Passage Excerpt from A Tramp Abroad
Excerpt from A Tramp Abroad
by Mark Twain
Now and then, while we rested, we watched the laborious ant at his work. I found nothing new in him—certainly nothing to change my opinion of him. It seems to me that in the matter of intellect the ant must be a strangely overrated bird. During many summers now I have watched him, when I ought to have been in better business, and I have not yet come across a living ant that seemed to have any more sense than a dead one. I refer to the ordinary ant, of course; I have had no experience of those wonderful Swiss and African ones which vote, keep drilled armies, . . . and dispute about religion. Those particular ants may be all that the naturalist paints them, but I am persuaded that the average ant is a sham.
I admit his industry, of course; he is the hardest working creature in the world—when anybody is looking—but his leather-headedness is the point I make against him. He goes out foraging, he makes a capture, and then what does he do? Go home? No; he goes anywhere but home. He doesn’t know where home is. His home may be only three feet away; no matter, he can’t find it. He makes his capture, as I have said; it is generally something which can be of no sort of use to himself or anybody else; it is usually seven times bigger than it ought to be; he hunts out the awkwardest place to take hold of it; he lifts it bodily up in the air by main force, and starts—not toward home, but in the opposite direction; not calmly and wisely, but with a frantic haste which is wasteful of his strength; he fetches up against a pebble, and, instead of going around it, he climbs over it backwards, dragging his booty after him, tumbles down on the other side, jumps up in a passion, kicks the dust off his clothes, moistens his hands, grabs his property viciously, yanks it this way, then that, shoves it ahead of him a moment, turns tail and lugs it after him another moment, gets madder and madder, then presently hoists it into the air and goes tearing away in an entirely new direction; comes to a weed; it never occurs to him to go around it. No; he must climb it, and he does climb it, dragging his worthless property to the top—which is as bright a thing to do as it would be for me to carry a sack of flour from Heidelberg to Paris by way of Strasburg steeple; when he gets up there he finds that that is not the place; takes a cursory glance at the scenery, and either climbs down again or tumbles down, and starts off once more—as usual, in a new direction. At the end of half an hour he fetches up within six inches of the place he started from, and lays his burden down. Meantime, he has been over all the ground for two yards around, and climbed all the weeds and pebbles he came across. Now he wipes the sweat from his brow, strokes his limbs, and then marches aimlessly off, in as violent a hurry as ever. He traverses a good deal of zig-zag country, and by and by stumbles on his same booty again. He does not remember to have ever seen it before; he looks around to see which is not the way home, grabs his bundle, and starts. He goes through the same adventures he had before; finally stops to rest, and a friend comes along.
Evidently the friend remarks that a last year’s grasshopper leg is a very noble acquisition, and inquires where he got it. Evidently the proprietor does not remember exactly where he did get it, but thinks he got it “around here somewhere.” Evidently the friend contracts to help him freight it home. Then, with a judgment peculiarly antic (pun not intentional), they take hold of opposite ends of that grasshopper leg and begin to tug with all their might in opposite directions. Presently they take a rest, and confer together. They decide that something is wrong, they can’t make out what. Then they go at it again, just as before. Same result. Mutual recriminations follow. Evidently each accuses the other of being an obstructionist. They warm up, and the dispute ends in a fight. They lock themselves together and chew each other’s jaws for a while; then they roll and tumble on the ground till one loses a horn or a leg and has to haul off for repairs. They make up and go to work again in the same old insane way, but the crippled ant is at a disadvantage; tug as he may, the other one drags off the booty and him at the end of it. Instead of giving up, he hangs on, and gets his shins bruised against every obstruction that comes in the way. By and by, when that grasshopper leg has been dragged all over the same old ground once more, it is finally dumped at about the spot where it originally lay. The two perspiring ants inspect it thoughtfully and decide that dried grasshopper legs are a poor sort of property after all, and then each starts off in a different direction to see if he can’t find an old nail or something else that is heavy enough to afford entertainment and at the same time valueless enough to make an ant want to own it. . . .
Science has recently discovered that the ant does not lay up anything for winter use. . . . He does not work, except when people are looking, and only then when the observer has a green, naturalistic look, and seems to be taking notes. This amounts to deception, and will injure him for the Sunday schools. He has not judgment enough to know what is good to eat from what isn’t. This amounts to ignorance, and will impair the world’s respect for him. . . . He cannot stroll around a stump and find his way home again. This amounts to idiocy, and once the damaging fact is established, thoughtful people will cease to look up to him. It is strange beyond comprehension that so manifest a humbug as the ant has been able to fool so many nations and keep it up so many ages without being found out.
we: the author and his fictional travel companion
From A TRAMP ABROAD by Mark Twain—Public Domain
Question
Read this sentence from paragraph 3.
Evidently the friend remarks that a last year’s grasshopper leg is a very noble acquisition, and inquires where he got it.
Which statement best describes how the sentence fits into the overall structure of the excerpt?
- AIt indicates a shift to the realization that the ants place great importance on an item that has little value.
- BIt emphasizes a shift from an analysis of the actions of the individual ant to an interpretation of the interaction between ants.
- CIt introduces a transition to the idea that specific observations about one ant allow for generalizations about all ants.
- DIt provides a transition to the observation that the ant’s friend is just as purposeful in his efforts toward a futile ending as the first ant is.
Show the answer
Correct answer: B
The question asks for an explanation of how the sentence from paragraph 3, which highlights the second ant’s interest in the grasshopper leg, fits into the structure of the excerpt.
A. Incorrect. The idea that the ant seeks out worthless items is established in paragraph 2 (“it is generally something which can be of no sort of use to himself or anybody else”) and in paragraph 3 (“valueless enough to make an ant want to own it”), but the sentence does not indicate a shift to a realization that the ants place great importance on an item that has little value.
B. CORRECT. This statement best describes how the sentence from paragraph 3 fits into the overall structure of the excerpt because the sentence emphasizes a shift from paragraph 2, which analyzes the actions of the first ant alone, to paragraph 3, which comments on the interaction between the two ants and the ensuing efforts of the two ants together as they “take hold of opposite ends of that grasshopper leg and begin to tug with all their might in opposite directions” (paragraph 3).
C. Incorrect. While the author states in paragraph 3 that the ants “take hold of opposite ends of that grasshopper leg and begin to tug with all their might in opposite directions” and they “go to work again in the same old insane way,” this statement does not best describe how the sentence from paragraph 3 fits into the overall structure of the excerpt, because the sentence does not create a transition to the idea that specific observations allow for a generalization about all ants.
D. Incorrect. Although the author states in paragraph 3 that “the friend contracts to help him freight [the grasshopper leg] home,” the author does not suggest that the ants’ actions are purposeful. Rather, the author describes their actions and their “judgment [as] peculiarly antic” (paragraph 3). Thus, the statement does not best describe how the sentence from paragraph 3 fits into the overall structure of the excerpt, because the sentence does not provide a transition to the observation that the ant’s friend is just as purposeful in his efforts toward a futile ending as the first ant is.
Question analysis
This structure question quotes the first sentence of paragraph 3 in Mark Twain's ant excerpt, where the ant's friend calls a grasshopper leg “a very noble acquisition,” and asks how the sentence fits the excerpt's overall structure. All four answers describe the sentence as a turning point of some kind, so the task is pinning down what is genuinely new here and what came earlier.
- NYS standards
- 7R5 structure and genre features
- Grade level
- Grade 8 reading and task
- Compared with grade 7
- Above grade 7 In grade 7, structure work typically centers on the role of a whole section. Here students must place one sentence within a long nineteenth-century satire and choose among four abstract accounts of a shift, a heavier demand than usual.
- Estimated difficulty
- Hard: combines ideas, needs a plan, and has more than one tempting wrong answer.
- Thinking it demands
- Depth of knowledge 2, skills and concepts · mainly analyze
- What makes it hard
- How, not what major
- Every choice must be checked moderate
- Figurative or literary language minor
- Evidence
- Answered from several paragraphs or stanzas
- Reading level
- Passage: about grade 9, 1099 words; question and choices: about grade 11, 129 words.
- Students, last 30 days
- Not enough answers yet to show (it takes 10).
Why it is hard, traps and wrong answers (shows the answer)
Why it is hard
Every choice is worded as a structural move, so all of them sound plausible, and the sentence's content, praise for a worthless grasshopper leg, draws students toward describing what it says. What is new here is a second ant: paragraph 2 followed one ant alone, and from this sentence on the excerpt imagines what two ants say and do together. The ants' taste for useless loot, by contrast, was established well before this point.
How, not what major Working it out
The stem asks how the sentence fits the excerpt's structure, so students must compare paragraph 2's lone ant with paragraph 3's pair rather than restate what the friend says about the grasshopper leg. (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001)
Every choice must be checked moderate Choosing the answer
Each choice names a shift or transition in abstract terms, so each must be tested against paragraphs 2 and 3: is its idea present at all, and is it new at this sentence? (Embretson & Wetzel, 1987)
Figurative or literary language minor Understanding the question
Twain's “Evidently,” repeated through paragraph 3, marks the ants' conversation as his comic guess, and “very noble acquisition” is mock praise; the key's word “interpretation” depends on seeing that. (Graesser, Singer & Trabasso, 1994; Kintsch, 1998)
Strategy: Sum up what paragraph 2 does and what paragraph 3 does, then test each choice: is the change it names real, and does it begin with this sentence rather than earlier or later?
Traps
- Wrong purpose or structure: Names a purpose, structure or effect that the part does not serve, or describes what a part says when the question asks what it does.
- Reads too much in: A reasonable-sounding conclusion that goes further than the text allows.
- Twists what the text says: Uses the text's topic and ideas but changes what it says: who did it, how much, when, or why.
The wrong answers, classified
A Wrong purpose or structure (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001)
Restates what the sentence says, that ants prize a worthless leg, and calls it a shift, though paragraph 2 already had the ant hauling captures “of no sort of use.”
C Reads too much in (Graesser, Singer & Trabasso, 1994)
Reads the sentence as widening one ant's story into a rule for all ants, but paragraph 3 follows two particular ants; the sweeping verdicts come in paragraphs 1 and 4.
D Twists what the text says (King et al., 2004)
Rightly sees the friend joining a futile effort, but the excerpt never measures his purposefulness against the first ant's, and Twain calls their judgment “peculiarly antic.”
Working it out, step by step
Figure out what the question asks
This question is about structure, the way a text is put together. It asks what role one sentence plays in the whole excerpt. So look at what comes before it and after it, and ask what is new.
Find where the sentence sits
The sentence opens paragraph 3. Just before it, paragraph 2 ends with the ant. He “finally stops to rest, and a friend comes along.” All of paragraph 2 follows this one ant on his own. Twain picks apart each thing he does.
See what changes in paragraph 3
From this sentence on, there are two ants. They “take hold of opposite ends of that grasshopper leg and begin to tug with all their might in opposite directions.” Then they argue, fight and make up.
Twain also keeps saying “Evidently.” He is guessing at what the ants say to each other. That is his interpretation, his own explanation of what he sees.
Check each choice
- A is wrong. Ants prizing worthless things is not new here. Paragraph 2 already said the ant’s capture “can be of no sort of use to himself or anybody else.”
- B is right. The focus moves from one ant’s actions to two ants together. Interaction means how they act with each other.
- C is wrong. Paragraph 3 follows two particular ants, not ants in general. Twain’s claims about all ants are in paragraphs 1 and 4.
- D is wrong. Twain never says the friend is as purposeful, or set on a goal, as the first ant. He calls their judgment “peculiarly antic,” or silly.
Choose the answer
The sentence brings in the second ant. It turns the excerpt from one ant alone to Twain’s take on two ants together. So the answer is B.
Why this answer and not the closest wrong one
A is the strongest trap, because in this sentence the friend calls an old leg “a very noble acquisition.” But a shift needs something new. Worthless loot was already in paragraph 2. The new thing is the friend, and B names that change.
More questions like this
The original DOE question
The passage “Excerpt from A Tramp Abroad” as printed (pages 62–63)
