501 Critical Reading Questions

Critical Reading Questions

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and then says I can see now—(lines 38–39) suggesting that she
can understand now how Mrs. Wright must have felt.
284.
d. Mrs. Hale describes Mr. Wright as a hard man who was like a raw
wind that gets to the bone (lines 51–52). Mrs. Wright’s loneliness
would be deepened by living with a man who was quiet and cold.
285.
b. The punctuation here—the dashes between each word—sug-
gest that Mrs. Wright changed from the sweet, fluttery woman
she was to a bitter, unhappy person over the years. The
emphasis on her loneliness and the dead husband and bird add
to this impression.
286.
d. The women decide to take the quilt to Mrs. Wright to keep her
busy; it would give her something to do, something familiar and
comforting
287.
c. Because her house was so lonely, Mrs. Wright would have wanted
the company of a pet—and a pet that shared some qualities with
her (or with her younger self) would have been particularly
appealing. She would have liked the bird’s singing to ease the
quiet in the house, and she also used to sing real pretty herself (line
10) and would have felt a real connection with the bird.
288.
b. The clues in the passage—the violently broken bird cage, the
dead bird lovingly wrapped in silk and put in a pretty box, the
description of John Wright as a hard and cold man—suggest that
he killed the bird and that Mrs. Wright in turn killed him for
destroying her companion.
289.
d. The fact that Mrs. Hale slips box under quilt pieces suggests that she
will not share her discovery with the men.
290.
c. Frankenstein asks his listener to [l]earn from me [ . . . ] how danger-
ous is the acquirement of knowledge (lines 6–8). He is telling his tale
as a warning and does not want to lead his listener into the same
kind of destruction and infallible misery (line 6).
291.