PrepTest 150, Section 1, Question 19
Passage A In a 1978 lecture titled "The(449 more words not shown)
Passage A(186 more words not shown)
Passage B(271 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(21 more words not shown)
- AA story in(12 more words not shown)
- BStories in the(20 more words not shown)
- CStories in the(19 more words not shown)
- DA story in(28 more words not shown)
- EThe reading protocols(15 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
B says central examples of a genre were written to exploit a particular reading protocol. A tells us what the detective-fiction protocol looks like: the reader is suspicious and looks beneath appearances. Putting those together, we should expect detective fiction to take advantage of that suspicious way of reading.
What we’re looking for
The answer should connect how the text is written with what the reader does. A rule about what events every detective story must contain would miss that connection.
Working the answers
- A
Neither account rules out supernatural characters or events. This adds a content restriction instead of applying B's principle about reading protocols.
- B
We never discuss crimes reflecting social anxieties, much less say they inevitably do. That claim doesn't follow from either account of reading.
- CCorrect
A supplies the suspicious reader; B supplies textual devices that encourage or exploit a way of reading. Devices designed to make us suspicious about characters and events bring those two ideas together. They invite us to use the very approach that Borges associates with detective fiction.
- D
Unraveling a puzzle describes a plot feature, and the requirement that the reader discover its solution alongside the protagonist adds another. Neither is established here. B's principle concerns the approach a work rewards, not a mandatory sequence of events.
- E
B expressly allows protocols to be applied to any text while still using them to distinguish genres. Wide applicability therefore doesn't make the detective-fiction protocol useless for classification. Central examples can especially reward that approach even though other stories can be read that way too.
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