ShmoopTube

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Here’s an unshmoopy question you may find on the exam…

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This passage totally has your name on it.

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Not literally… unless your name is Epimenides<<ep-uh-men-uh-dees>>…

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…anyway, pause and review if you’d like.

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The author's tone in regard to friendship between monarchs and servants is BEST described

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as which of the following? And here are the potential answers…

00:40

This question wants us to refer to the passage and interpret our author’s tone.

00:46

So… hopefully he isn’t tone deaf. But… we’re not judging his tone throughout the entire piece…

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…just the part that relates to friendship between monarchs… or royalty… and their servants.

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So we can home in on the third paragraph, and ignore the first two for now.

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In this case, our best bet might be to get a general sense of how the author feels about

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the subject at hand…

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…and THEN take a look at the answer choices to see which one fits.

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Okay, so he’s talking about how even great rulers place a lot of importance on friendship…

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even if it can get them in trouble sometimes.

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They have a lot of power and wealth, and it can be tricky to let people get too close,

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because it’s tough to know when they’re using you…

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…but even still… everybody needs a pal.

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That’s… basically the gist of it. Okay, now to the answer choices.

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It sounds like the author is pro-friendship… so we can rule out A – ambivalent – B

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– strongly disapproving – and E – cautiously disapproving.

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But… there’s a little bit of hesitation there, and Bacon points out that there are pitfalls…

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…so “decidedly approving” doesn't quite get us there either.

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It looks like our best answer is C.

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As in, "You should cautiously fill in your answer for this test."

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