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Scott Fitzgerald was a prominent American writer of the twentieth century. This passage comes from one
of his short stories and tells the story of a young John Unger leaving home for boarding school.
John T. Unger came from a family that had been well known in Hades a small town on the Mississippi
River for several generations. John's father had held the amateur golf championship through many a
heated contest; Mrs. Unger was known "from hot-box to hot-bed," as the local phrase went, for her
political addresses; and young John T. Unger, who had just turned sixteen, had danced all the latest
dances from New York before he put on long trousers.
And now, for a certain time, he was to be away from home That respect for a New England education
which is the bane of all provincial places, which drains them yearly of their most promising young men,
had seized upon his parents.
Nothing would suit them but that he should go to St. Midas's School near Boston--Hades was too small to
hold their darling and gifted son. Now in Hades--as you know if you ever have been there the names of
the more fashionable preparatory schools and colleges mean very little. The inhabitants have been so
long out of the world that, though they make a show of keeping up-to-date in dress and manners and
literature, they depend to a great extent on hearsay, and a function that in Hades would be considered
elaborate would doubtless be hailed by a Chicago beef-princess as "perhaps a little tacky." John T. Unger
was on the eve of departure. Mrs. Unger, with maternal fatuity, packed his trunks full of linen suits and
electric fans, and Mr. Unger presented his son with an asbestos pocket-book stuffed with money.
"Remember, you are always welcome here," he said. "You can be sure, boy, that we'll keep the home
fires burning." "I know," answered John huskily.
"Don't forget who you are and where you come from," continued his father proudly, "and you can do
nothing to harm you. You are an Unger--from Hades."
So the old man and the young shook hands, and John walked away with tears streaming from his eyes.
Ten minutes later he had passed outside the city limits and he stopped to glance back for the last time.
Over the gates the old-fashioned Victorian motto seemed strangely attractive to him. His father had tried
time and time again to have it changed to something with a little more push and verve about it, such as
"Hades--Your Opportunity," or else a plain "Welcome" sign set over a hearty handshake pricked out in
electric lights. The old motto was a little depressing, Mr. Unger had thought--but now.
So John took his look and then set his face resolutely toward his destination. And, as he turned away, the
lights of Hades against the sky seemed full of a warm and passionate beauty.
The names Hades, St. Midas, and Unger suggest that the passage can be considered a(n)

• A. satire.
• B. aphorism.
• C. epic poem.
• D. euphemism.
• E. allegory.

The following two passages deal with the political movements working for the woman's vote in America.
The first organized assertion of woman's rights in the United States was made at the Seneca Falls
convention in 1848. The convention, though, had little immediate impact because of the national issues
that would soon embroil the country. The contentious debates involving slavery and state's rights that
preceded the Civil War soon took center stage in national debates.
Thus woman's rights issues would have to wait until the war and its antecedent problems had been
addressed before they would be addressed. In 1869, two organizations were formed that would play
important roles in securing the woman's right to vote. The first was the American Woman's Suffrage
Association (AWSA). Leaving federal and constitutional issues aside, the AWSA focused their attention
on state-level politics. They also restricted their ambitions to securing the woman's vote and downplayed
discussion of women's full equality. Taking a different track, the National Woman's Suffrage Association
(NWSA), led by Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, believed that the only way to assure the long-
term security of the woman's vote was to ground it in the constitution. The NWSA challenged the
exclusion of woman from the Fifteenth Amendment, the amendment that extended the vote to
African-American men. Furthermore, the NWSA linked the fight for suffrage with other inequalities faced
by woman, such as marriage laws, which greatly disadvantaged women.
By the late 1880s the differences that separated the two organizations had receded in importance as the
women's movement had become a substantial and broad-based political force in the country. In 1890, the
two organizations joined forces under the title of the National American Woman's Suffrage Association
(NAWSA). The NAWSA would go on to play a vital role in the further fight to achieve the woman's vote.
In 1920, when Tennessee became the thirty-eighth state to approve the constitutional amendment
securing the woman's right to vote, woman's suffrage became enshrined in the constitution. But woman's
suffrage did not happen in one fell swoop. The success of the woman's suffrage movement was the story
of a number of partial victories that led to the explicit endorsement of the woman's right to vote in the
constitution.
As early as the 1870s and 1880s, women had begun to win the right to vote in local affairs such as
municipal elections, school board elections, or prohibition measures. These "partial suffrages"
demonstrated that women could in fact responsibly and reasonably participate in a representative
democracy (at least as voters). Once such successes were achieved and maintained over a period of
time, restricting the full voting rights of woman became more and more suspect. If women were helping
decide who was on the local school board, why should they not also have a voice in deciding who was
president of the country? Such questions became more difficult for non-suffragists to answer, and thus the
logic of restricting the woman's vote began to crumble.
The word "antecedent" in 1st passage can best be replaced by

• A. referent.
• B. antebellum.
• C. subsequent.
• D. abolitionist.
• E. causal.

Her character was completely ______; she was totally devoid of ______.

• A. impassive .. emotion
• B. passive .. inertia
• C. prudent .. affection
• D. prosaic .. dullness
• E. saintly .. virtue

The main purpose of this story is to appeal to the reader's interest in a subject which has been the theme
of some of the greatest writers, living and dead--but which has never been, and can never be, exhausted,
because it is a subject eternally interesting to all mankind. Here is one more book that depicts the struggle
of a human creature, under those opposing influences of Good and Evil, which we have all felt, which we
have all known.
It has been my aim to make the character of "Magdalen," which personifies this struggle, a pathetic
character even in its perversity and its error; and I have tried hard to attain this result by the least
obtrusive and the least artificial of all means--by a resolute adherence throughout to the truth as it is in
Nature. This design was no easy one to accomplish; and it has been a great encouragement to me
(during the publication of my story in its periodical form) to know, on the authority of many readers, that
the object which I had proposed to myself, I might, in some degree, consider as an object achieved.
Round the central figure in the narrative other characters will be found grouped, in sharp contrast--
contrast, for the most part, in which I have endeavored to make the element of humor mainly predominant.
I have sought to impart this relief to the more serious passages in the book, not only because I believe
myself to be justified in doing so by the laws of Art--but because experience has taught me (what the
experience of my readers will doubtless confirm) that there is no such moral phenomenon as unmixed
tragedy to be found in the world around us. Look where we may, the dark threads and the light cross each
other perpetually in the texture of human life.
Which word best describes the meaning of "personifies" in 1st paragraph?

• A. represents as a human being
• B. embodies the basic evil within
• C. takes on the characteristics of a pathetic character
• D. exemplifies perversity
• E. contains the qualities of goodness

This passage discusses the work of Abe Kobo, a Japanese novelist of the twentieth century.
Abe Kobo is one of the great writers of postwar Japan. His literature is richer, less predictable, and wider-
ranging than that of his famed contemporaries, Mishima Yukio and Nobel laureate Oe Kenzaburo. It is
infused with the passion and strangeness of his experiences in Manchuria, which was a Japanese colony
on mainland China before World War II.
Abe spent his childhood and much of his youth in Manchuria, and, as a result, the orbit of his work would
be far less controlled by the oppressive gravitational pull of the themes of furusato (hometown) and the
emperor than his contemporaries'.
Abe, like most of the sons of Japanese families living in Manchuria, did return to Japan for schooling. He
entered medical school in Tokyo in 1944--just in time to forge himself a medical certificate claiming ill
health; this allowed him to avoid fighting in the war that Japan was already losing and return to Manchuria.
When Japan lost the war, however, it also lost its Manchurian colony. The Japanese living there were
attacked by the Soviet Army and various guerrilla bands. They suddenly found themselves refugees,
desperate for food. Many unfit men were abandoned in the Manchurian desert. At this apocalyptic time,
Abe lost his father to cholera.
He returned to mainland Japan once more, where the young were turning to Marxism as a rejection of the
militarism of the war. After a brief, unsuccessful stint at medical school, he became part of a Marxist group
of avant-garde artists. His work at this time was passionate and outspoken on political matters, adopting
black humor as its mode of critique.
During this time, Abe worked in the genres of theater, music, and photography. Eventually, he
mimeographed fifty copies of his first "published" literary work, entitled Anonymous Poems, in 1947. It
was a politically charged set of poems dedicated to the memory of his father and friends who had died in
Manchuria. Shortly thereafter, he published his first novel, For a Signpost at the End of a Road, which
imagined another life for his best friend who had died in the Manchurian desert. Abe was also active in the
Communist Party, organizing literary groups for workingmen.
Unfortunately, most of this radical early work is unknown outside Japan and underappreciated even in
Japan. In early 1962, Abe was dismissed from the Japanese Liberalist Party. Four months later, he
published the work that would blind us to his earlier oeuvre, Woman in the Dunes. It was director
Teshigahara Hiroshi's film adaptation of Woman in the Dunes that brought Abe's work to the international
stage. The movie's fame has wrongly led readers to view the novel as Abe's masterpiece. It would be
more accurate to say that the novel simply marked a turning point in his career, when Abe turned away
from the experimental and heavily political work of his earlier career. Fortunately, he did not then turn to
furusato and the emperor after all, but rather began a somewhat more realistic exploration of his
continuing obsession with homelessness and alienation. Not completely a stranger to his earlier
commitment to Marxism, Abe turned his attention, beginning in the sixties, to the effects on the individual
of Japan's rapidly urbanizing, growth driven, increasingly corporate society.
The author refers to "the orbit" of Abe's work (2nd paragraph) to emphasize that

• A. conventional themes can limit an author's individuality.
• B. Abe's travels were the primary themes in his work.
• C. Abe's work is so different from his contemporaries' that it is like another solar system.
• D. the emperor is often compared to a sun.
• E. his work covers a wide range of themes.