Prinsky's English 1101 Pamphlet Ch. 16: Sample Regents' Examination-type Reading Comprehension Test, Answers, and Test-Question Explanations

13. Sample Regents' Examination-Type Reading Test, Answers, and Explanations of Questions and Answers

Directions: Read the following short essay and then answer the multiple-choice questions on it. You may refer back to the essay to answer any of the questions, if you need to do so.

"Nuits Blanches" by Robert Louis Stevenson

        [1] If anyone should know the pleasure and pain of a sleepless night, it should be I. I remember, so long ago, the sickly child that woke from his few hours' slumber with the sweat of a nightmare on his brow, to lie awake and listen and long for the first signs of life among the silent streets. These nights of pain and weariness are graven on my mind; and so when the same thing happened to me again, everything that I heard or saw was rather a recollection than a discovery.

        [2] Weighed upon by the opaque and almost sensible darkness, I listened eagerly for anything to break the sepulchral quiet. But nothing came, save, perhaps, an emphatic crack from the old cabinet that was made by Deacon Brodie, or the dry rustle of the coals on the extinguished fire. It was a calm; or I know that I should have heard in the roar and clatter of the storm, as I have not heard it for so many years, the wild career of a horseman, always scouring up from the distance and passing swiftly below the window; yet always returning again from the place whence first he came, as though, baffled by some higher power, he had retraced his steps to gain impetus for another and another attempt.

        [3] As I lay there, there arose out of the utter stillness the rumbling of a carriage a very great way off, that drew near, and passed within a few streets of the house, and died away as gradually as it had arisen. This, too, was a reminiscence.

        [4] I rose and lifted a corner of the blind. Over the black belt of the garden I saw the long line of Queen Street, with here and there a lighted window. How often before had my nurse lifted me out of bed and pointed them out to me, while we wondered together if, there also, there were children that could not sleep, and if these lighted oblongs were signs of those that waited like us for the morning.

        [5] I went out into the lobby, and looked down into the great deep well of the staircase. For what cause I know not, just as it used to be in the old days that the feverish child might be the better served, a peep of gas illuminated a narrow circle far below me. But where I was, all was darkness and silence, save the dry monotonous ticking of the clock that came ceaselessly up to my ear.

        [6] The final crown of it all, however, the last touch of reproduction on the pictures of my memory, was the arrival of that time for which, all night through, I waited and longed of old. It was my custom, as the hours dragged on, to repeat the question, "When will the carts come in?" and repeat it again and again until at last those sounds arose in the street that I have heard once more this morning. The road before our house is a great thoroughfare for early carts. I know not, and I never have known, what they carry, whence they come, or whither they go. But I know that, long ere dawn, and for hours together, they stream continuously past, with the same rolling and jerking of wheels and the same clink of horses' feet. It was not for nothing that they made the burthen of my wishes all night through. They are really the first throbbings of life, the harbingers of day; and it pleases you as much to hear them as it must please a shipwrecked seaman once again to grasp a hand of flesh and blood after years of miserable solitude. They have the freshness of the daylight life about them. You can hear the carters cracking their whips and crying hoarsely to their horses or to one another; and sometimes even a peal of healthy, harsh horse-laughter comes up to you through the darkness. There is now an end of mystery and fear. Like the knocking at the door in Macbeth, or the cry of the watchman in the Tour de Nesle, they show that the horrible caesura is over and the nightmares have fled away, because the day is breaking and the ordinary life of men is beginning to bestir itself among the streets.

        [7] In the middle of it all I fell asleep, to be wakened by the officious knocking at my door, and I find myself twelve years older than I had dreamed myself all night.

Questions on Robert Louis Stevenson's "Nuits Blanches"

1. The main purpose of this essay is to:  (a) tell the story of an isolated night's experience  (b) describe the experiences associated with insomnia  (c) explain the causes of sleeplessnes (d) persuade the reader to support medical research

2. As implied in the essay, the dawn is of utmost importance to the narrator, and fellow sufferers, because it:  (a) ends the lonely isolation from humanity and daily affairs  (b) provides warmer temperatures aiding good health  (c) brings the sunlight necessary for gardening  (d) symbolizes rebirth into childhood

3. As implied in the essay, the narrator's age category is:  (a) young child (b) adolescent (c) adult (d) old age

4. As implied in the essay, the time period in which it is set is approximately:  (a) 1890's (b) 1920's (c) 1950's (d) 1980's

5. The whole experience as it affected the essayist might be summarized as a:  (a) bore (b) flashback  (c) discovery   (d) preparation

6. One feature of the essayist's life has been:  (a) good fortune (b) indifferent parents  (c) country living   (d) periodic illness

7. Throughout the essay, one of the things that most unnerves the narrator is:  (a) mysterious noises  (b) eerie silence  (c) unexpected smells   (d) ominous strangers

8. The figure of speech used in the first sentence of the first paragraph is:  (a) simile (b) understatement (c) paradox (d) metonymy

9. As used in par. 1, the word graven means:  (a) manmade (b) entombed (c) carved (d) floating

10. As used in the first sentence of par. 2, the word opaque means:  (a) frightening (b) emphatic (c) quiet (d) murky

11. As used in the first sentence of par. 2, the word sensible means:  (a) conservative (b) touchable (c) intelligent (d) lowkey

12. As used in the first sentence of par. 2, the word sepulchral means:  (a) tomblike (b) beautiful (c) medicinal (d) musical

13. As used in the third sentence of par. 2 ("It was a . . ."), the word career means:  (a) erring from a path (b) chosen profession  (c) routine occupation   (d) speedy motion

14. As mentioned in par. 3, the carriage the narrator hears is:  (a) a memory (b) a hallucination  (c) nostalgic  (d) frightening

15. In the second sentence of par. 4 ("Over the . . ."), the narrator describes the garden, using:  (a) metaphor (b) euphemism (c) personification (d) hyperbole

16. In the second sentence of par. 4 ("Over the . . ."), the figure used by the narrator about the garden mainly helps describe its:  (a) content (b) smells (c) shape (d) fragility

17. In the third sentence of par. 4 ("How often . . ."), the word them refers to:  (a) windows (b) lines of streets  (c) children   (d) street signs

18. In the third sentence of par. 4 ("How often . . ."), the word there in "there also" refers to:  (a) windows(b) nighttime  (c) children   (d) the suburbs

19. As implied in par. 4, the essayist regards his former nurse as:  (a) strict (b) humorous (c) overworked (d) kindly

20. As used in par. 6, the word harbingers means:  (a) drunkards (b) policemen (c) heralds (d) protectors

21. As used in par. 6, the word caesura means:  (a) army (b) Roman (c) certainty (d) interval

Answers to and Explanation of the Quiz Items

The answers to the items are as follows:

 

Explanations to the items are as follows:

1. Both inferential comprehension and (literary) analysis items ask about overall aims or purposes of essays or passages. While answers a and c are partly applicable, item b covers the most material of the essay. (See the composition handbook for further explanation of description, narration, exposition, and argument.)

2. This item is inferential comprehension--the writer implies, through descriptions of the loneliness, quietness, and sadness of nocturnal insomnia, plus the bustle of workers in the coming dawn (and the analogy of the ship captain arriving and shaking hands), that dawn represents the end of lonely isolation from humanity and daily affairs.

3. This item is inferential comprehension: the writer does not explicitly identify his age. However, he refers to remembering such experiences when a child, meaning he is not now a child, and moreover that this childhood was twelve years ago (par. 7), eliminating old age. The writer's reference to these events having happened "so long ago" (par. 1), plus the impression he gives in the essay that he is living on his own, eliminate adolescence and point to maturity.

4. This item is inferential comprehension. The repeated reference to horse-drawn carriages, plus gas lighting (rather than electric lighting), suggest the 1890's rather than the later periods.

5. This item is literal comprehension. The writer states in par. 1 that the experience was a "recollection" rather than "a discovery." A "flashback" is a synonym for "recollection."

6. This item is literal comprehension. The writer refers to his having been a "sickly child" with "nights of pain" in par. 1.

7. This item is inferential comprehension. The writer begins in par. 2 by stating that he "listened eagerly for anything to break the sepulchral quiet," and in par. 6 welcomes the street sounds of pre-dawn workers, which bring "now an end of mystery and fear."

8. This is a literary analysis item, drawing on terminology from Eng. 101-102 (see the literary and rhetorical terminology in both the composition handbook and literature textbook). Something that brings two contradictory things--the writer says pleasure and pain--constitutes a paradox.

9. A vocabulary item (such items are always given in context, so context clues can be used). Graven is related to engraved, a carving of something--applicable in the sentence to mean that the experience made a deep impression, carved into the writer's memory.

10. A vocabulary item. Part of what makes the night's darkness so uncomfortable for the writer is its murkiness or impenetrability.

11. A vocabulary item testing readers for close attention to the passage. Ordinary or common words, such as sensible, may have many meanings besides the most ordinary or common one some people may think of first. Here, the word means "able to be sensed through physical sensation" or "touchable."

12. A vocabulary item. The writer's wish for this "sepulchral quiet" to be "broken" is a clue that it is deep and unpleasant, a hint of the word sepulchral's meaning as "tomblike." A sepulchre is a tomb; students familiar with the King James Version of the Bible or with Joseph Conrad's novelette Heart of Darkness will be familiar with the word through the famous phrase in these works "whited sepulchres" (uttered by whom?).

13. A vocabulary item on an apparently ordinary or common word, testing readers for close attention to the passage. As used in the passage, career means a "speedy motion" (check the word in your collegiate dictionary); it should not be confused with the word careen (to veer off course), nor does it have its ordinary sense of a profession or occupation (referring as the word does to a horse and rider in motion).

14. A literal comprehension item. The carriage the writer hears is not merely a memory; it is an actual carriage. Since it is actual, it is also not a hallucination. Since the writer longs for sound, to break the depressing silence of his nocturnal insomnia, the sound is more welcome than frightening. In the paragraph's last sentence, "This, too, was as a reminiscence," the words "as a reminiscence," mean that the actual experience chimed with previous childhood experiences.

15. A literary analysis item, drawing on technical terminology from Engl. 1101-1102.

16. A combination literary analysis item and inferential item: requiring inference from figurative language (figures of speech) to determine meaning. The metaphor's comparison of a garden to a black belt most suggests its rectangular shape.

17. An item testing the reader's comprehension of reference of pronouns. The "them" refers to the lighted windows the nurse shows the child to cheer him up by suggesting he's not alone in his unpleasant nocturnal vigil.

18. Same as question 17 and explantion to that item.

19. An inferential comprehension item. The nurse's kindliness is implied by her lifting the child out of bed and pointing the lighted windows out to him, by implication to cheer him up through the suggestion he's not alone in his unpleasant nocturnal vigil. The nurse is acting on behalf of the child's emotional welfare.

20. A vocabulary item. A clue in the sentence is the word first, which a herald is, the first announcer of something.

21. A vocabulary item. The clue in the sentence is the idea of a transition from one thing to the next--that is, the end of a pausing or interval. Students having completed English 102 will know the meaning of "pause" or "interval" for caesura from the term's use of this sense in prosody (the rhythm and meter of poetry, in which a caesura is a pause, interval, or beat of silence in a line of poetry).