Question

Breaks from the blue-black

skin of the water, dragging her shell


with its mossy scutes


across the shallows and through the rushes


and over the mudflats, to the uprise,


to the yellow sand,


to dig with her ungainly feet


a nest, and hunker there spewing


her white eggs down


into the darkness, and you think




of her patience, her fortitude,


her determination to complete


what she was born to do----


and then you realize a greater thing----


she doesn’t consider


what she was born to do.


She’s only filled


with an old blind wish.


It isn’t even hers but came to her


in the rain or the soft wind


which is a gate through which her life keeps walking.




She can’t see


herself apart from the rest of the world


or the world from what she must do


every spring.


Crawling up the high hill,


luminous under the sand that has packed against her skin,


she doesn’t dream


she knows


she is a part of the pond she lives in,


the tall trees are her children,


the birds that swim above her


are tied to her by an unbreakable string.


—“The Turtle,”

Mary Oliver


In what two ways does the poem’s structure match the movements of the turtle it describes?


They both have even movements.

They both stop and start regularly.

They both have uneven movements.

They both stop and start unevenly.

They both are separated into three parts.


ANSWER:
They both have uneven movements.
They both stop and start unevenly.

Answer 1

Answer:The excerpt that best expresses the theme that all living things are a part of, and are guided by, a natural purpose is:

She's only filled with an old blind wish. It isn't even hers but came to her

Explanation:"The Turtle" is a poem by author Mary Oliver. The speaker in the poem talks of the beauty and effortlessness of turtle laying eggs in the sand. It's a sacred action, which the turtle itself cannot understand since the drive to do it does not come consciously. It is a purely instinctive drive, guided by nature. The speaker admires the turtle's determination and patience in completing the task while remaining unaware of itself as an individual. The turtle sees itself as the world, and the world as itself.