the meaning of the following passage. “And thus, too, it happened, perhaps, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single individual before.”
  • Which allegory helps the author reveal the moral lesson that neither the poor nor the wealthy can escape death?
  • Illness stands for moral weakness
  • The strange mummer stands for death
  • Prospero stands for hope
  • The clock stands for the passage of time
  • What happens at the end of the story?
  • Vocabulary:
  • Allegory
  • Impede
  • Cessation
  • Disapprobation
  • Propriety
  • Short Answer – What is one possible meaning of the title of the short story “The Masque of the Red Death”?

From “Minister’s Black Veil”:

  • How do the people first react when they first see Mr. Hooper’s black veil?
  • Why does Mr. Hooper leave the wedding party early?
  • Read Elizabeth’s comment about people in her community. What characteristic of Puritan culture do these lines most likely suggest? -- “Beloved and respected as you are, there may be whispers that you hide your face under the consciousness of secretsin.”
  • Read the following quotation. What meaning does it most likely reveal about the symbol of the black veil? -- “All through life that piece of crepe had hung between him and the world: it had separated him from cheerful brotherhood and woman’s love, and kept him in that saddest of all prisons, his own heart….”
  • What is the most likely reason that Mr. Hooper says that everyone wears a black veil?
  • Vocabulary:
  • Iniquity
  • Ostentatious
  • Imbued
  • Portend
  • Tremulous
  • Veil or Veiled
  • Short Answer – What happens when the group of parishioners visits Mr. Hooper to discuss the veil?
  • Short Answer – Explain a piece of evidence that supports the idea that Mr. Hooper wears the veil to cover the sin of loving the young woman he buries on the first day he wears the veil.

ACT Practice:

  • There will be a section mimicking the previous 3-part pre-test we took during our ACT prep weeks. Utilize those test packets in preparation for this portion of the test. @ 15-20 items…