GED-SECTION-4 Online Practice Questions and Answers
What Has Happened to Gregor? As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes. What has happened to me? he thought. It was no dream. His room, a regular human bedroom, only rather too small, lay quiet between the four familiar walls. Above the table on which a collection of cloth samples was unpacked and spread out Samsa was a commercial traveler hung the picture which he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and put into a pretty gilt frame. It showed a lady, with a fur cap on and a fur stole, sitting upright and holding out to the spectator a huge fur muff into which the whole of her forearm had vanished! . . . . He slid down again into his former position. This getting up early, he thought, makes one quite stupid. A man needs his sleep. Other commercials live like harem women. For instance, when I come back to the hotel of a morning to write up the orders Ive got, these others are only sitting down to breakfast. Let me just try that with my chief; Id be sacked on the spot. Anyhow, that might be quite a good thing for me, who can tell? If I didnt have to hold my hand because of my parents Id have given notice long ago, Id have gone to the chief and told him exactly what I think of him. That would knock him endways from his desk! Its a queer way of doing, too, this sitting on high at a desk and talking down to employees, especially when they have to come quite near because the chief is hard of hearing. Well, theres still hope; once Ive saved enough money to pay back my parents debts to him that should take another five or six years Ill do it without fail. Ill cut myself completely loose then. For the moment, though, Id better get up, since my train goes at five. Franz Kafka, from The Metamorphosis (1912) When Gregor Samsa wakes up, he realizes that he
A. has been having a nightmare.
B. is late for work.
C. has turned into a giant bug.
D. dislikes his job.
E. needs to make a change in his life.
What Has Happened to Gregor?
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike
brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly
before his eyes.
What has happened to me? he thought. It was no dream. His room, a regular human bedroom, only rather too small, lay quiet between the four familiar walls.
Above the table on which a collection of cloth samples was unpacked and spread out Samsa was a commercial traveler hung the picture which he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and put into a pretty gilt frame. It showed a
lady, with a fur cap on and a fur stole, sitting upright and holding out to the spectator a huge fur muff into which the whole of her forearm had vanished!
. . . .
He slid down again into his former position. This getting up early, he thought, makes one quite stupid. A man needs his sleep. Other commercials live like harem women. For instance, when I come back to the hotel of a morning to write up the
orders Ive got, these others are only sitting down to breakfast. Let me just try that with my chief; Id be sacked on the spot. Anyhow, that might be quite a good thing for me, who can tell? If I didnt have to hold my hand because of my parents Id
have given notice long ago, Id have gone to the chief and told him exactly what I think of him. That would knock him endways from his desk! Its a queer way of doing, too, this sitting on high at a desk and talking down to employees, especially
when they have to come quite near because the chief is hard of hearing. Well, theres still hope; once Ive saved enough money to pay back my parents debts to him that should take another five or six years Ill do it without fail. Ill cut myself
completely loose then. For the moment, though, Id better get up, since my train goes at five.
Franz Kafka, from The Metamorphosis (1912)
Which of the following best describes Gregors job?
A. magician
B. traveling clothing salesman
C. advertisement copywriter
D. clothing designer
E. magazine editor
How Are Robots Different from Humans?
[Helena is talking to Domain, the general manager of Rossums Universal Robots factory.]
DOMAIN: Well, any one whos looked into anatomy will have seen at once that man is too complicated, and that a good engineer could make him more simply. So young Rossum began to overhaul anatomy and tried to see what could be left
out or simplified. In short but this isnt boring you, Miss Glory?
HELENA: No; on the contrary, its awfully interesting.
DOMAIN: So young Rossum said to himself: A man is something that, for instance, feels happy, plays the fiddle, likes going for walks, and, in fact, wants to do a whole lot of things that are really unnecessary.
HELENA: Oh!
DOMAIN: Wait a bit. That are unnecessary when hes wanted, let us say, to weave or to count. Do you play the fiddle?
HELENA: No.
DOMAIN: Thats a pity. But a working machine must not want to play the fiddle, must not feel happy, must not do a whole lot of other things. A petrol motor must not have tassels or ornaments, Miss Glory. And to manufacture artificial workers
is the same thing as to manufacture motors. The process must be of the simplest, and the product of the best from a practical point of view. What sort of worker do you think is the best from a practical point of view?
HELENA: The best? Perhaps the one who is most honest and hard-working.
DOMAIN: No, the cheapest. The one whose needs are the smallest. Young Rossum invented a worker with the minimum amount of requirements. He had to simplify him. He rejected everything that did not contribute directly to the progress of
work. In this way he rejected everything that made man more expensive. In fact, he rejected man and made the Robot. My dear Miss Glory, the Robots are not people. Mechanically they are more perfect than we are, they have an enormously
developed intelligence, but they have no soul. Have you ever seen what a Robot looks like inside? HELENA: Good gracious, no!
DOMAIN: Very neat, very simple. Really a beautiful piece of work. Not much in it, but everything in flawless order. The product of an engineer is technically at a higher pitch of perfection than a product of nature.
HELENA: Man is supposed to be the product of nature.
DOMAIN: So much the worse.
Karel C apek,
from R.U.R. (1923, translated by P. Selver)
According to the passage, why are robots better workers than humans?
A. Robots have a very simple anatomy.
B. Robots are more intelligent.
C. Robots are more honest and hard-working.
D. Robots do not have a soul.
E. Robots want things that are unnecessary.
How Are Robots Different from Humans?
[Helena is talking to Domain, the general manager of Rossums Universal Robots factory.]
DOMAIN: Well, any one whos looked into anatomy will have seen at once that man is too complicated, and that a good engineer could make him more simply. So young Rossum began to overhaul anatomy and tried to see what could be left
out or simplified. In short but this isnt boring you, Miss Glory?
HELENA: No; on the contrary, its awfully interesting.
DOMAIN: So young Rossum said to himself: A man is something that, for instance, feels happy, plays the fiddle, likes going for walks, and, in fact, wants to do a whole lot of things that are really unnecessary.
HELENA: Oh!
DOMAIN: Wait a bit. That are unnecessary when hes wanted, let us say, to weave or to count. Do you play the fiddle?
HELENA: No.
DOMAIN: Thats a pity. But a working machine must not want to play the fiddle, must not feel happy, must not do a whole lot of other things. A petrol motor must not have tassels or ornaments, Miss Glory. And to manufacture artificial workers
is the same thing as to manufacture motors. The process must be of the simplest, and the product of the best from a practical point of view. What sort of worker do you think is the best from a practical point of view?
HELENA: The best? Perhaps the one who is most honest and hard-working.
DOMAIN: No, the cheapest. The one whose needs are the smallest. Young Rossum invented a worker with the minimum amount of requirements. He had to simplify him. He rejected everything that did not contribute directly to the progress of
work. In this way he rejected everything that made man more expensive. In fact, he rejected man and made the Robot. My dear Miss Glory, the Robots are not people. Mechanically they are more perfect than we are, they have an enormously
developed intelligence, but they have no soul. Have you ever seen what a Robot looks like inside? HELENA: Good gracious, no!
DOMAIN: Very neat, very simple. Really a beautiful piece of work. Not much in it, but everything in flawless order. The product of an engineer is technically at a higher pitch of perfection than a product of nature.
HELENA: Man is supposed to be the product of nature.
DOMAIN: So much the worse.
Karel C apek,
from R.U.R. (1923, translated by P. Selver)
Based on the passage, Rossum is most likely
A. a robot.
B. a part-time inventor.
C. a retired doctor.
D. a foreman in the factory.
E. a very intelligent engineer.
Whats Wrong with Commercial Television?
Kids who watch much commercial television ought to develop into whizzes at the dialect; you have to keep so much in your mind at once because a series of artificially short attention spans has been created. But this in itself means that the
experience of watching the commercial channels is a more informal one, curiously more homely than watching BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation].
This is because the commercial breaks are constant reminders that the medium itself is artificial, isn't, in fact, "real," even if the gesticulating heads, unlike the giants of the movie screen, are life-size. There is a kind of built-in alienation effect.
Everything you see is false, as Tristan Tzara gnomically opined. And the young lady in the St. Bruno tobacco ads who currently concludes her spiel by stating categorically: "And if you believe that, you’ll believe anything," is saying no more
than the truth. The long-term effect of habitually watching commercial television is probably an erosion of trust in the television medium itself.
Since joy is the message of all commercials, it is as well they breed skepticism. Every story has a happy ending, gratification is guaranteed by the conventions of the commercial form, which contributes no end to the pervasive unreality of it
all. Indeed, it is the chronic bliss of everybody in the commercials that creates their final divorce from effective life as we know it.
Grumpy mum, frowning dad, are soon all smiles again after the ingestion of some pill or potion; minimal concessions are made to mild frustration (as they are, occasionally, to lust), but none at all to despair or consummation. In fact, if the form
is reminiscent of the limerick and the presentation of the music-hall, the overall mood in its absolute and unruffled decorum is that of the uplift fables in the Sunday school picture books of my childhood.
Angela Carter, from Shaking a Leg (1997)
According to the author, what is the main thing that makes commercials unrealistic?
A. Everyone in commercials always ends up happy.
B. The background music is distracting.
C. Commercials are so short.
D. The people in commercials are always sick.
E. The claims commercials make are unrealistic.
What Happened When He Came to America? My parents lost friends, lost family ties and patterns of mutual assistance, lost rituals and habits and favorite foods, lost any link to an ongoing social milieu, lost a good part of the sense they had of themselves. We lost a house, several towns, various landscapes. We lost documents and pictures and heirlooms, as well as most of our breakable belongings, smashed in the nine packing cases that we took with us to America. We lost connection to a thing larger than ourselves, and as a family failed to make any significant new connection in exchange, so that we were left aground on a sandbar barely big enough for our feet. I lost friends and relatives and stories and familiar comforts and a sense of continuity between home and outside and any sense that I was normal. I lost half a language through want of use and eventually, in my late teens, even lost French as the language of my internal monologue. And I lost a whole network of routes through life that I had just barely glimpsed. Hastening on toward some idea of a future, I only half-realized these losses, and when I did realize I didnt disapprove, and sometimes I actively colluded. At some point, though, I was bound to notice that there was a gulf inside me, with a blanketed form on the other side that hadnt been uncovered in decades. My project of self-invention had been successful, so much so that I had become a sort of hydroponic vegetable, growing soil-free. But I had been formed in another world; everything in me that was essential was owed to immersion in that place, and that time, that I had so effectively renounced. [ . . . . ] Like it or not, each of us is made, less by blood or genes than by a process that is largely accidental, the impact of things seen and heard and smelled and tasted and endured in those few years before our clay hardens. Offhand remarks, things glimpsed in passing, jokes and commonplaces, shop displays and climate and flickering light and textures of walls are all consumed by us and become part of our fiber, just as much as the more obvious effects of upbringing and socialization and intimacy and learning. Every human being is an archeological site. Luc Sante, from The Factory of Facts (1998) In the first paragraph, the writer lists more than a dozen things that he and his family lost when they immigrated to America. He does this in order to
A. convince others not to immigrate.
B. show how careless his family was when packing.
C. show how much he missed his homeland.
D. show how many intangible and important things were left behind.
E. prove that you are never too old to change..
Whats Wrong with Biff and Happy?
[Biff is talking with his brother, Happy. They are together with their parents in the home where they grew up.]
BIFF: [with rising agitation] Hap, Ive had twenty or thirty different kinds of jobs since I left home before the war, and it always turns out the same. I just realized it lately. In Nebraska, when I herded cattle, and the Dakotas, and Arizona, and
now in Texas. Its why I came home now, I guess, because I realized it.
This farm I work on, its spring there now, see? And theyve got about fifteen new colts. Theres nothing more inspiring or beautiful than the sight of a mare and a new colt. And its cool there now, see? Texas is cool now, and its spring. And
whenever spring comes to where I am, I suddenly get the feeling, my God, Im not gettin anywhere! What the hell am I doing, playing around with horses, twenty-eight dollars a week! Im thirty-four years old, I oughta be makinmy future.
Thats when I come running home. And now, I get here, and I dont know what to do with myself. [After a pause] Ive always made a point of not wasting my life, and every time I come back here I know that all Ive done is to waste my life.
HAPPY: Youre a poet, you know that, Biff?
Youre a youre an idealist!
BIFF: No, Im mixed up very bad. Maybe I oughta get married. Maybe I oughta get stuck into something. Maybe thats my trouble. Im like a boy. Im not married,
Im not in business, I justIm like a boy. Are you content, Hap? Youre a success, arent you? Are you content?
HAPPY: Hell, no!
BIFF:Why? Youre making money, arent you?
HAPPY: [moving about with energy, expressiveness] All I can do now is wait for the merchandise manager to die. And suppose I get to be merchandise manager?
Hes a good friend of mine, and he just built a terrific estate on Long Island. And he lived there about two months and sold it, and now hes building another one.
He cant enjoy it once its finished. And I know thats just what I would do. I dont know what the hell Im workin for. Sometimes I sit in my apartment all alone.
And I think of the rent Im paying. And its crazy. But then, its what I always wanted. My own apartment, a car, and plenty of women. And still, goddammit, Im lonely.
Arthur Miller, from Death of a Salesman (1949)
Biff has come home because
A. he needs a vacation.
B. he isn't earning enough money at his new job.
C. he feels like he isn't getting anywhere in life.
D. he likes to be home in springtime.
E. he misses his family.
What Is the New Dress Code Policy?
MEMORANDUM
TO:All Employees FROM:Helen Suskind, Director,
Human Resources Department
DATE:March 22, 2005 RE: Implementation of New Dress Code
A new dress code for all employees will take effect on September 1. All employees will be required to wear professional business attire while in the office. In this context, professional business attire excludes T-shirts, sleeveless shirts, shorts,
jeans, athletic attire, miniskirts, sandals, flip-flops, and sneakers. The attached sheet provides a complete list of attire that is inappropriate for the office. Please be sure to review this list carefully.
Violations of the new dress code will be handled as follows:
If you have any questions about the parameters of the dress code, please contact Martin Lamb in Human Resources immediately to schedule an appointment.
It is important that all employees understand the seriousness of this policy. Management based its decision to implement this code upon evidence that the lack of a dress code leads to a decrease in productivity. Our new dress code will help
maintain the reputation and integrity of our company by keeping us aware of the need for professionalism. Thank you for your cooperation.
According to the new policy, employees
A. can wear sandals but not flip-flops.
B. can wear short-sleeved shirts but not T-shirts.
C. must wear suits or dresses.
D. can wear shorts on very hot days.
E. cannot wear hats in the office.
What Inspires Thomas?
[Thomas Builds-the-Fire is a Spokane Indian living on the Spokane Indian Reservation.]
So Thomas went home and tried to write their first song. He sat alone in his house with his bass guitar and waited for the song. He waited and waited. Its nearly impossible to write a song with a bass guitar, but Thomas didn't know that. He’d
never written a song before. "Please," Thomas prayed. But the song would not come, so Thomas closed his eyes, tried to find a story with a soundtrack. He turned on the television and watched The Sound of Music on channel four. Julie
Andrews put him to sleep for the sixty-seventh time, and neither story nor song came in his dreams.
After he woke up, he paced around the room, stood on his porch, and listened to those faint voices that echoed all over the reservation. Everybody heard those voices, but nobody liked to talk about them. They were loudest at night, when
Thomas tried to sleep, and he always thought they sounded like horses. For hours,
Thomas waited for the song.
Then, hungry and tired, he opened his refrigerator for something to eat and discovered that he didnt have any food. So he closed the fridge and opened it again, but it was still empty. In a ceremony that he had practiced since his youth, he
opened, closed, and opened the fridge again, expecting an immaculate conception of a jar of pickles. Thomas was hungry on a reservation where there are ninety-seven different ways to say fry bread.
[. . . .]
As his growling stomach provided the rhythm, Thomas sat again with his bass guitar, wrote the first song, and called it "Reservation Blues."
Sherman Alexie, from Reservation Blues (1995)
Based on the passage, we can conclude that Thomas
A. does not take good care of himself.
B. is poor.
C. has always wanted to be in a band.
D. is waiting for someone to help him.
E. watches too much television.
What Is the Authors Father Like?
It was an impressive place: old, solidly built, in the Tudor style, with leaded windows, a slate roof, and rooms of royal proportions. Buying it had been a big step for my parents, a sign of growing wealth. This was the best neighborhood in town,
and although it was not a pleasant place to live (especially for children), its prestige outweighed its deadliness. Given the fact that he wound up spending the rest of his life in that house, it is ironic that my father at first resisted moving there.
He complained about the price (a constant theme), and when at last he relented, it was with grudging bad humor. Even so, he paid in cash. All in one go. No mortgage, no monthly payments. It was 1959, and business was going well for him.
Always a man of habit, he would leave for work early in the morning, work hard all day, and then, when he came home (on those days he did not work late), take a short nap before dinner. Sometime during our first week in the new house,
before we had properly moved in, he made a curious kind of mistake. Instead of driving home to the new house after work, he went directly to the old one, as he had done for years, parked his car in the driveway, walked into the house
through the back door, climbed the stairs, entered the bedroom, lay down on the bed, and went to sleep. He slept for about an hour.
Needless to say, when the new mistress of the house returned to find a strange man sleeping in her bed, she was a little surprised. But unlike Goldilocks, my father did not jump up and run away. The confusion was eventually settled, and
everyone had a good laugh. Even today, it still makes me laugh. And yet, for all that, I cannot help regarding it as a pathetic story. It is one thing for a man to drive to his old house by mistake, but it is quite another, I think, for him not to notice
that anything has changed inside it.
Paul Auster, from The Invention of Solitude (1982)
Based on the excerpt, how does the author feel about his fathers life?
A. His father was a great businessman.
B. His father lived a sad, lonely life.
C. His father was a financial genius.
D. His father was often cruel, but always had good intentions.
E. His father was impressive and strong, like the house where they lived.