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Both passages describe a plant. The yucca tree has "foul, greenish blooms" while the daffodil is "golden." What does this word choice reveal about how the two passages view nature? Passage 1 views nature as colorful while Passage 2 views nature as depressing. Passage 1 views nature as exciting while Passage 2 views natures as boring. Passage 1 views nature as stimulating while Passage 2 views nature as relaxing. Passage 1 views nature as unpleasant while Passage 2 views nature as special.

User Max Yankov
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2 Answers

14 votes

Answer:

Passage 1 views nature as unpleasant while Passage 2 views nature as special.

User PlayKid
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10 votes

Answer:

Passage 1 views nature as unpleasant while Passage 2 views nature as special.

Step-by-step explanation:

The passages you were given are the following:

Nothing that comes from the desert expresses its extremes better than the unhappy growth of the tree yuccas. Tormented, thin forests of it stalk drearily in the high mesas, particularly in that triangular slip that fans out eastward from the meeting of the Sierras and coastwise hills. The yucca bristles with bayonet-pointed leaves, dull green, growing shaggy with age like an old man's tangled gray beard, tipped with panicles of foul, greenish blooms. After its death, which is slow, the ghostly hollow network of its woody skeleton, with hardly power to rot, makes even the moonlight fearful. But it isn't always this way. Before the yucca has come to flower, while yet its bloom is a luxurious, creamy, cone-shaped bud of the size of a small cabbage, full of sugary sap, the Indians twist it deftly out of its fence of daggers and roast the prize for their own delectation.

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

We can see that the first passage views nature as unpleasant, while the second one views it as special.

The description of the yucca tree as having foul, greenish blooms is one of the things that reveal the unpleasantness. When we describe something as foul (e.g. a foul smell), we're actually saying that it's unpleasant. Some other words that reveals this negative view on nature are: unhappy, tormented, dull, etc.

Unlike the first passage, the second one is filled with positivity. Nature is described as beautiful and special, and one of the things that lead us to this conclusion is the description of the daffodils as golden. Some more words that support this conclusion are: dance, shine, glee, bliss, etc.

This is why the fourth option is the correct one.

User Kabus
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