Read the following paragraph and answer the questions after each paragraph.

Question

A single knoll rises out of the plain in Oklahoma, north and west of the Wichita Range. For my people, the Kiowas, it is an old landmark, and they gave it the name Rainy Mountain. The hardest weather in the world is there. Winter brings blizzards, hot tornadic winds arise in the spring, and in summer the prairie is an anvil’s edge. The grass turns brittle and brown, and it cracks beneath your feet. There are green belts along the rivers and creeks, linear groves of hickory and pecan, willow and witch hazel. At a distance in July or August the steaming foliage seems almost to writhe in fire. Great green-and-yellow grasshoppers are everywhere in the tall grass, popping up like corn to sting the flesh, and tortoises crawl about on the red earth, going nowhere in the plenty of time. Loneliness is an aspect of the land. All things in the plain are isolate; there is no confusion of objects in the eye, but one hill or one tree or one man. To look upon that landscape in the early morning, with the sun at your back, is to lose the sense of proportion. Your imagination comes to life, and this, you think, is where Creation was begun.
—N. Scott Momaday
1. What dominant impression does N. Scott Momaday communicate in this paragraph?
2. The author uses the senses to communicate his dominant impression. List three details from this paragraph and the senses they draw on.
3. List three details that show rather than tell.
4. How does Momaday organize the details in this paragraph?

Answer 1

1. Rainy Mountain is a quiet, peaceful place.

2. Sight: single knoll
green belts along the rivers and creeks
linear groves of hickory and pecan, willow and witch hazel
great green-and-yellow grasshoppers… popping up like corn
tortoises crawl about the red earth
Sound: it cracks beneath your feet
Touch: winter brings blizzards
hot tornadic winds
grass turns brittle and brown
steaming foliage seems to almost writhe in fire
to sting the flesh
sun at your back
3. Answers will vary, but see answer 2.
4. Chronologically—by seasons