Read this excerpt from The Land. Eventually there came the time on a late summer afternoon just before my twelfth birthday when folks came to visit and it was my mama, not my daddy, who ordered me to the kitchen. Robert was now expected to stay at my daddy’s table, and no amount of protest on his part changed that. My mama set a lone plate for me on the sideboard in the kitchen. That was truly the first time I felt unwanted in my daddy’s family. My daddy hadn’t even bothered to tell me himself not to sit at his table. He had left that to my mama, and I resented not only him for it, but her too.

What is the best reason why this excerpt is important to the story?

It develops the characterization of Paul’s mother.
It addresses the minor theme dealing with loneliness.
It provides specific details about the historical setting.
It addresses the major theme dealing with inequality.

Select the correct answer. lyric poems often deal with intense emotions. which statement best describes the shift in emotion in "lift every voice and sing" as it moves from the first into the second stanza? lift every voice and sing till earth and heaven ring, ring with the harmonies of liberty; let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies, let it resound loud as the rolling sea. sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us, sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us, facing the rising sun of our new day begun let us march on till victory is won. stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod, felt in the days when hope unborn had died; yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet come to the place for which our fathers sighed? we have come over a way that with tears has been watered, we have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered, out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last where the white gleam of our bright star is cast. a. the joyful call of the first stanza gives way to a bitter recounting of history in the second. b. the first stanza's anger is replaced by the second stanza's resignation. c. the poem moves from a sense of wonder in the first stanza toward a sense of perplexity in the second. d. there is no change between the first stanza and the second. the emotions are the same in both.