Willa Cather (1873–1947) lived in Nebraska and set her novels O Pioneers! and My Ántonia in the state, describing the land as intricately as she would a main character. However, Nebraska might not have featured so heavily in Cather’s work if she had not grown up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Until she was nine, she lived in the quaint charm of Willow Shade, her grandfather’s 300-acre farm. Amid the lush, wooded vegetation, a rustic bridge covered a creek. Box hedges surrounded the house. Willow trees grew large. In 1883, following the lure of fertile farmland in the West, Cather’s family left Willow Shade and crossed six states to reach a new farm in Webster County, Nebraska. The new landscape shocked Cather to the core. She felt erased by flat prairies stretching to the horizon, swallowed by the enormous sky. The stark contrast to the mountains of Virginia etched its influence onto her soul. She grew to love the new land, but never forgot the old. Perhaps that is why she identified with immigrants homesick for Czechoslovakia, Norway, and Sweden, the people she wrote about in O Pioneers! and My Ántonia. She knew how transplanted they felt.

1. Based on the information in the passage, which assumption MOST likely underlies the passage?

A. Cather’s novels would have been much different if her family had not moved to Nebraska.
B. Cather would not have become an author if her family had not moved to Nebraska.
C. Cather did not truly remember or value Virginia because she did not use the state as the setting of her most famous novels.
D. It was Cather’s compassion for immigrant people, rather than her passion for landscape, that inspired her novels.
E. The shock Cather felt in Nebraska and her grief for Virginia deepened her soul and made her an artist.


2. Which best states the author’s use of rhetorical structure in the passage?

A. The passage is a comparison between the different landscapes of Virginia and Nebraska.
B. The passage compares Willa Cather’s response to the different landscapes of Virginia and Nebraska.
C. The author compares the different landscapes of Virginia and Nebraska as a way to emphasize Willa Cather’s experience when she first set eyes on Nebraska.
D. The author describes how Willa Cather compared the different landscapes of Virginia and Nebraska when she first set eyes on Nebraska.
E. The author compares Willa Cather’s use of landscapes in her two most famous novels.