Story by Lawrence

	There was a man who loved islands. He was born on one, but it didn't 
suit him, as there were too many other people on it,  besides himself. He 
wanted an island all of his own: not necessarily to be alone on it, but to make 
it a world of his own.
	An island, if it is big enough, is no better than a continent. It has to be 
really quite small, before it feels like an island...before you can presume to fill 
it with your own personality....For an island is a nest which holds one egg, 
and one only. This egg is the islander himself.
	Now circumstances so worked out that this lover of islands, by the 
time he was thirty-five, actually acquired an island of his own. He didn't own 
it as freehold property, but he had a ninety-nine years' lease of it, which, as 
far as a man and an island are concerned, is as good as everlasting....
	There is danger in becoming an islander. When, in the city you wear 
your white spats and dodge the traffic with the fear of death down your 
spine, then you are quite safe from the terrors of infinite time. The moment is 
your little islet in time, it is the spatial universe that careers round you.
	But once you isolate yourself on a little island in the sea of space, and 
the moment begins to heave and expand in great circles, the solid earth is gone, 
and your moment begins to heave and expand in great circles, the solid earth is 
gone, and your slippery naked dark soul finds herself out in the timeless 
world, where the chariots of the so-called dead dash the old street of 
centuries, and the souls crowd on the footways that we, in the moment, call 
bygone years. The souls of all the dead are alive again, and pulsating actively 
around you. You are out in the other infinity.
	Something of this happened to our islander. Mysterious 'feelings' 
came upon him that he wasn't used to:  strange awareness of old, far-gone 
men, and other influences: men of Gaul, with big mustaches who had been on 
his island, and had vanished from the face of it, but not out of the air of night. 
They were still, hurtling their big, violent, unseen bodies through the night. 
And there were priests, with golden knives and mistletoe: then other priests 
with a crucifix, then pirates with murders on the sea.
	Our islander was uneasy. He didn't believe, in the daytime, in any of 
this nonsense. But at night it just was so. He had reduced himself to a single 
point in space, and, a point being that which has neither length nor breadth, 
he had to step off it into somewhere else. Just as you must step into the sea, 
if the waters wash your foothold away, so he had, at night, to set off into the 
other worlds of undying time.

D.H. Lawrence, from The Woman Who Rode
 Away (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928).      






1. According to the passage, the aspect of a small island initially most 
attractive to the man was
a. its mystery and atmosphere of antiquity
b. its isolation from society
c. the sense of total ownership it permitted
d. the challenging sense of adventure it provided
e. its complete freedom form the restraints of civilization	

2.  For the man in the passage, the drawbacks to living on a large island 
include all of the following EXCEPT:
a. he finds life there unrewarding.
b. he cannot speculate about space and time on a large island.
c. he feels constantly surrounded by people.
d. he cannot imprint his personality on  a large island
e. he cannot live freely and creatively there.

3. The elaborate figure if speech in lines 19-26 mainly indicates that 
inhabitants if small islands
a. soon begin to worry about death
b. lose their earlier perceptions of here and now
c. quickly acquire curious notions about eternity
d. tend to regard themselves as immortal
e. lose all sense of themselves as members of human society

4. The phrase "the chariots of the so-called dead"  implies that
a. chariot racing is an extinct sport
b. death can come with terrifying speed
c. "dead" is not always the proper term for charioteers
d. human beings do not want to think about death
e. the dead may still lie in our minds

5. The "men of Gaul," the priests, and the pirates mentioned  in lines 29-33 
can best be identified as 
a. actors in a nightmare of the islander
b. inhabitants long ago buried on the island
c. imagined former occupants of the island
d. previous owners of the little island
e. ancestors of the island's present inhabitants

6. The term "this nonsense" (1. 35) has its antecedent
a. the requisite smallness of an island (par. 2)
b. the danger of becoming an islander (par. 4)
c. the sense of isolation felt on small islands par. 5)
d. "Mysterious 'feelings'" (1. 27) and "strange awareness" 
e. "golden knives and mistletoe" (1. 32)

7. A basic and repeated shift in the passage is from 
a. objective reporting to subjective analysis
b. third-person narrative to second-person exposition
c. impersonal commentary to emotional description
d. thumbnail biography to philosophic speculation
e. first-person narrative to third-person description

8. Following the acquisition of an island, the islander's perception of time and
space is
a. more clearly fixed and determined
b. no longer a matter of concern
c. overwhelmingly affected by loneliness
d. enriched by greater historical knowledge
e. subject to loss of control

9. At the end of the passage, the islander's reaction to time leaves him 
a. unnerved by the concept of infinity
b. alternately exultant and fearful of death
c. calm yet fearful of eternity
d. wiser and more mature than before
e. numbed by the island's isolation

10. The basic contrast in the final paragraph concerns the islander's 
a. fear vs. his confidence
b. curiosity vs. his indifference
c. reason vs. his nonrational fears
d. boredom vs. his love of life
e. sense of safety vs. his desire for adventure


Answers
1. C 
2. B
3. B
4. E
5. C
6. D
7. B
8. E
9. A 
10. C