Practice Test 7 - AP English Literature and Composition

20 questions. Answer them in any order, then submit to see your score and every explanation.

Read the following excerpt from a short story: At the clinic, Sora filled out forms with the same pen she used for grocery lists. The waiting room's aquarium bubbled steadily, as if practicing calm. When the nurse called her name, Sora stood so quickly her chair scraped, a small violence against the quiet. The doctor spoke gently, but the words arrived in Sora's body like weather: pressure behind the eyes, a storm in the throat. She nodded at the right moments, storing instructions she would later forget. Hope, she discovered, was a candle in a drafty hallway. What is the primary function of the metaphor "a candle in a drafty hallway" in the excerpt?
In the following original drama scene, a character's choice reveals an aspect of their character. [Midday. A small museum office. Display labels and gloves on a desk. DR. VOSS, curator, holds a phone. RUTH, an intern, stands near a cabinet containing a newly acquired artifact.] DR. VOSS: The board wants the provenance finalized by five. RUTH: It isn't finalized. DR. VOSS: It's "sufficient." RUTH: The shipping documents don't match the excavation report. DR. VOSS: (coolly) You're an intern. RUTH: I'm a person who can read. DR. VOSS: If we delay, the grant disappears. RUTH: If we display it, we certify it. [Dr. Voss opens the cabinet with a key and gestures for Ruth to place the artifact on a padded tray. Ruth hesitates, then closes the cabinet door instead and pockets the key.] DR. VOSS: Ruth. RUTH: You can fire me. DR. VOSS: Give me the key. RUTH: "Not until you can tell me whose hands it left—and whether they wanted it to leave." What does Ruth's choice and dialogue most reveal about her character?
Read the following excerpt from an original drama. In a kitchen during a family gathering, GRANDMA EVE speaks to her grandson TOM, who has avoided visiting since leaving for college. TOM: I didn't mean to stay away so long. GRANDMA EVE: Meaning is a thin soup. TOM: I was busy. GRANDMA EVE: Busy is what people call it when they don't want to feel guilty. TOM: That's not true. GRANDMA EVE: Is it not? You used to run in here like the house was yours. TOM: I was a kid. GRANDMA EVE: And now you're a man who knocks. TOM: I'm trying to be respectful. GRANDMA EVE: Respectful is fine. But distance—distance is a habit. TOM: I didn't forget you. GRANDMA EVE: (touching his sleeve) Child, time is a thief with clean hands. You won't feel it stealing until your pockets are empty. In context, what is the primary function of the metaphor "time is a thief with clean hands"?
Read the following excerpt from a short story: After moving to a new city, the narrator buys a houseplant and names it after her hometown. She waters it too often, then too little, watching its leaves curl like "small fists." When it finally grows a new sprout, she whispers, "Don't forgive me." Which thesis best interprets the excerpt's treatment of guilt and belonging?
A narrator describes riding a bus through her old neighborhood: "The storefronts wore new names like ill-fitting coats, and I kept staring at the seams." How does the bolded language shape the relationship between literal and figurative meaning? (Assume familiar shops have been replaced.)
Read the following original poem, then answer the question. At the party, I stand near the bookshelf, pretending to read spines like tea leaves. Laughter ricochets; names are traded like cards. Someone asks what I do; my answer stutters, a small animal trapped in fluorescent light. I nod too much, sip something too sweet, and feel my face arrange itself into politeness. In the bathroom mirror, I practice a grin— Narcissus would call it devotion; I call it survival. The allusion to Narcissus chiefly functions to
In a short story, a man stands in his childhood bedroom after his mother's funeral. The posters are gone, leaving lighter rectangles on the paint. The narrator describes those pale shapes as "quiet wounds in the wall". Which choice best explains the function of the bolded imagery?
In a story about a science fair, the narrator describes her partner, Ben, who insists their project board be perfectly aligned. When the board tilts slightly, Ben says, "If it leans, they'll think we do." A student claims Ben equates minor imperfections with moral or intellectual failure. Which option best explains how the bolded quote supports the claim?
Read the poem below, in which the speaker sits with a friend in a hospital waiting room. "The TV mutes itself into captions. A vending machine blinks, selling patience. You fold your hands as if they are paper cranes, creasing calm into something you can hold. I tap my knee—morse code for panic— and watch the clock's second hand stitch and unstitch. You say, It's probably nothing, with a voice as smooth as the cup of water you don't spill. When the nurse calls a name, you stand up like a practiced prayer. I stand up like a dropped glass, trying to gather myself before I shatter." The contrast between the friend's "fold[ing] your hands as if they are paper cranes" and the speaker's "tap my knee—morse code for panic" primarily serves to
In the excerpt below from an original drama, a couple debates whether to sell a house after a loss. Which choice best supports the claim that the house functions as a symbol of stalled grief? [Stage: A living room with furniture covered in sheets. A child's height marks are penciled on the doorframe, half-hidden by paint samples taped over them.] NORA: The realtor says we should brighten the walls. ADAM: Brighten. NORA: People want to imagine themselves here. ADAM: They can imagine somewhere else. NORA: We can't keep living under sheets. ADAM: (pulls one corner of a sheet back, then drops it) It's cleaner this way. NORA: Cleaner? ADAM: No dust on the memories. NORA: (points to the doorframe) You painted over the marks. ADAM: I taped samples. I didn't paint. NORA: You covered them. ADAM: I protected them. NORA: From what? ADAM: From being looked at like an exhibit. NORA: Adam, we haven't had anyone over in two years. ADAM: Exactly.
Read the following poem excerpt: "The New Phone" My father holds the screen at arm's length, as if it might bite. He asks me to show him photos; I swipe, and his face shifts, quick as weather. He calls the cloud 'somewhere thieves can reach', and keeps printing pictures, stacking them like sandbags. I laugh, but softly, because his fear has edges. Which choice best explains what the bolded details reveal about the speaker's perspective on the father?
In the following excerpt, a man sits at his desk after being laid off: "The email had been brief, as if the company were afraid of wasting words on him. He turned off his work laptop and watched the screen go black, a small death. His apartment was quiet except for the refrigerator's steady mutter. On the table, bills formed a tidy stack, corners aligned like teeth. He reached for a pen, but the calendar on the wall accused him with its empty squares, each day a box he no longer knew how to fill." What is the function of the personification in the bolded phrase?
Read the following excerpt from an original drama: (Backstage at a community theater. A mirror with burned-out bulbs leaves gaps of darkness in the actors' faces. A costume rack holds only half a suit and a wedding veil, both tagged "RETURN." The stage curtain upstage is slightly parted, revealing empty seats lit by the EXIT signs.) LEO (in makeup): If I go out there, they'll see the seam. TESS (holding the veil): That's the point. They paid for seams. LEO: They paid for a story. TESS (points to the parted curtain): Look. The story's already staring back. (Leo leans toward the mirror; his reflection breaks into alternating bright and dim strips.) Which choice best describes the function of the mirror with missing bulbs, the incomplete costume rack, and the parted curtain revealing empty seats?
In the following excerpt from a short story, a man attends his first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting: The meeting room was a borrowed space in the back of a community center. Folding chairs formed a lopsided circle. On the wall, a banner read ONE DAY AT A TIME, but the fabric sagged in the middle, and on a side table a tray of cookies sat uncovered, already going stale at the edges. The man held a paper cup of coffee and noticed how the fluorescent light made everyone's skin look slightly gray, as if the room insisted on honesty even in color. What do the bolded setting details most strongly suggest about the nature of recovery in this space?
Read the excerpt from an original drama scene. [Night. A front porch. Rain taps the railings in uneven rhythms. LENA holds a set of keys; TOM stands just inside the doorway, blocking it without touching her.] LENA: I left because you made the house smaller. TOM: I never told you not to go out. LENA: You didn't have to. You sighed at the door like it was a crime scene. TOM: I was tired. LENA: You were tired of me being seen. TOM: That's not— LENA: Don't correct me. You kept your love like a fence. TOM: A fence keeps things safe. LENA: Or keeps them in. What is the function of the word fence in LENA's line?
Read the poem below. "After the Shift" At 3 a.m. the hospital doors breathe out the day's last families. I unpin my badge and the name falls away like a petal. In the break room mirror my face is a paper cup: creased, used once, still warm at the rim. On the bus, strangers sleep with their mouths open— soft commas in a sentence I'm too tired to finish. I press my palms together over the ache that isn't mine and whisper, I did what I could, as if the dark is a supervisor. How does the speaker's perspective as a fatigued healthcare worker (especially in "over the ache that isn't mine") affect the interpretation of the poem?
Read the following poem, in which the speaker describes watching a friend run a marathon, and answer the question that follows. "Mile Marker" You train before sunrise, miles unspooling behind you like disciplined ribbon. I promise I'll start tomorrow, a word I keep polishing. On race day you pass the mile markers as if they're merely suggestions. I stand by the barricade, clapping with hands that never learned endurance. When you finish, you bend over laughing, sweat shining like earned proof. I hand you water, thirsty for a life I didn't run toward. What is the function of the contrast between "disciplined ribbon" and "a word I keep polishing"?
Read the poem below. "Weather App" Morning: a bright icon of a sun with polite rays. Outside, the actual sky is a blank receipt. At noon the app promises rain at 40%—a gamble with my hair. Clouds gather like neighbors who heard something. By three, the forecast changes. The phone apologizes in new numbers. I refresh until certainty feels like a button. At dusk, thunder arrives without permission. The app stays calm, a doctor reading charts while the body shakes. I turn off the screen. In the dark window my face appears, weathered by wanting to know. Which thesis best interprets how the poem uses the weather app to comment on the speaker's mindset?
In the following excerpt from a short story, a narrator returns to her childhood apartment after her mother's death: "The hallway still smelled of boiled cabbage and floor wax, a smell that used to mean supper was close. Now it meant only that the building had never learned another language. In the kitchen, the kettle sat on the stove, bright as a coin under the window's weak light, while the sink was stacked with plates dull as stones. I touched the kettle's handle and felt nothing—no heat, no warning—only my own skin insisting on being alive." What is the most likely function of the contrast between the "bright as a coin" kettle and the "dull as stones" plates?
In the following original drama passage, infer what the dialogue and stage directions suggest about Lila's relationship to truth and performance: [An upscale restaurant bathroom. Bright mirror lights. LILA, in a cocktail dress, stands at the sink, practicing a smile that never reaches her eyes. DEV, her friend, leans against a stall door, holding Lila's clutch.] DEV: You don't have to go back out there. LILA (dabs lipstick with a tissue): I do. They're waiting. DEV: "They" being your boss, your boss's boss, and that guy who keeps calling you "kiddo." LILA (smile tightens): He's harmless. DEV: He's not harmless. He's loud. [LILA rinses her hands, then dries them with meticulous slowness, pulling the paper towel into perfect squares before dropping them.] LILA: Loud is manageable. DEV: And what isn't? [LILA meets her own eyes in the mirror, then looks away as if caught.] LILA: Questions. DEV: Like "Are you okay?" LILA (too bright): I'm excellent. DEV: You said that at your dad's funeral. [LILA's laugh comes out clipped; she checks her teeth, then her earrings, then her posture.] LILA: I said it because it was true. DEV: It wasn't. LILA (turns, voice low): Dev, if I stop being excellent for five minutes, people start narrating my life like it's a cautionary tale. DEV: Let them. LILA (snatches the clutch from DEV, then immediately smooths the strap as if apologizing to it): No. I'd rather be a lie they can't touch. Which inference is best supported by LILA smoothing the clutch strap right after snatching it?

Practice tests