ShmoopTube

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Put this in your pipe and Shmoop it... Which words could fill in the blanks so that

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the sentence below makes sense?

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Because Holden Caulfield is often surrounded by people, many of whom he knows, isolation

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in The Catcher in the Rye is much more of a(n) blank concept than a concrete blank.

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Here are the potential answers.

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Our two missing words should represent opposing concepts, since this sentence pits one concept

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against another. Arena-style.

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The word that fits in the first blank, for example, should be an antonym of "concrete."

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"Abstruse" means hard to understand, which isn't exactly the opposite of concrete...

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...so choice (B) gets fed to the lions.

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Holden might be thinking "deep" thoughts, but "deep" isn't an antonym for concrete,

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either, so it's lions for (C) as well.

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"Abstract," "philosophical," and "intellectual" all... kind of work at least.

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We'll dub them safe for now.

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(D) is a goner, because "recondition" means to restore something.

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A "concrete recondition"? No way.

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"Transcendence" can mean the act of surpassing

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others, or moving beyond the material universe.

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Neither of these meanings work, though, because "concrete transcendence" is total gibberish.

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Unfortunately, blank two spells doom for (E).

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Looks like it's going to be (A)...

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"Concrete reality" makes sense, and "abstract" is the opposite of concrete, so both blanks

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check out.

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(A) is the winner of this battle.

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As in, "ASPCA."

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