from 'The Lost Letters of Frederick Douglass'

The poet includes a specified date in the beginning of the poem (line 1) most likely to ______ .

• remind the reader of the poem’s form

• associate the subject of the poem to a time frame

• remind the reader of an important date in history

• create tension between past and present

Answer explanation

The speaker of the poem is an important person in US history—Frederick Douglass. The poet assumes Douglass’s perspective. Therefore, the inclusions of a date allows the poet to engage the reader in a specified time in history.

The poem contains ______ lines and ______ stanzas.

• 50, 9

• 63, 9

• 67, 8

• 65, 8

Answer explanation

The poem is a 65-line poem with eight stanzas.

The speaker’s tone is best described as ______ .

• Optimistic

• Pessimistic

• Ashamed

• Contrite

Answer explanation

The speaker shares his flaws as a father to his daughter and as a husband to his first wife, Anna Murray.

Tags

CCSS.RI.8.4

CCSS.RL.8.4

Which lines from the poem best support the correct answer to Question 3?

• “…and I cannot pilfer back time / I spent pursuing Freedom. Fair to you, / to your brothers, your mother? Hardly.”

• “I could not have stayed so unequally yoked / so long, without a kind of Freedom in / it.”

• “Your mother’s eyes stare / out at me through yours, of late. You think I / didn’t love her, that my quick remarriage / makes a Gertrude of me, a corseted / Hamlet of you.”

• “But / what other choice did I have? What sham, / what shabby love could I offer you, so / long as Thomas Auld held the law over / my head?”

Answer explanation

Here, the speaker, Douglass, confronts his own failures as a domestic man. The line humanizes a significant historical figure, showing the reader a man grappling with his own shortcomings as a father and a husband.

Tags

CCSS.RL.8.1

CCSS.RL.8.4

CCSS.W.8.9A

Which of the following is the definition of "Retain"

• common to or shared by two or more parties

• lack of knowledge about something

• to keep in one’s mind

• to give an authoritative order requiring obedience

Tags

CCSS.L.8.4B

CCSS.RI.8.4

CCSS.RL.8.4

Which of the following is the definition of "Command"

• common to or shared by two or more parties

• lack of knowledge about something

• to keep in one’s mind

• to give an authoritative order requiring obedience

Tags

CCSS.L.8.4B

Which of the following is the definition of "Ignorance"

• common to or shared by two or more parties

• lack of knowledge about something

• to keep in one’s mind

• to give an authoritative order requiring obedience

Tags

CCSS.L.8.4B

Which of the following is the definition of "Mutual"

• common to or shared by two or more parties

• lack of knowledge about something

• to keep in one’s mind

• to give an authoritative order requiring obedience

Tags

CCSS.L.8.4B

CCSS.RI.8.4