Reading ComprehensionProse Passage #5

Read the following passage carefully before you choose your answers.

Yet even if we had been convinced of the honesty of our guard-

ians, we would still have clung to that beneficent image of our

grandfather that the family myth proposed to us. We were too

poor, spiritually speaking, to question his generosity, to ask why

(5)he allowed us to live in oppressed chill and deprivation at a long

arm’s length from himself and hooded his genial blue eye with a

bluff, millionarish gray eyebrow whenever the evidence of our

suffering presented itself at his knee. The official answer we

knew: our benefactors were too old to put up with four wild young

(10)children; our grandfather was preoccupied with business mat-

ters and with his rheumatism, to which he devoted himself as

though to a pious duty, taking it with him on pilgrimages to Ste.

Anne de Beaupré and Miami, offering it with impartial reverence

to the miracle of the Northern Mother and the Southern sun.

(15)This rheumatism hallowed my grandfather with the mark of a

special vocation; he lived with it in the manner of an artist or a

grizzled Galahad; it set him apart from all of us and even from

my grandmother, who, lacking such an affliction, led a relatively

unjustified existence and showed, in relation to us children, a

(20)sharper and more bellicose spirit. She felt, in spite of everything,

that she was open to criticism, and, transposing this feeling with

a practiced old hand, kept peering into our characters for symp-

toms of ingratitude.

We, as a matter of fact, were grateful to the point of servility.

(25)We made no demands, we had no hopes. We were content if we

were permitted to enjoy the refracted rays of that solar prosper-

ity and come sometimes in the summer afternoon to sit on the

shady porch or idle through a winter morning on the wicker

furniture of the sun parlor, to stare at the player piano in the

(30)music room and smell the odor of whiskey in the mahogany

cabinet in the library, or to climb about the dark living room

examining the glassed-in paintings in their huge gilt frames, the

fruits of European travel; dusky women carrying baskets to mar-

ket, views of Venetian canals, and Tuscan harvest scenes – sec-

(35)ular themes that, to the Irish-American mind, had become tinged

with Catholic feeling by a regional infusion from the Pope. We

asked no more from this house than the pride of being connected

with it, and this was fortunate for us, since my grandmother, a

great adherent of the give-them-an-inch-and-they’ll-take-a-yard

(40)theory of hospitality, never, so far as I can remember, offered

any caller the slightest refreshment, regarding her own conver-

sation as sufficiently wholesome and sustaining. An ugly, severe

old woman with a monstrous balcony of a bosom, she officiated

over certain set topics in a colorless singsong, like a priest inton-

(45)ing a Mass, topics to which repetition had lent a senseless so-

lemnity: her audience with the Holy father; how my own father

had broken with family tradition and voted the Democratic

ticket; a visit to Lourdes; the Sacred Stairs in Rome, blood-

stained since the first Good Friday, which she had climbed on

(50)her knees; my crooked little fingers and how they meant I was

a liar; a miracle-working bone; the importance of regular bowel

movements; the wickedness of Protestants; the conversion of my

mother to Catholicism; and the assertion that my Protestant

grandmother must certainly dye her hair. The most trivial rem-

(55)iniscences (my aunt’s having hysterics in a haystack) received

from her delivery and from the piety of the context a strongly

monitory flavor; they inspired fear and guilt, and one searched

uncomfortably for the moral in them as in a dark and riddling

fable.

  1. Which of the following best indicates the subject of the passage?

(A)The quality of upper class Irish-American domestic life

(B)The piety of the speaker’s grandparents

(C)The moral power of Christianity in American families

(D)The speaker’s indictment of the grandparents’ selfishness

(E)The speaker’s attack on a materialist society

  1. The spiritual poverty of the children (lines 3-4) is most likely

the result of

(A)religious skepticism

(B)emotional deprivation

(C)hopeless servility

(D)excessive wildness

(E)excessive wealth

  1. The attitude of the speaker as an adult, in contrast to the

attitude of the child observer, is best described as

(A)moderately tolerant and understanding

(B)nostalgic and sentimental

(C)cheerfully vindictive and unforgiving

(D)remorseful and guilty

(E)mean-spirited and sinister

  1. The grandparents’ home and furnishings signify to the children

(A)elegant taste that they should strive to emulate

(B)a pleasure-loving, indulgent side of their grandparents

that the children seldom saw

(C)evidence that God allows his faithful servants to prosper

(D)a world to be approached, even cautiously sampled, but

not possessed

(E)all that will be theirs as soon as their grandparents die

  1. Which of the following best describes the grandfather?

(A)Cruel

(B)Conservative

(C)Deceitful

(D)Long-suffering

(E)Self-absorbed

  1. The chief effect of such contrasts as “business matters and

. . . rheumatism” (lines 10-11) and “Ste. Anne De Beaupré

and Miami” (lines 12-13) is to

(A)intensify the speaker’s sense of the ridiculous

(B)reveal the speaker’s ambivalent attitude

(C)emphasize the cynicism of the grandparents

(D)reduce the grandparents to the level of low comic

characters

(E)glamorize the grandparents as worldly sophisticates

  1. The comparison of the grandfather to Galahad (line 17) is

ironic primarily because the grandfather?

(A)is old and ailing

(B)has less pure ideals, less noble pursuits

(C)recognizes no master but wealth

(D)seeks little in his travels, receives no rewards at home

(E)is more like a king than a knight

  1. All of the following help sustain a pattern of religious imagery

in the passage EXCEPT

(A)“pilgrimages (lines 12)

(B)“Hallowed” (line 15

(C)“vocation” (line 16)

(D)“officiated” (line 43)

(E)“reminiscences” (line 54-55)

  1. Which of the following is the most credible reason for the kind

of attention the grandmother paid to the grandchildren?

(A)She had no purpose in life: she “led a relatively

unjustified existence” (lines 18-19)

(B)She had been mistreated so that she had a “sharper and

more bellicose spirit” (line 20)

(C)She had feelings of inadequacy: “She felt. . . that she

was open to criticism (lines 20-21)

(D)She was embarrassed by her appearance: she was an

“ugly, severe old woman” (lines 42-43)

(E)She was concerned about the state of their souls: her

reminiscences “inspired fear and guilt” (line 57)

  1. The passage presents an ironic juxtaposition of

(A)the grandfather and the grandmother

(B)virtue and youth

(C)innocence and egotism

(D)wealth and poverty

(E)Catholicism and Protestantism

  1. Which of the following best sums up the contrast between the

attitude of the adult speaker and the attitude of the

the observing child?

(A)Accusatory. .awed

(B)Romantic..realistic

(C)Religious..secular

(D)Guilty..innocent

(E)Tranquil..anxious

  1. Which of the following do the children bring to their exami-

nation of the “glassed-in paintings in their huge gilt frames”

(line 32)?

(A)The assurance that they are civilized Christians because of the

association of Italian culture with Catholicism

(B)A sensitivity to the vision of great artists

(C)An awareness that appearances, like gilt frames, count for little

(D)The belief that Italian art is inherently religious

(E)The knowledge that life in their grandparents’ home will always be as static as the figures in the paintings

  1. The speaker’s attitude toward the grandparents is one of

(A)bitterness tempered by maturity

(B)respect strengthened by distance

(C)servility imparted by discipline

(D)perplexity compounded by resentment

(E)gratitude made richer by love

  1. The grandmother’s regard for her own conversation as “sufficiently wholesome and sustaining” (line 42) is evidence of her

(A)smugness and inhospitality

(B)religious prejudice

(C)faith in other people

(D)skill as a teacher

(E)ironic sense of humor

  1. The principal device used by the speaker to satirize the grandmother’s conversation (lines 46-54) is

(A)mingling the serious and the trivial indiscriminately

(B)including both religious and political views

(C)using repetition to emphasize similar characteristics

(D)introducing it with a description of the grandmother’s hospitality

(E)cataloging a number of religious beliefs