Silent Spring, Part 3.

Question 1. Part A

From the details in the selection from Silent Spring, what can you conclude about the town before the changes take place?

• The town attracts visitors who enjoy outdoor activities

• The town is full of simple, poor, hard-working people

• The town is a settlement for recent immigrants

Questions 1. Part B

Which of the following quotations from Silent Spring best supports the answer to Part A?

• There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms....

• Then foxes barked in the hills and deer silently crossed the fields, half hidden in the mists of the fall mornings.

• The countryside was, in fact, famous for the abundance and variety of its bird life, and when the flood of migrants was pouring through in spring and fall people traveled from great distances to observe them. Others came to fish the streams...

Question 2. Part A

In the selection from Silent Spring, who or what is responsible for the white powder that has fallen on the town and its surroundings?

• an accumulation of fallout from nuclear testing

• blossoms from fruit trees growing nearby

• a sudden snowstorm in early spring

• humans living in or near the town 

Question 2. Part B

Which of the following quotations from Silent Spring best supports the answer to Part A?

• The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards where, in spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above the green fields.

• Some evil spell had settled on the community . . .

• . . . some weeks before it had fallen like snow upon the roofs and the lawns, the fields and the streams.

• No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves.

Question 3. Part A

From the details in the selection from Silent Spring, what do you conclude is the author’s main purpose in writing?

• to record farm practices and statistics for a farming magazine

• to warn people about a dangerous practice

• to frighten readers with a tale of mystery and horror

• to describe her home town as part of her autobiography

Question 3. Part B

Which of the following quotations from Silent Spring best supports the answer to Part A?

• Along the roads, laurel, viburnum and alder, great ferns and wildflowers delighted the traveler’s eye through much of the year.

• Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens, the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was the shadow of death.

• There had been several sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among adults but even among children, who would be stricken suddenly while at play and die within a few hours.

• A grim specter has crept upon us almost unnoticed, and this imagined tragedy may easily become a stark reality we all shall know.