Which of the following identifies the central idea of the text? a. by only exposing ourselves to a single story, we run the risk of constructing overly-simplistic understandings of other people and places. b. by only reading a single story, we cheat ourselves of experiencing different cultures from different perspectives. c. literature is reflective of the stories that are most popular and that people are most likely to identify with. d. literature primarily shapes the understanding of children, while adults are less likely to construct their views of the world based on a single story.

Which two sentences in this excerpt from theodore dreiser my brother paul are examples of characterization that suggest paul is a superstitious person?

The town should regulate the height of buildings allowed on main street. this would be categorized as a: a. claim of fact. b. claim of policy. c. claim of cause and effect. d. claim of definition.

[1] nothing that comes from the desert expresses its extremes better than the unhappy growth of the tree yuccas. tormented, thin forests of it stalk drearily in the high mesas, particularly in that triangular slip that fans out eastward from the meeting of the sierras and coastwise hills. the yucca bristles with bayonet-pointed leaves, dull green, growing shaggy with age like an old [5] man's tangled gray beard, tipped with panicles of foul, greenish blooms. after its death, which is slow, the ghostly hollow network of its woody skeleton, with hardly power to rot, makes even the moonlight fearful. but it isn't always this way. before the yucca has come to flower, while yet its bloom is a luxurious, creamy, cone-shaped bud of the size of a small cabbage, full of sugary sap. the indians twist it deftly out of its fence of daggers and roast the prize for their [10] own delectation why does the author use the words "bayonet-pointed" (line 4) and "fence of daggers" (line 9) to describe the leaves of the yucca tree? . to create an image of the sharp edges of the plant to emphasize how beautiful the plant's leaves are to explain when and where the plant grows to show how afraid the author is of the plant