read the following excerpt from the introduction to “a quilt of a country.” why does quindlen offer this contradiction about the “ideal” of america and its “reality”? how does she develop her central idea from this point? america is an improbable idea. a mongrel nation built of ever-changing disparate parts, it is held together by a notion, the notion that all men are created equal, though everyone knows that most men consider themselves better than someone. . out of many, one. that is the ideal. . the reality is often quite different, a great national striving consisting frequently of failure. many of the oft-told stories of the most pluralistic nation on earth are stories not of tolerance, but of bigotry.

Read the following excerpt from string by alice childress: maydelle. oh, look at you. if you had a nice suit perhapsnone of this would have happened.joe. l. v. got a nice suit, he got maybe forty nice suits andhe live in a pretty white house with a lawn in the front of it... but he cheatswhich statement best explains how the author uses symbolism in thisexcerpt? a. joe stands for the general turmoil that followed the years after thecivil rights act of 1964, which included riots and assassinations.b. with his combination of nice clothes and immoral behavior, l. v.represents the price some african americans paid in order toescape poverty.c. by describing l v.'s clothes in the same breath as his evilbehavior, joe points out that l. v. is only good on the outside, noton the insideod. the tension between joe and l. v. culminates in a physicalaltercation that is only broken up when the women in the playintervene.

With the extra income, the bookers moved to a housing project. "loveman's village was brick," wash said, "and it was warm and well lit. there was a bathtub. it had hot and cold running water. there was a gas heater with a thermostat that came on whenever it got cold." how does this excerpt readers make a personal connection to the story?

The missionaries who appear in the novel are colonists from britain portugal spain italy