ShmoopTube

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Here's your shmoop du jour... Hit pause and read this passage. You may experience

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a bit of déjà vu...

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What was the author's purpose in writing this passage?

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And here are the potential answers...

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So... what is this question asking? Well, it's asking us to peer inside the

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author's head and see if we can get at their reason for writing this little historical nugget.

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Was it A... to entertain? Meh. There isn't a lot of plot development,

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and there are no thrilling chase sequences... probably not.

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What about B... to inform? Certainly sounds plausible. There's a lot

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of information here... meaning that we're being informed...

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How about C... to persuade? There are certain things the author is trying

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to persuade us of... ...such as the idea that the railroad helped

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bring people together, or made travel more efficient...

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...but it still seems more like the purpose was to inform us than to sway our beliefs.

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And D? To argue? Not much argumentation here. Besides, "arguing"

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is pretty close to "persuading"... Nope... answer B is our best bet.

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As in, "Brain privacy."

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