Regents High School Examination ELA 2015

Reading Comprehension Passage A

Nine years ago Pyotr Sergeytich, the deputy prosecutor, and I were riding towards

evening in haymaking time to fetch the letters from the station.

  The weather was magnificent, but on our way back we heard a peal of thunder, and saw

 an angry black storm-cloud which was coming straight towards us. The storm-cloud was

5 approaching us and we were approaching it. …

  Then the first wave raced through the rye and a field of oats, there was a gust of wind,

 and the dust flew round and round in the air. Pyotr Sergeytich laughed and spurred on his horse.

  “It’s fine!” he cried, “it’s splendid!”

  Infected by his gaiety, I too began laughing at the thought that in a minute I should be

10 drenched to the skin and might be struck by lightning.

  Riding swiftly in a hurricane when one is breathless with the wind, and feels like a bird,

 thrills one and puts one’s heart in a flutter. By the time we rode into our courtyard the wind

 had gone down, and big drops of rain were pattering on the grass and on the roofs. There

 was not a soul near the stable. …

15 “What a crash!” said Pyotr Sergeytich, coming up to me after a very loud rolling peal of

 thunder when it seemed as though the sky were split in two. “What do you say to that?”

  He stood beside me in the doorway and, still breathless from his rapid ride, looked at

 me. I could see that he was admiring me.

“Natalya Vladimirovna,” he said, “I would give anything only to stay here a little longer

20 and look at you. You are lovely to-day.”

  His eyes looked at me with delight and supplication,¹ his face was pale. On his beard

 and moustache were glittering raindrops, and they, too, seemed to be looking at me

with love.

  “I love you,” he said. “I love you, and I am happy at seeing you. I know you cannot be

25 my wife, but I want nothing, I ask nothing; only know that I love you. Be silent, do not

 answer me, take no notice of it, but only know that you are dear to me and let me look at

 you.” …

“You say nothing, and that is splendid,” said Pyotr Sergeytich. “Go on being silent.”

   I felt happy. I laughed with delight and ran through the drenching rain to the house;

30 he laughed too, and, leaping as he went, ran after me.

  Both drenched, panting, noisily clattering up the stairs like children, we dashed into the

room. My father and brother, who were not used to seeing me laughing and lighthearted,

looked at me in surprise and began laughing too. …

   When I went to bed I lighted a candle and threw my window wide open, and an

35 undefined feeling took possession of my soul. I remembered that I was free and healthy,

 that I had rank and wealth, that I was beloved; above all, that I had rank and wealth, rank

 and wealth, my God! how nice that was!… Then, huddling up in bed at a touch of cold

which reached me from the garden with the dew, I tried to discover whether I loved Pyotr

 Sergeytich or not,… and fell asleep unable to reach any conclusion. …

40 And what happened afterwards? Why—nothing. In the winter when we lived in town

 Pyotr Sergeytich came to see us from time to time. Country acquaintances are charming

 only in the country and in summer; in the town and in winter they lose their charm. When

you pour out tea for them in the town it seems as though they are wearing other people’s

 coats, and as though they stirred their tea too long. In the town, too, Pyotr Sergeytich spoke

45 sometimes of love, but the effect was not at all the same as in the country. In the town we

 were more vividly conscious of the wall that stood between us: I had rank and wealth, while

 he was poor, and he was not even a nobleman, but only the son of a deacon and a deputy

public prosecutor; we both of us—I through my youth and he for some unknown reason—

 thought of that wall as very high and thick, and when he was with us in the town he would

50 criticize aristocratic society with a forced smile, and maintain a sullen silence when there

 was anyone else in the drawing-room. There is no wall that cannot be broken through, but

 the heroes of the modern romance, so far as I know them, are too timid, spiritless, lazy, and

oversensitive, and are too ready to resign themselves to the thought that they are doomed

 to failure, that personal life has disappointed them; instead of struggling they merely

55 criticize, calling the world vulgar and forgetting that their criticism passes little by little into

 vulgarity.

  I was loved, happiness was not far away, and seemed to be almost touching me; I went

on living in careless ease without trying to understand myself, not knowing what I expected

 or what I wanted from life, and time went on and on.… People passed by me with their

60 love, bright days and warm nights flashed by, the nightingales sang, the hay smelt fragrant,

 and all this, sweet and overwhelming in remembrance, passed with me as with everyone

 rapidly, leaving no trace, was not prized, and vanished like mist.… Where is it all?

My father is dead, I have grown older; everything that delighted me, caressed me, gave me

 hope—the patter of the rain, the rolling of the thunder, thoughts of happiness, talk of

65 love—all that has become nothing but a memory, and I see before me a flat desert distance;

 on the plain not one living soul, and out there on the horizon it is dark and terrible. …

  A ring at the bell.… It is Pyotr Sergeytich. When in the winter I see the trees and

remember how green they were for me in the summer I whisper:

  “Oh, my darlings!”

70  And when I see people with whom I spent my spring-time, I feel sorrowful and warm

 and whisper the same thing. …

  Not knowing what to say I ask him:

  “Well, what have you to tell me?”

“Nothing,” he answers. …

75 I thought of the past, and all at once my shoulders began quivering, my head dropped,

 and I began weeping bitterly. I felt unbearably sorry for myself and for this man, and

 passionately longed for what had passed away and what life refused us now. And now I did

 not think about rank and wealth.

I broke into loud sobs, pressing my temples, and muttered:

80 “My God! my God! my life is wasted!”

  And he sat and was silent, and did not say to me: “Don’t weep.” He understood that I

 must weep, and that the time for this had come. …

—Anton Chekhov

excerpted from “A Lady’s Story”

The Schoolmistress and Other Stories, 1920

translated by Constance Garnett

Chatto & Windus

¹supplication — a humble plea

Reading Comprehension Passage B

ON LIVING

I

  Living is no laughing matter:

  you must live with great seriousness

   like a squirrel, for example—

  I mean, without looking for something beyond and above living,

5 I mean living must be your whole life.

  Living is no laughing matter:

  you must take it seriously,

  so much so and to such a degree

  that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,

10 your back to the wall,

  or else in a laboratory

  in your white coat and safety glasses,

  you can die for people—

  even for people whose faces you’ve never seen,

15 even though you know living

  is the most real, the most beautiful thing.

  I mean, you must take living so seriously

  that even at seventy, for example, you’ll plant olive trees—

  and not for your children, either,

20 but because although you fear death you don’t believe it,

  because living, I mean, weighs heavier.

II

  Let’s say we’re seriously ill, need surgery—

  which is to say we might not get up

   from the white table.

25 Even though it’s impossible not to feel sad

   about going a little too soon,

  we’ll still laugh at the jokes being told,

  we’ll look out the window to see it’s raining,

  or still wait anxiously

30    for the latest newscast…

  Let’s say we’re at the front—

  for something worth fighting for, say.

  There, in the first offensive, on that very day,

  we might fall on our face, dead.

35 We’ll know this with a curious anger,

but we’ll still worry ourselves to death

  about the outcome of war, which could last years.

  Let’s say we’re in prison

  and close to fifty,

40 and we have eighteen more years, say,

   before the iron doors will open.

  We’ll still live with the outside,

  with its people and animals, struggle and wind—

  I mean with the outside beyond the walls.

45 I mean, however and wherever we are,

we must live as if we will never die.

III

  This earth will grow cold,

  a star among stars

  and one of the smallest,

50 a gilded mote on blue velvet—

  I mean this, our great earth.

  This earth will grow cold one day,

  not like a block of ice

  or a dead cloud even

55 but like an empty walnut it will roll along

  in pitch-black space…

  You must grieve for this right now

  —you have to feel this sorrow now—

  for the world must be loved this much

60  if you’re going to say “I lived”…

—Nazim Hikmet

Poems of Nazim Hikmet, 1994

translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk

Persea Books

Reading Comprehension Passage C

A few years ago the City Council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping

  goldfish in curved fishbowls. The sponsors of the measure explained that it is cruel to keep

  a fish in a bowl because the curved sides give the fish a distorted view of reality. Aside from

  the measure’s significance to the poor goldfish, the story raises an interesting philosophical

5 question: How do we know that the reality we perceive is true?

The goldfish is seeing a version of reality that is different from ours, but can we be sure

  it is any less real? For all we know, we, too, may spend our entire lives staring out at the

  world through a distorting lens.

In physics, the question is not academic. Indeed, physicists and cosmologists are

10 finding themselves in a similar predicament to the goldfish’s. For decades we have strived

  to come up with an ultimate theory of everything—one complete and consistent set of

  fundamental laws of nature that explain every aspect of reality. It now appears that this

  quest may yield not a single theory but a family of interconnected theories, each describing

  its own version of reality, as if it viewed the universe through its own fishbowl.

15 This notion may be difficult for many people, including some working scientists, to

  accept. Most people believe that there is an objective reality out there and that our senses

  and our science directly convey information about the material world. Classical science is

  based on the belief that an external world exists whose properties are definite and inde-

  pendent of the observer who perceives them. In philosophy, that belief is called realism. …

Do Not Attempt To Adjust The Picture

20 The idea of alternative realities is a mainstay of today’s popular culture. For example,

  in the science-fiction film The Matrix the human race is unknowingly living in a simulated

  virtual reality created by intelligent computers to keep them pacified and content while the

  computers suck their bioelectrical energy (whatever that is). How do we know we are not

  just computer-generated characters living in a Matrix-like world? If we lived in a synthetic,

25 imaginary world, events would not necessarily have any logic or consistency or obey any

  laws. The aliens in control might find it more interesting or amusing to see our reactions,

  for example, if everyone in the world suddenly decided that chocolate was repulsive or that

  war was not an option, but that has never happened. If the aliens did enforce consistent

  laws, we would have no way to tell that another reality stood behind the simulated one. It

30 is easy to call the world the aliens live in the “real” one and the computer-generated world

  a false one. But if—like us—the beings in the simulated world could not gaze into their

  universe from the outside, they would have no reason to doubt their own pictures of reality.

The goldfish are in a similar situation. Their view is not the same as ours from outside

  their curved bowl, but they could still formulate scientific laws governing the motion of the

35 objects they observe on the outside. For instance, because light bends as it travels from air

  to water, a freely moving object that we would observe to move in a straight line would be

  observed by the goldfish to move along a curved path. The goldfish could formulate

  scientific laws from their distorted frame of reference that would always hold true and that

  would enable them to make predictions about the future motion of objects outside the

40 bowl. Their laws would be more complicated than the laws in our frame, but simplicity is a

  matter of taste. If the goldfish formulated such a theory, we would have to admit the

  goldfish’s view as a valid picture of reality. …

  Glimpses Of The Deep Theory

In the quest to discover the ultimate laws of physics, no approach has raised higher

  hopes—or more controversy—than string theory. String theory was first proposed in the

45 1970s as an attempt to unify all the forces of nature into one coherent framework and,

  in particular, to bring the force of gravity into the domain of quantum¹ physics. By the early

  1990s, however, physicists discovered that string theory suffers from an awkward issue:

  there are five different string theories. For those advocating that string theory was the

  unique theory of everything, this was quite an embarrassment. In the mid-1990s

50 researchers started discovering that these different theories—and yet another theory called

  supergravity—actually describe the same phenomena, giving them some hope that they

  would amount eventually to a unified theory. The theories are indeed related by what

  physicists call dualities, which are a kind of mathematical dictionaries for translating

  concepts back and forth. But, alas, each theory is a good description of phenomena only

55 under a certain range of conditions—for example at low energies. None can describe every

  aspect of the universe.

String theorists are now convinced that the five different string theories are just

  different approximations to a more fundamental theory called M-theory. (No one seems to

  know what the “M” stands for. It may be “master,” “miracle” or “mystery,” or all three.)

60 People are still trying to decipher the nature of M-theory, but it seems that the traditional

  expectation of a single theory of nature may be untenable² and that to describe the universe

  we must employ different theories in different situations. Thus, M-theory is not a theory in

  the usual sense but a network of theories. It is a bit like a map. To faithfully represent the

  entire Earth on a flat surface, one has to use a collection of maps, each of which covers

65 a limited region. The maps overlap one another, and where they do, they show the same

  landscape. Similarly, the different theories in the M-theory family may look very different,

  but they can all be regarded as versions of the same underlying theory, and they all predict

  the same phenomena where they overlap, but none works well in all situations.

Whenever we develop a model of the world and find it to be successful, we tend to

70 attribute to the model the quality of reality or absolute truth. But M-theory, like the

  goldfish example, shows that the same physical situation can be modeled in different ways,

  each employing different fundamental elements and concepts. It might be that to describe

  the universe we have to employ different theories in different situations. Each theory may

  have its own version of reality, but according to model-dependent realism, that diversity is

75 acceptable, and none of the versions can be said to be more real than any other. It is not the

  physicist’s traditional expectation for a theory of nature, nor does it correspond to our

  everyday idea of reality. But it might be the way of the universe.

—Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow
excerpted from “The (Elusive) Theory of Everything”
Scientific American, October 2010

¹ quantum — a small, indivisible unit of energy

² untenable — indefensible

Text

  …I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential

 facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die,

 discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor

 did I wish to practise resignation,¹ unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and

5 suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like² as to put to rout all that

 was not life, to cut a broad swath³ and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it

 to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean,⁴ why then to get the whole and genuine

 meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by

 experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it

10 appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and

 have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to “glorify God and

 enjoy him forever.” …

  Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every

 nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast,

15 gently and without perturbation;⁵ let company come and let company go, let the bells ring

 and the children cry,—determined to make a day of it. Why should we knock under and

 go with the stream? Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and

 whirlpool called a dinner, situated in the meridian shallows. Weather this danger and you

 are safe, for the rest of the way is down hill. With unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail

20 by it, looking another way, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the engine whistles, let it whistle

 till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings, why should we run? We will consider what kind

 of music they are like. Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward

 through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion and

 appearance, that alluvion⁶ which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New

25 York and Boston and Concord, through church and state, through poetry and philosophy

 and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and

 say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin, having a point d’appui,⁷ below freshet⁸ and frost

 and fire, a place where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamppost safely, or

 perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages might know how deep

30 a freshet of shams and appearances had gathered from time to time. If you stand right

 fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it

 were a cimeter,⁹ and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so

 you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we

 are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we

35 are alive, let us go about our business.

  Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy

 bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I

 would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one.

 I know not the first letter of the alphabet, I have always been regretting that I was not wise

40 as the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret

 of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. My head is

 hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties concentrated in it. My instinct tells me that my

 head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and fore-paws, and with

 it I would mine and burrow my way through these hills. I think that the richest vein is

45 somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining rod and thin rising vapors I judge; and here I will

 begin to mine.

—Henry D. Thoreau

excerpted from Walden, 1910

Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.

¹resignation — patient acceptance

²Spartan-like — simply

³swath — long strip

⁴mean — inferior, lowly, of little value

⁵perturbation — disturbance

⁶alluvion — flood

⁷point d’appui — point of support

⁸freshet — overflowing stream

⁹cimeter — sword