What is wrong with (A)?
Blassingame's work occurs right after this sentence:
"In many cases, the so-called edited narrative of an ex-slave ought to be treated as a ghostwritten account insofar as literary analysis is concerned..."
I know that there is a "however" starting in line 19 suggesting that the author disagrees, but I am confused as to why the author would say OUGHT to be treated instead of using the conventional "some critics believe that..."
Help!
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- tommywallach
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Atticus Finch
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Re: Q20
Hey Goriano,
Any review of questions you get wrong on an LSAT should be focused not on that individual question (which, of course, will never come up again), but on how you could change your process so as to avoid a similar error in the future.
Your focus on every RC passage should be on creating a SCALE (see our books for more of this, but I'll give you the speed-through here). The scale divides up the two sides that every RC passage (or 99% of them) describe. The author will generally land on one side or another. This is the fundamental work you need to do when reading a passage: build the scale, and locate the author.
The scale here is between whether or not we can "trust" dictated slave narratives or not, and the author very clearly comes down on the side of don't trust them. Keeping that in mind, let's read the sentences that relates to Blassingame's work:
"Blassingame has taken pains to show that the editors of several of the more famous antebellum slave narratives were "noted for their integrity" and thus were unlikely to distort the facts given them by slave narrators. From a literary standpoint, however, it is not the moral integrity of these editors that is at issue but the linguistic, structural, and tonal integrity of the narratives they produced."
First off, Blassingame clearly wants people to trust certain slave narratives. This is the OPPOSITE of where the author lands on the scale. Secondly, we can see that Blassingame has been included because he's focused on the wrong thing (moral integrity), instead of the other things listed.
A) This is the opposite of what we want. Blassingame would NOT endorse the author's view, which is that we shouldn't trust slave narratives.
B) That's what we want. There is a mistaken emphasis on moral integrity.
C) Blassingame doesn't have a new method. This method is an old method that the entire article (and the author) is against.
D) This is too general. Blassingame is emblematic of a particular error in interpreting dictated slave narratives, not anything that relates to the overall "Analysis of autobiography."
E) Blassingame does believe that there is an important relationship between editor and narrator. But the author includes this example to show a mistake people make when looking at slave narratives, not merely to describe the importance of the relationship between editor and narrator.
Let me know if that makes sense!
-t
Any review of questions you get wrong on an LSAT should be focused not on that individual question (which, of course, will never come up again), but on how you could change your process so as to avoid a similar error in the future.
Your focus on every RC passage should be on creating a SCALE (see our books for more of this, but I'll give you the speed-through here). The scale divides up the two sides that every RC passage (or 99% of them) describe. The author will generally land on one side or another. This is the fundamental work you need to do when reading a passage: build the scale, and locate the author.
The scale here is between whether or not we can "trust" dictated slave narratives or not, and the author very clearly comes down on the side of don't trust them. Keeping that in mind, let's read the sentences that relates to Blassingame's work:
"Blassingame has taken pains to show that the editors of several of the more famous antebellum slave narratives were "noted for their integrity" and thus were unlikely to distort the facts given them by slave narrators. From a literary standpoint, however, it is not the moral integrity of these editors that is at issue but the linguistic, structural, and tonal integrity of the narratives they produced."
First off, Blassingame clearly wants people to trust certain slave narratives. This is the OPPOSITE of where the author lands on the scale. Secondly, we can see that Blassingame has been included because he's focused on the wrong thing (moral integrity), instead of the other things listed.
A) This is the opposite of what we want. Blassingame would NOT endorse the author's view, which is that we shouldn't trust slave narratives.
B) That's what we want. There is a mistaken emphasis on moral integrity.
C) Blassingame doesn't have a new method. This method is an old method that the entire article (and the author) is against.
D) This is too general. Blassingame is emblematic of a particular error in interpreting dictated slave narratives, not anything that relates to the overall "Analysis of autobiography."
E) Blassingame does believe that there is an important relationship between editor and narrator. But the author includes this example to show a mistake people make when looking at slave narratives, not merely to describe the importance of the relationship between editor and narrator.
Let me know if that makes sense!
-t
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