Mr. Fornnarino's English 2, Quiz 29 for ELL Students

Be sure to choose each answer carefully. You get only one try to answer each question correctly!

This space contains reference material beginning next to Question 11.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To answer Questions 11-15, please read the following passage from Chapter 18 of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Choose the best responses to the prompts located next to each passage. There is one and only one correct answer to each prompt.

 

Chapter 18, pages 158-159

“ ‘It is not our custom to fight for our gods,’ said one of them [Okeke]. ‘Let us not presume to do so now. If a man kills the sacred python in the secrecy of his hut, the matter lies between him and the god. We did not see it. If we put ourselves between the god and his victim we may receive blows intended for the offender. When a man blasphemes, what do we do? Do we go and stop his mouth? No. We put our fingers into our ears to stop us hearing. That is a wise action.’

 

‘Let us not reason like cowards,’ said Okonkwo. ‘If a man comes into my hut and defecates on the floor, what do I do? Do I shut my eyes? No! I take a stick and break his head. That is what a man does. These people are daily pouring filth over us, and Okeke says we should pretend not to see.’ Okonkwo made a sound full of disgust. This was a womanly clan, he thought. Such a thing could never happen in his fatherland, Umuofia.

 

‘Okonkwo has spoken the truth,’ said another man. ‘We should do something. But let us ostracize these men. We would then not be held accountable for their abominations.’

 

Everybody in the assembly spoke, and in the end it was decided to ostracize the Christians. Okonkwo ground his teeth in disgust.”

 

Note: Okeke, Okonkwo, and other men are talking about what they should do. Okeke says, "It is not our custom to fight for our gods." (He is saying that Ibo do not fight for gods.) He says, "If a man kills the sacred python in the secrecy of his hut, the matter lies between him and the god." (Okeke is saying that if a man does something bad, the problem is between the man and the god.) Okeke says if other people go between the god and the man who has done something bad, then the god might hurt them, not the man who did something bad. Okeke says that when a man blasphemes (says something bad about a god), people do NOT try to stop his mouth. They put their fingers into their ears, so they will not hear. Okeke says putting their fingers in their ears is the right and intelligent thing to do.

Okonkwo says they should not think like cowards (people who are afraid to act). Okonkwo says that if a man came into his hut and defecated (put waste from inside his body onto the floor - using the floor like a toilet), Okonkwo would not shut his eyes. He would take a stick and break the man's head. Okonkwo says that is what a man does. Okonkwo says that Okeke thinks they should pretend not to see that the others are making everything dirty. Okonkwo thought the men were acting like women and that the men of Umuofia would not act in the same way. 

Another man said that Okonkwo had said was true and that they all should do something, but the man said those who acted against the gods should be ostracized (they should be made to leave). If people who acted in ways the gods did not like were made to leave, then the good people would not be hurt by the gods.

The men in the assembly spoke and decided to ostracize the people who did not act as the gods wanted.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To answer Questions 16-21, please read the following passage from Chapter 20 of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Choose the best responses to the prompts located next to each passage. There is one and only one correct answer to each prompt.

 

 

Chapter 20, page 176

" ‘Perhaps I have been away too long,’  Okonkwo said, almost to himself. ‘But I cannot understand these things you tell me. What is it that has happened to our people? Why have they lost the power to fight?’

 

‘Have you not heard how the white man wiped out Abame?’ asked Obierika.

 

‘I have heard,’ said Okonkwo. ‘But I have also heard that Abame people were weak and foolish. Why did they not fight back? Had they no guns and machetes? We would be cowards to compare ourselves with the men of Abame. Their fathers had never dared to stand before our ancestors. We must fight these men and drive them from the land.’

 

‘It is already too late,’ said Obierika sadly. ‘Our own men and our sons have joined the ranks of the stranger. They have joined his religion and they help to uphold his government. If we should try to drive out the white men in Umuofia we should find it easy. There are only two of them. But what of our own people who are following their way and have been given power? They would go to Umuru and bring the soldiers, and we would be like Abame.’ He paused for a long time and then said: ‘I told you on my last visit to Mbanta how they hanged Aneto.’

 

‘What has happened to that piece of land in dispute?’ asked Okonkwo.

 

‘The white man's court has decided that it should belong to Nnama's family, who had given much money to the white man's messengers and interpreter.’

 

‘Does the white man understand our custom about land?’

 

‘How can he when he does not even speak our tongue? But he says that our customs are bad, and our own brothers who have taken up his religion also say that our customs are bad. How do you think we can fight when our own brothers have turned against us? The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.’ "

 

Note: Okonkwo asks why his people do not want to fight the white man. Obierika says the people know that the white man killed the Abame. Okonkwo says the Abame were fools and cowards, but Okonkwo and his people can fight and save their land. Obierika says it is too late because some of their people now believe like white men. Those who think like white men would get soldiers and fight against Okonkwo. Obierika says that the white man gave land that was being argued about to Nnama's family who had given money to white men. Okonkwo asks Obierika if the white man understands how Okonkwo and the others in the village decide who owns land. Obierika asks, "How can he [the white man]" understand when he does not speak our language? The white man thinks the customs and traditions of the village people are bad. People in the village now believe in the white man's customs and think the old customs are bad. Obierika asks Okonkwo how he thinks they can fight the white man when their own people now do not like the old customs. Obierika says the white man was intelligent and has the belief of the people. The white man used peace and religion to win the people. Obierika says the village leaders had thought the white man was funny, but now the people do not act as one; they do not have the same ideas. The white man has used a knife to cut the things (the beliefs of the people that were like ropes) that held the people together, so they have fallen apart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To answer Questions 22-25, please read the following excerpted interview with Chinua Achebe’s about Things Fall Apart. Choose the best responses to the prompts that follow. There is one and only one correct answer to each prompt.

 

Interviewer: “A character in Things Fall Apart remarks that the white man ‘has put a knife on the things that held us together, and we have fallen apart.’ Are those things still severed, or have the wounds begun to heal?”

 

Achebe: “What I was referring to there, or what the speaker in the novel was thinking about, was the upsetting of a society, the disturbing of a social order. The society of Umuofia, the village in Things Fall Apart, was totally disrupted by the coming of the European government, missionary Christianity, and so on. That was not a temporary disturbance; it was a once and for all alteration of their society. To give you the example of Nigeria, where the novel is set, the Ibo people had organized themselves in small units, in small towns and villages, each self-governed. With the coming of the British, Ibo land as a whole was incorporated into a totally different polity, to be called Nigeria, with a whole lot of other people with whom the Ibo people had not had direct contact before. The result of that was not something from which you could recover, really. You had to learn a totally new reality, and accommodate yourself to the demands of this new reality, which is the state called Nigeria. Various nationalities, each of which had its own independent life, were forced by the British to live with people of different customs and habits and priorities and religions. And then at independence, fifty years later, they were suddenly on their own again. They began all over again to learn the rules of independence. The problems that Nigeria is having today could be seen as resulting from this effort that was initiated by colonial rule to create a new nation. There's nothing to indicate whether it will fail or succeed. It all depends.

 

One might hear someone say, How long will it take these people to get their act together? It's going to take a very, very long time, because it's really been a whole series of interruptions and disturbances, one step forward and two or three back. It has not been easy. One always wishes it had been easier. We've compounded things by our own mistakes, but it doesn't really help to pretend that we've had an easy task.”

 

Bacon, Katie. "An African Voice." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 2 Aug. 2000. Web. 15 Apr. 2017.

 

 

Note:

An interviewer asks Achebe, the writer of Things Fall Apart,

if the things that have been severed (cut apart) in his country are still bad or if they are getting better.

 

Achebe says he wrote about things being severed (cut), he was thinking about how a society sometimes can be changed quickly.  Achebe says the society of Umuofia was changed by the European government and people who talked about Christianity. Achebe says the new ways completely changed the old society for all time. Achebe says his story happened in Nigeria, where the Ibo people had organized themselves in small towns and villages, each self-governed. The British made a new country named Nigeria, with a whole lot of other people the Ibo people did not know. The people had to learn a new ways. The British made different nationalities live together, but they had different customs and religions. Fifty years later, the people in Nigeria became independent from the British. The people had problems that were caused by the British making Nigeria a colony, a place where people lived and had to do what the British said to do.

 

Achebe says it is going to take a very, very long time for people in Nigeria to find answers to their problems because the people's lives have been changed so many times by different customs and religions. Achebe says he and his people have made mistakes, but it doesn't help to say that making a good country with different peoples, customs, and languages is easy.

For Questions 1-10, please mark the letter of the correct definition for the given vocabulary word.