SAT II Literature : Context, Speaker, and Addressee

Study concepts, example questions & explanations for SAT II Literature

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Example Questions

Example Question #21 : Context, Speaker, And Addressee

1                  In silent night when rest I took,

2                  For sorrow near I did not look,

3                  I wakened was with thund’ring noise

4                  And piteous shrieks of dreadful voice.

5                  That fearful sound of “fire” and “fire,”

6                  Let no man know is my Desire.

7                  I, starting up, the light did spy,

8                  And to my God my heart did cry

9                  To straighten me in my Distress

10               And not to leave me succourless.

11               Then, coming out, behold a space

12               The flame consume my dwelling place.

13               And when I could no longer look,

14               I blest His name that gave and took,

15               That laid my goods now in the dust.

16               Yea, so it was, and so ‘twas just.

17               It was his own, it was not mine,

18               Far be it that I should repine;

19               He might of all justly bereft

20               But yet sufficient for us left.

21               When by the ruins oft I past

22               My sorrowing eyes aside did cast

23               And here and there the places spy

24               Where oft I sate and long did lie.

25               Here stood that trunk, and there that chest,

26               There lay that store I counted best.

27               My pleasant things in ashes lie

28               And them behold no more shall I.

29               Under thy roof no guest shall sit,

30               Nor at thy Table eat a bit.

31               No pleasant talk shall ‘ere be told

32               Nor things recounted done of old.

33               No Candle e'er shall shine in Thee,

34               Nor bridegroom’s voice e'er heard shall be.

35               In silence ever shalt thou lie,

36               Adieu, Adieu, all’s vanity.

37               Then straight I ‘gin my heart to chide,

38               And did thy wealth on earth abide?

39               Didst fix thy hope on mould'ring dust?

40               The arm of flesh didst make thy trust?

41               Raise up thy thoughts above the sky

42               That dunghill mists away may fly.

43               Thou hast a house on high erect

44               Framed by that mighty Architect,

45               With glory richly furnished,

46               Stands permanent though this be fled.

47               It’s purchased and paid for too

48               By Him who hath enough to do.

49               A price so vast as is unknown,

50               Yet by His gift is made thine own;

51               There’s wealth enough, I need no more,

52               Farewell, my pelf, farewell, my store.

53               The world no longer let me love,

54               My hope and treasure lies above.

 

(1666)

The speaker’s attitude toward the event goes from _______________.

Possible Answers:

regret to repentance

worry to happiness

anger to fear

anguish to acceptance

unbelieving to devout

Correct answer:

anguish to acceptance

Explanation:

The speaker mourns the loss of her home and possessions, as suggested by the lines 21-22, but ultimately accepts the fact that the material world is not meant to be permanent.

Passage adapted from Anne Bradstreet's "Upon the Burning of our House" (1666)

Example Question #22 : Context, Speaker, And Addressee

To the Dead in the Grave-Yard Under My Window
by Adelaide Crapsey (1878 - 1915)

How can you lie so still? All day I watch
And never a blade of all the green sod moves
To show where restlessly you toss and turn,
And fling a desperate arm or draw up knees
Stiffened and aching from their long disuse;
I watch all night and not one ghost comes forth
To take its freedom of the midnight hour.
Oh, have you no rebellion in your bones?
The very worms must scorn you where you lie,
A pallid mouldering acquiescent folk,
Meek habitants of unresented graves.
Why are you there in your straight row on row
Where I must ever see you from my bed
That in your mere dumb presence iterate
The text so weary in my ears: “Lie still
And rest; be patient and lie still and rest.”
I’ll not be patient! I will not lie still!

The poem’s point of view is best characterized as __________________.

Possible Answers:

third person only

second person and third person only

first person only

second person only

first person and second person only

Correct answer:

first person and second person only

Explanation:

The narrator of the poem is speaking to the dead, addressing them as "you." ("Why are you there in your straight row on row/ Where I must ever see you from my bed...") Therefore you can eliminate two options: "First person only" and "third person only." She also speaks in first person ("All day I watch...") so that eliminates another option ("second person only"). The best answer is "first person and second person only."

Example Question #21 : Context, Speaker, And Addressee: Poetry

To the Dead in the Grave-Yard Under My Window
by Adelaide Crapsey (1878 - 1915)

  1. How can you lie so still? All day I watch
  2. And never a blade of all the green sod moves
  3. To show where restlessly you toss and turn,
  4. And fling a desperate arm or draw up knees
  5. Stiffened and aching from their long disuse;
  6. I watch all night and not one ghost comes forth
  7. To take its freedom of the midnight hour.
  8. Oh, have you no rebellion in your bones?
  9. The very worms must scorn you where you lie,
  10. A pallid mouldering acquiescent folk,
  11. Meek habitants of unresented graves.
  12. Why are you there in your straight row on row
  13. Where I must ever see you from my bed
  14. That in your mere dumb presence iterate
  15. The text so weary in my ears: “Lie still
  16. And rest; be patient and lie still and rest.”
  17. I’ll not be patient! I will not lie still!

The words quoted in lines 15-16 are most likely spoken by _______________.

Possible Answers:

the narrator herself

future readers of the poem

the narrator’s physician

it cannot be determined

a priest or minister

Correct answer:

the narrator’s physician

Explanation:

Looking at the complete thought that includes the quoted text (lines 12-16), we see that the speaker is questioning the dead, whose relentless, silent presence seems to communicate a repetitive message to her. The message is "weary in [her] ears," which tells us that the speaker is hearing it rather than speaking it herself. The message is not spoken by her future readers, because she has already heard it many times. There is nothing in the poem to suggest that she talks with a priest or minister. We are told that she spends all her time in bed, that she's restless, that she wants to rebel, and that she seems to feel some kind of kinship with the dead buried outside her window. It seems clear that she is seriously ill, and that the authority figure who is telling her to rest is probably a doctor.

Example Question #24 : Context, Speaker, And Addressee

To the Dead in the Grave-Yard Under My Window
by Adelaide Crapsey (1878 - 1915)

  1. How can you lie so still? All day I watch
  2. And never a blade of all the green sod moves
  3. To show where restlessly you toss and turn,
  4. And fling a desperate arm or draw up knees
  5. Stiffened and aching from their long disuse;
  6. I watch all night and not one ghost comes forth
  7. To take its freedom of the midnight hour.
  8. Oh, have you no rebellion in your bones?
  9. The very worms must scorn you where you lie,
  10. A pallid mouldering acquiescent folk,
  11. Meek habitants of unresented graves.
  12. Why are you there in your straight row on row
  13. Where I must ever see you from my bed
  14. That in your mere dumb presence iterate
  15. The text so weary in my ears: “Lie still
  16. And rest; be patient and lie still and rest.”
  17. I’ll not be patient! I will not lie still!

The speaker believes that the dead are all of the following EXCEPT ___________________.

Possible Answers:

infuriating

silent

contemptible

obedient

restless

Correct answer:

restless

Explanation:

Here, you are looking for the single answer that is clearly not correct.

The speaker says that the dead are obedient ("Oh, have you no rebellion in your bones?") She says that they are silent ("That in your mere dumb presence iterate/
The text...") She says they are contemptible ("The very worms must scorn you where you lie".) Everything she says tells us that she finds the dead infuriating. However, the speaker does not suggest that the dead are restless.

Example Question #161 : Content

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I 

Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee. 

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one. 

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

(1633)

The poem is most likely addressed to ____________.

Possible Answers:

a long-time lover

None of these

a new lover

a blood relative

a former lover

Correct answer:

a new lover

Explanation:

The poem is certainly addressed to a current lover. At the top of stanza two "now" and "waking" give the poem and immediacy and sense of revelation that imply that this love is. This is underscored by the recurring motif of global exploration and discovery of "new worlds."

Passage adapted from John Donne's "The Good Morrow" (1633).

Example Question #26 : Context, Speaker, And Addressee

1 Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, 
       Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, 
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express 
       A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: 
5 What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape 
       Of deities or mortals, or of both, 
               In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? 
       What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? 
9 What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? 
               What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? 
 
11 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: 
15 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, 
18 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! 
 
21 Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed 
         Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; 
And, happy melodist, unwearied, 
         For ever piping songs for ever new; 
25 More happy love! more happy, happy love! 
         For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd, 
                For ever panting, and for ever young; 
28 All breathing human passion far above, 
         That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd, 
                A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. 
 
31 Who are these coming to the sacrifice? 
         To what green altar, O mysterious priest, 
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, 
         And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? 
35 What little town by river or sea shore, 
         Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, 
                Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? 
38 And, little town, thy streets for evermore 
         Will silent be; and not a soul to tell 
                Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. 
 
41 O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede 
         Of marble men and maidens overwrought, 
With forest branches and the trodden weed; 
         Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought 
45 As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! 
         When old age shall this generation waste, 
                Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe 
48 Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, 
         "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all 
                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
 
(1819)

The addressee of lines 13-14 is __________________.

Possible Answers:

"Sylvan historian" (line 3)

"ye soft pipes" (line 12)

the poet's companion

"Fair youth" (line 15)

an unspecified audience

Correct answer:

"ye soft pipes" (line 12)

Explanation:

Lines 13-14 are addressed to the "soft pipes" in line 12. It is clear that the poet is addressing the pipes directly (an example of apostrophe) because the vocative "ye" is used--"ye soft pipes." Also, the main thing said in lines 13-14 is a command to "pipe," to play music, an action that can only be fulfilled by a musical instrument.

Passage adapted from John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819)

Example Question #21 : Context, Speaker, And Addressee: Poetry

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent 
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went! 
And more must, in yet longer light's delay. 
With witness I speak this. But where I say 
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament 
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent 
To dearest him that lives alas! away. 

I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree 
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me; 
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse. 
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see 
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be 
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

(1918) 


In line two, “we” refers to __________

Possible Answers:

The speaker and the black hours 

None of these 

The speaker and his heart

The speaker and his lover

The speaker and the night 

Correct answer:

The speaker and his heart

Explanation:

The second half of the "we" is revealed in the next line, when the speaker addresses his heart directly. 

Passage adapted from "[I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day]" (1918) by Gerald Manley Hopkins. 

Example Question #21 : Inferring Author Intent, Opinion, And Bias

Passage adapted from “Reconstruction” by Frederick Douglass (1866)

Without attempting to settle here the metaphysical and somewhat theological question (about which so much has already been said and written), whether once in the Union means always in the Union—agreeably to the formula, “Once in grace always in grace”—it is obvious to common sense that the rebellious States stand today, in point of law, precisely where they stood when, exhausted, beaten, conquered, they fell powerless at the feet of Federal authority. Their State governments were overthrown, and the lives and property of the leaders of the Rebellion were forfeited. In reconstructing the institutions of these shattered and overthrown States, Congress should begin with a clean slate, and make clean work of it.

Let there be no hesitation. It would be a cowardly deference to a defeated and treacherous President, if any account were made of the illegitimate, one-sided, sham governments hurried into existence for a malign purpose in the absence of Congress. These pretended governments, which were never submitted to the people, and from participation in which four millions of the loyal people were excluded by Presidential order, should now be treated according to their true character, as shams and impositions, and supplanted by true and legitimate governments, in the formation of which loyal men, black and white, shall participate.

It is not, however, within the scope of this paper to point out the precise steps to be taken, and the means to be employed. The people are less concerned about these than the grand end to be attained. They demand such a reconstruction as shall put an end to the present anarchical state of things in the late rebellious States—where frightful murders and wholesale massacres are perpetrated in the very presence of Federal soldiers. This horrible business they require shall cease. They want a reconstruction such as will protect loyal men, black and white, in their persons and property; such a one as will cause Northern industry, Northern capital, and Northern civilization to flow into the South, and make a man from New England as much at home in Carolina as elsewhere in the Republic. No Chinese wall can now be tolerated. The South must be opened to the light of law and liberty, and this session of Congress is relied upon to accomplish this important work.

Which of the following describes Douglass's feelings about the governments that were established in rebellious territories?

Possible Answers:

Gregariousness

Dolor

Dismissal

Zealotry

Disdain

Correct answer:

Disdain

Explanation:

Note the adjectives used in the second paragraph to describe the governments that were created during the rebellion. Douglass calls them "illegitimate," "one-sided," and "sham." He is not expressing mere dislike or distaste for these governments. He has utter disdain for them. Indeed, he says that any president that would respect these governments would be both a coward and be treacherous!

Example Question #21 : Context, Speaker, And Addressee

Passage adapted from Cape Cod by Henry David Thoreau (1865)

Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, New Orleans, and the rest, are the names of wharves projecting into the sea (surrounded by the shops and dwellings of the merchants), good places to take in and to discharge a cargo (to land the products of other climes and load the exports of our own). I see a great many barrels and fig-drums, piles of wood for umbrella-sticks, blocks of granite and ice, great heaps of goods, and the means of packing and conveying them, much wrapping-paper and twine, many crates and hogsheads and trucks, and that is Boston. The more barrels, the more Boston. The museums and scientific societies and libraries are accidental. They gather around the sands to save carting. The wharf-rats and customhouse officers, and broken-down poets, seeking a fortune amid the barrels. Their better or worse lyceums, and preachings, and doctorings, these, too, are accidental, and the malls of commons are always small potatoes....

When we reached Boston that October, I had a gill of Provincetown sand in my shoes, and at Concord there was still enough left to sand my pages for many a day; and I seemed to hear the sea roar, as if I lived in a shell, for a week afterward.

The places which I have described may seem strange and remote to my townsmen, indeed, from Boston to Provincetown is twice as far as from England to France; yet step into the cars, and in six hours you may stand on those four planks, and see the Cape which Gosnold is said to have discovered, and which I have so poorly described. If you had started when I first advised you, you might have seen our tracks in the sand, still fresh, and reaching all the way from the Nauset Lights to Race Point, some thirty miles, for at every step we made an impression on the Cape, though we were not aware of it, and though our account may have made no impression on your minds. But what is our account? In it there is no roar, no beach-birds, no tow-cloth.

In the first paragraph, the author's impression of Boston can be summarized as ___________________.

Possible Answers:

a busy place of trade and industry

a quiet coastal town

a place of debauchery and sin

an intellectual place full of art and culture

an economically depressed area

Correct answer:

a busy place of trade and industry

Explanation:

This question asks you to interpret the author's description of Boston. The first paragraph is made up of details that give an impression of a busy place of trade and industry. The author states, "The more barrels, the more Boston," showing that he equates Boston with its trade and industry. Since he states that "museums and scientific societies and libraries are accidental," it is not correct to say that he considers Boston a place of intellect and culture. He describes Boston as a busy harbor city, not a quiet coastal town. This description of the fast pace of trade does not give an impression of economic depression, but rather of economic success. The author also does not mention sin and debauchery, focusing instead on economic elements. 

Example Question #21 : Context, Speaker, And Addressee

. . . Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain. The paralysing immobility of a life every circumstance of which is regulated after an unchangeable pattern, so that we eat and drink and lie down and pray, or kneel at least for prayer, according to the inflexible laws of an iron formula: this immobile quality, that makes each dreadful day in the very minutest detail like its brother, seems to communicate itself to those external forces the very essence of whose existence is ceaseless change. Of seed-time or harvest, of the reapers bending over the corn, or the grape gatherers threading through the vines, of the grass in the orchard made white with broken blossoms or strewn with fallen fruit: of these we know nothing and can know nothing.

For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow. The very sun and moon seem taken from us. Outside, the day may be blue and gold, but the light that creeps down through the thickly-muffled glass of the small iron-barred window beneath which one sits is grey and niggard. It is always twilight in one’s cell, as it is always twilight in one’s heart. And in the sphere of thought, no less than in the sphere of time, motion is no more. The thing that you personally have long ago forgotten, or can easily forget, is happening to me now, and will happen to me again to-morrow. Remember this, and you will be able to understand a little of why I am writing, and in this manner writing. . . .

(1897)

From the end of the second paragraph, it is clear that the addressee is _________________.

Possible Answers:

a former lover

a person the speaker has never met

a non-specific audience

a person who has absolutely never suffered

a person who experienced something similar a long time ago

Correct answer:

a person who experienced something similar a long time ago

Explanation:

This is the essential sentence for understanding who the addressee of this passage is: " The thing that you personally have long ago forgotten, or can easily forget, is happening to me now, and will happen to me again to-morrow." From this alone, it is possible to infer that the author is writing to someone specific (not a general audience), and someone he has met before. From this and the sentence that follows it, it is also possible to conclude that the addressee is someone who experienced, long ago, something similar to what the speaker is presently experiencing.

Passage excerpted from Oscar Wilde's De Profundis (1897).

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