Q12 - In a scene in an ancient Greek play

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Inference (Most Negatively Supported)

Stimulus Breakdown:
In a play, the character D opens a tablet, reads a prophecy, expressing amazement. His buddy keeps asking, "What's it say? What's it say?" So D explains what it says.

Answer Anticipation:
MUST BE FALSE Inference questions usually have a correct answer that contradicts a provided conditional or that contradicts an available inference.

There are no conditionals here, and the available inferences seem to be things like "some prophecies are surprising/amazing when read" ... or "his companion was unable to read the tablet himself". Not sure what they'll go for.

Correct Answer:
D

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) In the play, illiteracy was not specifically mentioned. So this answer thinks we would presume that characters know how to read. Does that conflict with what we read? No, it seems consistent. After all, D reads the tablet. His companion might be illiterate, but he also just might not have a good view of the tablet.

(B) Did the passage support the idea that Demo IS based on a historical figure? No, that's completely out of scope.

(C) Did the passage support the idea that written texts are NOT commonly read aloud as part of the on-stage action? Kind of! It doesn't seem like D initially reads the prophecy aloud. Otherwise, why would his friend be asking "what does it say?" The problem is, the fact that D didn't read a written text aloud doesn't really go against the idea that "written texts are commonly read aloud". 'Commonly' doesn't mean 'always' (not even close), so there's plenty of room for Demo to be an exception to the common trend. Also, since Demo does end up explaining what the oracle wrote, he MAY have actually read the written text aloud eventually.

(D) YES! Did the passage support the idea that in ancient Greece, people DID read silently to themselves? Sure, since we can tell that Demo initially reads the prophecy silently to himself. The only troubling part of this answer choice is that we only know that a character in an ancient Greek PLAY read to himself. Does that prove that people in ancient Greece also did so? No, but this question stem is not asking for a contradiction, just for whichever answer that has the MOST negative support.

(E) Did the passage support the idea that it was common for prophecies to be written down on tablets? No, we have no clue with what frequency prophecies were written on tablets. We only know of one occurrence.

Takeaway/Pattern: It's easier to go against an extreme claim than against a mild one. (D) ends up being the answer because it implies that people NEVER read silently to themselves, so even our one measly example of Demo doing so is good enough to reject that claim. Meanwhile, rejecting (C) or (E) would have required us knowing whether what happened in this play was common / rare.

#officialexplanation