SAT II Literature : Content
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for SAT II Literature
All SAT II Literature Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #2 : Context, Speaker, And Addressee
Hear the mellow wedding bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!(5)
From the molten golden-notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!(10)
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
Which word in this passage best encapsulates what the poet is trying to imitate?
Euphony (line 12)
Gush (line 12)
Ditty (line 8)
Happiness (line 3)
Sounding cells (line 11)
Euphony (line 12)
Through his use of lush imagery, pleasing rhymes, and careful diction, Poe is depicting the harmonious, dulcet sound of bells. “Euphony,” which means a harmonious sound or collection of sounds, is the best description of Poe’s accomplishment. While “sounding cells” also alludes to the auditory nature of the passage, it is a neutral and therefore less optimal choice.
Passage adapted from "The Bells" by Edgar Allen Poe (1850)
Example Question #651 : Sat Subject Test In Literature
… Come, my friends,
’T is 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 (5)
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
In lines 6-8, the narrator acknowledges what outcome for the explorers?
Lack of necessary navigational equipment
Reunion with emigrant friends
Death
An easy voyage due to ocean currents
Colonization of new lands
Death
Based on the previous lines, in which the narrator admits to his willingness to “sail beyond the sunset” until he dies, we can already begin to form conclusions about lines 6-8. We can also note the use of past tense in describing Achilles (“whom we knew”) and surmise that Achilles is a now-dead companion of the speaker. Lastly, close attention to tone will make it clear that “the gulfs will wash us down” is a euphemism for death and not smooth sailing.
Passage adapted from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” (1842).
Example Question #11 : Passage Content
Adapted from "The Mouse’s Petition" in Poems by Anna Letitia Barbauld (1773)
Found in the trap where he had been confined all night by Dr. Priestley, for the sake of making experiments with different kinds of air
“To spare the humbled, and to tame in war the proud.” - Virgil
OH! hear a pensive captive's prayer,
For liberty that sighs;
And never let thine heart be shut
Against the prisoner's cries.
For here forlorn and sad I sit,
Within the wiry grate;
And tremble at th' approaching morn,
Which brings impending fate.
If e'er thy breast with freedom glow'd,
And spurn'd a tyrant's chain,
Let not thy strong oppressive force
A free-born mouse detain.
Oh! do not stain with guiltless blood
Thy hospitable hearth;
Nor triumph that thy wiles betray'd
A prize so little worth.
The scatter'd gleanings of a feast
My scanty meals supply;
But if thine unrelenting heart
That slender boon deny,
The cheerful light, the vital air,
Are blessings widely given;
Let nature's commoners enjoy
The common gifts of heaven.
The well-taught philosophic mind
To all compassion gives;
Casts round the world an equal eye,
And feels for all that lives.
If mind, as ancient sages taught,
A never dying flame,
Still shifts thro' matter's varying forms,
In every form the same,
Beware, lest in the worm you crush
A brother's soul you find;
And tremble lest thy luckless hand
Dislodge a kindred mind.
Or, if this transient gleam of day
Be all of life we share,
Let pity plead within thy breast,
That little all to spare.
So may thy hospitable board
With health and peace be crown'd;
And every charm of heartfelt ease
Beneath thy roof be found.
So when unseen destruction lurks,
Which men like mice may share,
May some kind angel clear thy path,
And break the hidden snare.
The speaker of this poem is __________.
A scientist speaking to his research subject, a mouse, explaining the moral reasoning behind the mouse's imprisonment.
A mouse asserting its own ethical relevance and desire to be free of the scientific experiments being conducted on him.
A human patient who has been made captive by his doctor for the purpose of medical study pleading for his freedom.
A prisoner asserting his own ethical relevance and desire to be free of the secret scientific experiments being conducted on him.
A mouse asserting its own ethical relevance and desire to be free of the cage in which his owner keeps him as a pet.
A mouse asserting its own ethical relevance and desire to be free of the scientific experiments being conducted on him.
The speaker of this poem is a mouse. The “petition” the mouse is making to his captor, a scientist, consists of asserting his own ethical relevance relative to all creatures, and voicing his desire for “freedom.” Since the speaker is not a prisoner, patient, or scientist. The speaker is specifically figured as the object of an experiment, rather than as a house pet.
Example Question #92 : Extrapolating From The Passage
Adapted from “Solitary Death, make me thine own” in Underneath the Bough: A Book of Verses by Michael Field (pseudonym of Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper) (1893)
Solitary Death, make me thine own,
And let us wander the bare fields together;
Yea, thou and I alone
Roving in unembittered unison forever.
I will not harry thy treasure-graves,
I do not ask thy still hands a lover;
My heart within me craves
To travel till we twain Time’s wilderness discover.
To sojourn with thee my soul was bred,
And I, the courtly sights of life refusing,
To the wide shadows fled,
And mused upon thee often as I fell a-musing.
Escaped from chaos, thy mother Night,
In her maiden breast a burthen that awed her,
By cavern waters white
Drew thee her first-born, her unfathered off-spring toward her.
On dewey plats, near twilight dingle,
She oft, to still thee from men’s sobs and curses
In thine ears a-tingle,
Pours her cool charms, her weird, reviving chaunt rehearses.
Though mortals menace thee or elude,
And from thy confines break in swift transgression.
Thou for thyself art sued
Of me, I claim thy cloudy purlieus my possession.
To a long freshwater, where the sea
Stirs the silver flux of the reeds and willows,
Come thou, and beckon me
To lie in the lull of the sand-sequestered billows:
Then take the life I have called my own
And to the liquid universe deliver;
Loosening my spirit’s zone,
Wrap round me as thy limbs the wind, the light, the river.
Which of the following is NOT a reasonable inference to take from the poem of the speaker’s opinion?
The speaker feels that death is worthy of earnest intellectual consideration and should not be blindly feared.
The speaker places great values maternal bonds.
The speaker views individual human lives as insignificant in the face of larger metaphysical concepts, like death and time.
The speaker places great value on paternal bonds
The speaker advocates non-transactional, companionable relationships.
The speaker places great value on paternal bonds
The specific figuring of Death as “un-fathered” makes it unreasonable to infer that the speaker specifically places great value on paternal bonds. The description of Death’s birth and relationship to “mother Night” makes such an inference reasonable about maternal bonds. The entire poem functions as an earnest intellectual consideration of death, the importance of non-transactional relationships are emphasized in the first two stanzas, and the notion that individual human lives are insignificant in the face of larger concepts is presented in the first line of the last stanza.
Example Question #21 : Character And Subject Relationships
Passage adapted from Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Spring" (1921).
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know. 5
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify? 10
Not only under the ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. 15
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
The attitude of the speaker towards April can be described as __________.
reverent and admiring
tender and conciliatory
bored and indifferent
curious and inquisitive
confrontational and condescending
confrontational and condescending
The attitude of the speaker towards the personification of April is confrontational because the speaker bluntly questions April and states that April can no longer quiet him or her. The assertion that "it is not enough" that April comes each year is spoken as a challenge to the month of April. The speaker's attitude is also condescending, since April is being described as "an idiot babbling and stewing flowers."
Example Question #652 : Sat Subject Test In Literature
The speaker is addressing __________________.
critics
a friend who is a writer
a general audience
poets
a lover
a general audience
While this passage does talk specifically about poets and critics, the speaker is not directly addressing them. Rather, the speaker is stating his opinions and observations, presumably for anyone who is willing to read the poem. Because nothing more particular is specified, the addressee is a general audience.
Passage adapted from Alexander Pope's poem An Essay on Criticism (1711).
Example Question #241 : Interpreting The Passage
Adapted from Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" in Leaves of Grass (1855)
Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds of the west—sun there half an hour high—I see you also face to face.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me!
On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.
2
The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day,
The simple, compact, well-join’d scheme, myself disintegrated, every one disintegrated yet part of the scheme,
The similitudes of the past and those of the future,
The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the walk in the street and the passage over the river,
The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away,
The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them,
The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others.
Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore,
Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,
Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east,
Others will see the islands large and small;
Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high,
A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them,
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the falling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide.
3
It avails not, time nor place—distance avails not,
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence,
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh’d,
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood yet was hurried,
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-stemm’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d.
I too many and many a time cross’d the river of old,
Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,
Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left the rest in strong shadow,
Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the south,
Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,
Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams . . .
Which of the following do we NOT know about the speaker's immediate setting?
It is after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
Shipping ports are in sight.
It is summer.
The sun is out.
The speaker is in New York.
It is summer.
Although the speaker refers to "the reflection of the summer sky in the water" he does so reflectively and immediately after noting "the Twelfth-month [i.e. December] sea-gulls . . . edging toward the south," suggesting winter. In fact, the only definite information we get about the speaker's immediate setting is in the first stanza, but most of the information provided is more permanent and can be safely extended to his present setting.
Example Question #33 : Extrapolating From The Passage
Adapted from "Old Man Traveling" by William Wordsworth in Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1798 ed.)
The little hedge-row birds,
That peck along the road, regard him not.
He travels on, and in his face, his step,
His gait, is one expression; every limb,
His look and bending figure, all bespeak
A man who does not move with pain, but moves
With thought—He is insensibly subdued
To settled quiet: he is one by whom
All effort seems forgotten, one to whom
Long patience has such mild composure given,
That patience now doth seem a thing, of which
He hath no need. He is by nature led
To peace so perfect, that the young behold
With envy, what the old man hardly feels.
—I asked him whither he was bound, and what
The object of his journey; he replied
"Sir! I am going many miles to take
"A last leave of my son, a mariner,
"Who from a sea-fight has been brought to Falmouth,
And there is dying in an hospital."
Based on the poem, which of the following words best describes the narrator?
Stoic
Nonsensical
Fanciful
Idealistic
Cynical
Idealistic
We can eliminate “stoic,” as the only character who shows any form of stoicism, or lack of emotion, is the man, whereas the narrator shows envy, at least. The narrator cannot accurately be called "nonsensical," either, as the poem makes sense and nothing in its content suggests that the narrator somehow does not make sense. The narrator is not "cynical," either, as he or she views the man in a positive light when he or she knows nothing about him. We are left with “idealistic” and “fanciful” as potential answer choices, which are very similar. “Fanciful” generally means coming from the imagination or unrealistic, whereas “idealistic” would be describing the action of the speaker in putting the man on a pedestal, which he clearly is doing.
Example Question #42 : Interpreting The Passage
1 Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting Heaven
2 That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice,
3 And thereupon imagination and heart were driven
4 So wild that every casual thought of that and this
5 Vanished, and left but memories, that should be out of season
6 With the hot blood of youth, of love crossed long ago;
7 And I took all the blame out of all sense and reason,
8 Until I cried and trembled and rocked to and fro,
9 Riddled with light. Ah! when the ghost begins to quicken,
10 Confusion of the death-bed over, is it sent
11 Out naked on the roads, as the books say, and stricken
12 By the injustice of the skies for punishment?
(1916)
Who is the addressee of the poem?
An unspecified audience
The speaker's soul
The speaker's beloved
The sky
A ghost
An unspecified audience
No specific addressee is defined within this poem. That is, the speaker gives no indication that he is addressing his words to any particular person, thing, or group of people. He makes observations, records experiences, and asks questions, but never directs these things to any specific listener. Since the poem provides no evidence to the contrary, it can be concluded that the addressee is an "unspecified audience."
Passage adapted from William Butler Yeats' "The Cold Heaven" (1916)
Example Question #151 : Content
1 Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
2 Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;
3 From hence your memory death cannot take,
4 Although in me each part will be forgotten.
5 Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
6 Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:
7 The earth can yield me but a common grave,
8 When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie.
9 Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
10 Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read,
11 And tongues to be your being shall rehearse,
12 When all the breathers of this world are dead;
13 You still shall live (such virtue hath my pen)
14 Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.
(1609)
Who is the addressee of this poem?
The speaker is talking to himself
A now-dead lover of the speaker
A fellow poet
Someone who is not yet dead
A non-specific audience
Someone who is not yet dead
The speaker talks about and to the addressee as if their death is something that has not happened yet. The addressee, then, it can be inferred, is someone not yet dead. Not much other specific information is given in the poem, but this much is clear.
Passage adapted from William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 80" (1609)
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