AccelePrep for the ACT Test 2nd Edition Student Text

C HAPTER 8 | H YPER P REP R EADING • 163

POWER PRACTICE 3

She descended the stairs. Someone was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained. He had been far from the scene of the accident and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at his wife’s piercing cry. When the doctors came, they were too late. They said she had died of heart disease—of joy that kills. Passage B In the summer of 1941, sixteen-year-old Glenn Frazier, distraught because the girl he loved confessed her devotion to someone else, ran away from his home in Alabama. He lied to Army recruiters about his age and signed up to serve in the Philippines, thinking he would be safe from the war raging in Europe. After the December 7 attack on Pearl Harbor, Frazier became one of thirty-one thousand men under the command of General Douglas MacArthur. The Americans were •‘‘ ‘˜‡”™Š‡Ž‡† „› –Š‡ ‘”‡ –Šƒ ϐ‹ˆ–› –Š‘—•ƒ† Japanese troops converging on Manila. MacArthur ordered a retreat to the Bataan Peninsula, a mountainous, malarial place. Short on supplies, the Americans fought off one Japanese attack after another, waiting for the reinforcements MacArthur said were on the way. The help never came. After four months, Frazier and the other surviving Americans were taken prisoner. They endured brutal treatment at the hands of their captors, beginning with a forced march through the jungle that came to be known as the Bataan Death March. Frazier survived the march but spent the remainder of the war in slave labor camps in Japan. One day, before being relocated to Japan and while on burial detail above a mass grave, he threw his dog tags into the pit. He was certain he ™‘—Ž† †‹‡ •Š‘”–Ž›Ǥ ‘ϐ‹†‡– –Šƒ– –Š‡ –ƒ‰• ™‘—Ž† „‡ found after the war, he wanted to relieve his family of uncertainty about his fate. When the Allies retook the Philippines, they discovered the mass grave with Frazier’s dog tags in it. The Army believed that ”ƒœ‹‡” ™ƒ• †‡ƒ† ƒ† ‘–‹ϐ‹‡† Š‹• ˆƒ‹Ž›Ǥ ”ƒœ‹‡”ǯ• father, however, refused to believe it. He said, “I’m sure if anybody can make it, my son can make it.” Miraculously, Frazier survived his internment. When he returned to the United States at the end of the war, he called home. His mother answered the phone

DIRECTIONS: The pair of passages below are followed by a set of items. Read the passages and choose the best answer for each item. You may refer to the passages as often as necessary to answer the items. Answers are on p. 310. Items #1–10 are based on the following pair of passages. Prose Fiction: Passage A is a short story called “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin. Passage B is an excerpt from the autobiography Hell’s Guest by Glenn D. Frazier. Passage A ‘™‹‰ –Šƒ– ”•Ǥ ƒŽŽƒ”† ™ƒ• ƒˆϐŽ‹…–‡† ™‹–Š heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death. It was her sister Josephine who told her. Her husband’s friend Richards had been in the ‡™•’ƒ’‡” ‘ˆϐ‹…‡ ™Š‡ ‹–‡ŽŽ‹‰‡…‡ ‘ˆ –Š‡ ”ƒ‹Ž”‘ƒ† disaster was received, with Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of “killed.” She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability –‘ ƒ……‡’– ‹–• •‹‰‹ϐ‹…ƒ…‡Ǥ Š‡ ™‡’– ƒ– ‘…‡ǡ ™‹–Š sudden, wild abandonment. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. There she stood, facing the open window. She was young, with a fair calm face, but now there was a †—ŽŽ •–ƒ”‡ ‹ Š‡” ‡›‡•ǡ ™Š‘•‡ ‰ƒœ‡ ™ƒ• ϐ‹š‡† ƒ™ƒ› ‘ˆˆ yonder on a patch of blue sky. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips: “free!” She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had ‡˜‡” Ž‘‘‡† •ƒ˜‡ ™‹–Š Ž‘˜‡ —’‘ Š‡”ǡ ϐ‹š‡† ƒ† ‰”ƒ› 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 welcome them. 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 no less a crime. And yet she had loved him—sometimes.

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