Mr. Fornnarino's English 2, Quiz 30 for ELL

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 24.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Use the following poem by Yeats, from which Achebe got the title for his novel, to answer questions 24-26. Be sure to read the note after the poem.

 

“The Second Coming” (By William Butler Yeats)

 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre  

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere  

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst  

Are full of passionate intensity.

 

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.  

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out  

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert  

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,  

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,  

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it  

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.  

The darkness drops again; but now I know  

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,  

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,  

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

 

Note: The poem shows a falcon (a bird that people can teach to kill other animals for them) flying in a “gyre." (A gyre is a spiral  - a line that moves upward around a center. The line moves farther and farther away from the center. The bird is far away and cannot hear the falconer (the person who controls the falcon). Things fall apart. There is no center when the falcon flies away. The world now is in anarchy. (Anarchy is when there is no control or order in the world.) There is blood and no innocence. (People have only anger and know only bad things.) The best people have no beliefs, but the worst people have strong beliefs.

Surely, the world is going to learn something surprising. Surely, the Second Coming is going to happen. (The Second Coming usually means that Jesus is coming again, but in this poem it means something bad is coming.) When the speaker in the poem thinks of “the Second Coming,” he is troubled when he sees the spirit (the soul) of all humans put together. In the desert, a giant sphinx (a shape with a lion's body and a man's head with eyes like suns) moves. The sphinx is the center and desert birds fly around it. Night comes and the speaker knows that the sphinx has been asleep for twenty centuries. The sphinx was only a bad dream when people believed in Jesus, but now an unknown beast (an unknown dangerous animal) comes to Bethlehem (the place where Jesus was born) to be born.

 

The poem says that today's world is ending. A new world with different and dangerous beliefs is beginning.

 

 

For Questions 1-12, please mark the letter of the correct definition of the given vocabulary word.