The following text is from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1910 poem “The Earth’s Entail.”
No matter how we cultivate the land,
Taming the forest and the prairie free;
No matter how we irrigate the sand,
Making the desert blossom at command,
We must always leave the borders of the sea;
The immeasureable reaches
Of the windy wave-wet beaches,
The million-mile-long margin of the sea.
Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?
Explanation
Context: In Gilman's "The Earth's Entail," the speaker catalogs human efforts to cultivate land, tame forest and prairie, and irrigate desert, then turns to the shoreline. The task is to describe the overall structure of the poem.
Answer: D) The speaker describes attempts to control nature and then offers a reminder that not all nature is controllable.
Why? The repeated "No matter how we" builds a list of human mastery, and the pivot "We must always leave the borders of the sea" insists that the immeasurable beaches stay outside that reach.
Traps:
- A) No argument against interference is made, and the closing lines set a limit on human control rather than supporting further interference.
- B) The sea is presented as permanently beyond reach; nothing suggests the cultivating and irrigating will prove temporary.
- C) The efforts are described, not held up as admirable, and the ending marks a boundary instead of challenging an approach.