Maria's Study Group (original) (raw)

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind -
As if my Brain had split -
I tried to match it - Seam by Seam -
But could not make them fit.

The thought behind, I strove to join
Unto the thought before -
But Sequence ravelled out of Sound
Like Balls - upon a Floor.

Emily Dickinson, I felt a Cleaving in my Mind, publication 1896

Question 1
From the choices below, how would you define the mental condition being described in this poem?
1. A headache caused by thinking
2. Disconnected or disorganized thinking
3. Depressive and suicidal thinking
4. Schizophrenia mental illness
5. Compulsive or obsessive thinking

Question 2
"Cleave" is an unusual word that has several meanings. What is the meaning of the word “cleave” in the first line of the poem?
1. Forge
2. Adhere
3. Separate
4. Join
5. Penetrate

Question 3
How would you describe the author’s mood?
1. Silly
2. Depressed
3. Excited
4. Hostile
5. Frustrated

Question 4
What metaphorical occupation does the poet assume to repair the condition of her brain?
1. A mechanic
2. A physician
3. A brain surgeon
4. A butcher
5. A seamstress

In the following selection, Pi, who survived 8 months alone at sea and lost his family, tells a journalist how he recovered from the ordeal.

My suffering left me sad and gloomy.

Academic study and the steady, mindful practice of religion slowly brought me back to life. I have kept up what some people would consider my strange religious practices. After one year of high school, I attended the University of Toronto and took a double-major Bachelor's degree. My majors were religious studies and zoology. My fourth-year thesis for religious studies concerned certain aspects of the cosmogony theory of Isaac Luria, the great sixteenth-century Kabbalist from Safed1. My zoology thesis was a functional analysis of the thyroid gland of the three-toed sloth. I chose the sloth because its demeanor - calm, quiet and introspective - did something to soothe my shattered self.

There are two-toed sloths and there are three-toed sloths, the case being determined by the forepaws of the animals, since all sloths have three claws on their hind paws. I had the great luck one summer of studying the three-toed sloth in situ in the equatorial jungles of Brazil. It is a highly intriguing creature. Its only real habit is indolence. It sleeps or rests on average twenty hours a day. Our team tested the sleep habits of five wild three-toed sloths by placing on their heads, in the early evening after they had fallen asleep, bright red plastic dishes filled with water. We found them still in place late the next morning, the water of the dishes swarming with insects. The sloth is at its busiest at sunset, using the word busy here in the most relaxed sense. It moves along the bough of a tree in the characteristic upside-down position at the speed of roughly 400 meters an hour. On the ground, it crawls to its next tree at the rate of 250 meters an hour, when motivated, which is 440 times slower than a motivated cheetah. Unmotivated, it covers four to five meters in an hour.

The three-toed sloth is not well informed about the outside world. On a scale of 2 to 10, where 2 represents unusual dullness and 10 extreme acuity, Beebe (1926)2 gave the sloth's senses of taste, touch, sight and hearing a rating of 2, and its sense of smell a rating of 3. If you come upon a sleeping three-toed sloth in the wild, two or three nudges should suffice to awaken it; it will then look sleepily in every direction but yours. Why it should look about is uncertain since the sloth sees everything in a Magoo-like blur. As for hearing, the sloth is not so much deaf as uninterested in sound. Beebe reported that firing guns next to sleeping or feeding sloths elicited little reaction. And the sloth's slightly better sense of smell should not be overestimated. They are said to be able to sniff and avoid decayed branches, but Bullock (1968) reported that sloths fall to the ground clinging to decayed branches "often".

How does it survive, you might ask.

Precisely by being so slow. Sleepiness and slothfulness keep it out of harm's way, away from the notice of jaguars, ocelots, harpy eagles and anacondas. A sloth's hairs shelter an algae that is brown during the dry season and green during the wet season, so the animal blends in with the surrounding moss and foliage and looks like a nest of white ants or of squirrels, or like nothing at all but part of a tree.

Life of Pi, 2002 by Yann Martel

Question 1
How do people mirror the animal behavior of the sloth described by Pi?
1. People adapt to their circumstances in surprising and ingenious ways
2. People are sometimes lazy and slow.
3. People who don’t want to be noticed try to blend into their surroundings.
4. People will cling to decaying ideas in the same way that sloths cling to decayed branches.
5. All of the above.

Question 2
Why might Pi have chosen the sloth as a subject for study?
1. Since the sloth is sluggish, Pi knew he wouldn’t have to work very hard.
2. Pi had fun teasing the sloth when he was in Brazil.
3. Pi found comfort in the sloth’s calm unruffled behavior after his own suffering.
4. The course of sloth study was easy because they moved so slowly.
5. Background studies on the sloth were plentiful, so Pi chose an easy study course that required little original research.

Question 3
Pi, the storyteller, while speaking of a present, calm time in his life, indicates a time past when life was difficult. What line or lines in the story indicate a difficult past or a challenging past?
1. Line 1-3
2. Line 7-9
3. The sentence that begins on Line 10, and continues to Line 12.
4. Line 18
5. Answers 1 and 3.

Question 4
In this novel, the narrator shares information about the sloth. Is it true?
1. Since this is a work of fiction, we can’t know if it is true or false.
2. It is true, since he includes the name of the scientist who did the research.
3. It is true, since he cites a publication date for the research.
4. It is false, since it is impossible for a sloth to move so slowly and survive.
5. It is false, since Martel is not a scientist.

Question 5
In this selection, the author begins in the 1st person point of view (“I) and moves into the 3rd person point of view (objective neutral). When does this transition to 3rd person begin?
1. Line 3, I have kept up what some people would consider
2. Line 16, . I had the great luck one summer of studying
3. Line 30, The three-toed sloth is not well informed
4. Line 21, We found them still in place late
5. Line 44, How does it survive, you might ask

Questions 6
One technique of effective writing is anticipating the reader's questions. When does Martel do this in the selection?
1. Line 44
2. Line 35-36
3. Line 27-28-
4. Line 16-17
5. Line 35

In the following selection, Pi, who survived 8 months alone at sea and lost his family, tells a journalist how he recovered from the ordeal.

My suffering left me sad and gloomy.

How does it survive, you might ask.

Life of Pi, 2002 by Yann Martel