Short Story and Field Glasses

Have that

English 11
Grade 11 English Exam – University
Final Examination

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For the English exam we had to do 1 sight passage and 1 modified essay
Half of the English classes got story number one and story number 2
The essay topics were the same though: and the questions
The topics for the essay were the following:
Does evil exist naturally in humans
Ambitions effect on surrounding individuals or others
A tip from me is do the essay first question are easier and you can always bullshit and rush the question but you have to think for the essay which you cant do properly under pressure

Story number one is about a poor girl going to a rich girl birthday party and the events that take place. I found the story online after some time but couldn’t copy and paste it properly here’s the link and the second story is given on the next pages: http://www.syracusecityschools.com/tfiles/folder718/Short%20Story-%20The%20Stolen%20Party.pdf We had to read the story and answer only 5 questions worth 4 marks each
Important: we weren’t given the title or the authors name but I found the story online anyways
Marking scheme: Sight Passage ( story questions) = 20 marks
Essay on evil or ambition = 28 marks
Spelling and grammar use = 2 marks
Total = 50 marks
Story # 2

“A Television Drama” by Jane Rule

At one-thirty in the afternoon, Carolee Mitchell was running the vacuum cleaner, or she would have heard the first sirens and looked out. After the first, there weren’t any others. The calling voices, even the number of dogs barking, could have been students on their way back to school, high-spirited in the bright, cold earliness of the year. Thinking back on the sounds, Carolee remembered a number of car doors being slammed, that swallow of air and report which made her smooth her hair automatically even if she wasn’t expecting anyone. But what caught her eye finally was what always caught her eye - the flight of a bird from a treetop in the ravine out over the fringe of trees at the bottom of her steeply sloping front lawn, nearly private in the summer, exposed now to the startling activity of the street.

Three police cars were parked in front of the house, a motorcycle like a slanted stress in the middle of the intersection, half a dozen more police cars scattered up and down the two blocks. There were men in uniform up on her neighbour’s terrace with rifles and field glasses. Police with dogs were crossing the empty field at the bottom of the ravine. More cars were arriving, police and reporters with cameras and sound equipment. Mingling among the uniforms and equipment were the neighbours: Mrs. Rolston from the house across the street who had obviously not taken time to put on a coat and was rubbing her arms absentmindedly as she stood and talked. Jane Carey from next door with a scarf tied round her head and what looked like one of her son’s jackets thrown over her shoulders, old Mr. Monkson, a few small children. Cars and people kept arriving. Suddenly there was a voice magnified to reach even Carolee, surprised and unbelieving behind her picture window.

“Clear the street. All householders return to or stay in your houses. Clear the street.”

Mrs. Rolston considered the idea for a moment but did not go in. The others paid no attention at all. Carolee wondered if she should go out just to find out what on earth was going on. Perhaps she should telephone someone, but everyone she might phone was already on the street. Was it a gas main? Not with all those dogs. A murder? It seemed unlikely that anyone would kill anyone else on this street, where every child had his own bedroom and most men either studies or basement workshops to retreat into. In any case, it was the middle of the afternoon Mrs. Cole had come out on her balcony with field glasses focused on the place where the dogs and police had entered the ravine. Field glasses. Where were Pete’s field glasses? Carolee thought she knew, but she did not move to get them. She would not know what she was looking for in the undergrowth or the gardens.

“Clear the street. All householders return to or stay in your houses.”

Police radios were now competing with each other. “Suspect last apprehended in the alley between…” “House to house search…” “Ambulance…”

If one of those policemen standing about on the street would come to search the house, Carole could at least find out what was going on. Was that a TV crew? Dogs were barking in the ravine. Did police dogs bark? Nobody on the street seemed to be doing anything, except for the motorcycle policeman who was turning away some cars. Maybe Carolee should go empty the dishwasher and then come back. It was pointless to stand here by the window. Nothing was happening, or, if something was happening, Carolee couldn’t see the point of it. She went to the window in Pete’s study to see if she could discover activity on the side street. There were more policemen, and far up the block an ambulance was pulling away without a siren, its red light slowly circulating. Carolee watched it until I turned the corner at the top of the hill. Then she turned back toward the sound of barking dogs and radios, but paused as she turned.

There, sitting against the curve of the laurel hedge by the lily pond, was a man, quite a young man, his head down, his left hand against his right shoulder. He was sick or hurt or dead. Or not really there at all, something Carolee’s imagination had put there to explain the activity in the street, part of a collage, like an unlikely photograph in the middle of a painting. But he raised his head slightly then, and Carolee saw the blood on his jacket and trousers.

“I must call the police,” she said aloud, but how could she call the police when they were already there, three of them standing not seventy feet away, just below the trees on the parking strip? She must call someone, but all the neighbours were still out of doors. And what if the police did discover him? He might be shot instead of helped. Carolee wanted to help him, whoever he was. It was such an odd way he was sitting, his legs stretched out in front of him so that he couldn’t possibly have moved quickly. He might not be able to move at all. But she couldn’t get to him, not without being seen. Suddenly he got to his feet, his left hand still against his right shoulder and also holding the lower part of his ducked face. He walked to the end of the curve of hedge as if it was very difficult for him to move, and then he began a stumbling run across the front lawn, through the trees, and out onto the parking strip. There he turned, hesitated, and fell on his back. Carolee had heard no host. Now her view was blocked by a gathering of police and reporters, drawn to that new center like leaves to a central drain.

“Suspect apprehended on…”

What had he done? What had that hurt and stumbling boy done? Carolee was standing with her hand on the transistor radio before it occurred to her to turn it on.

“We interrupt this program with a new bulletin. Suspect has been apprehended on…”

He had robbed a bank, run a car into a tree, shot a policeman, been shot at.

“And now, here is our reporter on the scene.”

Carolee could see the reporter quite clearly, standing in the street in front of the house, but she could hear only the radio voice, explaining what had happened.
“And now the ambulance is arriving…” as indeed it was. “The suspect, suffering from at least three wounds, who seems near death, is being lifted onto a stretcher...” This she couldn’t see. It seemed to take a very long time before police cleared a path for the ambulance, again silent, its red light circling, to move slowly down the block and out of sight.

A newspaper reporter was walking up the front path, but Carolee didn’t answer the door. She stood quietly away from the window and waited until he was gone. Then she went to the kitchen and began to empty the dishwasher. It was two o’clock. She turned on the radio again to listen to the regular news report. The details were the same. At three o’clock the hospital had reported that the policeman was in the operating room having a bullet removed from his right lung. At four o’clock the suspect was reported in only fair condition from wounds in the shoulder, jaw, leg and hand.

At five o’clock Pete came home, the evening paper in his hand. “Well, you’ve had quite a day,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Carolee said, her hand against his cold jacket, her cheek against his cold face. “Yes, I’m all right. What did the paper say?”

“It’s all diagrams,” he said, holding out the front page to her.

There was a map of the whole neighbourhood, a sketched aerial map, a view of the roof of their house Carolee had never seen. She followed the dots and arrows to the hood of a car crumpled under a flower of foliage, on again across the ravine, up their side hill, and there was the laurel hedge and the jelly bean lily pond, but the dots didn’t stop there. They arched round rather and immediately down through the trees to a fallen doll, all alone, not a policeman or reporter in sight, lying there exposed to nothing but a God’s–eye view.

“You must have seen him” Pete said.

“Yes,” Carolee agreed, still looking down on the rooftops of all her neighbours’ houses.” “Did it frighten you?” Pete asked.

“Not exactly. It was hard to believe, and everything seemed to happen so slowly.”

“Did you get a good look at him?”

“I guess not really,” Carolee said. Had he sat there by the laurel hedge at all, his long, stiff legs stretched out in front of him? The map didn’t show it.

“Something has got to be done about all this violence,” Pete said.

His tone and the look on his face made Carolee realize that Pete had been frightened, much more frightened than she was. Those dotted lines across his front lawn, that figure alone in the landscape – Carolee felt herself shaken by a new fear, looking at what Pete had seen.

“I’ll get us a drink,” Pete said.

Once they sat down, Carolee tried to tell her husband what it had been like, all those women just standing out in the street. She told him about the guns and field glasses and dogs and cameras. She did not tell him about the man, hurt, by the laurel hedge.

Pete turned on the television, and they watched three minutes of fast-moving images, first the policeman lifted onto an ambulance, then officers and dogs running through the field, finally glimpses of the suspect on the ground and then shifted onto a stretcher; and, while they watched, a voice told them of the robbery, the chase, the capture. Finally several people were quickly interviewed, saying such things as, “I saw him go over the fence.” or “He fell practically at my feet.” That was Mrs. Rolston, still rubbing her cold arms in the winter day.

“I’m glad you had the good sense to stay inside,” Pete said. He was holding her hand, beginning to relax into indignation and relief.

Carolee wasn’t there, nor was the man there. If she had spoken to that reporter, if she had said then, “I saw him. He was sitting by the laurel hedge,” would the dots in the paper have changed? Would the cameras have climbed into their nearly exposed winter garden? Would she believe now what she couldn’t quite believe then, that she stood at that window and saw a man dying in her garden?

Now a labour union boss was talking, explaining the unfair practices of the compensation board. Nearly as one, young marines were running, firing, falling. Planes were dropping bombs. Carolee wasn’t there, but it seemed real to her, terribly real, so that for a moment she forgot Pete’s hand in hers, her safe house on a safe street, and was afraid.

Sight Passage: Questions:

Question: 1. create your own title for this short story and be specific. Explain the reason this title was chosen using evidence from the story to support your answer.
Since there were two different stories for the English exam I wrote the following
For the first story I was going to write but we didn’t get this story “The Shattered Heart”
The second one I wrote:
“Compressed thoughts’’

Question: 2. Quotation analysis:
For story # 1: The birthday party
-The best came after Luciana blew out the candles. First the cake. Senora Ines had asked her to help pass the cake around, and Rosaura had enjoyed the task immensely, because everyone called out to her, shouting "Me, me.!" Rosaura remembered a story in which there was a queen who had the power of life or death over her subjects. She had always loved that, having the power of life or death. To Luciana and the boys she gave the largest pieces, and to the girl with the bow she gave a slice so thin one could see through it
Page 3 if u want to look it’s on the link

For story # 2: The guy about to die and she looking one

There was a map of the whole neighbourhood, a sketched aerial map, a view of the roof of their house Carolee had never seen. She followed the dots and arrows to the hood of a car crumpled under a flower of foliage, on again across the ravine, up their side hill, and there was the laurel hedge and the jelly bean lily pond, but the dots didn’t stop there. They arched round rather and immediately down through the trees to a fallen doll, all alone, not a policeman or reporter in sight, lying there exposed to nothing but a God’s–eye view.
I wrote about judgment and how since he’s in god eye view the judger is god
And about how its significant because it reveals character that the woman was self-centered and was immune to surrounding and how she didn’t care because she was shocked about everything around her house she didn’t know about naw mean

Question: 3. two characteristics about the main character: you must explain your reasoning by supporting it with evidence from the short story

If I got the first story I would have wrote:
Naïve
Uncomprehensive - Has not experienced reality

For the second one I wrote:
Self-centered and Compressed individual
She doesn’t care about nobody and she’s helpless nah mean

Question 4: State the theme of the story: Yo a good tip that my teacher in grade 10 said was never use cleshay or you’ll lose marks:
For example don’t judge a book by its cover
I worte perception and it was right

Question 5: Was relate to a quote from the story to a previous lesson or text taught in class. Or you can relate a past event to this story using archetypal symbols and onions
I did the first part were I related the story to the movie we watched matrix and stranger than fiction
I related the quote which we were supposed to analyze the one mentioned above for the second story.
I think I screwed up this question

The second part was the modified essay which was the thesis, two body paragraphs – for us it was comparative essay on the two stories Macbeth and Lord of the Flies
The two topics were
Ambition and Evil- this was the same for everybody

Hope this helps dawg