THE GED TESTS continued...

TEST FOUR: INTERPRETING LITERATURE AND THE ARTS

The GED Interpreting Literature and the Arts Test contains multiple-choice questions drawn from three content areas:

• Popular Literature
• Classical Literature
• Commentary

The questions measure your ability to understand and analyze what you read.

While most literature selections are drawn from American authors, English and Canadian authors are also represented, as are translations of important works from throughout the world. Popular and classical literature selections include fiction, prose nonfiction, poetry, and drama. Materials in the Commentary section include prose excerpts about literature and the arts.

Directions and Sample Questions for Interpreting Literature and the Arts

Direction: Choose the one best answer to each item.

Items 1 to 3 refer to the following excerpt from an essay.

WHAT WAS THE AMERICAN SMALL TOWN LIKE?

I'm glad I was born soon enough to have seen the American small town, if not at its height, at least in the early days of decline into its present forlorn status as a conduit for cars and people, all headed for some Big City over the horizon. The small town was not always a stultifying trap for bright young people to escape from; in the years before wartime travel ("How're you gonna keep'em down on the farm/After they've seen Paree?") and the scorn of the Menckens and Sinclair Lewises made the cities a magnet for farm boys and girls, the town of five to twenty thousand was a selfsufficient little city-state of its own.

The main street of those Midwestern towns I remember from the thirties varied little from one place to another: there were always a number of brick Victorian buildings, labeled "Richard's Block" or "Denman Block," which housed, downstairs, the chief emporia of the town--the stores which made it a shire town for the surrounding farmlands. Each of these stores was run according to a very exact idea of the rules of its particular game. A hardware store, for instance, had to be densely hung inside with edged tools--scythes, sickles, saws--of all descriptions. It had to smell of oil, like metal, and often like the sacks of fertilizer stacked in the back room. It had to have unstained wood floors, sometimes sprinkled with sawdust, and high cabinets of small drawers containing bolts, screws, nails, and small plumbing accessories. It had to be owned and run by a middle-aged man in a blue apron, assisted by one up-and-coming young man and one part-time boy in his middle teens. It had to sell for cash on the barrelhead, and it did.

The drugstore was a horse of a different color (and order), but it was circumscribed by equally strict rules. Here you would ask the white-coated and (often rimless-spectacles) druggist for aspirin or Four-Way Cold Tablets or Bromo-Seltzer, or perhaps for paramedical advice, which he was glad to give.... These towns are by and large gone in 1974, their old stores shut up with dusty windows, or combined, two or three at a time, to make a superette, a W.T. Grant store, or a sub-and-pizza parlor. The business has moved to the big shopping center on the Interstate or on to the city over the horizon, and the depopulated old towns drift along toward oblivion, centers of nothing in the middle of nowhere. From "Int'l Jet Set Hits Watkins Glen" by L.E. Sissman in Selections From 119 Years of the Atlantic. Copyright (C) 1974. Used by permission.

1. According to the essay, what is the major reason for the decline of the American small town?

(1) Cars made people more mobile.
(2) Lack of variation from one town to another drove people away.
(3) Big cities drew people away from the towns.
(4) Their main streets were all the same.
(5) Writers criticized small town life.
Correct Answer: 3

Difficulty Level: Easy

Many of the questions on the Interpreting Literature and the Arts Test are like this one: they require you show that you understand an important idea contained in the selection. The idea may or may not be directly stated in the selection. The information needed to answer this question is contained mainly in the first paragraph of the selection, where the author comments briefly on what drew people away from the small towns. It is here in the first paragraph that the author refers to the way the cities lured people away from the small towns.

As stated in option (3), big cities drew people away from the towns for many reasons; the way small towns were referred to in writings of the time was only one of the reasons. Option (3) is the best answer because only this answer offers the major reason.

2. How does the author feel about the American small town?

(1) angry
(2) nostalgic
(3) spiteful
(4) embarrassed
(5) relieved
Correct Answer: 2

Difficulty Level: Moderately difficult

The writer's attitude toward the subject, or the way he or she feels about it, is another area about which questions are asked in the Interpreting Literature and the Arts Test. Rarely does an author directly state his or her feelings about this subject. Instead, you must detect or infer those feelings from the way the author writes about the subject. Answering questions like this one requires an understanding of the total selection.

The writer's attitude comes through clearly throughout the selection. In stating that he was happy to have seen the small town "at its height," the author is making clear his positive attitude toward the subject. In addition, the use of the term "forlorn" in the first sentence suggests a sadness regarding something wonderful that has passed by. Only option (2), nostalgic, expresses this attitude towards the subject.

3. Given the descriptions of the small town stores, the author would most likely view modern shopping malls as places

(1) catering to small town people
(2) taking over the role of small farm stores
(3) lacking the friendliness of small town stores
(4) providing variety and sophistication to small town clients
(5) carrying on the tradition of small town stores
Correct Answer: 3

Difficulty Level: Difficult

Several questions in the Interpreting Literature and the Arts Test ask you to use your understanding of the reading selection to predict how the author or a character will act in a different situation. The detailed descriptions of small town stores provided in the second and third paragraphs of the selection emphasize their neighborliness and emphasis on personal service. Since the author views the decline of the small town as a source of regret, it is most likely that he would view modern shopping malls as places that lack the features that characterize small town stores. Option (3) expresses this idea best.