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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?
AP English Literature and Composition 1.5 Passage Drill 1. In the third paragraph, how does the author foreshadow a coming tone shift?
AP English Literature and Composition 1.8 Passage Drill 1. In the context of the passage, with which of the following would the author most li...
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?
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.
Full Transcript
- 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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