Reading literature passages

Read the question before the excerpt, because it tells you how much of the excerpt you need.

A literary excerpt never comes with “Which choice most logically completes the text?” You're always asked what the excerpt says or does, never what happens next. Pairs with a literary text are rare, and Cross-Text Connections covers them.

The following text is from a novel. Ruth's mother has sent her with a basket for a sick neighbor, and Davy is Ruth's little brother.

After supper Ruth took the covered basket from the shelf, lifted Davy into the wagon, and started down the lane toward the Pruitt farm. When the Pruitts' gate came into view, she slowed her steps. She went the last stretch at a crawl, stopping again and again to pull clover for Davy to scatter over the wagon bed.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

• A. To show that Ruth is afraid of the Pruitts
• B. To describe the clover Ruth picks for her brother
• C. To show Ruth putting off her arrival at the Pruitt farm
• D. To contrast Ruth's cheerful start with her gloomy arrival

1. Read the question. It asks about the whole excerpt, so every sentence counts.
2. Read the excerpt and say what it does in one plain sentence. It might describe a place, report what someone does or feels, show what sort of person someone is, argue a point, or show someone talking. Many do more than one, so don't spend time labeling. This one reports what Ruth does, in order, with no turn such as “but” or “at last.” If two reads still leave you unable to say what it does, guess, flag the question, and move on.
3. Say your answer before you look at the choices. Ruth slows down once she can see the Pruitts' gate. She's in no hurry to get there, and the excerpt never says why. Every choice will sound like something an English teacher might say, so you need your own answer to test them against.
4. Check each choice against the words, and name the word that rules it out.
   • A gives a reason for her slowness, and nothing on the page says she's afraid.
   • B is true, but the clover comes from one sentence, so it's too small for the whole excerpt.
   • D needs a cheerful start and a gloomy end. Neither is there, and she never reaches the farm.
   • C matches what she does.

When two choices are left, find the words where they differ and go back to the sentence that decides it. If every choice reuses the excerpt's words, compare who does what to whom. And a true choice can still answer the wrong question, such as why something happened when you were asked what happened.

The following text is from a short story.

The miller's wife, who had come to the door to hear what the boy on the gray mare was shouting about the bridge, stood there with flour on her arms long after he had gone.

Find the main verbThe verb that says what the subject does. In “The crew mapped the river,” it’s mapped.Read the lesson and ask who it belongs to. The verb is “stood,” and its subjectThe who or what a sentence is about. In “The vault held papers,” it’s the vault. is the miller's wife, so cover the words between the commas: “The miller's wife ... stood there with flour on her arms long after he had gone.” Then put back only the piece the question needs.

The following text is from a novel. Clara is a concert pianist.

On most evenings the music stayed just out of her reach; something always stood between her hands and what she meant them to say. But tonight the locked doors swung open, one after another. What she had chased for years lay plainly before her, and she had only to take it.

No real doors open here. In plain words, tonight Clara could finally play the way she meant to. Put every metaphorDescribing one thing by calling it something else, like calling a calm harbor a sheet of glass.Read the lesson and every comparison using “like” or “as” into plain words before you look at the choices.

A thing that acts like a person works the same way. If “the old house frowned at the road,” it looked grim, and a choice saying it resents travelers gives it a feeling no sentence reports.

This excerpt also turns. “But” moves from her usual evenings to one night that went the other way.

Watch for “but,” “yet,” “instead,” “at last,” and “nevertheless,” and read to the final period, since a turn can come in the last few words. If there's no turn, don't invent one. In an essay or a letter, find what the writer admits before moving past it.

The following text is from a novel.

Mrs. Tolliver watched the new schoolteacher cross the square. A city girl, and a vain one, too; anybody could tell that from the hat. The sight left Mrs. Tolliver sour for the rest of the morning, and she went back to her pickling with a bang.

The second sentence has no “she thought,” but it's Mrs. Tolliver's thought. It comes while she's watching, and “anybody could tell” is how she'd put it. The narratorThe person telling a story, who isn’t necessarily the author., the voice telling the story, never shows the teacher doing anything vain.

When a feeling is reported, name it in the excerpt's words and find what set it off. Here the sight of the teacher leaves her “sour.”

The following text is from a short story.

The front parlor of the boarding house was opened only on Sundays. Along one wall stood a horsehair sofa that no one had ever been seen to sit on. The window let in but a little light through curtains drawn nearly shut, and the fern on the sill had gone brown at the edges.

“Let in but a little light” means it let in only a little. In the second sentence the subject comes after the verb, so ask what stood there, and it's a sofa. Nobody does or feels anything in this excerpt. Each sentence adds a detail of one room, so it describes a dim parlor that hardly anyone uses. Check that your summary fits every line.

Speeches and plays take longer to read. First work out who's speaking, who they're speaking to, and which words are the speech and which describe what's around it.

The following text is from a play. Captain Ames, a retired sailor, has just been offered the post of harbor master. He is alone.

AMES. Sit in an office and count other men's boats? I, who have kept nothing in my life but a ship's log? They say I am too old for the sea and too stubborn for the shore; they say I would quarrel with the tide tables themselves. Well, I swore I would never be tied to a desk. And yet a man who has spent forty years coming into other men's harbors might be glad, at the end, to keep one of his own.

Ames is talking to himself. The lines after “they say” report what other people think of him, so they're neither his view nor the play's verdict on him. The name “AMES” in front sits outside the speech, like a stage direction or the introduction.

What characters say about themselves is their own claim. In a comic scene a line can mean the opposite of its words, so check how the other person responds. In verse, read to the punctuation instead of the end of each line (Poetry shows how), and check what each pronounA word like “it” or “they” that stands in for a noun. points back to.

The following text is from a novel. Judge Harlan is telling his dinner guests how he first came to the valley.

The judge spoke slowly and without any flourish, but his plain account commanded attention. Even the children at the foot of the table left their spoons in their bowls until he had finished.

As used in the text, what does the word “commanded” most nearly mean?

• A. ordered
• B. held
• C. requested
• D. overwhelmed

Cover the word and fill the gap in “his plain account ______ attention” yourself, with something like “kept.” Then check who does what. The subject is his account, and the objectThe person or thing a verb acts on. In “The crew carried a map,” it’s a map., what the verb acts on, is attention. A story can't give orders or ask for anything, so A and C fail, and D is too strong for a story told “without any flourish.” The next sentence settles it, since the children sit listening until he's done. That's B.

An everyday word can carry an older meaning. If the familiar meaning makes a sentence odd, try the meaning the sentence needs.

The hard word may be in a choice instead. If a choice calls someone's world “circumscribed,” which means limited, don't cross it off for being strange or pick it for sounding literary. Check whether the excerpt shows that world closing in.

Sometimes there's no excerpt. The question gives a claim about a work, and the choices are quotations from it. Split the claim into its parts before reading any quotation.

In the novel, Lottie prizes the shells she collects, though the narrator suggests they are worth very little.

Here are two of the choices.

• “Every morning Lottie combed the beach for shells, and she treasured each one she found.”
• “She kept her shells wrapped in flannel in a cracker tin under the bed, and she was certain, though no one else was, that they were worth a fortune.”

The second line shows both parts. She's sure the shells are valuable, and “though no one else was” tells you nobody agrees.

Check whose feeling a line reports, too, and judge each line by what it says on its own. Command of Evidence: Textual works through a full question of this kind.

Work through the three examples below with the four steps.

For more, use the drills in Text Structure and Purpose, Central Ideas and Details, Command of Evidence: Textual, and Words in Context. Most of their passages won't be fiction. When a literary one comes up, run the same steps.