PrepTest 114, Section 4, Question 26
Tony: A short story is little more than(72 more words not shown)
The dialogue most supports the(8 more words not shown)
- Ahuman lives are(8 more words not shown)
- Bnovels and short(9 more words not shown)
- Cnovels usually depict(5 more words not shown)
- Donly short stories(6 more words not shown)
- Eshort stories provide(10 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
A short story can be finished work, not just a novelist's rough sketch. That makes me question Tony's opening comparison. Even twenty pages might contain a meaningful change in a character. Shorter doesn't automatically mean undeveloped.
Tony nevertheless favors the novel's ability to portray personalities developing through experience. Raoul answers by challenging that picture of life. He describes disconnected episodes—his 'vignettes'—through which we glimpse character. On that account, a short story's narrower view could make it more faithful to life, not less.
What we’re looking for
The disagreement I would first predict is which form depicts human experience better. Tony favors novels; Raoul favors short stories. We need an answer on which their stated positions conflict. An opinion one speaker never addresses won't be enough.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
This wasn't the form I initially predicted: it asks about the view of life behind their preferences, rather than directly asking which literary form is better. Raoul expressly says life consists of completely disjointed vignettes, rather than a linear process of personality development. Tony treats personalities gradually developing through life experience as the feature that lets novels depict lives accurately.
So Raoul supports understanding lives as disconnected episodes, while Tony's account of accurate portrayal relies on gradual development. A identifies that deeper disagreement. It isn't simply substituting 'vignettes' as another name for short stories; it is asking whether the picture of life that makes Raoul prefer short stories is right.
- B
We aren't given opposite positions on whether the two forms use the same strategies. The speakers contrast the ways narratives can portray lives and disagree about which is faithful. Neither says, in opposition to the other, that novels and short stories employ identical strategies. B changes the dispute about accuracy into a dispute about whether the methods are the same.
- C
Raoul could agree that novels portray gradual personality changes and still think that portrayal gets life wrong. Tony values that kind of depiction; Raoul rejects the account of life it is meant to capture. Their disagreement is not established simply by describing what novels portray. We would need evidence that Raoul denies the portrayal itself, rather than its accuracy.
- D
Raoul doesn't address whether short stories serve as a novelist's sketch pad, much less whether they are the only things that do. Tony's metaphor doesn't establish that exclusivity either. The answers need a claim both speakers address in opposite ways; D doesn't give us that.
- E
Raoul mentions glimpses of character, but the passage doesn't say those facets are usually kept hidden. Tony also doesn't state a view on that claim. We shouldn't turn one speaker's reference to glimpses into a specific disagreement about hidden aspects of character.
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