5 Steps to a 5 by Shveta Verma Miller

Author:Shveta Verma Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
Published: 2018-03-18T04:00:00+00:00

Passage 6. Walt Whitman, “O Captain! My Captain!”

121. (A) Line 4 is part of the independent clause that begins in line 3: “The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,/While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring.” The clause “While follow eyes the steady keel” refers to the noun in the preceding clause, which is “the people” who are exulting. They are exulting (rejoicing, triumphant) because “the prize … is won” (2), and they are not yet aware of the captain’s demise. “Formidable” describes a noun that inspires awe or intimidation due to its grandeur, size, strength, power. The observers are exulting while in awe of the ship’s formidable features that helped assure victory. It has been victorious, and the people are exulting, not lamenting the damage done to the vessel (E) or worrying about it pulling into the port (C). The boat is returning, not departing (B). The speaker is not looking at the vessel; he is looking at “the people all exulting” and describing their eyes (D).

122. (A) The speaker tells his heart to not leave “the little spot” where the Captain lies “cold and dead.” In other words, he is telling himself (his heart) never to forget the moment and place of his captain’s death. (E) is a close answer, but the command to his heart (“O heart! heart! heart!”) indicates that he is telling himself not to forget, hoping and pleading with his heart to always remember, while (E) indicates that he is certain he will not forget.

123. (C) The “bells,” “flag,” “bugle,” “wreaths,” and crowds in the third stanza serve dual purposes in that they describe the celebration the crowd planned to have upon the captain and the ship’s victorious return and also happen to describe a funeral, which is appropriate since the victory parade must turn into a funeral upon receipt of the news that the captain has died.

124. (D) The captain has not arrived home safely; he has died on the ship. Both the captain and the ship achieved their goals (“the victor ship”) (B), ended their heroic journeys (“its voyage closed and done”) (A), and are being celebrated (E). They are both metaphorical; the captain is actually Abraham Lincoln, and the ship is the United States of America, but without this background knowledge, a reader can interpret the metaphorical potential of the “captain” and his “ship” (see question 129) (C).

125. (A) In the fifth stanza, the speaker no longer refers to the captain in exclamatory sentences like “O Captain!” (1, 9, 13). Instead, his references are calm statements like “My Captain does not answer … ” (17). While these calm statements may be called internal thoughts (C), this would not be considered a change because the references to the captain in the previous stanzas can also be considered internal thoughts.

126. (B) The first segment (stanza 1) shows the speaker discovering his captain has died ( … on the deck my Captain lies,/Fallen cold and dead”).

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