High School Reading: Grades 9-10 Quiz: Analyzing Transformed Source Material

A Midas retelling: "The king wept gold tears, and the court rushed to catch every one." Why does the author add the court's reaction?

In a Narcissus retelling: "He gazed not at the pool but at his phone, its glass a shallower water." What does "shallower" suggest?

A Pandora retelling: "She lifted the lid slowly, not from greed, but to learn what the gods had hidden from her." What is the central idea?

A legend: "The general rode in, and the city fell." A soldier's retelling: "We marched for weeks so he could ride in." The retelling shifts point of view mainly to:

An Atlas retelling: "He passed the sky to Hercules and felt strangely hollow, as if the weight had held him up." What does "hollow" suggest?

A Tortoise and Hare retelling: "The hare stopped mid-race, not to nap, but to carry the limping tortoise across the line." What can be inferred?

In a Sisyphus retelling: "He reached the top, sat down, and for once let the boulder roll without him." What is the central idea?

In a Medusa retelling: "Men called her gaze a curse; she called it a lock on a door they kept forcing." What does "lock" suggest?

A fable: "The ant worked; the grasshopper starved." A retelling: "The ant shared grain, and the grasshopper sang all winter." The retelling's central idea:

A Rapunzel retelling: "She cut her own braid, tied it to the bedpost, and climbed down before any prince arrived." What is the central idea?

In a Cinderella retelling: "She left the ball early on purpose, the glass slipper still firmly on her foot." What can be inferred?

A Prometheus retelling: "He gave them fire, then stayed all winter teaching them not to burn the village." Why does the author add the teaching?

A myth: "The hero slew the beast, and the village cheered." A retelling: "He knelt beside the beast, unsure he had won." The retelling's central idea is:

The following is an excerpt from a modern short story, "The Weaver's Complaint," which reimagines the Greek myth of Arachne, a mortal weaver who challenged the goddess Athena to a contest and was transformed into a spider.

Arya set down her phone and glared at the pop-up ad: Athena Textiles — Divine Quality Since Antiquity. Everywhere she looked, the goddess's brand was there, silk-screened onto tote bags, embroidered on hoodies, trending on every feed. Arya's own storefront had eleven followers. Eleven.

"They stole my patterns," she muttered, scrolling through Athena Textiles' latest collection. The olive-branch motif. The owl silhouette. Even the loom-shuttle logo — all of it lifted from her sketchbook, which she'd foolishly posted online last spring.

She opened a new post and began typing. She would not be quiet. She would not weave in silence while a corporation with a marble headquarters stitched her life away thread by thread. Let them sue. Let them send their lawyers in gray suits like a flock of gray owls. She had one skill left, and it was not weaving — it was telling the truth loudly enough that the algorithm could not bury it.

Her thumb hovered over Post. Outside, a small brown spider was spinning a web across her window, patient, geometric, unbothered by any audience at all.

How does the author most significantly transform the source myth of Arachne in this excerpt?

The following excerpt is from a contemporary novel that draws on Shakespeare's Hamlet. In this scene, Hana, a college student, has just learned her uncle married her mother two months after her father's sudden death.

Hana did not see a ghost. She saw a voicemail.

It had been sitting in her inbox for eleven weeks, unlistened-to, the little red dot beside her father's name like a wound that would not close. She had not been ready. She was still not ready. But tonight, after the toast her uncle gave — to new beginnings, to family, to moving forward — she locked the bathroom door, put in her earbuds, and pressed play.

Her father's voice was tired. He was calling from the hospital parking lot, he said, just to check in, just to say the tests were probably nothing, just to say he loved her, and — there was a pause, a long one, the kind her father never left — listen, if anything happens, don't let him near the business. Don't let him near your mother. He is not what he pretends to be.

The message ended. Hana sat on the tile floor. She played it again. She played it a third time, and a fourth, testing each word for the weight of proof, for the difference between a warning and a wish.

Which statement best describes how the author transforms the ghost scene from Hamlet in this passage?

The following is an excerpt from a young adult novel that retells the Norse myth of Loki, the trickster god who fathers the wolf Fenrir, later bound by the other gods with an unbreakable ribbon.

Lo brought the puppy home in a shoebox.

"It's a husky mix," she told her roommates, which was the first lie. The second lie was that it was hers. The third lie, which she told only to herself, was that she could handle it.

By month three, Fen had eaten two couches, a laptop charger, and the corner of a load-bearing wall. By month five, the landlord was leaving notes in red pen. By month seven, Fen weighed ninety pounds and could open the refrigerator with his teeth.

Her roommates called a meeting. They did not shout. They did not threaten. They simply produced, from a canvas tote, a slim blue collar made of some soft, almost silky material — a gift, they said, from Priya's aunt who trained service animals. Just try it, they said. Just for a week.

Lo looked at the collar. It weighed nothing. It looked like it would snap if Fen sneezed. And yet Fen, who had chewed through chain-link, took one look at it and lay down on the linoleum and would not rise.

The author transforms the myth of Fenrir's binding most notably by:

The following excerpt is adapted from a modern short story that draws on the fairy tale of "Little Red Riding Hood."

Rosa did not wear a red hood. She wore a red delivery uniform, and the wolf, as it turned out, was an app.

Every evening after her shift at the pharmacy, she picked up three or four orders for elderly customers in the north end of town — insulin, blood-pressure pills, the occasional carton of eggs. The app rated her on speed. The app did not rate her on the fact that Mrs. Alvarado always asked her to sit for a minute, or that Mr. Kim had started leaving his door unlocked because his hands shook too badly to work the deadbolt.

The app sent push notifications. You are behind schedule. Your acceptance rate has dropped. Consider your availability. The app did not have teeth, but it had a voice, and the voice was patient, and the voice was always, always hungry.

One Tuesday, Rosa turned off her notifications. She sat with Mrs. Alvarado for eleven minutes. She helped Mr. Kim change a lightbulb. When she got home, her rating had dropped below the threshold, and she was, in the language of the app, deactivated — a word that meant nothing and everything, the way a swallowed grandmother means nothing and everything.

Which choice best explains how the author transforms the figure of the wolf from the source tale?

The following is an excerpt from a modern play that draws on Sophocles' Antigone, in which Antigone defies King Creon's decree by burying her brother.

ANTI: They said I couldn't post it.

IZZY: Who is they?

ANTI: The school. The principal. The lawyer they hired last week when the news vans showed up. They said if I posted the video, I'd be expelled. They said it violates the settlement.

IZZY: So don't post it.

ANTI: He was my brother, Izzy.

IZZY: He was my brother too.

(A silence.)

ANTI: Then you understand.

IZZY: I understand that Mom already lost one child this year. I understand that the settlement pays for college. I understand that the video will not bring him back and that you posting it will not make anyone tell the truth who does not already want to.

ANTI: Someone has to say his name.

IZZY: Say it at home. Say it at the kitchen table. Say it to me.

ANTI: That isn't saying it.

(ANTI takes out her phone. IZZY does not stop her. IZZY does not leave.)

Which of the following best describes how the playwright transforms the source material from Antigone?

The following excerpt is from a short story that draws on the Grimm fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel," in which two children abandoned in the woods find a witch's candy house.

The foster placement was called Sweetbriar House, and the woman who ran it baked.

She baked constantly. Snickerdoodles on Monday, banana bread on Tuesday, a coffee cake on Wednesday that filled the whole first floor with the smell of cinnamon and butter. Hank distrusted it immediately. Greta, who was younger, did not.

"She's nice," Greta whispered at night, crumbs still on her pajama sleeve. "She's just nice, Hank."

"Nobody is just nice," Hank whispered back. "Not for free. Not to us."

But the weeks passed and no one tried to lock them in an oven. No one tried anything at all. The woman — her name was Ms. Bell — asked them about school. She bought Greta a used clarinet. She let Hank keep his door closed, even at meals, even when he did not come down for three days after the court hearing.

One night Hank found her in the kitchen at midnight, kneading dough with the radio on low. She did not startle. She said, without looking up, You can sit if you want. I'm not going to make you talk. And Hank, who had spent his whole life reading rooms for exits, sat down.

The author most significantly transforms the source tale by:

The following excerpt is from a short story that draws on the myth of Persephone, who was taken to the underworld by Hades and, because she ate pomegranate seeds there, must return every year.

Perry's mother called it the internship, because the internship sounded like something you could put on a college application, and my daughter is spending four months a year at her father's tech company in a city where I have no legal standing did not.

The company was in a tower with tinted windows. Perry's father — who had left when she was six, who paid his child support in punctual electronic transfers, who now wanted, suddenly, a relationship — met her at the elevator with a laminated badge and a smile she did not remember. He gave her a desk. He gave her a laptop. He gave her, on the third day, a small cardboard box of pomegranate seeds from the office kitchen, because they were in season, because they were antioxidants, because he did not know what else to give a fifteen-year-old.

She ate six.

She did not think about it until August, when her mother, over video chat, asked her — carefully, the way she asked everything now — whether she was planning to come back next summer. And Perry, who had not decided, who had not even considered deciding, opened her mouth to say of course and found, to her own surprise, that she could not.

The author most significantly transforms the Persephone myth by: