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AP English Literature and Composition 1.6 Passage Drill 5
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AP English Literature and Composition 1.6 Passage Drill 5. Death is primarily characterized as what?

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AP English Literature and Composition 1.8 Passage Drill 5 218 Views


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AP English Literature and Composition 1.8 Passage Drill 5. Line 9 is best understood as all of the following except what?

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Transcript

00:03

Here’s your shmoop du jour, brought to you by Fate. There’s no escaping it.

00:07

Unless you have MacGyver and Chuck Norris on speed dial.

00:18

Line 9 is BEST understood as all of the following EXCEPT… what?

00:23

And here are the potential answers…

00:29

Had enough of Line 9? We didn’t think so…

00:33

This question wants us to interpret the line and determine which of the answer choices

00:36

is INcorrect.

00:38

Note the “EXCEPT” in the question. They even “all caps”ed it for us.

00:42

Okay, first let’s take one last look at Line 9:

00:45

Thou'art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men

00:48

Yikes. Doesn’t seem like we could squeeze four pieces of factual information out of

00:52

such a short line…

00:53

…but the question tells us that there’s only one rotten egg in the bunch…

00:57

Let’s… start sniffin’…

00:59

We’ll start with A – Death is often subject to the whims of man.

01:02

Well… kings are men, last we checked. And “desperate men” are tacked onto the end there.

01:08

So yeah – Death is a slave to kings and desperate men, who often make the decision

01:12

to take lives.

01:13

It’s good to be the king. B – Death is but a consequence of luck or war.

01:18

It’s hinted at a little more indirectly… but sure. The “kings and men” we mentioned

01:22

aren’t always just walking up to randoms and knifing them in alleyways.

01:26

War is where kings and men do a lot of their dirty work…

01:28

…and “fate” takes care of the “luck” part.

01:30

C – Death has no mastery of someone who willingly takes his life.

01:34

Nothing directly stated about suicide in this line either… but it goes without saying

01:38

that if a “desperate man” kills himself, Death can’t really do anything about it.

01:42

So C is out. D – Death is avoided by fate.

01:45

Ah – here’s our black sheep. Fate determines death, it doesn’t avoid it.

01:50

Just to be sure… E – Death is unpredictable.

01:52

Yup. The author is implying that death can occur randomly… so there’s certainly some

01:56

unpredictability in the mix. Answer: D

01:58

As in, “Dead giveaway.”

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