Read this excerpt from “The Bridge.” I gaped at him, my mouth open like a fish scooping in bugs. Not play in the band? Give up my music? Why didn’t they just ask me to cut out my heart? I sat there staring at my father as though he had just turned into an alien, because for me he had. I didn’t know what in the world I was going to do. I could no more renounce my music than I could give up breathing.

Which term best describes how the narrator feels in this excerpt?

angered
shocked
annoyed
confused

The harlem renaissance dawned in an era of pervasive racism and segregation. although legally "free," many african americans were still bound by ideas that had their roots in the slavery of earlier centuries. identity and freedom are important ideas presented in many of the poems from the harlem renaissance. furthermore, the values of identity and freedom are not unique to particular times and places. as hughes expresses in "dream variations," all humans want to be able to develop their identities in freedom. what role does freedom play in the poems you read in this unit? what is required of a society to enable each individual to be true to his or her identity and be free to live by that identity? write about at least three of the poems, describing how the poet uses imagery to depict freedom and identity, the lack of it, or the desire for it.

Understand that amassed in paragraph 3 means

Which quotation from the passage best supports the themethat humans have a natural desire to learn about theworld? "they were men. i remember the dead man's face.""at least, we make a beginning."and the magic tools are broken—but we can look atthem and wonder."but they were men who built the city, not gods ordemons.