Checkpoint 27 English 12B
Read the excerpt from High Fidelity. When Laura was here I had the records arranged alphabetically; before that I had them filed in chronological order, beginning with Robert Johnson, and ending with, I don't know, Wham!, or somebody African, or whatever else I was listening to when Laura and I met. Tonight, though, I fancy something different, so I try to remember the order I bought them in: that way I hope to write my own autobiography, without having to do anything like pick up a pen. I pull the records off the shelves, put them in piles all over the sitting room floor, look for Revolver, and go on from there; and when I've finished, I'm flushed with a sense of self, because this, after all, is who I am. I like being able to see how I got from Deep Purple to Howlin' Wolf in twenty-five moves; I am no longer pained by the memory of listening to "Sexual Healing" all the way through a period of enforced celibacy, or embarrassed by the reminder of forming a rock club at school, so that I and my fellow fifth-formers could get together and talk about Ziggy Stardust and Tommy. But what I really like is the feeling of security I get from my new filing system; I have made myself more complicated than I really am. I have a couple of thousand records, and you have to be me—or, at the very least, a doctor of Flemingology—to know how to find any of them. If I want to play, say, Blue by Joni Mitchell, I have to remember that I bought it for someone in the autumn of 1983, and thought better of giving it to her, for reasons I don't really want to go into. Well, you don't know any of that, so you're knackered, really, aren't you? You'd have to ask me to dig it out for you, and for some reason I find this enormously comforting. Which response most completely explains why the author describes so many of Rob's records in relation to his ex-girlfriends?
In the scene, the author shows that Rob's records are a substitute for mature relationships in his life.
Which response most completely explains how the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy develops the character of Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz in the story?
The author blends a historical summary into the exposition of the story so that the reader will understand the entire evolutionary history of the Vogons' cruelty before meeting Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz.
Read the excerpt from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz heaved his unpleasant green body round the control bridge. He always felt vaguely irritable after demolishing populated planets. He wished that someone would come and tell him that it was all wrong so that he could shout at them and feel better. He flopped as heavily as he could on to his control seat in the hope that it would break and give him something to be genuinely angry about, but it only gave a complaining sort of creak. Which response most clearly explains Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz's perspective about harming others?
He would prefer to defend his harmful actions in a fit of rage, so that he would be protected from facing his own disturbed feelings.
Read the excerpt from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Ford, with a lightning movement, clapped his hand to Arthur's ear, and he had the sudden sickening sensation of the fish slithering deep into his aural tract. Which response most accurately states how a student could determine the meaning of the word aural?
A student could infer that aural relates to hearing, because the fish goes into Arthur's ear.
Read the excerpt from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. "Vogon Constructor Fleets. Here is what to do if you want to get a lift from a Vogon: forget it. They are one of the most unpleasant races in the Galaxy—not actually evil, but bad tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat and recycled as firelighters." Which response most completely explains the meaning of officious?
Officious means "meddlesome and annoyingly attentive," which is shown by the way the Vogons require precise paperwork even to save their grandmothers.
Which responses accurately explain why the author of High Fidelity introduces the setting of the record shop and the main characters of Rob and Barry by showing them arguing over the song "Walking on Sunshine"?
The dialogue demonstrates how tense and unhappy Rob is. The dialogue introduces Barry as a dramatic foil or contrast to Rob. The dialogue shows how immature Rob's companions are.
Read the excerpt from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Meanwhile, the natural forces on the planet Vogsphere had been working overtime to make up for their earlier blunder. They brought forth scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs, which the Vogons ate, smashing their shells with iron mallets; tall aspiring trees with breathtaking slenderness and colour which the Vogons cut down and burned the crab meat with; elegant gazellelike creatures with silken coats and dewy eyes which the Vogons would catch and sit on. They were no use as transport because their backs would snap instantly, but the Vogons sat on them anyway. Which response most clearly explains the tone created by the descriptive language in this passage?
Vivid language like "smashing their shells" and "their backs would snap instantly" creates a satirical tone by providing wildly overstated images of the Vogons' brutality and careless destruction.
Read the excerpt from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Ford stood up. "We're safe," he said. "Oh good," said Arthur. "We're in a small galley cabin," said Ford, "in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet." "Ah," said Arthur, "this is obviously some strange usage of the word safe that I wasn't previously aware of." Which response most clearly explains Arthur's perspective about his situation on the Vogon ship?
Arthur feels that he is currently in danger, which he expresses with sarcasm.
Read the excerpt from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. England no longer existed. He'd got that—somehow he'd got it. He tried again. America, he thought, has gone. He couldn't grasp it. He decided to start smaller again. New York has gone. No reaction. He'd never seriously believed it existed anyway. The dollar, he thought, had sunk for ever. Slight tremor there. Every Bogart movie has been wiped, he said to himself, and that gave him a nasty knock. McDonald's, he thought. There is no longer any such thing as a McDonald's hamburger. He passed out. When he came round a second later he found he was sobbing for his mother. Which answer most clearly explains why Arthur's way of grieving for Earth is an example of satire?
His reaction implies that humans connect more deeply to entertainment and fast food than to countries or other people.
Read the excerpt from High Fidelity. "You can if you want. I'm going back." I don't want to have a drink with someone called T-Bone, but I get the feeling that this is exactly what Barry would like to do. I get the feeling that having a drink with someone called T-Bone could be the high point of Barry's decade. "I don't want to muck your evening up. I just don't feel like staying." "Not even for half an hour?" "Not really." "Hold on a minute, then. I've got to take a piss." "Me too," Dick says. When they're gone, I get out quickly, and hail a black cab. It's brilliant, being depressed; you can behave as badly as you like. Which line from the excerpt most clearly demonstrates sarcasm?
It's brilliant, being depressed; you can behave as badly as you like.
Read the conversation between Barry and Rob from High Fidelity. "Since when did this shop become a fascist regime?" "Since you brought that terrible tape in." "All I'm trying to do is cheer us up. That's all. Very sorry. Go and put some old sad bastard music on, see if I care." "I don't want old sad bastard music on either. I just want something I can ignore." "Great. That's the fun thing about working in a record shop, isn't it? Playing things that you don't want to listen to. I thought this tape was going to be, you know, a talking point. I was going to ask you for your top five records to play on a wet Monday morning and all that, and you've gone and ruined it." "We'll do it next Monday." "What's the point of that?" And so on, and on, probably for the rest of my working life. Which response most clearly explains what the line "And so on, and on, probably for the rest of my working life" reveals about Rob's perspective?
Rob feels that he is trapped in an endless loop of superficial and trivial conversation and activity.
Read the excerpt from High Fidelity. The bad news: 1) Marie brings someone out to sing with her for her encore. A bloke. Someone who shares her microphone with her with an intimacy I don't like, and sings harmony on "Love Hurts," and looks at her while he's doing so in a way that suggests that he's ahead of me in the queue for the album shoot. Marie still looks like Susan Dey, and this guy—she introduces him as "T-Bone Taylor, the best-kept secret in Texas"—looks like a prettier version of Daryl Hall of Hall and Oates, if you can imagine such a creature. He's got long blond hair, and cheekbones, and he's well over nine feet tall, but he's got muscles too (he's wearing a denim waistcoat and no shirt) and a voice that makes that man who does the Guinness adverts sound soppy, a voice so deep that it seems to land with a thud on the stage and roll toward us like a cannonball. I know my sexual confidence is not high at the moment, and I know that women are not necessarily interested in long blond hair, cheekbones, and height; that sometimes they are looking for shortish dark hair, no cheekbones and width, but even so! Look at them! Susan Dey and Daryl Hall! Entwining the naked melody lines from "Love Hurts"! Mingling their saliva, almost! Just as well I wore my favorite shirt when she came into the shop the other day, otherwise I wouldn't have stood a chance. There is no other bad news. That's it. Which response most clearly explains the effect of Rob's use humor and sarcasm?
Saying, "Just as well I wore my favorite shirt when she came into the shop the other day, otherwise I wouldn't have stood a chance" conveys how utterly bleak and hopeless Rob feels.
Read the excerpt from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. "Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindboggingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. "The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.' "'But,' says Man, 'The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.' "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a puff of logic. "'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing. "Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his bestselling book Well That About Wraps It Up For God. "Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation." Which responses clearly explain the author's decision to write about how the Babel fish destroyed some people's faith in God? (Select all that apply.)
The author uses satire to show that some people will choose to manipulate any evidence before them to support their previously held beliefs. The author uses irony to show that in some situations, logically proving a point doesn't necessarily lead to understanding the full truth.
Read the excerpt from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about human beings was their habit of continually stating and repeating the obvious, as in It's a nice day, or You're very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you alright? At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behaviour. If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working. Which response most clearly explains why Ford Prefect's idea that if humans "don't keep on exercising their lips... their brains start working" is humorous?
The implication that humans tend to talk without expressing any valuable thoughts creates ironic humor.
Read the excerpt from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about human beings was their habit of continually stating and repeating the obvious, as in It's a nice day, or You're very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you alright? At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behaviour. If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working. Which response most clearly explains why Ford Prefect's idea that if humans "don't keep on exercising their lips... their brains start working" is humorous?
The student could notice the statement "he will not describe the plot, or how it made him feel, but where it ranks in his best-of-year list, his best-of-all-time list, his best-of-decade list" and infer that enumeration means making a list. The student could consider how enumeration appears to have the same root as number and numeral and infer that enumeration relates to using numbers.
