GED and HiSET language arts — reading longer fiction

Literary passages on the high-school-equivalency exams are not three-sentence scenes. ETS describes HiSET Language Arts – Reading texts as running about 400 to 600 words, and the GED's own sample literary item prints a full page of a novel. Longer fiction asks different questions: whether the person telling the story can be trusted, what a narrator reveals without meaning to, how a scene builds over several paragraphs, and how an ending changes what came before.

This material practices those questions on three American stories in the public domain, quoted from their original texts in extracts of up to about 330 words.

Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart' (1843) is the classic unreliable narrator. Four questions ask what he most wants the reader to believe, what his frantic style reveals when he promises to speak calmly, what his account of his motive gives away, and why his proof of sanity, an hour spent easing his head through a door every midnight, works against him.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wall-Paper' (1892) is told by a woman writing in a secret journal while her physician husband directs her 'rest cure'. Four questions ask how her husband sees her illness, why she whispers one thought in parentheses on 'dead paper', what her secret writing shows about her power over her own treatment, and what her sudden change of subject to the house reveals.

O. Henry's 'The Gift of the Magi' (1905) ends with a famous reversal. Four questions ask about the situational irony of the gifts, what Jim's calm reaction shows, why the narrator calls the couple foolish and then the wisest, and what his habit of speaking to the reader does.

Every question prints the extract it asks about, and each has one answer that the text supports. The flashcards cover narrator, first and third person, unreliable narrator, point of view, situational and dramatic irony, foreshadowing, climax, theme, motivation and tone.

The written work asks you to build an interpretation yourself: prove a narrator unreliable with evidence, explain what a single sentence reveals, explain a simile that builds suspense, compare first-person and third-person narrators, and explain an irony in your own words. The oral exam gives you a sentence or two from one of these stories and asks what it shows and how you know.

Zestly is an independent study tool, not affiliated with GED Testing Service or the HiSET program, and no score is promised.

  • Recognize an unreliable narrator and support that judgment with evidence from the text
  • Explain what a first-person narrator reveals without meaning to
  • Follow how a scene builds across several paragraphs to a turning point
  • Explain situational irony and an ending that reframes the story
  • Describe the effect of an intrusive narrator who addresses the reader

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the HiSET Language Arts – Reading literary-text category (texts of about 400 to 600 words; process categories on inference, point of view and literary devices such as irony) and the GED Reasoning Through Language Arts literary reading. Extracts, all public domain: Edgar Allan Poe, 'The Tell-Tale Heart' (1843); Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 'The Yellow Wall-Paper' (1892); O. Henry, 'The Gift of the Magi' (1905).

Sample question

Read the opening of Edgar Allan Poe's story 'The Tell-Tale Heart' (1843), told by its narrator: 'True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. ... I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily—how calmly I can tell you the whole story. It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees—very gradually—I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.' What does the narrator most want the reader to believe?

See the answer

That he is not mad

The narrator returns to one point again and again: 'why will you say that I am mad?', 'How, then, am I mad?', and his offer to tell the story 'healthily—how calmly'. Everything is aimed at convincing the listener of his sanity. He says the old man 'had never wronged me', he claims his senses are sharper than ever, not lost, and he says outright that he had no desire for the gold.

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