Symbols are objects, persons, or places that represent something more abstract, such as an idea, an emotion, or a theme. What do you think the "borders" and "backseat" in stanza 3 symbolize? Consider what you have learned about Naomi Shihab Nye's life as you interpret
the larger meaning of these images.

"Making a Fist"
For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
"When you can no longer make a fist."

Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.

The brother of a presidential candidate writes an editorial in which he defends this candidate against charges of corruption. in such a circumstance, it is most appropriate for the reader to a) suspect that the candidate may have been framed. b) consider whether the candidate has the best family or not. c) wonder if the writer may be biased, due to his family connection. d) wonder if the writer may be inaccurate, due to wanting to get people to read his column. \

Select the contred text in the passage which sentence in this excerpt from john galsworthy's narrative essay "gone" reflects his view that there is no afterlife? an old woman and mrs. herd's sister were in the sitting-room, they showed us to the crazy, narrow stairway. though we lived distant but four hundred yards of a crows flight, we had never seen mrs. herd before, for that is the way of things in this land of minding one's own business a slight dark girlish-looking woman, almost quite refined away, and with those eyes of the dying, where the spirit is coming through, as it only does when it knows that al is over except just the passing. she lay in a double bed with clean white sheets. a white-washed room, so low that the ceiling almost touched our heads, some flowers in a bow, the small lattice window open. though it was hot in there, it was better far than the rooms of most families in towns, living on a wage of twice as much, for here was no sign of defeat in decency or cleanliness. in her face, as in poor herd's, was that same strange minging of resigned despair and almost eager appeal, so terrible to disappoint. yet, trying not to disappoint it, one felt guilty of treachery: what was the good, the kindness in making this poor bird flutter still with hope against the bars, when fast prison had so surely closed in round her? but what else could we do? we could not give her those glib assurances that naive souls make so easily to others concerning their after state. and the night was so beautiful, so utterly glamourously beautiful, with its star-flowers, and its silence and its trees clothed in moonlight. all was tranquil as a dream of sleep. but it was long before our hearts wandering with poor herd, would let us remember that she had slipped away into so beautiful a dream

Which statement best describes the intended aesthetic impact of this excerpt?