Individuality and Conformity Unit Test Review

Read the excerpt from "Daughter of Invention". "Sticks and stones don't break bones," she chanted. Yoyo could tell, though, by the look on her face, it was as if one of those stones the kids had aimed at her daughters had hit her. But she always pretended they were at fault. "What did you do to provoke them? It takes two to tangle, you know." What is the original meaning of the underlined idiom in this excerpt?

Words cannot actually hurt a person like sticks and stones can.

How do authors present and develop characters? Check all that apply.

-the way characters are described -the situations in which the characters interact -dialogue between characters -conflicts within and between characters

Read the excerpt from "Daughter of Invention". But Laura had gotten used to the life here. She did not want to go back to the old country where, de la Torre or not, she was only a wife and a mother (and a failed one at that, since she had never provided the required son). Better an independent nobody than a high-class houseslave. She did not come straight out and disagree with her husband's plans. Instead, she fussed with him about reading the papers in bed, soiling their sheets with those poorly printed, foreign tabloids. "The Times is not that bad!" she'd claim if her husband tried to humor her by saying they shared the same dirty habit. How do Laura's interactions with her husband reveal the conflict she experiences?

Instead of openly disagreeing with her husband's desire to return to the Dominican Republic, she criticizes the foreign papers he reads.

Read the excerpts from different sections "The Scarlet Ibis." Although Doodle learned to crawl, he showed no signs of walking, but he wasn't idle. He talked so much that we all quit listening to what he said. It was about this time that Daddy built him a go-cart and I had to pull him around. At first I just paraded him up and down the piazza, but then he started crying to be taken out into the yard and it ended up by my having to lug him wherever I went. If I so much as picked up my cap, he'd start crying to go with me and Mama would call from wherever she was, "Take Doodle with you." *** He'd nod his head, and I'd say, "Well, if you don't keep trying, you'll never learn." Then I'd paint for him a picture of us as old men, white-haired, him with a long white beard and me still pulling him around in the go-cart. This never failed to make him try again. Based on these excerpts, what best describes the symbol of the go-cart within the story?

It changes from a symbol of freedom to a symbol of captivity.

Read the excerpt from "The Scarlet Ibis." Doodle was frightened of being left. "Don't go leave me, Brother," he cried, and he leaned toward the coffin. His hand, trembling, reached out, and when he touched the casket he screamed. A screech owl flapped out of the box into our faces, scaring us and covering us with Paris green. Doodle was paralyzed, so I put him on my shoulder and carried him down the ladder, and even when we were outside in the bright sunshine, he clung to me, crying, "Don't leave me. Don't leave me." What do Doodle's repeated pleas of "Don't leave me" foreshadow?

Later in the story, the narrator races ahead and leaves Doodle to struggle behind during a terrible storm.

Read the passage from "Initiation." And from that time on, initiations didn't bother Millicent at all. She went gaily about Lewiston Square from store to store asking for broken crackers and mangoes, and she just laughed inside when people stared and then brightened, answering her crazy questions as if she were quite serious and really a person of consequence. So many people were shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up, unfolding quite wonderfully, if only you were interested in them. And really, you didn't have to belong to a club to feel related to other human beings. Based on the indirect characterization, which is the most logical inference?

Millicent is beginning to question her decision to join the sorority.

Read the passage from "Initiation." The door behind her opened and a ray of light sliced across the soft gloom of the basement room. "Hey Millicent, come on out now. This is it." There were some of the girls outside. "I'm coming," she said, getting up and moving out of the soft darkness into the glare of light, thinking: This is it, all right. The worst part, the hardest part, the part of initiation that I figured out myself. The passage provides evidence that Millicent has just overcome what kind of conflict?

character vs. self

Read the excerpt from "The Scarlet Ibis." At that moment the bird began to flutter, but the wings were uncoordinated, and amid much flapping and a spray of flying feathers, it tumbled down, bumping through the limbs of the bleeding tree and landing at our feet with a thud. Its long, graceful neck jerked twice into an S, then straightened out, and the bird was still. A white veil came over the eyes and the long white beak unhinged. Its legs were crossed and its claw-like feet were delicately curved at rest. Even death did not mar its grace, for it lay on the earth like a broken vase of red flowers, and we stood around it, awed by its exotic beauty. Based on this passage, the scarlet ibis is a symbol of both

fragility and loveliness.

Some sections of "Initiation" imply that Millicent will decline the sorority's invitation. The rising action contributes to this implied resolution by showing

her beginning to question the way the group runs its operations.

A(n) ___________ cannot be taken literally and must be understood as a whole.

idiom

Read the excerpt from "The Scarlet Ibis." Finally I went back and found him huddled beneath a red nightshade bush beside the road. He was sitting on the ground, his face buried in his arms, which were resting on his drawn-up knees. "Let's go, Doodle," I said. He didn't answer, so I placed my hand on his forehead and lifted his head. Limply, he fell backwards onto the earth. He had been bleeding from the mouth, and his neck and the front of his shirt were stained in brilliant red. "Doodle! Doodle!" I cried, shaking him, but there was no answer but the ropy rain. He lay very awkwardly, with his head thrown far back, making his vermillion neck appear unusually long and slim. His little legs, bent sharply at the knees, had never before seemed so fragile, so thin. In this excerpt, the imagery appeals primarily to which sense to help place the reader in the scene?

sight

In "Initiation," one example of a character vs. self conflict is when Millicent

worries about how her actions affect Tracy.