Test Prep GED-SECTION-4 Online Practice Questions and Exam Preparation

Test Prep GED-SECTION-4 Online Questions & Answers

• Question 61:

  How Are Robots Different from Humans?

  [Helena is talking to Domain, the general manager of Rossums Universal Robots factory.]

  DOMAIN: Well, any one whos looked into anatomy will have seen at once that man is too complicated, and that a good engineer could make him more simply. So young Rossum began to overhaul anatomy and tried to see what could be left

  out or simplified. In short but this isnt boring you, Miss Glory?

  HELENA: No; on the contrary, its awfully interesting.

  DOMAIN: So young Rossum said to himself: A man is something that, for instance, feels happy, plays the fiddle, likes going for walks, and, in fact, wants to do a whole lot of things that are really unnecessary.

  HELENA: Oh!

  DOMAIN: Wait a bit. That are unnecessary when hes wanted, let us say, to weave or to count. Do you play the fiddle?

  HELENA: No.

  DOMAIN: Thats a pity. But a working machine must not want to play the fiddle, must not feel happy, must not do a whole lot of other things. A petrol motor must not have tassels or ornaments, Miss Glory. And to manufacture artificial workers

  is the same thing as to manufacture motors. The process must be of the simplest, and the product of the best from a practical point of view. What sort of worker do you think is the best from a practical point of view?

  HELENA: The best? Perhaps the one who is most honest and hard-working.

  DOMAIN: No, the cheapest. The one whose needs are the smallest. Young Rossum invented a worker with the minimum amount of requirements. He had to simplify him. He rejected everything that did not contribute directly to the progress of

  work. In this way he rejected everything that made man more expensive. In fact, he rejected man and made the Robot. My dear Miss Glory, the Robots are not people. Mechanically they are more perfect than we are, they have an enormously

  developed intelligence, but they have no soul. Have you ever seen what a Robot looks like inside? HELENA: Good gracious, no!

  DOMAIN: Very neat, very simple. Really a beautiful piece of work. Not much in it, but everything in flawless order. The product of an engineer is technically at a higher pitch of perfection than a product of nature.

  HELENA: Man is supposed to be the product of nature.

  DOMAIN: So much the worse.

  Karel C apek,

  from R.U.R. (1923, translated by P. Selver)

  According to the passage, why are robots better workers than humans?

  A. Robots have a very simple anatomy.
  B. Robots are more intelligent.
  C. Robots are more honest and hard-working.
  D. Robots do not have a soul.
  E. Robots want things that are unnecessary.
  D. Robots do not have a soul.

  ---

  Explanation/Reference:

  Domain states that the best workers are those who are "the cheapest" and "whose needs are the smallest" (lines 40

• Question 62:

  What Has Mrs. Mallard Realized?

  [Mrs.Mallard has locked herself in a room and is crying.]

  She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.

  She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of

  reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.

  There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the

  color that filled the air.

  Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been.

  When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed

  keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body. She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the

  suggestion as trivial.

  She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years

  to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome. There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers

  in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of

  illumination.

  -

  Kate Chopin, from "The Story of an Hour" (1894) Why is Mrs. Mallard crying?

  A. She is frightened.
  B. She has just been criticized in front of others.
  C. She has been told her husband is dead.
  D. She has been told she is seriously ill.
  E. She is just a very emotional person.
  C. She has been told her husband is dead.

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  Explanation/Reference:

  Mrs. Mallard is crying because she just learned her husband is dead. This is clear from the last two paragraphs. Someone has died - his hands will be "folded in death." That someone's eyes "never looked save with love upon her." The relationship of this person to Mrs. Mallard is suggested by the rest of the passage, in which she revels in the thought that she will be able to live for herself, not someone else: "There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature" (lines 47

• Question 63:

  Whats Wrong with Biff and Happy?

  [Biff is talking with his brother, Happy. They are together with their parents in the home where they grew up.]

  BIFF: [with rising agitation] Hap, Ive had twenty or thirty different kinds of jobs since I left home before the war, and it always turns out the same. I just realized it lately. In Nebraska, when I herded cattle, and the Dakotas, and Arizona, and

  now in Texas. Its why I came home now, I guess, because I realized it.

  This farm I work on, its spring there now, see? And theyve got about fifteen new colts. Theres nothing more inspiring or beautiful than the sight of a mare and a new colt. And its cool there now, see? Texas is cool now, and its spring. And

  whenever spring comes to where I am, I suddenly get the feeling, my God, Im not gettin anywhere! What the hell am I doing, playing around with horses, twenty-eight dollars a week! Im thirty-four years old, I oughta be makinmy future.

  Thats when I come running home. And now, I get here, and I dont know what to do with myself. [After a pause] Ive always made a point of not wasting my life, and every time I come back here I know that all Ive done is to waste my life.

  HAPPY: Youre a poet, you know that, Biff?

  Youre a youre an idealist!

  BIFF: No, Im mixed up very bad. Maybe I oughta get married. Maybe I oughta get stuck into something. Maybe thats my trouble. Im like a boy. Im not married,

  Im not in business, I justIm like a boy. Are you content, Hap? Youre a success, arent you? Are you content?

  HAPPY: Hell, no!

  BIFF:Why? Youre making money, arent you?

  HAPPY: [moving about with energy, expressiveness] All I can do now is wait for the merchandise manager to die. And suppose I get to be merchandise manager?

  Hes a good friend of mine, and he just built a terrific estate on Long Island. And he lived there about two months and sold it, and now hes building another one.

  He cant enjoy it once its finished. And I know thats just what I would do. I dont know what the hell Im workin for. Sometimes I sit in my apartment all alone.

  And I think of the rent Im paying. And its crazy. But then, its what I always wanted. My own apartment, a car, and plenty of women. And still, goddammit, Im lonely.

  Arthur Miller, from Death of a Salesman (1949)

  Biff has come home because

  A. he needs a vacation.
  B. he isn't earning enough money at his new job.
  C. he feels like he isn't getting anywhere in life.
  D. he likes to be home in springtime.
  E. he misses his family.
  C. he feels like he isn't getting anywhere in life.

  ---

  Explanation/Reference:

  Biff tells Happy,"And whenever spring comes to where I am, I suddenly get the feeling, my God, I’m not gettin

• Question 64:

  What Happened When He Came to America? My parents lost friends, lost family ties and patterns of mutual assistance, lost rituals and habits and favorite foods, lost any link to an ongoing social milieu, lost a good part of the sense they had of themselves. We lost a house, several towns, various landscapes. We lost documents and pictures and heirlooms, as well as most of our breakable belongings, smashed in the nine packing cases that we took with us to America. We lost connection to a thing larger than ourselves, and as a family failed to make any significant new connection in exchange, so that we were left aground on a sandbar barely big enough for our feet. I lost friends and relatives and stories and familiar comforts and a sense of continuity between home and outside and any sense that I was normal. I lost half a language through want of use and eventually, in my late teens, even lost French as the language of my internal monologue. And I lost a whole network of routes through life that I had just barely glimpsed. Hastening on toward some idea of a future, I only half-realized these losses, and when I did realize I didnt disapprove, and sometimes I actively colluded. At some point, though, I was bound to notice that there was a gulf inside me, with a blanketed form on the other side that hadnt been uncovered in decades. My project of self-invention had been successful, so much so that I had become a sort of hydroponic vegetable, growing soil-free. But I had been formed in another world; everything in me that was essential was owed to immersion in that place, and that time, that I had so effectively renounced. [ . . . . ] Like it or not, each of us is made, less by blood or genes than by a process that is largely accidental, the impact of things seen and heard and smelled and tasted and endured in those few years before our clay hardens. Offhand remarks, things glimpsed in passing, jokes and commonplaces, shop displays and climate and flickering light and textures of walls are all consumed by us and become part of our fiber, just as much as the more obvious effects of upbringing and socialization and intimacy and learning. Every human being is an archeological site. Luc Sante, from The Factory of Facts (1998) In the first paragraph, the writer lists more than a dozen things that he and his family lost when they immigrated to America. He does this in order to

  A. convince others not to immigrate.
  B. show how careless his family was when packing.
  C. show how much he missed his homeland.
  D. show how many intangible and important things were left behind.
  E. prove that you are never too old to change..
  D. show how many intangible and important things were left behind.

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  Explanation/Reference:

  While some of the things the authors family lost were tangible (the house, the heirlooms), most of the list includes intangible things that are very important in establishing our identity and sense of self. He is not trying to convince others not to immigrate (choice a); he is not criticizing America or his experience since he arrived. There is no evidence that the crates were smashed because his family packed carelessly (choice b). In the second paragraph, the author tells us that he did not consciously miss his homeland; he "actively colluded" in the losses they suffered and tried to reinvent himself. Thus, choice c is incorrect. The focus of this passage is how important place is to ones sense of self; it is not trying to show that you are never too old to change (choice e).

• Question 65:

  What Is the Author Asking for?

  The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? The land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

  Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.

  We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our

  brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man, all belong to the same family.

  The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells of events and

  memories in the life of my people. The waters murmur is the voice of my fathers father.

  The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry out canoes and feed our children. So you must give to the rivers the kindness you would give any brother. If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the

  air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So, if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a

  place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.

  Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth, befalls all sons of the earth. This we know:

  The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood which unites us all.

  -

  Chief Seattle, from "This We Know" (1854) The intended audience of this essay is most likely

  A. President George Washington only.
  B. Native Americans only.
  C. all new Americans.
  D. all Americans, Native and new.
  E. Chief Seattle himself.
  C. all new Americans.

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  Explanation/Reference:

  The author is addressing all new Americans - the people to whom he would be selling the land. There is a clear distinction between the "you" of the new

  Americans and the "we" of the Native Americans, so choices b, d, and e are incorrect. Choice a is incorrect because he speaks of President Washington in the third person.