GRE Literature in English (REA) (21 page)

 

67.
(B)

Look closely at the titles of the books: The Bible,
Pilgrim's Progress, Friendship's Offering
, and the fact that they are piled up exactly, i.e., never read! Even if you do not know the family and their feuding, the titles suggest an irony, and the other possibilities can be eliminated in context.

 

68.
(B)

Frequently Eliot's symbolism can be detected only in the poem seen as an integral whole. In “Prufrock” the allusions to characters from the past, characters such as Lazarus and John the Baptist and here, Hamlet, become central symbols for the poem. Do not be confused with (C) from “The Dry Salvages” which personifies the river as a god.

 

69.
(E)

“Little Gidding” shows the poet wrestling with words and meaning and returning exactly where he began, to begin all over again, a process the poet saw as part of the life-cycle of man. The entire opening movement of the poem builds upon poetic paradox: “We die with the dying: We are born with the dead.”

 

70.
(D)

Eliot writes of worlds in despair, fragmented, ruined—the imagery for such worlds demands delving into the subconscious, the night-world of dreams and nightmares. Often the probing produces surrealistic images of madness, debris, waste, and of course, drought, as in “The Waste Land.” Here the nightmare image prevails.

 

71.
(E)

Lord Byron's poems mean a great deal to the protagonist, Little Cloud. Trapped in a non-Romantic setting, he yearns for the profound loves and exotic adventures of Byron. If you do not know the poetry excerpt in Joyce's short story, eliminate (A), (C), and (D) through style, then try to recall a Wordsworth poem addressed to Margaret.

 

72.
(D)

Again, if you do not know the piece, eliminate through style. (A) is a possibility, considering D. H. Lawrence's short stories, but not this particular novel. (B) and (C) are too modern for the style depicted here, and Hardy's style (E) is too distinct to be confused with Joyce. Do not neglect Joyce's short stories, which are well worth studying.

 

73.
(E)

Lord Chesterfield wrote letters to his son, letters which seem outrageous in some parts to modern readers, but give an interesting insight into the lifestyles of the age. His world was Richardson's (A) and Fielding's who fictionalize the time's mores. Addison (B) and Chesterton developed the essay and epistolary art.

 

74.
(C)

Pandarus features slightly in
The Iliad
, but Chaucer develops the character into a scoundrel to whom readers react differently. He does “procure” Criseyde for Troylus but also brings humor and fun to the story, querying whether Troylus is a man or a mouse in his virginal attitude to women.

 

75.
(C)

There is an element of all these possibilities in the definition, but the main point of a pander's role is the sexual dimension. You can pander to someone's wants and desires by giving in too easily, but the true role involves procuring the sexual favors of one human being for another.

 

76.
(E)

Virgil is conducting Dante to Hell,
Inferno
, Canto III, lines 76-81. If you do not know Dante, then eliminate through style. The Bible [(B) and (C)] and
Paradise Lost
would be in more elevated language. Homer never engages in conversation with Odysseus (D). This passage establishes the relationship between Master and Disciple, something none of the other works develop.

 

77.
(D)

If you do not know Dante or the mythical terms for the journey to Hell, eliminate through context. The words “sorrowful shore” eliminate (A) and (E). As Virgil is taking Dante, neither a soldier nor a child, eliminate (B) and (C). The passage suggests that we all have the potential to cross the river into Hell.

 

78.
(B)

The key to understanding the passage are the words “abashed” and “unmeet,” and deriving from the context the relationship between master and disciple, the leader and the led. The paraphrase should capture the shame and the humility on the part of the narrator. Eliminate the options that suggest anger on the narrator's part.

 

79.
(B)

Death scenes are very important in novels and plays. These last words from Kurtz in
Heart of Darkness
are perhaps the most well known as they reveal the dying man's whole personality. (A) is from the same novel. Dr. Rieux (C) in
The Plague
has too many victims for him to recall last words. (D) and (E) come close to death but do not narrate last words.

 

80.
(D)

Kurtz's last words reveal the innate evil of the man and the Hell which is receiving him. (A) is Balzac's Old Goriot thinking of his daughters to the end. (B) is Dickens's Magwitch from
Great Expectations
, (C) is Osvald from Ibsen's Ghosts before sinking into insanity, and (E) is Flory to the dog he shoots before killing himself in Orwell's
Burmese Days
.

 

81.
(D)

You need to know the plot for the relationship between the fiancee and Kurtz. Marlow cannot reveal to a good, innocent woman the horrifying evil of the man she loved. The man's last words would instantly reveal that Kurtz was not thinking of her or any human thing at that moment, but slipping into evil as horrifying as that which he had perpetrated on earth.

 

82.
(C)

The Parable of the Prodigal Son illustrates one of the central premises of Christianity: that sinners will be forgiven and welcomed back, more loved than before, into God's fold. If you do not know the parable, some of the other possibilities could be considered, but there is always a deeper meaning to the seemingly simple stories.

 

83.
(E)

A favorite theme of Yeats and the Romantic poets, Coleridge and Wordsworth, was the constancy of nature. The birds come back each year as if they were the same birds. Trees seem to die each year but come back, as if resurrected, in the spring, a feat which man cannot achieve.

 

84.
(B)

There are clues in the stanzas even if you do not know the poem: peacocks (A) and doves (E) do not “paddle in the cold/Companionable streams”; ducks (C) and geese (D) seem infinitely less ethereal than swans, and think of the well-known poem of Yeats, “Leda and the Swan,” a bird of interest to him.

 

85.
(C)

Vladimir and Estragon feature in the play
Waiting for Godot
, frequently performed these days and well worth reading. The other characters are also from Beckett's works with the exception of Biff and Happy (E), who sound like Beckett people but in fact are Arthur Miller's from
Death of a Salesman.

 

86.
(D)

If you know the play, be careful distinguishing between (B) and (D). The characters do not listen to each other, which is one of Beckett's main points about the lack of human communication in the modern age. Eliminate (A) because the boredom is not apparent here. Eliminate (E) as the feeling is strong that they know each other well and can relax with one another.

 

87.
(C)

In the preface to
The Deerslayer
, Fenimore Cooper sets the story behind the strange attraction of Judith for his hero. If you do not know the story, analyze the other heroes and “plug into” the relationship described. (A), (B), and (D) do not fit the description of the hero. (E) begins well, but no Judith exists in the story.

 

88.
(C)

Although he lived for a shorter span than Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) wrote at approximately the same time. Charles Brockden Brown (D), often considered the first American novelist, was much earlier, as were Richardson (A) and Fielding (B) in England. Mark Twain (E) comes later. While studying specific authors, be aware of their time and contemporaries.

 

89.
(A)

Do not confuse Goldsmith's Marlow with Conrad's—different genres and different literary periods.
She Stoops to Conquer
is a Restoration comedy, frequently performed and very amusing to read. Analyze the other choices: (B) is Catherine's name from
Wuthering Heights
. (C) and (D), Booby and Andrews, are from
Joseph Andrews
and, (E) is Teazle is from
The Rivals.

 

90.
(D)

A late play in the Restoration period,
She Stoops to Conquer
has softened some of the outright farce of the true Restoration play, like a Congreve, or a Wycherley play. There is more fun in Goldsmith and Sheridan and less cruelty than in the earlier plays, but the period is still considered Restoration.

 

91.
(C)

Ezra Pound's explanations of modern poetry and his work within the movement are worth studying. A number of writers including T. S. Eliot are in debt to him not only for influence but also for personal friendship and help in publishing. The other poets/critics listed rarely express themselves quite so clearly or so emphatically.

 

92.
(B)

Much of Pound's writing is complex and difficult to grasp on first reading because of the internalized symbolism, as in T. S. Eliot's case. However, often as in this excerpt, a cryptic tone comes across which reflects the man's approach to life: a modern take-me-for-what-I-am attitude which antagonized even his friends.

 

93.
(C)

Do not confuse this with Amy Lowell (E) who was influenced by Pound and the French symbolists; her internalizing of images can make for difficult reading. Robert Lowell is more straightforward in the imagery and verse patterns. The picture here of the “hill-skull” and the graveyard extending the metaphor is typical of Robert Lowell, along with his love and death images.

 

94.
(D)

The Sheridan play stands out from the others, which are all early Restoration plays. Sheridan places more symbolic weight on his characters' names. His famous Mrs. Malaprop gave birth to the word “malapropism.” Like Goldsmith's, Sheridan's plays tone down the cruelty of the early plays and become semi-realistic comedies.

 

95.
(C)

The Humours developed from the morality plays where the characters took on the attributes of their names, often associated with sins: Sloth, Gluttony, etc. Ben Jonson developed the technique for attributes of personality, and Sheridan polished it so that without seeing the play we know that Lady Sneerwell will be a snob and Snake is not to be trusted.

 

96.
(D)

Dryden's criticism is frequently neglected, but he does have interesting insights and writes in clear, succinct prose. Eliminate the obvious from (A), (B), and (C), especially the latter where he would hardly praise his own work so lavishly, and think of the range and diversity in Chaucer's tales versus Shakespeare's history plays.

 

97.
(A)

If you do not know biblical names, ponder the “he” talking to Hawthorne. Eliminate Isaiah (C) and Job (E) as non-tragic figures not involved with someone who knew Hawthorne. Lucifer (D) in Milton's hands became a tragic figure, but Milton lived centuries before Hawthorne. Ishmael (B) was not an Old Testament ruler, which leaves Melville's tragic hero, Ahab.

 

98.
(C)

Alexander Pope took the heroic couplet to new heights, splitting the lines at the caesura, developing a two-by-five stress rather than the plodding iambic or octosyllabic line. If you do not know the poem or the poet's technique, cancel out the obvious (A) and (D) and distinguish between the different types of couplets.

 

99.
(D)

The key word here is in fact omitted, but, in context, mentally add the verb “filled.” Your vocabulary should include the word “lampoon,” especially if you have studied this era when the lampoon was a very popular means of attacking one's enemy.

 

100.
(C)

(A) and (B) are possibilities, but from the context analyze why the “Fair-ones” become ill in the first place. Capture the tone of the poetry and the mockery behind it. There were plenty of reasons for women to fall ill in Pope's day, but in this case, the advent of a new nightdress that they could show off in their rooms provoked diseases.