PSAT Reading Practice Test 39: Fiction: Almayer's Folly

Questions 1-9 refer to the following information.

Almayer's Folly is Joseph Conrad's first novel, published in 1895. Almayer, a poor businessman, dreams of acquiring wealth.

"Kaspar! Makan!"
The well-known shrill voice startled Almayer from his dream of splendid future into the
unpleasant realities of the present hour. An unpleasant voice too. He had heard it for many
years, and with every year he liked it less. No matter; there would be an end to all this soon.
05He shuffled uneasily, but took no further notice of the call. Leaning with both his elbows
on the balustrade of the verandah, he went on looking fixedly at the great river that flowed—
indifferent and hurried—before his eyes. He liked to look at it about the time of sunset; perhaps
because at that time the sinking sun would spread a glowing gold tinge on the waters of
the Pantai, and Almayer's thoughts were often busy with gold; gold he had failed to secure;
10gold the others had secured-dishonestly, of course-or gold he meant to secure yet, through
his own honest exertions, for himself and Nina. He absorbed himself in his dream of wealth
and power away from this coast where he had dwelt for so many years, forgetting the bitterness
of toil and strife in the vision of a great and splendid reward. They would live in Europe,
he and his daughter. They would be rich and respected. Nobody would think of her mixed
15blood in the presence of her great beauty and of his immense wealth. Witnessing her triumphs
he would grow young again, he would forget the twenty-five years of heart-breaking
struggle on this coast where he felt like a prisoner. All this was nearly within his reach. Let
only Dain return! And return soon he must-in his own interest, for his own share. He was
now more than a week late! Perhaps he would return to-night. Such were Almayer's thoughts
20as, standing on the verandah of his new but already decaying house-that last failure of his
life-he looked on the broad river. There was no tinge of gold on it this evening, for it had been
swollen by the rains, and rolled an angry and muddy flood under his inattentive eyes, carrying
small driftwood and big dead logs, and whole uprooted trees with branches and foliage,
amongst which the water swirled and roared angrily.
25One of those drifting trees grounded on the shelving shore, just by the house, and Almayer,
neglecting his dream, watched it with languid interest. The tree swung slowly round, amid
the hiss and foam of the water, and soon getting free of the obstruction began to move down
stream again, rolling slowly over, raising upwards a long, denuded branch, like a hand lifted in
mute appeal to heaven against the river's brutal and unnecessary violence. Almayer's interest
30in the fate of that tree increased rapidly. He leaned over to see if it would clear the low point
below. It did; then he drew back, thinking that now its course was free down to the sea, and
he envied the lot of that inanimate thing now growing small and indistinct in the deepening
darkness. As he lost sight of it altogether he began to wonder how far out to sea it would drift.
Would the current carry it north or south? South, probably, till it drifted in sight of Celebes, as
35far as Macassar, perhaps!
Macassar! Almayer's quickened fancy distanced the tree on its imaginary voyage, but his
memory lagging behind some twenty years or more in point of time saw a young and slim
Almayer, clad all in white and modest-looking, landing from the Dutch mail-boat on the dusty
jetty of Macassar, coming to woo fortune in the godowns of old Hudig. It was an important
40epoch in his life, the beginning of a new existence for him. His father, a subordinate official
employed in the Botanical Gardens of Buitenzorg, was no doubt delighted to place his son
in such a firm. The young man himself too was nothing loth to leave the poisonous shores of
Java, and the meagre comforts of the parental bungalow, where the father grumbled all day
at the stupidity of native gardeners, and the mother from the depths of her long easy-chair
45bewailed the lost glories of Amsterdam, where she had been brought up, and of her position
as the daughter of a cigar dealer there.
Almayer had left his home with a light heart and a lighter pocket, speaking English well,
and strong in arithmetic; ready to conquer the world, never doubting that he would.