Exercise in Identifying Tone

Read these paragraphs. Then choose the answer that best states the author's tone or emotional attitude.

1			My dog can't go in the barber shop with me anymore, but I don't know why because she curled up by the door and minded her own business until I got out of the chair, when she would gaze at me in astonishment, wondering how I had changed so much in just a few minutes. The sign now says, Sorry, No Dogs. The word sorry is pure hypocrisy and I resent it; it gives off a hollow ring like a spurious coin when tapped on the counter. My barber, whom I have called Nick for the past twelve years, has informed me that he is now a stylist, not a barber, and that he would appreciate it if I would call him Mr. Nicholas in the future. I'm looking for a new barber. --Caskie Stinnett, "A Room with a View," Down East The tone of this paragraph can be best described as
			A)	angry and hostile.
			B)	sincere and candid.
			C)	cynical and distrustful.
			D)	wry and ironically amused.
2			It was two-thirty when she reached Meridian. Off the main street, the houses gave the impression of concavity, as if the ground might swallow them up or they might fall into one another. They were expecting the worst. They seemed to have too many windows, too much porch; they bore the shame of providing more room than the shrinking families they held could use; they flinched under the monthly curses that the oil bills produced. Even the old trees on the road did not look proud. The spring was late here, the buds on the trees were folded tight still, yellow-brown. Patches of gray snow and ice took root in isolated inches on the laws beside odd objects that the melt left bare. Everywhere, Anne felt, the loveless effluvia of domestic life were exposed. Dolls' heads, dogs' dishes, wire hangers, buckets, bent snow shovels, plastic detergent bottles, cans with their labels still legible adhered to the soil or mud as if they had grown from it. At the end of one lawn was a bathroom sink like a pulled tooth. Cars that would never run again sat horizontally across driveways. It was as if some weakening disease had hit the town, as if the people in the houses wasted, cradling like dolls their useless limbs. It was only the end of winter, but it could have been the aftermath of a flood. It was the bleak testimony of a place down on its luck, of bad times, no jobs and no money. --Mary Gordon, Men and Angels The tone of this paragraph can be best described as
			A)	gloomy and disheartening.
			B)	earnestly hopeful.
			C)	anxious, concerned.
			D)	informative, instructive.
3			Thin people think it's easy being overweight . . . by which I mean fat. They don't know the half of it. Thin people, whose mothers and fathers also were thin, think overweight people have decided that's the way they want to be. Skinny people don't know it's like being 6 feet tall or like being blond or having a big nose. People who are thin as a rail are all smug and virtuous, as if being thin was something they did on purpose and deserve credit for. Well, I have news for you, thin people. Being overweight is not as easy as falling off a log into a plate of chocolate cake with whipped cream on it. Being overweight comes naturally for a lot of people, but that doesn't mean we don't have to work at it to keep our weight up where it doesn't belong. I often think that perhaps I'll skip breakfast because I don't feel hungry and don't need the calories, but then I remember what my mother always said to me. She said, "Eat a good breakfast, Andrew." So I eat a good breakfast. My mother also used to say that if I ate a good breakfast I wouldn't be so hungry at lunch. My mother was a wonderful person, but a dietician she wasn't. . . . --Andy Rooney, "The Thin of the Land: Fat Ain't Easy" The tone of this paragraph can be best described as
			A)	cynical and mistrustful.
			B)	sincere and honest.
			C)	humorous and amusing.
			D)	critical and fault-finding.
4			For some reason, or for no reason, I have never been afraid of elephants. This is not courage, which consists of overcoming fear, but stupidity. Elephants are large, powerful and wild, and have been so harried and tormented by man almost since mankind began that if every elephant charged every human on sight and trampled him to death the score would not be evened. It is fear that stops them from doing this, and fear can lead to desperate frenzy as well as to precipitate flight. Besides, a great many elephants go about with festering wounds, or with memories of man-inflicted pain and terror, and you can never tell whether that creature dozing so peaceably in the shade, and such tempting camera-fodder, bears the scars of bullet-wounds or spearheads. So it is foolish not to be afraid of elephants. But, if I had harboured such fears, the elephants of Wamba would have dispelled them. After the meal, I strolled down to the pool below our camp to enjoy the stillness and the silvery light on leaves and grasses and on the sandy verge of the pool. . . Turning to wander back to camp, I looked up to see three elephants standing about three yards away, moonlight illuminating their white tusks, the wrinkles on their foreheads and even a gleam in their eyes. They were altogether tranquil and relaxed, their big ears slowly moving, trunks hanging slackly down. Two or three strides and they could have stretched out a trunk and hurled me out of their path, but I sensed their peaceful intention and felt no inclination to turn and fly. . . . Retreating a few steps, I stood under a tree and watched them, and they watched me. After about fifteen minutes they half-turned and moved down to the water's edge with the dignity of a high priest bearing votive offerings to a shrine. --Elspeth Huxley, Out in the Midday Sun The tone of this paragraph can be best described as
			A)	curious and inquisitive.
			B)	objective, impartial.
			C)	serious, philosophical.
			D)	admiring, respectful.
5			Death and suffering are a big part of hunting. A big part. Not that you'd ever know it by hearing hunters talk. They tend to downplay the killing part. . . . Hunters' self-serving arguments and lies are becoming more preposterous as nonhunters awake from their long, albeit troubled, sleep. Sport hunting is immoral; it should be made illegal. Hunters are persecutors of nature who should be prosecuted. They wield a disruptive power out of all proportion to their numbers, and pandering to their interests-the special interests of a group that just wants to kill things-is mad. it's preposterous that every year less than 7 percent of the population turns the skies into shooting galleries and the woods and fields into abattoirs. It's time to stop actively supporting and passively allowing hunting, and time to stigmatize it. it's time to stop being conned and cowed by hunters, time to stop pampering and coddling them, time to get them off the government's duck-and-deer dole, time to stop thinking of wild animals as "resources" and "game," and start thinking of them as sentient beings that deserve our wonder and respect, time to stop allowing hunting to be creditable by calling it "sport" and "recreation." Hunters make wildlife dead, dead, dead. It's time to wake up to this indisputable fact. As for the hunters, it's long past check-out time. --Joy Williams, "The Killing Game," Esquire The tone of the first four sentences paragraph can be best described as
			A)	informative, objective.
			B)	sarcastic, cynical.
			C)	ironic, witty.
			D)	philosophic, reflective.
6			The tone of the second paragraph of the last question can be best described as
			A)	angry and hostile.
			B)	cynical and distrustful.
			C)	maudlin and sentimental.
			D)	harshly critical.
7			When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . . --Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence The tone of the passage can be best described as
			A)	whining, aggrieved.
			B)	informative, instructive.
			C)	stirring, inspiring.
			D)	admiring, laudatory.