Selection: K-29

K-29

Grade level: 11

Word count: 2253 words

Author: Anonymous

Synopsis: To what lengths would you go to keep a promise?

Excerpt: Tong-Yong's mother had died while he was an infant. When he became a youth of nineteen years his father also passed away, leaving him utterly solitary in the world, and without resources, for, being an impoverished man, Tong's father had put himself through great straits to educate the lad, and hadn't been able to lay by even one copper coin of his earnings. Tong lamented greatly to find himself destined to such destitution that he couldn't honor the memory of his good father by having the customary burial rituals performed and a carven monument erected upon a propitious site. The poor only are friends of the poor; among all whom Tong knew there was not one acquaintance able to assist him in defraying the expenses of the funeral.

In one way only could the youth obtain money: by selling his services as a slave to some rich cultivator, which he earnestly pledged to do.

Even as she ceased speaking, the great glow diminished, and Tong, reopening his eyes, knew she had passed away forever, mysteriously and irrevocably as the light of a flame extinguished.

Still his child slumbered, smiling in his sleep. Outside, darkness was breaking; the sky brightened swiftly; the night was past. With splendid majesty the East threw open high gates of gold for the coming of the sun, and, illuminated by the glory of its coming, the morning vapors wrought themselves into astonishing shapes of shifting color, into forms weirdly beautiful as the silken dreams woven in the loom of Tchi-Niu.

Question: Based on these two excerpts, the tone of this selection can best be described as shifting from

1. desperation to contentment.
2. frugality to excess.
3. joyfulness to desperation.
4. resistance to acceptance.