Directions: Fill in each numbered blank in the following passage with
ONE suitable word to complete the passage. Put your answers on the ANSWER SHEET.
(10%) Flowers for the Dead Since flowers symbolize new
life, it may seem inappropriate to have them at funerals. Yet people in many
cultures top coffins or caskets with wreaths and garlands and put blossoms on
the graves of the (36) . This custom is part of a widespread,
long-lived pattern. Edwin Daniel Wolff speculated that floral tributes to the
dead are an outgrowth of the grave goods of ancient (37) . In
cultures that firmly believed in an (38) , and that believed
further that the departed could enter that afterlife only (39)
they took with them indications of their worldly status, it was a
necessity to bury the dead with material goods: hence the wives and animals that
were killed to accompany (40) rulers, the riches
(41) with Egyptian pharaohs, and the coins that Europeans used
to place on the departed person’s eyes as payment for the Stygian ferryman. In
time, as economy modified tradition, the actual (42) goods
were replaced (43) symbolic representations. In China, for
example, gold and silver paper became a stand-in (44) real
money. Eventually even the symbolic significance became obscured. Thus, Wolff
said, flowers may be the (45) step in "three well-marked
stages of offerings to the dead: the actual object, its substitute in various
forms, and finally mere tributes of respect."