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AP English Literature and Composition 1.7 Passage Drill 1. Paragraph 2 serves primarily to what?
AP English Literature and Composition 1.6 Passage Drill 2. The primary purpose of lines 6 through 12 is to what?
AP English Literature and Composition 1.8 Passage Drill 2. What is the principle effect of the author's allusions in lines 10-11?
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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