Read the following extract from Robert Frost's poem, 'A Considerable Speck' and answer the questions that follow: This was no dust speck by my breathing blown, But unmistakably a living mite With inclinations it could call its own.
What was the narrator doing when he spotted the speck? Which two words from the poem helped you come to this conclusion?
Topic: The setting
Answer
He was writing — seated at his desk with pen and manuscript sheet before him.
The words are "manuscript" and "pen" (in the opening lines, "A speck that would have been beneath my sight / On any but a paper sheet so white / Set off across what I had written there"); "ink" also carries the same evidence.
This is a textual-evidence question: the marks go for naming the exact words, so quote them rather than describing the scene. It is worth adding why the setting matters — the mite is crossing the poet’s own written words, which is what allows Frost to end by praising any display of mind in a world of unthinking writing.