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Question of the Day: HiSET: Language Arts - Reading
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, on the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
Passage adapted from James Joyce's "The Dead" (1914)
The narrator is falling asleep during a snowstorm. What significance does the snow have in this scene?
It covers everything in white, making the landscape hard to see
It highlights then increases the narrator’s slip from awareness into sleep
Its softness and quiet beckon the narrator to examine it
It charts a clear westward journey
It shows the narrator what death in the churchyard is like
All HiSET: Language Arts - Reading Resources
