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AP English Literature and Composition 1.4 Passage Drill 1 427 Views


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AP English Literature and Composition 1.4 Passage Drill 1. Which of the following best describes the speaker's attitude towards immortality?

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:03

Time for your daily dose of shmoop... Hit pause and check out this passage. It may

00:07

look strangely familiar...

00:20

Which of the following BEST describes the speaker's attitude toward immortality?

00:24

And here are the potential answers...

00:30

Okay, so this is one of those "read and understand the passage as a whole" type deals.

00:35

Yeah, we can look for particular instances of the words "mortal" or "immortal" to help

00:39

clue us in to the answer...

00:41

...but we're basically just going to have to prove that we can correctly interpret what

00:44

the speaker is telling us. Our first option is A -- He views it as an

00:48

invaluable supply being drained by overuse on the part of the King.

00:53

Uh -- no. In line 31, the speaker says that struldbrugs are underutilized, so we can nix

00:58

this one. Next we've got B -- He views it as an equalizing

01:02

force to be hoped against by every citizen.

01:05

More like hoped for. Our speaker is clearly jazzed about immortality, so it doesn't fit

01:11

that he'd give it a bad rap. C -- He views it as a valuable tool for social

01:19

improvement for the parents and family.

01:21

Sounds plausible... but there's nothing in the passage whatsoever to support this. Total

01:26

red herring. D - He views it as potentially usurping the

01:30

natural order of class system in place.

01:33

Same thing -- no mention in the passage about class system... so D won't do us any good

01:39

either. Which brings us to E - He views it as a cultural

01:44

benefit to the community and a boon to good governance.

01:47

Heck yeah. The speaker clearly thinks that immortality is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

01:52

Which, incidentally, does not have a very long shelf life...

01:55

He talks about immortality's benefits, about how great it is that society has "so many

01:59

living examples of ancient virtue" and about how struldbrugs would make great royal counselors.

02:05

Verdict? Immortality is the bomb. Choice E.

02:09

For our money, we'll take the sliced bread. Makes better sandwiches.

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