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Edward Davis

Homer finds
sanctuary at last

More easy questions!

Keith Tankard
Knowledge4Africa.com
Updated: 6 March 2014
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A donkey strays onto the main highway and is struck by a car. Injured, he makes his way onto a small holding where the narrator finds he has a serious decision to make.



READ THE FOLLOWING PASSAGE:

I sauntered out surrounded by a flurry of chortling fur. And there, stumbling up the drive, his clown's mask sitting grotesquely about two burning eyes, was the donkey I had consigned to his fate about an hour before.

My dogs are gentlemen. I told them not to be rude, and their growls died down. The pathetic mask advanced. The dogs backed away. Irresolute, I waited.

The apparition did not. It stumbled nearer. Two feet from me it stopped, coughed a little, and rested its heavy brow against the bole of a tree.

His right ear had been terribly gashed by something. His eyes ran blood -- tears of blood; more moving, I found, than those of Oedipus, the King. A car had side-swiped him, evidently . . .

He stood there quivering, but not in fear. He was not afraid even of the dogs. It was as if he had gone beyond fear. As if he had somehow been aware of my inhibited impulse to save him, and was now come, not in reproach, and not as a blackmailer, but as a simple, four-legged fact to dismiss whatever illusion I nursed about the wisdom of not being my brother's keeper.

Have you looked at the questions
in the right column?
TEST YOURSELF!
Read the left column and then answer
the following questions:



"His clown's mask sitting grotesquely about two burning eyes."
  • Why was "his clown mask" all skew? (4)

[Need help?]

  • What figure of speech is this? (1)

[Need help?]

  • Comment on the effectiveness of this figure of speech. (4)

[Need help?]




"His eyes ran blood -- tears of blood."
  • What figure of speech is being used here? (1)

[Need help?]

  • Comment on the effectiveness of the figure of speech. (4)

[Need help?]




Who was Oedipus, the King? For what was he renowned? (3)

[Need help?]




Which TWO factors made the author change his mind about shooting the donkey? (2)

[Need help?]




What does the writer mean when he says that a "car had side-swiped him"? (2)

[Need help?]




Explain the following:
  • a blackmailer; (2)

[Need help?]

  • not being my brother's keeper. (3)

[Need help?]




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