Questions 1-10 refer to the following information.
Humanities—Passage A is an excerpt from an essay by magical realist author, Frank Bennet. Passage B is an excerpt from his short story, "Penny Blood."
PASSAGE A
Heritage, I suppose, has its place. But even then, I'm not really talking about bloodlines.
Folktales and fairy stories, legends and lore: in childhood, these are the first narratives
to germinate in our imaginations, and what we imagine as children will wither, one
day, into the husk of what we believe as adults. Indeed, inheriting of a set of stories is the
05 only heritage that truly matters. Across time, it aligns our minds with the same youthful
fears and fantasies of our ancestors. Across space, it thwarts the splintering and entropic
forces of diaspora. It is true that fairy stories are about magic. It is true, also, that they
themselves are magical.
Fidelity to forms is less essential than one might imagine. In the course of my career, I
10 have been labeled a fabulist, a memoirist, and a modern "re-teller" of folktales. It is only
the last that I tend to resent. One does not "retell" these tales. They are elemental. They
defy our vainest attempts to alter them. The German Briar Rose; the French Sleeping
Beauty; the Renaissance Italian Sun, Moon, and Talia; even the early English romance
Troilus and Zellandine—all are one and the same. Jack and the Beanstalk is no more a
15 retelling of David slaying Goliath than David slaying Goliath is a retelling of Odysseus
blinding Polyphemus. New names, places, and periods cannot sever the gossamer
thread that ties these stories together, and causes them to resonate throughout the ages.
In the autumn of 1945, at seven years old, I had the unique fortune of hearing Grimm's
Fairytales read aloud to me by my Grandmother, one Elsie Bennet (née Scharfenberg),
20 aged eighty-eight. Born the same year that the final edition of this seminal tome was put
in print, my Grandmother was raised in a two-room cottage in eastern Baden, just at the
edge of the Black Forest.
I myself have never visited Germany. Yet, from the very first, I recognized these stories
as my own, and greeted them like friends met in a half-remembered dream. To understand
25 them, I did not need to see the childhood home of my Grandmother; much less
that of the Brothers Grimm. My Baden was the East Village neighborhood of postwar
Chicago; my Black Forest the back of the Union stock yards. The world in which I found
myself was never wanting for wonderment. What Grimm and my Grandmother gave me
was a language to name the fantastical flights of my imagination—the "magic words," if
30 you will—and I have never since forsaken it. The purpose of the folktale is both humble,
and pervasive. It elevates us to see the reality that lies beyond illusion; revealing the
magic locked within the mundane. It is the rumbled roadmap by which we might navigate
those boundless byways of the imagination.
PASSAGE B
Up in their steeples, the bells were still sounding at half-past one. They sang to each
35 other—brass songbirds balanced on their huge, undulant boughs. They rang when
someone was getting married. They rang when someone was getting buried. Either
way, they sounded about the same. Though Nikki swore to me she could always tell the
difference.
"Funeral bells," she'd told me twice already that morning, popping a coral-colored
40 bubble that clashed with her crimson jacket, "ring slower. And if you listen close, you
can hear them crying."
I nodded, but I'm not sure I believed her. I always nodded when Nikki said something
strange. And she said strange things more often than not. But the bells themselves were
deafening. All up and down the East Village, plate glass windows rattled in their frames.
45 Cracks split like spider veins through the slate slabs of the sidewalks.
We covered our ears, ducking into Mister Kowalski's delicatessen. All his smoked and
salted meats sat displayed beneath a brightly lit counter. It sometimes made me think
of a glass casket. I cringed as a tiny bell jingled above the door. He grinned at us, and
asked if we'd ever heard such brouhaha. I hadn't. Nikki had. She said the bombs above
50 Tobolsk were louder. Brighter too—at night, the bombs were brighter than the sun. But
that was before her family moved here. She said there weren't any bells in Tobolsk anymore.
They'd all been melted down to make bullets. And bombs.
"Haven't you ever been to Tobolsk?" she turned back to me, blowing another bubble.
"Once," I nodded, "around here, we just say Toledo."
"So weird," she spun back to the counter. "My Gran. She just loves this mettwurst.
Let's bring her a little."
I nodded. I wasn't supposed to leave the village alone, but I didn't want Nikki to know
I wasn't brave.
"Well, alright." I fished a few dimes from my pocket, "so long as we're back before
60 dark."