15 - ] Model SAT Tests - Test Fifteen

15 - ] Model SAT Tests

 

Test Fifteen

Read the passage below , and then answer the questions that follow the passage . The correct response may be stated outright or merely suggested in the passage .

            In 1979 , when the World Health Organization declared smallpox had finally eradicated , few , if any ,  people recollected the efforts of an eighteenth century English aristocrat to combat the then-fatal disease . As a young woman , Lady Mary Wortely Montagu had suffered severely from smallpox . In Turkey , she observed the Eastern custom of inoculating people with a mild form of the pox , thereby immunizing them , a practice she later championed in England . The Turks , she wrote home , even held house parties during which inoculated youngsters played together happily until they came down with the pox , after which they convalesced together .

1 . The purpose of the passage as a whole is to

(A) celebrate the eradication of smallpox

(B) challenge the achievements of Lady Mary Wortely Montagu

(C) remind us that we can learn from foreign cultures

(D) show that smallpox was a serious problem in the eighteenth century

(E) call attention to a neglected figure

2 . Lady Mary’s efforts to combat smallpox in England came about 

(A) as a direct result of her childhood exposure to the disease

(B) as part of a World Health Organization campaign against the epidemic

(C) in response to the migration of Turks to England

(D) as a consequence of her travels in the EAST

(E) in the face of opposition from the medical profession

3 . The author uses the underlined word “even” primarily to   

(A) exaggerate the duration of the house parties

(B) emphasize the widespread acceptance of the procedure she describes

(C) indicate the most appropriate setting for treatment

(D) encourage her readers to travel to Turkey

(E) underscore the dangers of English methods for treating the disease

The questions that follow the next two passages relate to the content of both , and to their relationship . The correct response may be stated outright in the passage or merely suggested .

Questions 4 - 16 are based on the following passages .

The following passages are adapted from essays on detective fiction , often known as mysteries . In the first the poet W.H . Auden discusses the detective story’s magic formula . In the second , historian Robin Winks assesses whar we do when we read mysteries .   

Passage 1

           The most curious fact about the detective story is that it makes its greatest appeal precisely to those classes of people who are most immune to other forms of daydream literature . The typical detective story addict is a doctor or clergyman or scientist or artist , i.e. a fairly successful professional man with intellectual interests and well-read in his own field , who could never stomach the Saturday Evening Post or True Confessions or movie magazines or comics .

            It is sometimes said that detective stories are read by respectable law-abiding citizens in order to gratify in fantasy the violent or murderous wishes they dare not ,or are ashamed to , translate into action . This may be true for readers of thrillers ( which I rarely enjoy ) , but it is quite false for the reader of detective stories . On the contrary , the magical satisfaction the latter provide ( which makes them escape literature , not works of art ) is the illusion of being dissociated from the murderer .

            The magical formula is an innocence which is discovered to contain guilt ; then a suspicion of being the guilty one ; and finally a real innocence from which the guilty other has been expelled , a cure effected , not by me or my neighbors , but by the miraculous intervention of a genius from outside who removes guilt by giving knowledge of guilt . ( The detective story subscribes , in fact , to the Socratic daydream : “Sin is ignorance.” )

            If one thinks of a work of art which deals with murder , Crime and Punishment for example , its effect on the reader is to compel an identification with the murderer which he would prefer not to recognize . The identification of fantasy is always an attempt to avoid one’s own suffering : the identification of art is a compelled sharing in the suffering of another . Kafka’s The Trial is another instructive example of the difference between a work of art and the detective story . In the latter it is certain that a crime has been committed and , temporarily , uncertain to whom guilt should be attached : as soon as this is known , the innocence of everyone else is certain .(Should it turn out that aftewr all no crime had been committed , then all would be innocent . ) In The Trial  , on the other hand , it is the guilt that is certain and the crime that is uncertain : the aim of the hero’s investigation is not to prove his innocence ( which would be impossible for he knows he is guilty ) , but to discover what ,if anything ,he has done to make himself guilty .K, the hero ,is ,in fact , a portrait of the kind of person who reads detective stories for escape .

            The fantasy , then , which the detective story addict indulges is the fantasy of being restorwed to the Garden of Eden , to a state of innocence , where he may know love as love and not as the law . The driving force behind this daydream is the feeling of guilt , the cause of which is unknown to the dreamer . The fantasy of escape is the same , whether one explains the guilt in Christian , Freudian , or any other terms . One’s way of trying to facethe reality , on the other hand , will ,of course , depend very much one one’s creed .

Passage 2

            Detective fiction creates for us an anonymity ; within it , we may constitute the last law on earth ,making decisions ( to be “proved” right or wrong ) as we go ,responsible for them , tricked , disappointed , triumphant , joyful , honest as to our mistakes , setting the record straight . As we make leaps of faith between evidence and decision in our daily lives - to board this bus , to choose that doctor , to add these pounds - so we make leaps of faith between evidence and conclusion , through the public historiography and the private autobiography  that we read . We learn how to define evidence , to use up our intellectual shoe leather it pursuit of an operable truth , to take joy from the receding horizon and pleasure in the discovery that the answer has not yet been found , that there is more work to be done . We learn that what people believe to be true is as important as the objective truth defined by the researcher / detective . In Marlowe and Archer we meet people who have no use for their conclusions , no desire for vengeance , who know that society will supply the uses while they may engage in the happy ambiguity of simply finding the facts  , which ,inert . take on life when embedded in a context of cause and effect .

            Ultimately one reads detective fiction because it involves judgments - judgments made ,passed upon , tested . In raising questions about purpose ,it raises questions about cause and effect . In the end ,like history , such fiction appears to , and occasionally does , decode the environment; appears to and occasionally does set the record straight . Setting the record straight ought to matter . Detective fiction , in its high seriousness , is a bit like a religion ,in pursuit of truths best left examined at a distance . As with all fine literature , history , philosophy , as with the written word wherever employed creatively , it can lead us to laughter in our frustration , to joy in our experience , and to tolerance for our complexities .It begins as Hawthorne so often does , and as the best of historians do , with a personal word , diffident , apparently modest , in search of the subject by asking . What is the question ? It ends , as historians who have completed their journey often do , with an authoritative tone , the complex explained the mystery revealed .

4 . The underlined word “curious” in line 1 means ?               

(A) inquisitive (B) unusual (C) sensitive  (D)  prying (E)  salutary

5 . The opening paragraph of Passage 1 suggests that the author would consider True Confessions and movie magazines to be    

(A) sources of factual data about society

(B) worthwhile contemporary periodicals

(C) standard forms of escapist literature

(D) the typical literary fare of professionals

(E) less addictive than detective fiction

6 . The author of Passage 1 asserts that readers of detective fiction can most accurately be described as

(A) believers in the creed of art for art’s sake

(B) people bent on satisfying an unconscious thirst for blood

(C) dreamers unable to face the monotony of everyday reality

(D) persons seeking momentary release from a vague sense of guilt

(E) idealists drawn to the comforts of organized religion

7 . The underlined word “translate” in Passage 1 , paragraph 2 means   

(A) decipher (B) move (C) explain (D) convey (E) convert

8 . Which best describes what the author is doing in citing the example of Kafka’s The Trial in Passage 1 , paragraph three ?

(A) Dramatizing the plot of a typical detective story

(B) Analyzing its distinctive qualities as a work of art

(C) refuting a common opinion about readers of detective fiction

(D) Demonstrating the genius of the outside investigator

(E) Discrediting a theory about Kafka’s narrative

9 . In Passage 1 , the author’s attitude toward detective fiction can best be described as one of

(A) fastidious distaste

(B) open skepticism

(C) profound veneration

(D) aloof indifference

(E) genuine appreciation

10 . In context , “use up our intellectual shoe leather” suggests that readers of mysteries   

(A) suffer in the course of arriving at the truth

(B) are attempting to escape from overly strenuous intellectual pursuits

(C) work hard mentally , much as detectives do physically

(D) have only a limited supply of time to devote to detective fiction

(E) grow hardened to crime in the course of their reading

11 . In Passage 2 , in paragraph one  , the author finds the prospect of additional work

(A) burdensome (B) unexpected (C) unfounded (D) delightful (E) deceptive

12 . Passage 2 suggests that Marlowe and Archer are most likely   

(A) murder victims

(B) fictional detectives

(C) prominent novelists

(D) literary scholars

(E) rival theorists

13 . As used in the last paragraph the underlined word “employed” most nearly means

(A) hired (B) used  (C) commissioned (D) remunerated (E) labored

14 . According to the last four lines in Passage 2 the detective story starts by   

(A) setting the record straight

(B) simplifying the difficulties of the case

(C) humanizing the investigating detective

(D) introducing the characters under suspicion

(E) defining the problem to be solved

15 . Both passages are primarily concerned with the question of   

(A) whether detective stories gratify a taste for violence

(B) why people enjoy reading detective fiction

(C) how detectives arrive at their conclusions

(D) why some people resist the appeal of escapist literature

(E) whether detective stories can be considered works of art

16 . The author of Passage 1would most likely react to the characterization of detective fiction presented in the last paragraph in Passage 2 by pointing out that 

(A) reading detective fiction is an escape , not a highly serious pursuit

(B) other analyses have shown the deficiencies of this characterization

(C) this characterization reflects the author’s lack of taste

(D) this characterization is neither original nor objective

(E) the realities of the publishing trade justify this characterization