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SHSAT ELA · Reading Comprehension
Detail & Evidence Practice Quiz
Identify key details and supporting evidence. Answer all 8 questions below, then submit to see your score and an explanation for each question. Free, no account needed. This topic quiz helps you practice the skills used on the computer-based SHSAT.
Read the passage, then answer all 8 questions
Passage
from "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain
“Blame it, this whole thing is just as easy and awkward as it can
be. And so it makes it so rotten difficult to get up a difficult
plan. There ain’t no watchman to be drugged—now there ought to be
a watchman. There ain’t even a dog to give a sleeping-mixture to.
5
And there’s Jim chained by one leg, with a ten-foot chain, to the
leg of his bed: why, all you got to do is to lift up the bedstead
and slip off the chain. And Uncle Silas he trusts everybody.
[...]. Jim could a got out of that window-hole before this, only
there wouldn’t be no use trying to travel with a ten-foot chain
10
on his leg. Why, drat it, Huck, it’s the stupidest arrangement I
ever see. You got to invent all the difficulties. Well, we can’t
help it; we got to do the best we can with the materials we’ve
got. Anyhow, there’s one thing—there’s more honor in getting him
out through a lot of difficulties and dangers, where there warn’t
15
one of them furnished to you by the people who it was their duty
to furnish them, and you had to contrive them all out of your own
head. Now look at just that one thing of the lantern. When you
come down to the cold facts, we simply got to let on that a
lantern’s resky. Why, we could work with a torchlight procession
20
if we wanted to, I believe. Now, whilst I think of it, we got to
hunt up something to make a saw out of the first chance we get.”
“What do we want of a saw?”
“What do we want of it? Hain’t we got to saw the leg of Jim’s bed
off, so as to get the chain loose?”
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“Why, you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip
the chain off.”
“Well, if that ain’t just like you, Huck Finn. You can get up the
infant-schooliest ways of going at a thing. Why, hain’t you ever
read any books at all?—Baron Trenck, nor Casanova, nor Benvenuto
30
Chelleeny, nor Henri IV., nor none of them heroes? Who ever heard
of getting a prisoner loose in such an old-maidy way as that? No;
the way all the best authorities does is to saw the bed-leg in
two, and leave it just so, and swallow the sawdust, so it can’t
be found, and put some dirt and grease around the sawed place so
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the very keenest seneskal can’t see no sign of it’s being sawed,
and thinks the bed-leg is perfectly sound. Then, the night you’re
ready, fetch the leg a kick, down she goes; slip off your chain,
and there you are. Nothing to do but hitch your rope ladder to
the battlements, shin down it, break your leg in the moat—because
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a rope ladder is nineteen foot too short, you know—and there’s
your horses and your trusty vassles, and they scoop you up and
fling you across a saddle, and away you go to your native
Langudoc, or Navarre, or wherever it is. It’s gaudy, Huck. I wish
there was a moat to this cabin. If we get time, the night of the
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escape, we’ll dig one.”
Question 1 of 8
What can the reader infer about Tom's real priority in planning Jim's escape?
Question 2 of 8
What can the reader infer about Huck's attitude toward Tom's plan?
Question 3 of 8
According to Tom, what is wrong with simply lifting the bedstead to free Jim?
Question 4 of 8
According to Tom's described escape plan, what is supposed to happen after the prisoner saws through the bed-leg?
Question 5 of 8
Why does the author have Tom reference 'Baron Trenck,' 'Casanova,' and other historical figures?
Question 6 of 8
What is the main idea of this passage?
Question 7 of 8
How is the dialogue in this passage structured?
Question 8 of 8
How do Tom's and Huck's approaches to freeing Jim contrast in this passage?
0 of 8 answered
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