GRE Literature in English (REA) (10 page)

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DIRECTIONS:

“One must commit oneself to a conjunction with the other—forever. But it is not selfless—it is a maintaining of the self in mystic balance and integrity—like a star balanced with another star.”

 

 

The above description of love is stated by

1. Heathcliff in
   Wuthering Heights.
   
2. Birkin in
   Women in Love
   .
   
3. Rochester in
   Jane Eyre
   .
   
4. Stephen Dedalus in
   A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
   .
   
5. George Emerson in
   A Room with a View.
   

“Son of heaven and earth,
Attend: that thou art happy, owe to God;
That thou continu'st such, owe to thyself,
That is to thy obedience; therein stand.
This was that caution giv'n thee; be advised.
God made thee perfect, not immutable;
And good he made thee, but to persevere
He left it in thy power, ordained thy will
By nature free, not overruled by fate
Inextricable, or strict necessity;
Our voluntary service he requires,
Not our necessitated, such with him
Finds no acceptance, nor can find, for how
Can hearts, not free, be tried whether they serve
Willing or no, who will but what they must
By destiny, and can no other choose?
Myself and all th' angelic host that stand
In sight of God enthroned, our happy state
Hold, as you yours, while our obedience holds;
On other surety none; freely we serve,
Because we freely love as in our will
To love or not; in this we stand or fall:
And some are fall'n, to disobedience fall'n,
And so from heav'n to deepest hell; O fall
From what high state of bliss into what woe!”

In the above passage, the narrator and narratee are

1. the Angel Michael and Eve.
   
2. the Angel Gabriel and Mary.
   
3. the Angel of Death and Virgil.
   
4. the Angel Raphael and Adam.
   
5. the Angel Gabriel and Dante.
   

The narrator suggests

1. man's continued happiness depends on God.
   
2. man's continued happiness depends on the angels.
   
3. man cannot change his state.
   
4. man has no free will.
   
5. man must serve God voluntarily.
   

Which of the following best describes the narrator's tone?

1. Patronizing and didactic
   
2. Wise and instructive
   
3. Jolly and humorous
   
4. Gloomy and bad-tempered
   
5. Threatening and vindictive
   

Who should come to my lodge this morning but a true Homeric or Paphlagonian man—a Canadian, a wood chopper and post maker, who can hole 50 posts in a day, who made his last supper on a woodchuck which his dog caught.

 

Whose lodge does the wood chopper visit?

1. Rousseau's
   
2. Thoreau's
   
3. Wordsworth's
   
4. Homer's
   
5. Frost's
   

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Which of the following best describes the theme of this stanza?

1. Music refreshes the soul.
   
2. Youth has every advantage.
   
3. Art is immortal.
   
4. Imagination enhances life.
   
5. Art destroys life.
   

In which literary era was the entire poem written?

1. The Elizabethan
   
2. The Postmodern
   
3. The Romantic
   
4. The Victorian
   
5. The Modern
   

Which of the following best describes the philosophy of this era?

1. Delight in the Immortality of Nature bringing man closer to God
   
2. Despair in the failure of man to create the perfect world
   
3. Distrust in the new technology
   
4. Fear of fragmentation in the world as a result of a loss of belief in God
   
5. Triumph in man's ability to overcome nature
   

now were getting at it you seem to regard it merely as an experience that will whiten your hair overnight so to speak without altering your appearance at all you wont do it under these conditions it will be a gamble and the strange thing is that man who is conceived by accident and whose every breath is a fresh cast with dice already loaded against him will not face that final man which he knows beforehand he has assuredly to face without essaying expedients ranging all the way from violence to petty chicanery that would not deceive a child until some day in very disgust he risks everything on a single blind turn of a card no man ever does that under the first fury of despair or remorse or bereavement he does it only when he has realized that even the despair or remorse or bereavement is not particularly important to the dark diceman and i temporary and he it is hard believing to think that a love or a sorrow is a bond purchased without design and which matures willynilly and is recalled without warning to be replaced by whatever issues the gods happen to be floating at the time no you will not do that until you come to believe that even she was not quite worth despair perhaps and i will never do that nobody knows what i know and he i think youd better go on to cambridge right away you might go up into maine for a month you can afford it if you are careful it might be good thing watching pennies has healed more scars than jesus and i suppose i realize that you believe i will realize up there next week or next month and he then you well remember that for you to go to harvard has been your mothers dream since you were born and no compson has ever disappointed a lady

What literary technique does the above passage illustrate?

1. Enjambment
   
2. Dream of the unconscious
   
3. Stream-of-consciousness
   
4. Extended metaphor
   
5. Dislocation of time
   

By what means does the author achieve the effect?

1. Poetic language
   
2. Use of nuance
   
3. Extended metaphor
   
4. Lack of meaning
   
5. Lack of punctuation
   

What is the subject under discussion?

1. Coloring one's hair
   
2. Killing oneself
   
3. Killing one's dream
   
4. Courtesy to women
   
5. Going away to college
   

Which of the following most closely expresses the main speaker's point of view?

1. Life is not worth living.
   
2. Man's life is determined and cannot be altered.
   
3. People let you down and love destroys in the end.
   
4. Man has free will and should exercise it.
   
5. In the game of life, man always wins.
   

The author of the passage is

1. Thomas Hardy.
   
2. Henry James.
   
3. Theodore Dreiser.
   
4. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
   
5. William Faulkner.
   

____ looked vacantly at the richly carpeted floor. A new light was shining upon all the years since her enforced flight. She remembered now a hundred things that indicated as much. She also imagined that he took it on her account. Instead of hatred springing up there was a kind of sorrow generated. Poor fellow! What a thing to have had hanging over his head all the time.

 

Supply the name that completes the first sentence.

1. Emma
   
2. Tess
   
3. Milly
   
4. Carrie
   
5. Maggie
   

Come my friends
Tis not too late to seek a newer world
Push off and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the Western stars, until I die.

 

 

The speaker is

1. Achilles.
   
2. Jason.
   
3. Ahab.
   
4. Ishmael.
   
5. Ulysses.
   

Their society, for instance, is stoic in appearance. They accept such inevitable calamities as death calmly; they eat, sleep and exercise wisely; they believe in universal benevolence as an ideal, and accordingly have no personal ties or attachments. The family is effectively abolished; marriage is arranged by friends as “one of the necessary actions in a reasonable being”; husband and wife like one another, and their children just as much and as little as they like everyone else. Sex is accepted as normal but only for the purpose of procreation... They have no curiosity: their language, their arts and sciences are purely functional and restricted to the bare necessities of harmonious social existence.

This society is featured in

1. Animal Farm.
   
2. Slaughterhouse-Five
   .
   
3. 1984
   .
   
4. Gulliver's Travels.
   
5. Brave New World.
   

Which best describes such a book?

1. A travelogue
   
2. A Utopia novel
   
3. An anti-Utopia novel
   
4. A fable
   
5. A satire
   

Who lives in the society described?

1. Midgets
   
2. Tralfamadorians
   
3. Giants
   
4. Pigs
   
5. Horses
   

Busie old foole, unruly Sunne,
Why dost thou thus
Through wiridowes, and through curtaines call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers seasons run?
Saucy pedantique wretch, goe chide
Late school boyes, and sowre prentices,
Goe tell Court-huntsmen, that the King will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knowes, nor clyme,
Nor houres, dayes, months, which are the rags of time.

This impudent address of the sun is

1. anti-heroic.
   
2. anti-Shakesperean.
   
3. anti-Spenserian.
   
4. anti-Miltonic.
   
5. anti-cleric.
   

Which is the name for an address to daybreak?

1. An ode
   
2. An elegy
   
3. A sonnet
   
4. An aubade
   
5. A sestina
   

Which best describes the poem's meaning?

1. The two lovers are all sufficient to each other.
   
2. The two lovers prefer the night.
   
3. The two lovers want to share their love with the sun.
   
4. The two lovers do not want others to know of their love.
   
5. The two lovers want the sun to shine forever on their bed.
   

Which best explains the metaphor of time?

1. Love is eternal and does not recognize units of time.
   
2. Love lasts forever and does not need to be measured in mere fragments of time.
   
3. Love does not last forever so there is no point in measuring time.
   
4. Measurements of time are useless when trying to hang on to love.
   
5. Hours, days, months simply show how love is passing by with time.
   

Do not begrudge us oracles from birds,
or any other way of prophesy
within your skill; save yourself and the city,
save me; redeem the debt of our pollution
that lies on us because of this dead man.

 

Who is the dead man?

1. King Lear
   
2. King Alonzo
   
3. King Laius
   
4. King Priam
   
5. King Creon
   

Perhaps it is only a game. Modern women like Sarah exist and I have never understood them.

 

Sarah exists in

1. Beckett's
   Endgame
   .
   
2. Joyce's
   Ulysses.
   
3. Dickens's
   Great Expectations
   .
   
4. John Fowles'
   The French Lieutenant's Woman.
   
5. Pynchon's
   V
   .
   

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun.

 

The quote is from

1. Ecclesiastes.
   
2. Isaiah.
   
3. The Odyssey
   .
   
4. The Iliad.
   
5. The Symposium.