What is the main theme of the excerpt? read this excerpt from guy de maupassant's "mother savage" about an old woman who takes in four prussian soldiers while her son is away fighting in the french army: but the old woman thought always of her own son, so tall and thin, with his hooked nose and his brown eyes and his heavy mustache which made a roll of black hair upon his lip. she asked every day of each of the soldiers who were installed beside her hearth: "do you know where the french marching regiment, no. 23, was sent? my boy is in it." they invariably answered, "no, we don't know, don't know a thing at all." and, understanding her pain and her uneasiness—they who had mothers, too, there at home—they rendered her a thousand little services. she loved them well, moreover, her four enemies, since the peasantry have no patriotic hatred; that belongs to the upper class alone. the humble, those who pay the most because they are poor and because every new burden crushes them down; those who are killed in masses, who make the true cannon's prey because they are so many; those, in fine, who suffer most cruelly the atrocious miseries of war because they are the feeblest and offer least resistance—they hardly understand at all those bellicose ardors, that excitable sense of honor or those pretended political combinations which in six months exhaust two nations, the conqueror with the conquered. a. a mother’s love has no barriers. b. in war, there are no winners. c. the common man is not patriotic. d. the poor suffer the most in war.

The last option explains the theme.Though it is clear in the woman´s point of view that in war nobody wins, she speaks about the poor.There are the feelings of the  humble and the peasantry.She gives a visual description with strong words .She is against war but she knows who sufferes the most .The miseries affect the poor and the miserable.This  is the evidence .

The correct answer would be option D: "The poor suffer the most in war". In this excerpt, the woman is telling how she view's war as something that affects the lower classes most, there are several sentences that demonstrate that opinion, for example, "The humble, those who pay the most because they are poor" and "...those who are killed in masses, who make the true cannon's prey because they are so many", "those, in fine, who suffer the most cruelly the atrocious miseries of war because they are the feeblest and offer lest resistance". Option A is not correct because the excerpt does not say that she cares for the soldiers because she is a mother, Option B is not correct because it says that the upper class may benefit in someway and Option C is incorrect because she does not say she is not patriotic.

1. read the following excerpt from franklin d. roosevelt's "fireside chat 19":

on the other side of the picture, we must learn also to know that guerilla warfare against the germans in, let us say serbia or norway, us; that a successful russian offensive against the germans us; and that british successes on land or sea in any part of the world strengthen our hands.

remember always that germany and italy, regardless of any formal declaration of war, consider themselves at war with the united states at this moment just as much as they consider themselves at war with britain or russia. and germany puts all the other republics of the americas into the same category of enemies. the people of our sister republics of this hemisphere can be honored by that fact.  

the true goal we seek is far above and beyond the ugly field of battle. when we resort to force, as now we must, we are determined that this force shall be directed toward ultimate good as well as against immediate evil. we americans are not destroyers — we are builders.

analyze the effectiveness of this excerpt. how does it function within the speech as a whole? how does the structure of the excerpt to convey the speech's purpose and key points? support your argument with evidence from the speech. (10 points)