Passage Snowy Mountains
Snowy Mountains
by John Gould Fletcher
Higher and still more high,
Palaces made for cloud,
Above the dingy city-roofs
Blue-white like angels with broad wings,
Pillars of the sky at rest
The mountains from the great plateau
Uprise.
But the world heeds them not;
They have been here now for too long a time.
The world makes war on them,
Tunnels their granite cliffs,
Splits down their shining sides,
Plasters their cliffs with soap-advertisements,
Destroys the lonely fragments of their peace.
Vaster and still more vast,
Peak after peak, pile after pile,
Wilderness still untamed,
To which the future is as was the past,
Barrier spread by Gods,
Sunning their shining foreheads,
Barrier broken down by those who do not need
The joy of time-resisting storm-worn stone,
The mountains swing along
The south horizon of the sky;
Welcoming with wide floors of blue-green ice
The mists that dance and drive before the sun.
“Snowy Mountains” by John Gould Fletcher—Public Domain
Question
Read lines 21–22 from the poem.
Barrier broken down by those who do not need
The joy of time-resisting storm-worn stone,
How do the lines help convey the speaker’s point of view?
- AThey suggest that the speaker wants to remove the obstacles that prevent others from experiencing the wonders of nature.
- BThey reveal the speaker’s opinion that some people are too busy to appreciate natural beauty.
- CThey suggest the speaker’s dismay that people destroy the natural landscape without understanding the ramifications of their actions.
- DThey explain that the speaker is confident that nature will never be fully destroyed by people.
Show the answer
Correct answer: C
The question asks how the lines help convey the speaker’s point of view. The words “those who do not need / The joy” in lines 21–22 suggest the speaker’s sadness that people do not realize that they are destroying something wonderful and irreplaceable, as expressed in Option C.
Option A is incorrect because the word “barrier” (line 21) refers to the speaker’s opinion that the mountains were “spread by Gods” (line 19) and not to an obstacle that the speaker thinks should be removed.
Option B is incorrect because, while the lines indicate that people have lost the need to connect with nature, they do not reveal that the speaker thinks that the cause of this loss is busyness.
Option D is incorrect because, although the speaker does say that the stone is “time-resisting” (line 22), this belief is only a small detail of the speaker’s point of view.
Question analysis
Students explain how lines 21–22 of the poem “Snowy Mountains” convey the speaker’s point of view about people who break down the mountains’ barrier. The lines are hard to parse because a phrase runs across the line break and “need” is used in an unusual way, so students must first work out what the sentence says before judging the speaker’s feeling.
- Grade level
- Grade 8 reading and task
- Compared with grade 7
- Above grade 7 Reading a speaker’s attitude is grade 7 work, but this sentence runs across a line break with unusual phrasing, and the choices require fine distinctions between feelings and reasons, which pushes it above typical grade 7 demand.
- 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
- Complex sentences major
- Reading between the lines moderate
- Hard words minor
- Evidence
- Answered from one sentence or line
- Reading level
- Passage: 161 words (a poem; reading level not measured); question and choices: about grade 9, 99 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
Two lines of compressed, inverted verse must be untangled before any choice can be judged, and the meaning of “need” in them is unusual. Once the lines are paraphrased as people who do not value the old stone breaking it down, the speaker’s sorrow is clear, but two wrong choices offer neighboring readings. One supplies a reason the poem never gives, and the other carries the stanza’s idea of endurance into a certainty the lines contradict.
Complex sentences major Understanding the question
The sentence breaks mid-phrase, “those who do not need / The joy of time-resisting storm-worn stone,” and has no main verb of its own, so students must first work out who breaks what. (Abedi & Lord, 2001; Freedle & Kostin, 1993; Messick, 1989)
Reading between the lines moderate Working it out
Neither dismay nor ignorance is stated; both have to be inferred from describing people as not needing “the joy” of what they break down. (Graesser, Singer & Trabasso, 1994; Kintsch, 1998)
Hard words minor Understanding the question
“Barrier” here means the mountain range as a wall, not an obstacle, and the key uses “ramifications,” a word many students will not know. (Perfetti, 2007; Freedle & Kostin, 1993)
Strategy: Rephrase the two lines in plain words, starting with who breaks the barrier and what they do not need, then decide which feeling of the speaker that wording reveals.
Traps
- Dictionary meaning, not meaning here: A common meaning of the word that does not fit its use in this text.
- Outside knowledge: A choice is plausible in the real world but not supported by this text.
- Too broad or too strong: A choice overstates, generalizes, or uses absolute words the text does not support.
The wrong answers, classified
A Dictionary meaning, not meaning here (Perfetti, 2007)
Takes “Barrier” in its everyday sense of an obstacle to clear away, but here it is the mountain range itself, “spread by Gods,” which the speaker values.
B Outside knowledge (King et al., 2004; Recht & Leslie, 1988)
Supplies a familiar modern explanation, that people are too busy for nature, though the lines say only that some people do not need this joy, not why.
D Too broad or too strong (King et al., 2004)
Stretches “time-resisting” into certainty that nature can never be destroyed, though the same sentence shows the barrier being broken down by people.
Working it out, step by step
Figure out what the question asks
This asks what lines 21 and 22 show about the speaker’s point of view, or feelings and opinion. The lines are tangled, so first you need to put them in plain words.
Read the lines in their place
The two lines are “Barrier broken down by those who do not need / The joy of time-resisting storm-worn stone,” in the third stanza. Two lines earlier, line 19 calls the mountains a “Barrier spread by Gods,” or a wall made by the gods. So the barrier is the mountain range itself. It is not an obstacle in someone’s way.
Put the lines in plain words
Here is the meaning. The mountains are being broken down by people who feel no need for the joy that old, strong stone gives. These people do not value what they are destroying. The speaker is sad and upset about this. That feeling is dismay. Ramifications are the results that follow from an action. People break the mountains without seeing what they lose.
Check each choice
- A is wrong. The “barrier” is the mountains, which the speaker loves. The speaker does not want them removed.
- B is wrong. The lines never say why people don’t value the stone. Being too busy is a reason brought in from outside.
- C fits. The speaker is dismayed that people destroy the mountains without seeing their worth.
- D is wrong. The same lines show the barrier being “broken down.” They show worry about harm, not confidence that nature is safe.
Choose the answer
The lines show sorrow at people breaking down something they do not value. So the answer is C, “They suggest the speaker’s dismay that people destroy the natural landscape without understanding the ramifications of their actions.”
Why this answer and not the closest wrong one
B is the closest trap. It also says people fail to value nature. But it adds a reason, being busy, that the poem never gives. The lines only say these people “do not need” the joy. C stays with what the lines show: harm done by people who don’t see its cost.
More questions like this
The original DOE question
The passage “Snowy Mountains” as printed (page 142)
