The SAT Prep Black Book(36)

The enthusiasm in the second passage is felt with regard to “the mechanization that he saw around him” in line 13. So we need to find something in the first passage that mentions an idea related to mechanization or enthusiasm.

Passage 1 talks about “the forces of industrialization and urbanization,” which is essentially the same idea in this context as the “mechanization” referred to in the second passage. So let’s take a look and see what the first passage has to say about the “industrialization and urbanization.”

It says that Americans “protested the intrusion” of “industrialization and urbanization.” In other words, they didn’t like it—by definition, if you “protest” something, you must be against it. Passage 1 also says that Thoreau’s book is “an illustration of the intensity” of that protest. Along the same lines, the earlier part of the text calls Thoreau the “epitome” of this anti-industrial protest. So Thoreau is the embodiment (the “epitome” and “illustration”) of this protest.

Passage 2, though, said that Thoreau was sometimes “enthusiastic” about the mechanization.

This goes with choice (E), which says that Thoreau’s enthusiasm was at odds with what people thought about his attitudes. Again, the first passage says that people see Thoreau as the epitome of an anti-industrial feeling, but the second passage says he was sometimes enthusiastic about it. So (E) is correct.

The other answer choices don’t work for a variety of reasons. (B) is the direct contradiction of what passage 1 says. So is (C). (D) might be an interesting interpretation, but the text never says anything about Thoreau’s feelings being shaped by his experiment.





Page 459, Question 10


To understand why (C) is the correct answer here, we need to know about a certain stylistic construction in English that many students are unaware of: in English, if we say that something is “as X as it is Y,” we mean that it is very X and very Y, not just that it is equally X and Y.

For instance, if I said “that dog is as beautiful as he is smart,” I don’t just mean that the dog is equally beautiful and smart—I’m not saying that he’s kind of rough-looking and also pretty stupid. I’m saying that he’s extremely beautiful and also extremely smart. So this construction doesn’t just indicate equality between two attributes; it also indicates an abundance of both attributes.

For this reason, when the text says something is “as widespread as it is wrong,” it’s emphasizing that the widespread-ness and the wrong-ness are both extreme. This is why the answer is (C). We might like to think of this as one of those “demonstration” kinds of questions I mentioned earlier, in which the specific structure of the relevant text indicates the answer. But, again, in order to get this, we have to be familiar with the “as X as it is Y” construction, and a lot of students just aren’t.

But don’t worry about this question too much. For one thing, if you ever happen to see another SAT question about a phrase in the “as X as it is Y” structure, you’ll know what to do. But, more importantly, you’re probably never going to see another real SAT question exactly like this. As I mentioned earlier, these “demonstration” questions are pretty rare.

The other choices don’t work because nothing in the text indicates that the author is wistful, dismayed, ambivalent, or apologetic.





Page 462, Question 25


This difficult question combines two challenging elements. First, we have to realize that it’s actually Lewis’s remark that illustrates for us what Bobby is saying, because the two ideas are stated in succession and joined by the word “and” at the beginning of Lewis’s quote (remember that the College Board treats two ideas stated in this way as though they were synonyms). Second, we have to realize that Lewis’s remark can be considered humorous by the College Board because it can’t be taken literally.

Lewis says that people who lie down until a feeling passes will be in the cemetery before they think about getting up. There are two ways to take this statement, and both are impossible: Either he means that people will be dead and buried in the cemetery and then think about getting up, or he means that they will lie down somewhere else and somehow be transported to the cemetery without getting up. Either interpretation is logically impossible, so the College Board can refer to this remark as a humorous one, meaning that the answer is (C).

On top of that, the phrase can be taken as a ‘synonym’ of Bobby’s remark because Lewis begins his remark with the word “and.”