ShmoopTube

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Shmoopy question, comin' at ya... You may have already read this passage, but

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if you want to check it out again, just hit pause. We're not going anywhere.

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Which of the following best describes the overall purpose of this passage?

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And here are the potential answers...

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Ok, so what is this question asking?

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It wants to know if we can read an uber-long passage, and boil the whole thing down to a single, overarching idea.

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What is this passage... all about? Let's go through the answer choices, one by one.

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Is it to note the superstitions surrounding birth?

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Well, there was that part where the neighborhood women said that David would be able to see

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dead people.

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But...it doesn't seem like the whole passage focuses on superstition.

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What about B... "To describe the circumstances of the narrator's birth as well as offer hints

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about his family and his community?"

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Uh, yeah. That's exactly what it does. We hear a lot about David's birth, and we get

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a general sense of the quirks of the people in his neighborhood.

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Just to make sure, let's take a look at C and D.

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"To emphasize that the narrator's family and neighbors were sea-going people?"

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Nope. The passage never says anything about that. Adios, choice C

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Finally... D? "To foreshadow the narrator's unhappy adulthood?"

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Well, there's one line where the neighborhood ladies say David will be unlucky, but it's

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definitely not the main idea.

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So our answer is B.

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As in, "Burial seems like a bad choice."

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