Explanation
Correct answer: B.
Choice B is the best answer because it most effectively illustrates the speaker of the poem’s claim that the stories Aunt Sue tells are based on Aunt Sue’s personal experiences. In the quotation, the speaker conveys the listening child’s point of view that Aunt Sue’s stories originate from her personal experiences and are not taken from books or other external sources. The listening child explicitly contrasts two possible sources for Aunt Sue’s stories: a book (whose potentially fictitious stories are implied to be written by someone else) or “her own life.” By having the child confidently assert that Aunt Sue “never got her stories out of any book at all,” the speaker indicates that Aunt Sue’s stories are instead informed by her lived experiences.
Why the other choices are wrong
Choice A
Choice A is incorrect because it describes an element or image that recurs within Aunt Sue’s stories rather than indicating that these stories have a real-life basis. The reference to dark shadows that “cross and recross” the stories functions as imagery on a literal, visual level and may also evoke figurative darkness, but this detail by itself doesn’t suggest that the stories are based on Aunt Sue’s personal experiences.
Choice C
Choice C is incorrect because it identifies the setting of Aunt Sue’s storytelling rather than describing the real-life basis of the stories themselves. The quotation states that Aunt Sue tells her stories on “summer nights on the front porch,” which establishes when and where the storytelling occurs; however, no information is provided about the origins of the stories that Aunt Sue tells within this setting.
Choice D
Choice D is incorrect because it describes the movement or circulation of characters in the stories as Aunt Sue speaks rather than establishing that these stories have a real-life basis. The quotation primarily evokes the sounds of Aunt Sue’s voice and the seemingly easy “flow” of this voice in her storytelling. Although the characters who “mingle…in the flow of old Aunt Sue’s voice” are to some extent created or animated by her voice, no information is provided about the characters themselves or their relationship to Aunt Sue’s actual experiences.