Monday, September 09, 2019

So you think you know the classics

library



1) In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

2) Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.


3) 1801 -- I have just returned from a visit to my landlord -- the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.  This is beautiful country! In all of Englad, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society.  A perfect misanthropist's Heaven: and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us.  A capital fellow! He little imagined how my heart warmed towards him when I beheld his black eyes withdraw so suspiciously under their brows, as I rode up, and when his fingers sheltered themselves, with a jealous resolution, still further in his waistcoat, as I announced my name.


4) Day One
Maybe I shouldn't have given the guy who pumped my stomach my phone number, but who cares?  My life is over anyway.  Besides, what was I supposed to do?  He came up to my room and gave me that dumb stuffed animal that looks like a thumb, and there I was lying in bed twelve hours after an overdose.  I wasn't feeling my most attractive.  I'd thrown up scallops and Percodan on him the night before in the emergency room.  I thought that it would be impolite to refuse to give him my number.  He probably won't call, anyway.  No one will ever call me again.


5) One winter morning in the long-ago, four-year-old days of my life I found myself standing before a fire-place, warming my hands over a mound of glowing coals, listening to the wind whistle past the house outside.  All morning my mother had been scolding me, telling me to keep still, warning me that I must make no noise.  And I was angry, fretful, and impatient.  In the next room Granny lay ill and under the day and night care of a doctor and I knew that I would be punished if I did not obey.  I crossed restlessly to the window and pushed back the long fluffy white curtains -- which I had been forbidden to touch -- and looked yearningly out into the empty street.  I was dreaming of running and playing and shouting, but the vivid image of Granny's old, white, wrinkled, grim face, framed by a halo of tumbling black hair, lying upon a huge feather pillow, made me afraid.



6) Where's Papa going with that ax?" said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.
"Out to the hoghouse," replied Mr.s Arable.  "Some pigs were born last night."
"I don't see why he needs an ax," continued Fern, who was only eight.
"Well," said her mother, "one of the pigs is a runt.  It's very small and weak, and it will never amount to anything.  So your father has decided to do away with it."
"Do away with it?" Shrieked Fern.  "You mean kill it?  Just because it's smaller than the others?"
Mrs. Arable put a pticher of cream o the table.  "Don't yell Fern!" she said. "Your father is right.  The pig would probably die anyway."
Fern pushed a chair out of the way and ran outdoors.  The grass was wet and the earth smelled of springtime.  Fern's sneakers were sopping by the time she caught up with her father.

The six works cited are:


A) E.B. White's CHARLOTTE'S WEB.

B) Emily Bronte's WUTHERING HEIGHTS

C) F. Scott Fitzgerald's THE GREAT GATSBY.

D) Richard Wright's BLACK BOY.

E) Zora Neale Hurston's THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD.

F) Carrie Fisher's POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE.


So how did you do?

Not sure?

Need to check or maybe to cheat?

Fine, the key is below.



1) C
2) E
3) B
4) F
5) D
6) A


Previous installments:

"So you think you know the classics"
"So You Think You Know The Classics"