AP Literature Unit 5 Progress Check:
MCQ Questions and All Correct
Answers 2025-2026 Updated.
This passage is excerpted from a novel published in 2011. After attending a concert in New York
City, the narrator has accidentally exited onto a fire escape and discovered that he cannot
reenter the building through the same door. - Answer Now, I faced solitude of a rare purity. In
the darkness, above the sheer drop, I could see the lights of Forty-second Street flashing in the
visible distance. The railings of the fire escape, which were probably precarious at the best of
times, were slicked with water and inimical1 to the grip. I moved carefully, taking step after
premeditated step. The wind pushed around the building noisily, and I took some grim comfort
in the idea that, if I were to fall from that height, there was no question of being maimed: death
would be instant. The thought calmed me, and I stepped and slid down the metal steps, a few
modest inches at a time. My high-wire act continued for long minutes in the darkness. And then
I saw that the fire escape went only halfway down the building, ending abruptly at another
closed door. The rest of the way down to the ground, some two flights, was air alone. But luck
was with me: this second door had a handle. I tried it and it opened, into a hallway.
Before I entered the door, holding it open with relief and gratitude, it occurred to me to look
straight up, and much to my surprise, there were stars. Stars! I hadn't thought I would be able
to see them, not with the light pollution perpetually wreathing the city, and not on a night on
which it had been raining. But the rain had stopped while I was climbing down, and had washed
the air clean. The miasma2 of Manhattan's electric lights did not go very far up into the sky, and
in the moonless night, the sky was like a roof shot through with light, and heaven itself
shimmered. Wonderful stars, a distant cloud of fireflies: but I felt in my body what my eyes
could not grasp, which was that their true nature was the persisting visual echo of something
that was already in the past. In the unfathomable ages it took for light to cross such distances,
the light
In the fourth sentence of the passage ("I moved . . . step"), the word "premeditated" indicates
that the narrator - Answer C - is being very cautious as he navigates the fire escape
In the second sentence of the final paragraph, the image of the "human race itself" being
"extinguished" most clearly serves to associate humanity with - Answer D - long-dead stars
e metaphor in the first paragraph comparing the narrator's situation to a "high-wire act"
emphasizes which of the following? - Answer A - The danger of the narrator's current
predicament
Toward the middle of the second paragraph, the comparison between the stars and "a distant
MCQ Questions and All Correct
Answers 2025-2026 Updated.
This passage is excerpted from a novel published in 2011. After attending a concert in New York
City, the narrator has accidentally exited onto a fire escape and discovered that he cannot
reenter the building through the same door. - Answer Now, I faced solitude of a rare purity. In
the darkness, above the sheer drop, I could see the lights of Forty-second Street flashing in the
visible distance. The railings of the fire escape, which were probably precarious at the best of
times, were slicked with water and inimical1 to the grip. I moved carefully, taking step after
premeditated step. The wind pushed around the building noisily, and I took some grim comfort
in the idea that, if I were to fall from that height, there was no question of being maimed: death
would be instant. The thought calmed me, and I stepped and slid down the metal steps, a few
modest inches at a time. My high-wire act continued for long minutes in the darkness. And then
I saw that the fire escape went only halfway down the building, ending abruptly at another
closed door. The rest of the way down to the ground, some two flights, was air alone. But luck
was with me: this second door had a handle. I tried it and it opened, into a hallway.
Before I entered the door, holding it open with relief and gratitude, it occurred to me to look
straight up, and much to my surprise, there were stars. Stars! I hadn't thought I would be able
to see them, not with the light pollution perpetually wreathing the city, and not on a night on
which it had been raining. But the rain had stopped while I was climbing down, and had washed
the air clean. The miasma2 of Manhattan's electric lights did not go very far up into the sky, and
in the moonless night, the sky was like a roof shot through with light, and heaven itself
shimmered. Wonderful stars, a distant cloud of fireflies: but I felt in my body what my eyes
could not grasp, which was that their true nature was the persisting visual echo of something
that was already in the past. In the unfathomable ages it took for light to cross such distances,
the light
In the fourth sentence of the passage ("I moved . . . step"), the word "premeditated" indicates
that the narrator - Answer C - is being very cautious as he navigates the fire escape
In the second sentence of the final paragraph, the image of the "human race itself" being
"extinguished" most clearly serves to associate humanity with - Answer D - long-dead stars
e metaphor in the first paragraph comparing the narrator's situation to a "high-wire act"
emphasizes which of the following? - Answer A - The danger of the narrator's current
predicament
Toward the middle of the second paragraph, the comparison between the stars and "a distant
