Read the excerpt from chapter 8 of The Travels of Marco Polo. They have sheep here that have no ears, nor even ear-holes; but in the place where ears ought to be they have little horns. They are small creatures and very pretty. And here is something else that may strike you as marvelous: their domestic animals—sheep, oxen, camels, and little ponies—are fed on fish. They are reduced to this diet because in all this country and in all the surrounding regions there is no grass; but it is the driest place in the world. The fish on which these animals feed are very small and are caught in March, April, and May in quantities that are truly amazing. They are then dried and stored in the houses and given to the animals as food throughout the year. I can tell you further that the animals also eat them alive, as soon as they are drawn out of the water. Why does the author include information about the dry climate? to explain why the sheep have horns but no ears to explain why the sheep in the region are so small to explain why people in the region have to feed their animals fish to explain why there are such large quantities of fish available

98 points!

assignment

analyzing characters

respond to the following questions in one paragraph for each. use specific examples from the text to support your responses.

1. there is a set of twins on the island named sam and eric. however, when describing them, golding regularly refers to them as samneric. how does this way of describing the twins relate to their behavior and the way that readers understand their characters? what examples of their behavior readers see that samneric is really the appropriate way to refer to them?

2. as the boys set out to search for the beast, ralph allows jack to lead the way, and he sinks to the back of the pack, " to have escaped responsibility for a time." what does this moment lead you to infer about ralph and about his feelings about being the group’s leader? what does this moment foreshadow?

3. while part of the party searching for the beast, simon realizes that the notion of the beast that the other boys have does not make sense. a beast sitting atop a mountain with claws, a beast who did not leave tracks, could have easily caught the twins. simon has a different picture of the beast: "there rose before his inward sight the picture of a human at once heroic and sick." how does this picture relate to the beast that samneric saw? how does it relate to what simon said earlier about the beast being "only us"?

no plagarism

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