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AP English Language and Composition 5.3 Passage Drill 205 Views
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Description:
As much as we'd like to advocate for eating pizza and watching Game of Thrones , we think it'd be a better idea to answer this AP English Language and Composition question first. Winter will still be coming when you're done.
Transcript
- 00:00
[ musical flourish ]
- 00:03
And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by good and evil.
- 00:06
Maybe take a turn on someone else's shoulders, would ya?
- 00:09
Yeah, get out of here. Union angel?
- 00:12
Okay, movin' on.
Full Transcript
- 00:13
All right, we're reading about philosophy... Good versus evil...
- 00:16
Evolutionism... Universe... Boundless possibilities.
- 00:20
Religion... See all these key words we're picking out here for you?
- 00:24
Ah, primitive mind...
- 00:27
Prescientific scope and breadth...
- 00:29
Fallacious... Sounds kind of dirty, but it's not.
- 00:32
Okay. Here we go. Which of the following is suggested by the speaker?
- 00:37
And here are the potential answers.
- 00:38
[ mumbles ]
- 00:43
Hmm. Interesting. Oh, boy, well, break out your scuba gear.
- 00:46
We're about to plunge into some deep thoughts.
- 00:48
Remember deep thoughts from Saturday Night Live? Do they still do that these days?
- 00:52
All right, well, let's begin by nixing option A.
- 00:55
The speaker does a lot of talking about notions of good and evil
- 00:58
and how philosophers should ignore 'em.
- 01:00
But he never claims that society's morals were created by just a few people.
- 01:04
Man, what would it have been like to be on that committee?
- 01:07
Imagine Shmoop on that committee. It would not be pretty.
- 01:10
All right. Option E uses some of the words the speaker uses,
- 01:13
but it doesn't actually touch on any of his ideas.
- 01:16
Minor detail.
- 01:17
He says that philosophers ought to ignore ideas of fate and good and evil.
- 01:22
But this makes it sound like our destiny is somehow decided by our moral values.
- 01:27
Well, if the speaker thought this were true, then telling
- 01:29
philosophers to ignore both things would be an apocalyptic
- 01:32
plot worthy of a super villain.
- 01:34
We'll give him the benefit of the doubt and move on.
- 01:37
D doesn't make the cut, either.
- 01:38
This whole essay is basically the speaker telling modern scholars
- 01:41
that they're still way too concerned with notions of good and evil.
- 01:45
There'd be no reason for him to write this essay if he thought
- 01:47
modern scholars had it all figured out.
- 01:50
This statement cancels out the essay's
- 01:51
reason for being, and there's nothing more depressing than that.
- 01:54
Option C is pretty close.
- 01:56
The speaker says material success
- 01:58
is partly responsible for people being too confident about
- 02:01
their ability to control the world.
- 02:03
But he doesn't say that rich people think the world is fundamentally good.
- 02:07
Though things have to look a little rosier when you're sitting on the deck of your yacht.
- 02:12
All right, well, choice B is the way to go.
- 02:14
The speaker directly says that it's people who are not
- 02:16
on the quest for happiness that find it most.
- 02:19
It's like you trip over happiness and you just find it sitting there right in front of you.
- 02:23
In that case, we would like to announce to the universe
- 02:25
that we're definitely not trying to be happy.
- 02:27
Nope.
- 02:28
[ crash ]
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