english

Conradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced his professional opinion that the boy would not live another five years. The doctor was silky and effete, and counted for little, but his opinion was endorsed by Mrs. De Ropp, who counted for nearly everything. Mrs. De Ropp was Conradin's cousin and guardian, and in his eyes she represented those three-fifths of the world that are necessary and disagreeable and real; the other two-fifths, in perpetual antagonism to the foregoing, were summed up in himself and his imagination. One of these days Conradin supposed he would succumb to the mastering pressure of wearisome necessary things—such as illnesses and coddling restrictions and drawn-out dullness. Without his imagination, which was rampant under the spur of loneliness, he would have succumbed long ago. Mrs. De Ropp would never, in her honestest moments, have confessed to herself that she disliked Conradin, though she might have been dimly aware that thwarting him "for his good" was a duty which she did not find particularly irksome. Conradin hated her with a desperate sincerity which he was perfectly able to mask. Such few pleasures as he could contrive for himself gained an added relish from the likelihood that they would be displeasing to his guardian, and from the realm of his imagination she was locked out—an unclean thing, which should find no entrance. In the dull, cheerless garden, overlooked by so many windows that were ready to open with a message not to do this or that, or a reminder that medicines were due, he found little attraction. The few fruit-trees that it contained were set jealously apart from his plucking, as though they were rare specimens of their kind blooming in an arid waste; it would probably have been difficult to find a market-gardener who would have offered ten shillings for their entire yearly produce. In a forgotten corner, however, almost hidden behind a dismal shrubbery, was a disused tool-shed of respectable proportions, and within its walls Conradin found a haven, something that took on the varying aspects of a playroom and a cathedral. He had peopled it with a legion of familiar phantoms, evoked partly from fragments of history and partly from his own brain, but it also boasted two inmates of flesh and blood. In one corner lived a ragged-plumaged Houdan hen, on which the boy lavished an affection that had scarcely another outlet. Further back in the gloom stood a large hutch, divided into two compartments, one of which was fronted with close iron bars. This was the abode of a large polecat-ferret, which a friendly butcher-boy had once smuggled, cage and all, into its present quarters, in exchange for a long-secreted hoard of small silver. Conradin was dreadfully afraid of the lithe, sharp-fanged beast, but it was his most treasured possession. Its very presence in the tool-shed was a secret and fearful joy, to be kept scrupulously from the knowledge of the Woman, as he privately dubbed his cousin. And one day, out of Heaven knows what material, he spun the beast a wonderful name, and from that moment it grew into a god and a religion.

Correct. Conradin's imagination offers him a realm where his guardian is "locked out—an unclean thing, which should find no entrance." In the fantasy realms he creates for himself, he is able to make his decisions independent of an authoritative figure's oversight.\ B "Such few pleasures as he could contrive for himself gained an added relish from the likelihood that they would be displeasing to his guardian, and from the realm of his imagination she was locked out—an unclean thing, which should find no entrance" (paragraph 2)

Four weeks have passed since I left, and still I must write to you of no work. I've worn down the soles and walked through the tightness of my new shoes, calling upon the merchants,5 their offices bustling. All the while I kept thinking my plain English and good writing would secure for me some modest position. Though I dress each day in my best, hands covered with the lace gloves you crocheted—no one needs a girl. How flat 10the word sounds, and heavy. My purse thins. I spend foolishly to make an appearance of quiet industry, to mask the desperation that tightens my throat. I sit watching— though I pretend not to notice—the dark maids 15ambling by with their white charges. Do I deceive anyone? Were they to see my hands, brown as your dear face, they'd know I'm not quite what I pretend to be. I walk these streets a white woman, or so I think, until I catch the eyes 20of some stranger upon me, and I must lower mine, a negress again. There are enough things here to remind me who I am. Mules lumbering through the crowded streets send me into reverie, their footfall the sound of a pointer and chalk hitting the blackboard 25at school, only louder. Then there are women, clicking their tongues in conversation, carrying their loads on their heads. Their husky voices, the wash pots and irons of the laundresses call to me. Here, I thought not to do the work I once did, back-bending 30and domestic; my schooling a gift—even those half days at picking time, listening to Miss J—. How I'd come to know words, the recitations I practiced to sound like her, lilting, my sentences curling up or trailing off at the ends. I read my books until 35I nearly broke their spines, and in the cotton field I repeated whole sections I'd learned by heart, spelling each word in my head to make a picture I could see, as well as a weight I could feel in my mouth. So now, even as I write this 40and think of you at home, Good-bye is the waving map of your palm, is a stone on my tongue.

the harsh reality of her situation Correct. The juxtaposition emphasizes and reinforces the harsh reality of her situation as a Black woman who leaves her rural home to make a better life for herself but discovers that the city has nothing for her. social commentary using a historical period

Houses are wedged between the tall stacks1 of Seneca Glass beside the Monongahela2 and waffle up steep hills. Here, the terrain allows photographers to appear acrobatic.5Walker Evans3 liked standing on a hill, focusing down so it seemed he was poised on a branch. He liked the single telephone pole against the flat sky, crossed off-center like a crucifix. Beneath it, among elms and maples, is the house10my mother lived in with her sister and their mother nearly fifty years ago. In this shot, Evans only wanted the rough surfaces of clapboard houses, their meshed roofs and slanted gables. He didn't want my mother peeling the thin skin15from tomatoes with a sharp knife, my clumsy Aunt Grace chasing the ones she'd dropped around the linoleum floor. That would be another picture, not this one. I look back from the future, past the undulating, unremitting line of hills20Evans framed my family in, through the shaggy fronds of summer ferns he used as foreground and as border

calculated and artificial he limitations resulting from Evans's artistic choices incomplete nature of an artist's perspective an interpreter

The shelves were packed close together, and it felt like I was standing at the border of a forest—not a friendly California forest, either, but an old Transylvanian forest, a forest full of wolves and witches and dagger-wielding bandits all waiting just beyond moonlight's reach. There were ladders that clung to the shelves and rolled side to side. Usually those seem charming, but here, stretching up into the gloom, they were ominous. They whispered rumors of accidents in the dark. So I stuck to the front half of the store, where bright midday light pressed in and presumably kept the wolves at bay. The wall around and above the door was glass, thick square panes set into a grid of black iron, and arched across them, in tall golden letters, it said (in reverse): Below that, set in the hollow of the arch, there was a symbol—two hands, perfectly flat, rising out of an open book. So who was Mr. Penumbra? "Hello, there," a quiet voice called from the stacks. A figure emerged—a man, tall and skinny like one of the ladders, draped in a light gray button-down and a blue cardigan. He tottered as he walked, running a long hand along the shelves for support. When he came out of the shadows, I saw that his sweater matched his eyes, which were also blue, riding low in nests of wrinkles. He was very old. He nodded at me and gave a weak wave. "What do you seek in these shelves?" That was a good line, and for some reason, it made me feel comfortable. I asked, "Am I speaking to Mr. Penumbra?" "I am Penumbra"—he nodded—"and I am the custodian of this place." I didn't quite realize I was going to say it until I did: "I'm looking for a job." Penumbra blinked once, then nodded and tottered over to the desk set beside the front door. It was a massive block of dark-whorled wood, a solid fortress on the forest's edge. You could probably defend it for days in the event of a siege from the shelves. "Employment." Penumbra nodded again. He slid up onto the chair behind the desk and regarded me across its bulk. "Have you ever worked at a bookstore before?" "Well," I said, "when I was in school I waited tables at a seafood restaurant, and the owner sold his own cookbook." It was called The Secret Cod and it detailed thirty-one different ways to— You get it. "That probably doesn't count." "No, it does not, but no matter," Penumbra said. "Prior experience in the book trade is of little use to you here." Wait—maybe this place really was all erotica. I glanced down and around, but glimpsed no bodices, ripped or otherwise. In fact, just next to me there was a stack of dusty Dashiell Hammetts on a low table. That was a good sign. "Tell me," Penumbra said, "about a book you love." I knew my answer immediately. No competition. I told him, "Mr. Penumbra, it's not one book, but a series. It's not the best writing and it's probably too long and the ending is terrible, but I've read it three times, and I met my best friend because we were both obsessed with it back in sixth grade." I took a breath. "I love The Dragon-Song Chronicles." Penumbra cocked an eyebrow, then smiled. "That is good, very good," he said, and his smile grew, showing jostling white teeth. Then he squinted at me, and his gaze went up and down. "But can you climb a ladder?"

adders and bookshelves in the back of the store temporary but important responsibility From apprehension to lighthearted confidence

Mr. Murdock was one who carried no enthusiasm whatever for plays and their players, and that was too bad, for they meant so much to little Mrs. Murdock. Always she had been in a state of devout excitement over the luminous, free, passionate elect who serve the theater. And always she had done her wistful worshiping, along with the multitudes, at the great public altars. It is true that once, when she was a particularly little girl, love had impelled her to write Miss Maude Adams a letter beginning "Dearest Peter," and she had received from Miss Adams a miniature thimble inscribed "A kiss from Peter Pan." (That was a day!) And once, when her mother had taken her holiday shopping, a limousine door was held open and there had passed her, as close as that, a wonder of sable and violets and round red curls that seemed to tinkle on the air; so, forever after, she was as good as certain that she had been not a foot away from Miss Billie Burke. But until some three years after her marriage, these had remained her only personal experiences with the people of the lights and the glory. Then it turned out that Miss Noyes, new come to little Mrs. Murdock's own bridge club, knew an actress. She actually knew an actress; the way you and I know collectors of recipes and members of garden clubs and amateurs of needlepoint. The name of the actress was Lily Wynton, and it was famous. She was tall and slow and silvery; often she appeared in the role of a duchess, or of a Lady Pam or an Honorable Moira. Critics recurrently referred to her as "that great lady of our stage." Mrs. Murdock had attended, over years, matinee performances of the Wynton successes. And she had no more thought that she would one day have opportunity to meet Lily Wynton face to face than she had thought—well, than she had thought of flying! Yet it was not astounding that Miss Noyes should walk at ease among the glamorous. Miss Noyes was full of depths and mystery, and she could talk with a cigarette still between her lips. She was always doing something difficult, like designing her own pajamas, or reading Proust, or modeling torsos in plasticine.* She played excellent bridge. She liked little Mrs. Murdock. "Tiny one," she called her. "How's for coming to tea tomorrow, tiny one? Lily Wynton's going to drop up," she said, at a therefore memorable meeting of the bridge club. "You might like to meet her." The words fell so easily that she could not have realized their weight. Lily Wynton was coming to tea. Mrs. Murdock might like to meet her. Little Mrs. Murdock walked home through the early dark, and stars sang in the sky above her. "Glory in the Daytime," copyright 1933, renewed © 1961 by Dorothy Parker; from THE PORTABLE DOROTHY PARKER by Dorothy Parker, edited by Marion Meade. Used by permission of Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. The contrast between the two central characters in the passage reveals that, unlike Mrs. Murdock, Miss Noyes is

artistic and daring

He found himself in a large apartment of polished stone. There were three doors; one on each of three sides; all similarly curtained with tapestry. The fourth side was occupied by two large windows and a great stone chimney-piece, carved with the arms of the Malétroits. Denis recognized the bearings1, and was gratified to find himself in such good hands. The room was strongly illuminated; but it contained little furniture except a heavy table and a chair or two, the hearth was innocent of fire, and the pavement was but sparsely strewn with rushes2 clearly many days old. On a high chair beside the chimney, and directly facing Denis as he entered, sat a little old gentleman in a fur tippet.3 He sat with his legs crossed and his hands folded, and a cup of spiced wine stood by his elbow on a bracket on the wall. His countenance had a strongly masculine cast; not properly human, but such as we see in the bull, the goat, or the domestic boar; something equivocal and wheedling, something greedy, brutal, and dangerous. The upper lip was inordinately full, as though swollen by a blow or a toothache; and the smile, the peaked eyebrows, and the small, strong eyes were quaintly and almost comically evil in expression. Beautiful white hair hung straight all round his head, like a saint's, and fell in a single curl upon the tippet. His beard and mustache were the pink of venerable sweetness. Age, probably in consequence of inordinate precautions, had left no mark upon his hands; and the Malétroit hand was famous. It would be difficult to imagine anything at once so fleshy and so delicate in design; the tapered, sensual fingers, were like those of one of Leonardo's women; the fork of the thumb made a dimpled protuberance when closed; the nails were perfectly shaped, and of a dead, surprising whiteness. It rendered his aspect tenfold more redoubtable, that a man with hands like these should keep them devoutly folded like a virgin martyr—that a man with so intent and startling an expression of face should sit patiently on his seat and contemplate people with an unwinking stare, like a god, or a god's statue. His quiescence4 seemed ironical and treacherous, it fitted so poorly with his looks. Such was Alain, Sire de Malétroit. Denis and he looked silently at each other for a second or two. "Pray step in," said the Sire de Malétroit. "I have been expecting you all the evening."

barrenness to spotlight Malétroit himself Denis appreciates Malétroit's status. E The position of his hands is at odds with his malevolent gaze. giving Malétroit's greeting an ominous tone that suggests Denis' interaction with him may prove to be unpleasant

TOM enters, dressed as a merchant sailor, and strolls across to the fire escape. There he stops and lights a cigarette. He addresses the audience. TOM: Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion. To begin with, I turn back time. I reverse it to that quaint period, the thirties, when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy. In Spain there was revolution. Here there was only shouting and confusion. In Spain there was Guernica. Here there were disturbances of labor, sometimes pretty violent, in otherwise peaceful cities such as Chicago, Cleveland, Saint Louis . . . This is the social background of the play. (Music begins to play.) The play is memory. Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic. In memory everything seems to happen to music. That explains the fiddle in the wings. I am the narrator of the play, and also a character in it. The other characters are my mother, Amanda, my sister, Laura, and a gentleman caller who appears in the final scenes. He is the most realistic character in the play, being an emissary from a world of reality that we were somehow set apart from. But since I have a poet's weakness for symbols, I am using this character also as a symbol; he is the long-delayed but always expected something that we live for. There is a fifth character in the play who doesn't appear except in this larger-than-life-size photograph over the mantel. This is our father who left us a long time ago. He was a telephone man who fell in love with long distances; he gave up his job with the telephone company and skipped the light fantastic out of town . . . The last we heard of him was a picture postcard from Mazatlan, on the Pacific coast of Mexico, containing a message of two words: "Hello—Goodbye!" and no address. I think the rest of the play will explain itself. . . .

reinforce the notion that the play is part of a "world of reality" (paragraph 5) that will be reconstructed from "memory" (paragraph 4) waiting and fulfillment