Question

Passage 1:
Moon Landing

1 That warm summer night, Anna’s family gathered together in the living room to watch men in unwieldy, white spacesuits that encompassed them, their faces obscured by the bubbles of their helmets. They walked on the moon, and on the television a news anchorman narrated their movements in his kind, gravelly voice. Two men walked on the moon in shadowy black-and-white, a phantom stage where their footsteps sank into the dust, but in the sky over Anna’s house, the moon was a waxing pink crescent, the dark part of it barely visible.

2 Anna was fifteen and earthbound, her days unfolding in the stifling sameness of her neighborhood that was beginning to weigh her down. She let out a sigh and lamented the dull, pedestrian rhythm of her life: the only time she experienced travel or adventure was watching it on TV; her days were spent slouching on the curb to watch the little kids play another game of jacks; her evenings were spent walking to the corner store or perhaps sitting in the garage, listening to music from one of her three 45s.

3 She longed for the distance of the moon.

4 On the television, the men looked like paper dolls, their spaceship like a toy, and the surface of the moon was deep with powdery dust. Her father said they could all stay up late to watch history being made. “It’s something to see,” he said solemnly.
The reader can infer from lines 1 through 4 of the poem “The Apollo 11 Moon Landing” that the speaker is probably —
A
a child who is being told what happened when astronauts landed on the moon
B
an adult who is remembering what it felt like to watch the first moon landing
C
an adult who thinks about how the moon was transformed when the spaceship landed on it
D
a child who is watching a broadcast of astronauts landing on the moon as it occurs

Answer 1

D

Lines 1–4 describe Anna (age fifteen) and her family gathered to watch the live broadcast (“a news anchorman narrated…,” “they walked on the moon”), so the speaker is likely a child watching the landing as it happens.