need help for a SAT reading question

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1

If the ghost orchid was really only a phantom it was still such a bewitching one that it could seduce people to pursue it year after year and mile after miserable mile. If it was a real flower I wanted to keep coming back to Florida until I could see one. The reason was not that I love orchids. I don’t even especially like orchids. What I wanted was to see this thing that people were drawn to in such a singular and powerful way. Everyone I was meeting connected to the orchid poaching had circled their lives around some great desire - Laroche had his crazy inspirations and orchid lovers had their intense devotion to their flowers and the Seminoles had their burning dedication to their history and culture - a desire that then answered questions for them about how to spend their time and their money and who their friends would be and where they would travel and what they did when they got there. It was religion. I wanted to want something as much as people wanted these plants, but it isn’t part of my constitution. I think people my age are embarrassed by too much enthusiasm and believe that too much passion about anything is naive. I suppose I do have one unembarrassing passion - I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately. That night I called Laroche and told him I had just come back from looking for ghost orchids in the Fakahatchee but that I had seen nothing but bare roots. I said I was wondering whether perhaps the only place the ghost orchid bloomed was in the imagination of people who’d walked too long in the swamp. What I didn’t say was that strong feelings always make me skeptical at first. What else I didn’t say was that his life seemed to be filled with things that were just like the ghost orchid - wonderful to imagine and easy to fall in love with but a little fantastic and fleeting and out of reach.

  • Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief

The author refers to “religion” in order to
A. show that orchid collecting involves a certain set of rituals
B. suggest that attraction to orchids automatically involves a set of shared beliefs
C. indicate that orchid enthusiasts routinely join organized societies
D. underscore how people connected to orchids are especially devoted to environmental causes
E emphasize importance of orchids in some people’s life

Which one is the correct answer? Why?

Thanks for the help!

2

(A) Wrong because there’s no emphasis on rituals
(B) Wrong because “automatically” is a red flag and there’s no reference to “shared beliefs”
© Wrong because no mention of organized societies
(D) Wrong because no mention of environmental causes
(E) Yay this is right! Because “people were drawn to it in such a singular and powerful way” and “circled their lives around some great desire” and “orchid lovers had their intense devotion to their flowers” and “Seminoles had their burning dedication.”

3

@Betty2015 - take a look at all the answers again without rereading or thinking about the passage. A-D all have some very specific assertion, and the assertion is incorrect if you are extremely precise. E is very general and is definitely correct. There are many examples supporting the general assertion in E and none contradicting it. Answers like E are often correct and answers like A-D are often, if not usually, incorrect. If I had looked at the answers without reading the passage I would have chosen E because its the only general answer. Try to pay attention to the general vs specific in future passages and see if you can learn to understand the patterns on this test - it could really help.

4

Thanks marvin100 and CHD2013. I also picked E, but the answer is B :frowning:

5

Your answer key is wrong, then. The answer is definitely E, not B. The examples show that the orchid lovers all have different beliefs. Unequivocally not B.