Test 5

Passage One

    You may not have stopped to think that something as simple and utilitarian as a key carries so great a tradition of meaning in the art and religion of our daily lives.  But the tradition turns up whenever a visiting dignitary--politician, astronaut or Olympic hero--is presented with a huge, obviously bogus but beribboned key to the city.  This, in spite of the fact that the town is no longer and never was, protected by walls with lockable gates.
    In some places the tradition has more force to it, even today.  Writer Alex Shoumatoff, reporting from deep in the Ituri Forest in Zaire, notes that a local policeman there wears no badge, but rather sports a set of four keys as symbols of civic authority:  two of them fits desks in the station, another is for the policeman's house, the last is a skeleton.  That key ring is all the badge he ever needs.
    A "Ceremony of the Keys" has been played out every evening for 700 years at the Tower of London.  At precisely 9:53 each night, the chief warden makes symbolic rounds of the castle to lock the gates.
    In our country, the key as a symbol of authority goes back to Colonial days.  William Penn first arrived in the New World to lead his colony on October 27, 1682.  After his great ship dropped anchor, Penn proceeded directly to the town's fort for an elaborate ritual in which he was given the key to the defensive works [of New Castle].  With that, he was in charge.

Passage Two

    As links in food chains, sharers of space and competitors for resources, all animals must become well-acquainted with some other ones.  But, uniquely, humans hang out with other species even when they don't have to, apparently because this provides a certain amount of psychic satisfaction.  In all times and cultures of record, people have formed companionable and compassionate relationships with beasts, demonstrating what has been called biophilia, or, more stylishly, the yearning to know other bloods.  Whatever the ancient origins of these inclinations, they seem to be intensifying rather than atrophying as the millions of pet keepers, and students, admirers and protectors of wild animals, currently testify.
    Having a rather wide circle of zoologically involved acquaintances, I believe that, based on what they do, wildlife rehabilitators are probably the most passionate biophiliacs.  One of them is Christie Huffman.  She and her husband live in the Northern Virginia exurbs of Washington D. C. on a partially wooded five-acre tract.  Sharing the house and grounds with them on a full-time basis are two parrots, two dogs, two cats, and a horse.  More numerous, varied and demanding than these permanent residents are the ailing transients who live, or are trying to, in a shelter Christie operates on the premises.  She and I became acquainted because we are crow fanciers.  We both have permits that allow us to do hands-on work with these birds--hale and hearty ones in my case, distressed ones in hers.(240)

Passage Three

    It was not long after that when I heard the Robert Dudley's wife was dead.  She had been discovered at the bottom of a staircase at Cumnor Place with her neck broken.  None dared talk of it in the presence of Queen Elizabeth.
    What had happened to Amy Dudley?  Had she committed suicide?  Was it an accident?  Or had she been murdered?
    In view of all the rumors which had persisted through the last months, the fact that the Queen and Robert Dudley behaved like lovers, and that Robert seemed to have a conviction that soon he would marry the Queen, the last suggestion did not seem an impossibility.  I could see that my father was worried.
    I could not believe that the Queen would ever put her crown in jeopardy for any man, and that if Amy had been murdered, she would have allowed herself to become involved.
    The great point was that Robert was now free to marry her.  The whole Court, the whole country, the whole of Europe waited to see how she would respond.  One thing was clear.  On the day she married Robert Dudley she would be judged guilty.  A queen had to be above ordinary passions.  Her people would see her as merely a weak and sinful woman; and she knew that if she were to keep her hold on the glittering crown she must retain her people's devotion.

Passage Four

    In one sense, "ideology" is a more subtle and expansive way of saying "politics," at least when we think of politics as the ideas or beliefs on which we base our lives and our vision of the world.  Ideology might refer to one person's belief in the sanctity of the family or to another person's sense that civilization is basically progressive.  When we see a movie such as Red Dawn(1984) or Potemkin, there is little chance of our mistaking the political messages at work:  the first proclaims the threat of communism to America, the second hails the force of a socialist revolution.  Less obvious, however, may be the messages about life and society communicated in films such as Rocky(1976), Porky's(1982), The Sound of Music(1965), and Dances With Wolves(1990).  Like the majority of movies, these films present themselves as entertainment, and their makers would probably resent any claim that unintended social or political perspectives are at work here.  Yet most of us would probably acknowledge that each of these films offers rather clear ideological messages about individualism, gender relations, the importance of family life, race, or American history.  Similarly, many of us might see The Godfather(1974) as an exciting, well-made gangster movie, but a writer sensitive to the ideological values in the movie might view those elements as part of another perspective, one concerned with the business of capitalism.

Passage Five

    It's because of that all-too-real threat of extinction that many biologists are racing to understand the world's biodiversity.  Already in many parts of the globe, from southern California to the Atlantic coast of Brazil, habitats have been so altered that what is left is but a shadow of what once was.  "That's true here too," says Chris Dickman, an ecologist at the University of Sydney in Australia who's studying the small marsupials, rodents, and lizards of one of his country's most remote regions:  the Simpson Desert, which lies almost in the middle of this island continent.
    "There used to be bettongs, bilbies, and bandicoots out here," says Dickman, listing some of the stranger medium-size marsupials.  We're walking up a brick red sand dune in the bright morning sun, dodging the needle-sharp clumps of spiky spinifex to reach the traps Dickman had opened the night before.  "One of the Aboriginal station hands remembers eating bilby as a kid," he adds.  Although not extinct in Australia, these creatures have vanished--probably forever--from the Simpson, largely because of the introduction of foxes and cats, animals not native to this land.  "So while I can unravel the present ecosystem to some extent, we'll never know how different it was here in the past.  Those marsupials are the ghosts of communities past."
    Yet even without them the Simpson boasts an astonishing diversity of life, particularly for such a harsh, arid land.

Excerpts from Arthur, Linda L. et al.  Strategic Reading for Regents' Reading Exams, 3rd edition.  Dubuque, IA:  Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 2000.