21 - ] Model SAT Tests
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Test Twenty One
The questions that follow the two passages relate to
the content of both , and to their relationship . The correct response may be
stated outright in the passage or merely suggested .
Questions 1 - 13are based on the following passages .
The
following passages are taken from memoirs by two young American writers , each
of whom records his reaction to the prospect of visiting his ancestral homeland
.
Passage
1
Thomas Wolfe said that going home
again is like stepping into a river . You cannot step into the same river twice
; you cannot go home again . After a very long time away , you will not find
the same home you left behind . It will be different , and so will you . It is
quite possible that home will not be home at all , meaningless except for its
sentimental place in your heart . At best it will point the long way back to
where you started , its value lying in how it helped to shape you and in the
part of home you have carried away .
Alex Haley went to Africa in the
mid-sixties . Somehow he had managed to trace his roots back to a little
village called Juffure , upriver from Banjul in the forests of The Gambia . It
was the same village from which his ancestors had been stolen and forced into
slavery . In some way Haley must have felt he was returning home : a flood of
emotions , an awakening of the memoirs hidden in his genes .
Those were the two extremes between
which I was trapped . I could not go home again , yet here I was .
Africa was so long ago the land of my ancestors that it held for me only
a symbolic significance . Yet there was enough to remind me that what I carry
as a human being has come in part from Africa . I did not feel Africa , but was
beginning to feel not wholly American anymore either . I felt like an orphan ,
a waif without a home .
I was not trying to find the
village that had once been home to my people , not would I stand and talk to people
who could claim to be my relatives , as Haley had done . The thought of running
into someone who looked like a relative terrified me , for that would have been
too concrete , too much proof . My Africanism was abstract and I wanted it to
remain so . I did not need to hear the names of my ancient ancestors or know
what they looked like . I had seen the ways they loved their children in the
love of my father . I would see their faces and their smiles one day in the
eyes of my children .
Haley found what he was seeking . I
hardly knew what I was looking for , except perhaps to know where home once was
, to know how much of me is really me ,how much of being black has been carried
out of Africa .
Passage
2
I am a Sansei , a
third-generation Japanese-American . In 1984 , through luck and through some
skills as a poet . I traveled to Japan . My reasons for going were not very
clear .
At the time , I’d been working as
an arts administrator in the Writers-in-the-Schools program , sending other
writers to grade schools and high schools throughout Minnesota .It wasn’t taxing
, but it didn’t provide the long stretches needed to plunge into my own work
. I had applied for a U.S. / Japan Creative Artist Exchange Fellowship mainly
because I wanted time to write .
Japan ? That was where my
grandparents came from ; it didn’t have much to do with my present life .
For me Japan was cheap baseballs ,
Godzilla , weird sci-fi movies like Star Man , where you could see the
string that pulled him above his
enemies , flying in front of a backdrop so poorly made even I , at eight , was
conscious of the fakery . Then there were the endless hordes storming GI’s in
war movies . Before the television set , wearing my ever-present Cubs cap . I
crouched near the sofa , saw the enemy surrounding me . I shouted to my men ,
hurled a grenade . I fired my gun . And the Japanese soldiers fell before me ,
one by one .
So , when I did win the fellowship
, I felt I was going not as an ardent pilgrim , longing to return to the land
of his grandparents , but more like a contestant on a quiz show who finds
himself winning a trip to Bali or the Bahamas . Of course , I was
pleased about the stipend , the plane fare for me and my wife , and the
payments for Japanese lessons , both before the trip and during my stay . I was
also excited that I had beat out several hundred candidates in literature and
other fields for one of the six spots . But part of me wished the prize was
Paris , not Tokyo . I would have preferred French bread and Brie over sashimi
and rice , Baudelaire and Proust over Basho and Kawabata and Barthes over
Zen and D.T. Suzuki .
This contradiction remained . Much
of my life I had insisted on my Americanness , had shunned most connections
with Japan and felt proud I knew no Japanese ; yet I was going to Japan as a
poet , and my Japanese ancestry was there in my poems - my grandfather, the
relocation camps , the hibakusha ( victims of the atomic bomb ) , a picnic
of Nisei ( second-generation Japanese-Americans ) , my uncle who fought
in the 442nd . True , the poems were written in blank verse , rather
than haika , tanka . or haibun . But perhaps it’s a bit disingenuous to say
that I had no longing to go to Japan ; it was obvious my imagination had been
traveling there for years , unconsciously swimming the Pacific , against the
tide of my Tamily’s emigration , my parents’ desire , after the internment
camps , to forget the past .
1
. Wolfe’s comment referred to 1 - 4 represents
(A)
a digression from the author’s thesis
(B)
an understatement of the situation
(C)
a refutation of the author’s central argument
(D)
a figurative expression of the author’s point
(E)
an example of the scientific method
2.
according to the lines at the end of the first paragraph , the most positive
outcome of attempting to go home again would be for you to
(A)
find the one place you genuinely belong
(B)
recognize the impossibility of the task
(C)
grasp how your origins have formed you
(D)
reenter the world of your ancestors
(E)
decide to stay away for shorte5r periods of time
3
. Throughout Passage 1 , the author seeks primarily to convey
(A)
his resemblance to his ancestors
(B)
his ambivalence about his journey
(C)
the difficulties of traveling in a foreign country
(D)
his need to deny his American origins
(E)
the depth of his desire to track down his roots
4
. The underlined statement “I could not go home again , yet here I was represents
(A)
a paradox (B) a prevarication (C) an interruption (D) an analogy (E) a fallacy
5
. The underlined word “held” in paragraph 3 Passage 1 means
(A)
grasped (B) believed (C) absorbed (D) accommodated (E) possessed
6
. By “my own work” Passage 2 paragraph 2 , the author refers to
(A)
seeking his ancestral roots
(B)
teaching in high school
(C)
writing a travel narrative
(D)
creating poetry
(E)
directing art programs
7
. The underlined word “taxing” Passage 2 , paragraph 2 means
(A)
imposing (B) obliging (C) demanding (D) accusatory (E) costly
8
. The author’s purpose in describing the war movie incident Passage 2 , at the
end of paragraph 3 most likely is to
(A)
indicate the depth of his hatred for the Japanese
(B)
show the extent of his self-identification as an American
(C)
demonstrate the superiority of American films to their Japanese counterparts
(D)
explore the range of his interest in contemporary art forms
(E)
explain why he had a particular urge to travel to Japan
9
. By “a trip to Bali or the Bahamas” paragraph 5 Passage 2 the author wishes to
convey
(A)
his love for these particular vacation sites
(B)
the impression that he has traveled to these places before
(C)
his preference for any destination other than Japan
(D)
his sense of Japan as just another exotic destination
(E)
the unlikelihood of his ever winning a second trip
10
. The author’s attitude toward winning the fellowship can best be described as
one of
(A)
graceful acquiescence
(B)
wholehearted enthusiasm
(C)
unfeigned gratitude
(D)
frank dismay
(E)
marked ambivalence
11
. The author concludes Passage 2 with
(A)
a rhetorical question
(B)
a eulogy
(C)
an epitaph
(D)
an extended metaphor
(E)
a literary allusion
12
. Both passages are concerned primarily with the subject of
(A)
ethnic identity
(B)
individual autonomy
(C)
ancestor worship
(D)
racial purity
(E)
genealogical research
13
. For which of the following statements or phrases from Passage 1 is a parallel
idea not conveyed in Passage 2 ?
(A)
Africa “held for me only a symbolic significance”
(B)
“I did not feel African”
(C)
“I felt like an orphan , a waif without a home”
(D)
“I hardly knew what I was looking for”
(E) “An awakening of the memories hidden in his genes”
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