6.14 Self-test on The textual
Read the passage printed below and answer the questions that follow.
It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke
and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red
and black, like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and
tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves
for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it,
and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building
full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and
where the piston of the steam- engine worked monotonously up and down, like
the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several
large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like
one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in
and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to
do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow,
and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.
(Dickens, C. Hard Times, p.26)
1. Which statement below sums up Dickens’ intention in writing this passage?
(a) simply to describe an industrial city in England in the nineteenth century
(b) to denigrate people who live in such industrial towns
(c) to let the reader know, see and experience vicariously the
inhumanity of Victorian industrial England
2. Some of the power in this piece of writing lies with Dickens’ generous use of:
(a) onomatopoeia
(b) metaphor
(c) repetition
(d) verb groups
3. What is noticeable about the grammatical theme in this passage?:
(a) repetition of the referring word (pronoun) "it"?
(b) the use of cohesive devices
(c) (c) the use of text connectives
4. Meaning is particularly reinforced by Dickens’ use of:
(a) Similes
(b) Metaphors
(c) Personifications
5. Dickens appeals to the reader’s sense of:
(a) smell
(b) smell and sight
(c) smell, sight and sound
(d) smell, sight, sound and touch
6. The simile: ‘it was a town of unnatural red and black, like the painted face of a
savage’ emphasises:
(a) a man-made, uncivilised situation contrary to the laws of nature
(b) the filth of the situation
(c) the colour of the town
7. The simile: ‘where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and
down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness
(a) implants the idea of brute strength and dysfunction
(b) introduces a comical element
(c) shows how the steam-engine worked
8. What type of grammar does Dickens use to construct the idea of a monotonous life in a monotonous place, with no individuality or creativity?
(a) repetition and noun groups
(b) repetition
(c) noun groups
9. What kind of adjectives occur primarily in this text?
(a) repetition and noun groups
(b) repetition
(c) noun groups
10. The metaphor of the coiling smoke hanging over and around and in and out of the
town, clinging endlessly, reminds one of a serpent and introduces the idea of:
(a) a place with no winds
(b) constantly pervading evil
(c) yet another problem