<p>This question comes from the SAT Practice Test 2006-07.</p>
<ol>
<li>The author of Passage 2 would most likely characterize
the view of King expressed in lines 38-42 of Passage 1
(“The annual . . . America”) as
(A) contradictory
(B) insightful
(C) atypical
(D) simplistic
(E) arrogant</li>
</ol>
<p>The answer is (D). I have ahard time figuring out why the answer is D. Can anyone help me?</p>
<p>Can you give us lines 38-42… otherwise we wouldn’t be able to answer this</p>
<p>Lol oddly enough, i remember that question. So i dug out the passage from my stack of SAT practice tests.</p>
<p>To first answer the question, you have to know the views of both authors. So for passage 1, the author states his view in line 18 “Even now, upon hearing the speech, one is struck by the many forms of King’s genius”. Passage is basically saying, “No… Just because King’s speech is overly used and quoted, it doesn’t mean people lose a sense of his"genius”’. Its sort of confusing to find this, because the intro paragraph talks about how people think dr. King is not recognized for his other genius"s that the “i have a dream” speech fails to capture. My tip for you is to pay attention to words like “but” and “however”. They indicate that the author thinks the opposite of views he mentioned. Following this advice, you can see that the author does use “but” in line 15, and the sentence that follows is his stance on the situation.</p>
<p>Now we must understand what passage 2’s view point is. Its found in line 57: “this is not the image of King…” The key word is “this”. What is “this” referring to. Its referring to the image described in the previous paragraph. The image of how martin luther king underestimated racism in america and how blacks tried to “restructure american society” by solving poverty and economic equality. So basically the author is saying that " Martin luther is so much more than what he is celebrated for on martin luther kings day." Actually, the author states this in line 61, by saying king’s image is shrouded by a “romantic tissue”. And in line 63, he says " his strengths have been needlessly exaggerated, his weaknesses wildly overplayed".
So now lets answer the question (lol ur probably like, “it takes this much work to answer one question!???” And the answer is yes, but it usually only takes 30 seconds to do all this processing in your head)</p>
<p>The question asks about line 38-42. Now let’s translate in our own words what it is saying, " martin luther king’s day is a time to recognize the immense debt that america owes king and the other heroes of the civil rights movement, for “saving the soul of America.”’ The most important word is "saving the soul of america. Isnt that a bit of an oversimplification? Passage 2 says (as mentioned earlier) that martin luther king is “exaggerated” (line 64) and his “weaknesses are overplayed”.</p>
<p>So the author most likely would say that the statements in passage 1 are “simplistic”. That they only account for martin luther king the “hero”, when he also had weaknesses and also dabbled in economic issues.</p>
<p>Thank you jpmac13!</p>