Missouri MAP English II EOC Practice Questions - Missouri Assessment Program English II End-of-Course Assessment Exam

[Passage 1: Excerpt from Willa Cather's 'My Ántonia'] On the afternoon of that same Sunday I took my first long walk alone into the country. The high prairie grass, which was red in the autumn, had been burned off, and the new grass was coming up green and tender. The country was flat, and the horizon was very low; it seemed as if the sky were coming down to meet the earth. I sat down in the middle of the garden, among the pumpkin vines, to feel the warm sun. The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it through my fingers. I kept still, looking at the grass and the red dirt. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great. What shift occurs between the first half of Passage 1 and the second half?