GED-SECTION-4 Online Practice Questions and Answers

What Has Happened to Gregor? As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes. What has happened to me? he thought. It was no dream. His room, a regular human bedroom, only rather too small, lay quiet between the four familiar walls. Above the table on which a collection of cloth samples was unpacked and spread out Samsa was a commercial traveler hung the picture which he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and put into a pretty gilt frame. It showed a lady, with a fur cap on and a fur stole, sitting upright and holding out to the spectator a huge fur muff into which the whole of her forearm had vanished! . . . . He slid down again into his former position. This getting up early, he thought, makes one quite stupid. A man needs his sleep. Other commercials live like harem women. For instance, when I come back to the hotel of a morning to write up the orders Ive got, these others are only sitting down to breakfast. Let me just try that with my chief; Id be sacked on the spot. Anyhow, that might be quite a good thing for me, who can tell? If I didnt have to hold my hand because of my parents Id have given notice long ago, Id have gone to the chief and told him exactly what I think of him. That would knock him endways from his desk! Its a queer way of doing, too, this sitting on high at a desk and talking down to employees, especially when they have to come quite near because the chief is hard of hearing. Well, theres still hope; once Ive saved enough money to pay back my parents debts to him that should take another five or six years Ill do it without fail. Ill cut myself completely loose then. For the moment, though, Id better get up, since my train goes at five. Franz Kafka, from The Metamorphosis (1912) When Gregor Samsa wakes up, he realizes that he

A. has been having a nightmare.

B. is late for work.

C. has turned into a giant bug.

D. dislikes his job.

E. needs to make a change in his life.

What Did the Speaker Learn from Alfonso?

Alfonso I am not the first poet born to my family. We have painters and singers, actors and carpenters.

I inherited my trade from my zio, Alfonso. Zio maybe was the tallest man in the village, he certainly was the widest. He lost his voice to cigarettes before I was born, but still he roared with his hands, his eyes, with his brow, and his deafening

smile.

He worked the sea with my nonno fishing in silence among the grottoes so my father could learn to write and read and not speak like the guaglione, filled with curses and empty pockets.

He would watch me write with wonder, I could hear him on the couch, he looked at the lines over my shoulder, tried to teach himself to read late in the soft Adriatic darkness. Wine-stained pages gave him away.

But I learned to write from Zio He didnt need words, still he taught me the language of silence, the way the sun can describe a shadow, a gesture can paint a moment, a scent could fill an entire village with words and color and sound, a

perfect little grape tomato can be the most beautiful thing in the world, seen through the right eyes.

Marco A. Annunziata (2002)

Reprinted by permission of the author.

Which of the following statements about Alfonso is true?

A. He was a poet.

B. He could not speak.

C. He could speak many languages.

D. He was a farmer.

E. He was also a painter.

What Did the Speaker Learn from Alfonso?

Alfonso I am not the first poet born to my family. We have painters and singers, actors and carpenters.

I inherited my trade from my zio, Alfonso. Zio maybe was the tallest man in the village, he certainly was the widest. He lost his voice to cigarettes before I was born, but still he roared with his hands, his eyes, with his brow, and his deafening

smile.

He worked the sea with my nonno fishing in silence among the grottoes so my father could learn to write and read and not speak like the guaglione, filled with curses and empty pockets.

He would watch me write with wonder, I could hear him on the couch, he looked at the lines over my shoulder, tried to teach himself to read late in the soft Adriatic darkness. Wine-stained pages gave him away.

But I learned to write from Zio He didnt need words, still he taught me the language of silence, the way the sun can describe a shadow, a gesture can paint a moment, a scent could fill an entire village with words and color and sound, a

perfect little grape tomato can be the most beautiful thing in the world, seen through the right eyes.

Marco A. Annunziata (2002)

Reprinted by permission of the author.

Which of the following best sums up what the speaker has learned from Alfonso?

A. how to appreciate the beauty of the world

B. how to listen to others

C. how to appreciate his family

D. how to understand himself

E. how to read poetry

How Are Robots Different from Humans?

[Helena is talking to Domain, the general manager of Rossums Universal Robots factory.]

DOMAIN: Well, any one whos looked into anatomy will have seen at once that man is too complicated, and that a good engineer could make him more simply. So young Rossum began to overhaul anatomy and tried to see what could be left

out or simplified. In short but this isnt boring you, Miss Glory?

HELENA: No; on the contrary, its awfully interesting.

DOMAIN: So young Rossum said to himself: A man is something that, for instance, feels happy, plays the fiddle, likes going for walks, and, in fact, wants to do a whole lot of things that are really unnecessary.

HELENA: Oh!

DOMAIN: Wait a bit. That are unnecessary when hes wanted, let us say, to weave or to count. Do you play the fiddle?

HELENA: No.

DOMAIN: Thats a pity. But a working machine must not want to play the fiddle, must not feel happy, must not do a whole lot of other things. A petrol motor must not have tassels or ornaments, Miss Glory. And to manufacture artificial workers

is the same thing as to manufacture motors. The process must be of the simplest, and the product of the best from a practical point of view. What sort of worker do you think is the best from a practical point of view?

HELENA: The best? Perhaps the one who is most honest and hard-working.

DOMAIN: No, the cheapest. The one whose needs are the smallest. Young Rossum invented a worker with the minimum amount of requirements. He had to simplify him. He rejected everything that did not contribute directly to the progress of

work. In this way he rejected everything that made man more expensive. In fact, he rejected man and made the Robot. My dear Miss Glory, the Robots are not people. Mechanically they are more perfect than we are, they have an enormously

developed intelligence, but they have no soul. Have you ever seen what a Robot looks like inside? HELENA: Good gracious, no!

DOMAIN: Very neat, very simple. Really a beautiful piece of work. Not much in it, but everything in flawless order. The product of an engineer is technically at a higher pitch of perfection than a product of nature.

HELENA: Man is supposed to be the product of nature.

DOMAIN: So much the worse.

Karel C apek,

from R.U.R. (1923, translated by P. Selver)

According to the passage, why are robots better workers than humans?

A. Robots have a very simple anatomy.

B. Robots are more intelligent.

C. Robots are more honest and hard-working.

D. Robots do not have a soul.

E. Robots want things that are unnecessary.

What Happened When He Came to America? My parents lost friends, lost family ties and patterns of mutual assistance, lost rituals and habits and favorite foods, lost any link to an ongoing social milieu, lost a good part of the sense they had of themselves. We lost a house, several towns, various landscapes. We lost documents and pictures and heirlooms, as well as most of our breakable belongings, smashed in the nine packing cases that we took with us to America. We lost connection to a thing larger than ourselves, and as a family failed to make any significant new connection in exchange, so that we were left aground on a sandbar barely big enough for our feet. I lost friends and relatives and stories and familiar comforts and a sense of continuity between home and outside and any sense that I was normal. I lost half a language through want of use and eventually, in my late teens, even lost French as the language of my internal monologue. And I lost a whole network of routes through life that I had just barely glimpsed. Hastening on toward some idea of a future, I only half-realized these losses, and when I did realize I didnt disapprove, and sometimes I actively colluded. At some point, though, I was bound to notice that there was a gulf inside me, with a blanketed form on the other side that hadnt been uncovered in decades.My project of self-invention had been successful, so much so that I had become a sort of hydroponic vegetable, growing soil-free. But I had been formed in another world; everything in me that was essential was owed to immersion in that place, and that time, that I had so effectively renounced. [ . . . . ] Like it or not, each of us is made, less by blood or genes than by a process that is largely accidental, the impact of things seen and heard and smelled and tasted and endured in those few years before our clay hardens. Offhand remarks, things glimpsed in passing, jokes and commonplaces, shop displays and climate and flickering light and textures of walls are all consumed by us and become part of our fiber, just as much as the more obvious effects of upbringing and socialization and intimacy and learning. Every human being is an archeological site. Luc Sante, from The Factory of Facts (1998) The author came to America when he was

A. an infant.

B. a toddler.

C. in his early teens.

D. in his late teens.

E. a young adult.

What Happened When He Came to America? My parents lost friends, lost family ties and patterns of mutual assistance, lost rituals and habits and favorite foods, lost any link to an ongoing social milieu, lost a good part of the sense they had of themselves. We lost a house, several towns, various landscapes. We lost documents and pictures and heirlooms, as well as most of our breakable belongings, smashed in the nine packing cases that we took with us to America. We lost connection to a thing larger than ourselves, and as a family failed to make any significant new connection in exchange, so that we were left aground on a sandbar barely big enough for our feet. I lost friends and relatives and stories and familiar comforts and a sense of continuity between home and outside and any sense that I was normal. I lost half a language through want of use and eventually, in my late teens, even lost French as the language of my internal monologue. And I lost a whole network of routes through life that I had just barely glimpsed. Hastening on toward some idea of a future, I only half-realized these losses, and when I did realize I didnt disapprove, and sometimes I actively colluded. At some point, though, I was bound to notice that there was a gulf inside me, with a blanketed form on the other side that hadnt been uncovered in decades. My project of self-invention had been successful, so much so that I had become a sort of hydroponic vegetable, growing soil-free. But I had been formed in another world; everything in me that was essential was owed to immersion in that place, and that time, that I had so effectively renounced. [ . . . . ] Like it or not, each of us is made, less by blood or genes than by a process that is largely accidental, the impact of things seen and heard and smelled and tasted and endured in those few years before our clay hardens. Offhand remarks, things glimpsed in passing, jokes and commonplaces, shop displays and climate and flickering light and textures of walls are all consumed by us and become part of our fiber, just as much as the more obvious effects of upbringing and socialization and intimacy and learning. Every human being is an archeological site. Luc Sante, from The Factory of Facts (1998) In the last sentence of the excerpt, the author writes that "Every human being is an archeological site."What does he mean by this?

A. The environment that formed us is a permanent, if buried, part of us.

B. We must dig deep within ourselves to discover our past.

C. We all have a piece of our past that we would prefer to keep buried.

D. Only archaeologists understand the impact of our environment.

E. The past is always with us, no matter where we go.

What Has Mrs. Mallard Realized?

[Mrs. Mallard has locked herself in a room and is crying.]

She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.

She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of

reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.

There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the

color that filled the air.

Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been.

When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed

keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body. She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the

suggestion as trivial.

She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years

to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome. There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers

in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of

illumination.

-

Kate Chopin, from "The Story of an Hour" (1894)

Mrs. Mallard repeats the word "free" several times. What is it that she will be free from?

A.

debt

B.

fear

C.

criticism from others

D.

having to do with what someone else wants

E.

problems with family members who can't mind their own business

Whats Wrong with Biff and Happy?

[Biff is talking with his brother, Happy. They are together with their parents in the home where they grew up.]

BIFF: [with rising agitation] Hap, Ive had twenty or thirty different kinds of jobs since I left home before the war, and it always turns out the same. I just realized it lately. In Nebraska, when I herded cattle, and the Dakotas, and Arizona, and

now in Texas. Its why I came home now, I guess, because I realized it.

This farm I work on, its spring there now, see? And theyve got about fifteen new colts. Theres nothing more inspiring orbeautiful than the sight of a mare and a new colt. And its cool there now, see? Texas is cool now, and its spring. And

whenever spring comes to where I am, I suddenly get the feeling, my God, Im not gettin anywhere! What the hell am I doing, playing around with horses, twenty-eight dollars a week! Im thirty-four years old, I oughta be makinmy future.

Thats when I come running home. And now, I get here, and I dont know what to do with myself. [After a pause] Ive always made a point of not wasting my life, and every time I come back here I know that all Ive done is to waste my life.

HAPPY: Youre a poet, you know that, Biff?

Youre a youre an idealist!

BIFF: No, Im mixed up very bad. Maybe I oughta get married.Maybe I oughta get stuck into something. Maybe thats my trouble. Im like a boy. Im not married,

Im not in business, I just Im like a boy. Are you content, Hap? Youre a success, arent you? Are you content?

HAPPY: Hell, no!

BIFF:Why? Youre making money, arent you?

HAPPY: [moving about with energy, expressiveness] All I can do now is wait for the merchandise manager to die. And suppose I get to be merchandise manager?

Hes a good friend of mine, and he just built a terrific estate on Long Island. And he lived there about two months and sold it, and now hes building another one.

He cant enjoy it once its finished. And I know thats just what I would do. I dont know what the hell Im workin for. Sometimes I sit in my apartment all alone.

And I think of the rent Im paying. And its crazy. But then, its what I always wanted. My own apartment, a car, and plenty of women. And still, goddammit, Im lonely.

Arthur Miller, from Death of a Salesman (1949)

Why isnt the merchandise manager happy?

A. He doesn't have enough money.

B. He knows Happy is after his job.

C. The more he has, the more he wants.

D. He is lonely.

E. He didn't like the way his estate was built.

What Is the New Dress Code Policy?

MEMORANDUM

TO:All Employees FROM:Helen Suskind, Director,

Human Resources Department

DATE:March 22, 2005 RE: Implementation of New Dress Code

A new dress code for all employees will take effect on September 1. All employees will be required to wear professional business attire while in the office. In this context, professional business attire excludes T-shirts, sleeveless shirts, shorts,

jeans, athletic attire, miniskirts, sandals, flip-flops, and sneakers. The attached sheet provides a complete list of attire that is inappropriate for the office. Please be sure to review this list carefully.

Violations of the new dress code will be handled as follows:

If you have any questions about the parameters of the dress code, please contact Martin Lamb in Human Resources immediately to schedule an appointment.

It is important that all employees understand the seriousness of this policy. Management based its decision to implement this code upon evidence that the lack of a dress code leads to a decrease in productivity. Our new dress code will help

maintain the reputation and integrity of our company by keeping us aware of the need for professionalism. Thank you for your cooperation.

It is possible to conclude from this memorandum that

A. the company does not currently have a dress code.

B. the dress code has been a controversial issue at the company.

C. the company used to have a formal dress code and it is simply being reinstated.

D. the employees will be unhappy about the policy.

E. there has been a recent change in management.

What Is the Authors Father Like?

It was an impressive place: old, solidly built, in the Tudor style, with leaded windows, a slate roof, and rooms of royal proportions. Buying it had been a big step for my parents, a sign of growing wealth. This was the best neighborhood in town,

and although it was not a pleasant place to live (especially for children), its prestige outweighed its deadliness. Given the fact that he wound up spending the rest of his life in that house, it is ironic that my father at first resisted moving there.

He complained about the price (a constant theme), and when at last he relented, it was with grudging bad humor. Even so, he paid in cash. All in one go. No mortgage, no monthly payments. It was 1959, and business was going well for him.

Always a man of habit, he would leave for work early in the morning, work hard all day, and then, when he came home (on those days he did not work late), take a short nap before dinner. Sometime during our first week in the new house,

before we had properly moved in, he made a curious kind of mistake. Instead of driving home to the new house after work, he went directly to the old one, as he had done for years, parked his car in the driveway, walked into the house

through the back door, climbed the stairs, entered the bedroom, lay down on the bed, and went to sleep. He slept for about an hour.

Needless to say, when the new mistress of the house returned to find a strange man sleeping in her bed, she was a little surprised. But unlike Goldilocks, my father did not jump up and run away. The confusion was eventually settled, and

everyone had a good laugh. Even today, it still makes me laugh. And yet, for all that, I cannot help regarding it as a pathetic story. It is one thing for a man to drive to his old house by mistake, but it is quite another, I think, for him not to notice

that anything has changed inside it.

Paul Auster, from The Invention of Solitude (1982)

Based on the excerpt, how does the author feel about his fathers life?

A. His father was a great businessman.

B. His father lived a sad, lonely life.

C. His father was a financial genius.

D. His father was often cruel, but always had good intentions.

E. His father was impressive and strong, like the house where they lived.