Common Core: 10th Grade English Language Arts : Read and Comprehend Grade-Appropriate Literary Texts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.10
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for Common Core: 10th Grade English Language Arts
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Example Questions
Example Question #1 : Read And Comprehend Grade Appropriate Literary Texts: Ccss.Ela Literacy.Rl.9 10.10
Passage adapted from Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1798)
There passed a weary time. Each throat
Was parched, and glazed each eye.
A weary time! a weary time!
How glazed each weary eye,
When looking westward, I beheld
A something in the sky.
At first it seemed a little speck,
And then it seemed a mist:
It moved and moved, and took at last
A certain shape, I wist.
A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist!
And still it neared and neared:
As if it dodged a water-sprite,
It plunged and tacked and veered.
With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
We could not laugh nor wail;
Through utter drought all dumb we stood
I bit my arm, I sucked the blood,
And cried, A sail! a sail!
With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
Agape they heard me call:
Gramercy! they for joy did grin,
And all at once their breath drew in,
As they were drinking all.
See! see! (I cried) she tacks no more!
Hither to work us weal;
Without a breeze, without a tide,
She steadies with upright keel!
The western wave was all a-flame
The day was well nigh done!
Almost upon the western wave
Rested the broad bright Sun;
When that strange shape drove suddenly
Betwixt us and the Sun.
And straight the Sun was flecked with bars,
(Heaven's Mother send us grace!)
As if through a dungeon-grate he peered,
With broad and burning face.
Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud)
How fast she nears and nears!
Are those her sails that glance in the Sun,
Like restless gossameres!
Are those her ribs through which the Sun
Did peer, as through a grate?
And is that Woman all her crew?
Is that a DEATH? and are there two?
Is DEATH that woman's mate?
Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Night-Mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold.
The naked hulk alongside came,
And the twain were casting dice;
"The game is done! I've won! I've won!"
Quoth she, and whistles thrice.
The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out:
At one stride comes the dark;
With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea.
Off shot the spectre-bark.
What is the end result of the appearance of the embodied spirits?
The narrator and crew are rescued
The narrator and crew are killed
The sun is permanently blackened
The narrator and crew are left at sea, just as they were at the beginning of the passage
The narrator and crew are left at sea, just as they were at the beginning of the passage
This question simply interrogates your understanding of what happens in the passage. So, let's look at our options and see which jibe with our understanding of the events described in the passage. Basically, it seems as if the specter of "LIFE IN DEATH" has vanished into the sky. Key to note here is that it is the "specter-bark" that has shot off into the sky, NOT the narrator and his crew mates.
While the specter did temporarily put "bars" over the sun, it never fully obscured it, and since the bark left at the end, one can assume that then sun became fully apparent again.
Since the poem is narrated in the first person past tense, it is a near certainty that the narrator was not killed at the end of the passage.
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