SAT OwlQuestion bank / Command of Evidence
"The Keeper's Daughter" is a 1907 poem by Agnes Pellow. In the poem, the speaker, who has grown up at a lighthouse on a small island, expresses a longing to leave the island, as when she says, ______
Which quotation from "The Keeper's Daughter" most effectively illustrates the claim?
"Each night I trim the wick and wind the clock / And watch the beam go sweeping round the bay."
"The gulls are all the neighbors that I know, / And they are gone by autumn's earliest gale."
"I watch the ferry fade toward the mainland shore / And wish my name were written on its list."
"My father's hands are rough with rope and salt, / And still he hums the hymns his mother sang."
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C
The claim is that the speaker longs to leave the island. In choice C she watches the ferry head for the mainland and wishes her name were on its passenger list, a direct wish to go.
Choice B suggests loneliness, which might go with a wish to leave, but it never expresses that wish.
Why the other choices are wrong
- A. These lines describe the speaker's nightly duties without any wish to go elsewhere.
- B. These lines suggest loneliness, but they don't express a desire to leave the island.
- D. These lines describe her father, not any longing of the speaker's to leave.
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