A unit test for your 9th graders reading ATOTC: How much attention did they pay to Dickens' unmatched descriptive powers?

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Unit Test

(originally created for a 9^th grade English class)

Directions: Many readers feel that Dickens is unequalled in his ability to create memorable settings and characters. Identify as precisely as possible the place or character described in 15 of the 16 following passages.

Places

1. It was a heavy mass of building . . . with a large stone courtyard before it, and two stone sweeps of staircase meeting in a stone terrace before the principal door. A stony business altogether, with heavy stone balustrades, and stone urns, and stone flowers, and stone faces of men, and stone heads of lions, in all directions.
2. Your money came out of, or went into, wormy old wooden drawers, particles of which flew up your nose and down your throat when they were opened and shut.
3. At last, the top of the staircase was gained, and they stopped for the third time. There was yet an upper staircase, of a steeper inclination and of contracted dimensions, to be ascended, before the garret story was reached.
4. "Those rooms are all in disorder, there has been a hurried packing, there are odds and ends upon the ground. There is no one in that room behind you! Let me look."
5. Every town-gate and village taxing-house had its band of citizen-patriots, with their national muskets in a most explosive state of readiness, who stopped all comers and goers, cross-questioned them, inspected their papers, looked for their names in lists of their own, turned them back, or sent them on . . . .
6. The other patient lay in a back room across a second staircase, which was a species of lost over a stable. There was a low plastered ceiling to a part of it; the rest was open, to the ridge of the tiled roof, and there were beams across.
7. The clocks are on the stroke of three, and the furrow ploughed among the populace is turning around, to come on into the place of execution, and end. The ridges thrown to this side and to that, now crumble in and close behind the last plough as it passes on, . . . In front of it, seated in chairs, as in a garden of public diversion, are a number of women, busily knitting.

People

1. . . . a loud buzz swept into the street as if the baffled blueflies were dispersing in search of other carrion.
2. . . . a gentleman of sixty, formally dressed in a brown suit of clothes, pretty well worn, but very well kept, with large square cuffs and large flaps to the pockets, passed along the way to breakfast.
3. He had put up a hand between his eyes and the light, and the very bones of it seemed transparent. So he sat, with a steadfastly vacant gaze, pausing in his work.
4. She acknowledged their homage by bending her head, and giving them a quick look. Then she glanced in a casual manner round the wine-shop, took up her knitting with great apparent calmness and repose of spirit, and became absorbed in it.
5. "I am a disappointed drudge, sir. I care for no man on earth, and no man cares for me." (Who is the speaker?)
6. The patient was a woman of great beauty, and young; assuredly not much past twenty. Her hair was torn and ragged, and her arms were bound to her sides with sashes and handkerchiefs.
7. . . . Charles Darnay seemed to stand in the company of the dead. Ghosts all! The ghost of beauty, the ghost of stateliness, the ghost of elegance, the ghost of pride, the ghost of frivolity, the ghost of wit, the ghost of wit, the ghost of youth, the ghost of age, all waiting dismissal from the desolate shore, . . . (Who are the "ghosts"?)
8. But, her courage was of that emotional nature that it brought irrepressible tears into her eyes. This was a courage of that Madame Defarge so little comprehended as to mistake for weakness.
9. The smooth manner of the spy, curiously in dissonance with his ostentatiously rough dress, and probably with his usual demeanour, received such a check from the inscrutability of Carton . . . that it faltered here and failed him.

Vocabulary: Define the underlined word as used in context.

1. The squalid conditions in the jail elicited cries of protest from the inmates.
2. Sagacity is not the product of books alone; some modicum of experience is also necessary to attain it.
3. We can expect that fervent admirers of Madonna will flock to her latest film whatever the reviews say.
4. A precocious youngster, he was reading by age three.
5. One could describe Miss Pross's sacrifice for her beloved Ladybird, at the close of A Tale of Two Cities, as acoustical in nature.
6. It has been said that today's youth have few national heroes to emulate.
7. What did Mme. Defarge's knitting portend?
8. Don't ask me to reiterate the instructions; I've already explained the assignment three times.
9. Do you believe that profligate characters can reform?
10. Some readers have complained that descriptive passages are a ubiquitous feature of Dickens's writing style.
11. Sidney Carton's deportment in the closing moments of his life is awe-inspiring.

For numbers 28 through 31, select four of the words from the word bank below and define and put them in sentences: anathema avocation blasphemous conflagration inclement indignity implicit inclement inquisitive jocosely throng tumbril