Question

1 how the day after graduating as a victorian from the high school in the rio grande valley you helped your family board up the door and windows of the frame house and packed the old pickup truck to make your annual trek north. after three days on the road arriving at the turkey farm and being led to your quarters. the family, tired, looks to you. “what’s this?” you ask, for you, the favored son, speak english, you can communicate with the bosses.

“this is where you’re gonna live.”

perplexed, you say, “but it looks like a chicken coop.”

“it is, but it’s not good enough for the chickens,” the anglo responds with a sneer.

2 and you take it, and you suffer as your mother and your sisters make the best of the chicken coop. they hang curtains and sweep the floor and burn candles to the virgen.

3 then the work, arduous and demeaning, begins. working night shifts after long days—plucking feathers, forcibly breeding the toms and the hens, and your dad ages from the day - to - day before your very eyes.

4 until one day you’ve been working hard, and you look for your dad, and barely see his head in one of the buried barrels full of feathers, working away. suddenly he’s gone, and you think you’re imagining things: how could he disappear? and you remove your gloves and risk the foreman’s wrath. you run to your father, jump in; he is almost smothered by feathers, and you say,

which of the following pairs of central ideas is most significantly developed throughout this excerpt, providing a foundation for an objective summary of the narrative’s core concerns? (r.2)

a the pursuit of academic excellence and the eventual triumph over personal hardship.

b the systemic exploitation of migrant labor and the emergence of individual agency in the face of injustice.

c the complexities of family dynamics and the cyclical nature of poverty across generations.

d the clash between rural and urban lifestyles and the psychological impact of cultural displacement.

Explanation:

• Option A: The excerpt has no focus on academic excellence or personal triumph over hardship. Eliminate A.
• Option B: The family (migrant labor) lives in a chicken coop (exploitation), and the narrator takes control (individual agency) to leave, matching the excerpt's themes.
• Option C: The excerpt doesn't explore family dynamics complexity or cyclical poverty across generations. Eliminate C.
• Option D: There's no rural - urban lifestyle clash or cultural displacement focus. Eliminate D.

Answer:

B. The systemic exploitation of migrant labor and the emergence of individual agency in the face of injustice.