Open City (pt 1)
In the fourth sentence of the passage (“I moved . . . step”), the word “premeditated” indicates that the narrator
(A) has been out on the fire escape before
(B) is considering doing something illegal or unethical
(C) is being very cautious as he navigates the fire escape
(D) is counting the steps as he climbs down the fire escape
Answer C
On the slippery fire escape, the narrator must step very carefully and deliberately, “step after premeditated step.”
In referring to Times Square as a “neon inferno” in the final paragraph, the narrator emphasizes both the brightness of Times Square’s lights and
(A) the sense that its lights are spreading throughout the city
(B) the wickedness of the people inhabiting its crowded streets
(C) the severity of the injuries suffered by the people inside the ambulance
(D) the garish appearance it has compared to the sky above it
D Correct. The word “inferno,” which suggests the fires of hell, indicates not only that the neon lights burn very brightly, but also that they have a disturbing or repulsive quality. In the passage, the “neon inferno” below is placed in opposition to the light of the stars shining above, in the sky where “heaven itself shimmered.”
Which lines most fully support an interpretation that the speaker feels the nonpoets of the modern world have a misguided perspective?
(A) Lines 14-15 (“To grow . . . go-getter”)
(B) Line 24 (“No longer . . . dreams”)
(C) Line 33 (“A wordy . . . problems”)
(D) Lines 38-39 (“Grow up . . . wants”)
Answer D Correct. The speaker’s advice to “Grow up and join the big, busy crowd / That scrambles for what it thinks it wants” (lines 38-39) follows his advice that “this is no time nor place for a poet” (line 37). By putting the crowd in opposition to poets and saying it “scrambles for what it thinks it wants” (line 39), the speaker implies that the nonpoets are undignified and misguided in their desires.
The allusion to Atlas in line 34 primarily serves to suggest that modern poets
(A) claim to feel unworthy of the public’s praise
(B) possess an exaggerated sense of their own importance
(C) express their ideas through old-fashioned imagery
(D) tend to avoid tasks that seem particularly difficult
Answer B Correct. The speaker refers to each modern-day poet as being “a self-imagined Atlas” (line 34). Atlas, who had to carry the sky on his shoulders as punishment, was responsible for the weight of the sky on his body—a very significant task. The current poets, in aligning themselves with Atlas and seeing themselves as carrying the weight of the world in their work, overinflate their importance.
The metaphor in the first paragraph comparing the narrator’s situation to a “high-wire act” emphasizes which of the following?
(A) The danger of the narrator’s current predicament
(B) The narrator’s complete lack of fear
(C) The narrator’s sense that he is being watched
(D) The narrator’s physical agility and skill
Answer A
By describing his movements as a high-wire, or tightrope, act, the narrator emphasizes how dangerous his situation is and how careful he must be.
The passage emphasizes a parallel between the narrator’s unexpected experience of finding himself outside the building and his
(A) feeling that he has never really belonged in New York City
(B) desire to escape his hectic day-to-day life and find true solitude
(C) sense of temporarily existing outside everyday time and space
(D) reaction to the otherworldly beauty of the music at the concert
C Correct. This question invites students to consider how the author arranges the sequence of events depicted in the passage so as to emphasize an aspect of the narrator’s state of mind. The narrator’s unexpected and unusual situation when he is locked out of the building on the fire escape, his “solitude of a rare purity,” puts him physically outside of his ordinary world. The bulk of the passage describes the narrator’s experience as he pauses with his hand on the entry door, contemplating the long journey of the light from faraway stars; in those moments, he imagines himself as having a “direct glimpse of the future,” wishing he could “meet the unseen starlight halfway.” The final sentence of the passage emphasizes his feeling of being outside of ordinary experience: “. . . it was as though I had come so close to something that it had fallen out of focus, or fallen so far away from it that it had faded away.”
In the context of the first stanza, “Tiny” (line 1) emphasizes the speaker’s feeling that his son is a
(A) miniature model of human perfection
(B) small part of a larger world
(C) insignificant product of human history
(D) diminutive reflection of his ancestors
Answer B Correct. The speaker/poet refers to his son as a “tiny bit of humanity” (line 1), which alludes to him being a member of a vast community of human beings.
The two three-line stanzas in lines 1-3 and in lines 42-44 have the effect of framing the poem as
(A) an impatient and scornful set of instructions
(B) a brief and powerful confession
(C) a concise and counterintuitive message
(D) a short and sincere wish
Answer C Correct. The two three-line stanzas together form a concise message for the baby son tinged with competing ideas. On the one hand, the boy is “blessed,” but on the other hand, he is “cursed” in the first stanza. Similarly, the “father who knows” and argues against becoming a poet in the last stanza is, presumably, the “Poet” in the title.
Toward the middle of the second paragraph, the comparison between the stars and “a distant cloud of fireflies” (sentence 6) is best described as
(A) a homely simile that expresses the narrator’s yearning for a more rural setting
(B) a reductive image that reveals the extent to which the narrator’s moral values have been corrupted by the city
(C) a hyperbolic expression that hints at the stars’ destructive potential
(D) a lively metaphor that emphasizes the narrator’s initial delight at being able to see stars in the city
Answer D
The metaphor of “a distant cloud of fireflies” likens the stars to light-emitting living creatures; in the context of the pleasure and excitement expressed by the narrator earlier in the passage (e.g., “Stars! . . . the sky was like a roof shot through with light, and heaven itself shimmered”), the image emphasizes the narrator’s initial sense of childlike wonder at the beauty of this unexpected sight. Significantly, this lively metaphor completely dissolves in the sentences that follow: instead of seeing the stars as living creatures, the narrator perceives them instead as “dead, shining stars.”
Overall, the passage can best be interpreted as an account of a
(A) terrifying ordeal
(B) daring rescue
(C) personal triumph
(D) transcendent experience
D Correct. The narrator finds himself feeling as though he is standing outside of the everyday world, experiencing a “direct glimpse of the future” as he contemplates the light traveling from the distant stars. “[C]aught up in a blind spot,” he wishes he could “meet the unseen starlight halfway” but does not know if he has “come so close to something that it had fallen out of focus, or fallen so far away from it that it had faded away.”
. In context, the description of modern poets as “unfortunate fellows / And . . . Atlas” (lines 27-34) suggests that the speaker believes their predicament is
(A) lamentable because it is inevitable
(B) heroic because it is ongoing
(C) ambiguous because it is indistinct
(D) trivial because it is self-created
Answer D Correct. The idea is that modern poets are exhausting themselves, “Baffled in trying to say old things in a new way” (line 28), speaking in “abracadabra” (line 30). The speaker indicates that this trivial struggle is self-created, as the modern poet creates “A wordy world of shadow problems / And as a self-imagined Atlas” (lines 33-34) struggles under this load.
A good synonym for "incipient" in line 17 would be
A) Penultimate
B) Transient
C) Enigmatic
D) Nascent
D is Correct. Nascent means "just starting, or just born"
Penultimate = second to last
Transient = fleeting, not lasting long
Enigmatic = mysterious, difficult to define
In the second sentence of the final paragraph, the image of the “human race itself” being “extinguished” most clearly serves to associate humanity with
(A) the recent rain
(B) the speeding ambulance
(C) long-dead stars
(D) Manhattan’s electric lights
Answer C
In the second paragraph, the narrator refers to long-dead stars whose light has been traveling toward the Earth for so long that “the light source itself had in some cases been long extinguished, its dark remains stretched away from us at ever greater speeds.” By echoing the image of something being “extinguished” in the final paragraph in reference to “the human race itself,” the narrator associates humanity with the stars and places humanity’s survival in the context of the “unfathomable ages” that light spends traveling through the universe.
Which of the following provides the most accurate synonym for "miasma" ("The miasma[2]of Manhattan’s electric lights did not go very far up into the sky, and in the moonless night, the sky was like a roof shot through with light, and heaven itself shimmered."
A) Fetor
B) Brume
C) Intimation
D) Illusion
Correct answer: Brume (mist, fog, haze)
Fetor = Stench
Intimation = Inkling
Illusion = Image that doesn't actually exist
In line 29, “old” refers to a language that is
(A) descended from a language used in ancient times
(B) characterized by a wise and balanced prose style
(C) inadequate to express modern thoughts
(D) incomprehensible to modern people
Answer C Correct. The speaker focuses on the predicament of modern poets who are “Baffled in trying to say . . . new things in an old language” (lines 28-29). These poets lack a language that is adequate to express their experiences of modern life. Their futile attempts lead them to speak incoherently of “abracadabra” in words that strike others as “an unknown tongue” (lines 30-31).
How does the narrator characterize the poets of old?
A) As egotistical historians
B) As ingrateful complainers
C) As noble philosophers
D) As curious malingerers
Correct answer: C
The poets of old are characterized as deep thinkers whose ruminations on the secrets of the universe contributed to the growth of humankind.
The image of the “blurred yellow rectangle of a taxicab” in the final paragraph helps dramatize which aspect of the scene?
(A) The dizzying height from which the narrator regards the city streets
(B) The temporary blindness suffered by the narrator because of the lights in Times Square
(C) The identical appearance of the many taxicabs in the city
(D) The recklessness of the taxicab driver’s driving
Answer A
The narrator looks down through the “steep drop” from his perch high above the street; from
that distance the moving taxicab below looks like a “blurred yellow rectangle.”
Which of the following complex emotions does the narrator not experience in the text:
A) Belligerence
B) Inquietude
C) Mollification
D) Reverence
Correct answer: A Belligerence (at no point is he aggressive and combative toward his surroundings)
Inquietude = distress, discomfort, the feeling of being smothered
Mollification = to experience relief, for a discomfort to be resolved
Reverence = to be in awe of something (often something spiritual or holy)
In a famous nineteenth-century poem by John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” the speaker concludes a discussion about the nature of art by saying:
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
In addressing his baby son, the speaker alludes to Keats’s poem in lines 25-26 (“And interpreters . . . beauty”) in order to make which point?
(A) Poets formerly helped readers feel that they understood the world around them.
(B) Poets originally served their communities as instructors in the creation of art objects.
(C) Poets urgently need to rediscover a childhood delight in their physical surroundings.
(D) Poets regrettably have rejected the use of mythology to illustrate human problems.
Answer A Correct. In saying “all ye need to know” about “earth” is that “Beauty is truth,” Keats’s speaker is imparting wisdom about the world. The speaker in “A Poet to His Baby Son,” in alluding to Keats and describing past poets as “interpreters of the eternal truth” (line 25), implies that the past poet’s job was to help us understand the truth of the world around us.
Which of the following poetic devices is not employed throughout the poem?
A) Irony
B) Allusion
C) Oxymoron
D) Polysyndeton
D) Polysyndeton (there is no repetition of "and, and and" or "but, but, but")