<p>January 2007 sat test</p>
<p>Section 7 Reading Question 25</p>
<p>"They tell me that this is the kind of thing [canoe tips] that gets hold of middle-class householders every once in a while," Bobby said. "But most of them just lie down till the feeling passes."</p>
<p>'And when most of them lie down they're at Woodlawn (cemetery) before they think about getting up." Lewis said.</p>
<p>Question: Bobby's remarks are best characterized as a) Explicit Criticism b) Veiled Malice c) Dry Humor d) Frank Confession e) Factual Observation</p>
<p>Who can explain to me why this remark can be interpretted as dry humor??</p>
<p>Bobby is being funny. Could you recognize that from the context?</p>
<p>Bobby is being funny in a sarcastic sense.That is what I interpreted.
However it would have been better to understand if you provide the context in which he is making the statement and what the passage talks about.
In my opinion,both Bobby and Lewis are mocking the subject of the topic of their discussion,and hence the other choices do not suit and the only likely/obvious choice remains(b).</p>
<p>Bobby is just commenting on how middle class families have an infatuation with canoe trips, but on these trips these people end up ironically waiting for the seasickness to pass. </p>
<p>Dry humor.</p>
<p>The whole context is as follows:</p>
<p>It unrolled slowly, forced to show its colors, curling and snapping back whenever one of us turned loose. The whole land was very tense until we put our four steins on Line its corners and laid the river out to run for us through the mountains 150 miles north. Lewis’ hand took a pencil and marked out a small strong X in a place where some of the green bled away and the paper changed with high ground, and began to work downstream, northeast to southwest through the printed woods. I watched the hand rather than the location, for it seemed to have power over the terrain, and when it stopped for Lewis’ voice to explain something, it was as though all streams everywhere quit running, hanging silently where they were to let the point be made. The pencil turned over and pretended to sketch in with the eraser an area that must have been around fifty miles long, through which the river hooked and cramped.
“When they take another survey and rework the map,” Lewis said, “all this in here will be blue. The dam at Aintry has already been started, and when it’s finished next spring the river will back up fast. This whole valley will be under water. But right now it’s wild. And I mean wild; it looks like something up in Alaska. We really ought to go up there before the real estate people get hold of it and make it over into one of their heavens.”
I leaned forward and concentrated down into the invisible shape he had drawn, trying to see the changes that would come, the nighttime rising of dammed water bringing a new lake up with its choice lots, its marinas and beer cans, and also trying to visualize the land as Lewis said it was at that moment, unvisited and free. I breathed in and out once, consciously; my body, particularly the back and arms, felt ready for something like this. I looked around the bar and then back into the map, picking up the river where we would enter it. A little way to the southwest the paper blanched.
“Does this mean it’s higher here?” I asked.
Yes, Lewis said, looking quickly at me to see if I saw he was being tolerant.
Ah, he’s going to turn this into something, I thought. A lesson. A moral. A life principle. A Way.
“It must run through a gorge or something” was all he said though. “But we can get through that in a day, easy. And the water should be good, in that part especially.”
I didn’t have much idea what good meant in the way of river water, but for it to seem good to Lewis it would have to meet some very definite standards. The way he went about things was strictly his own; that was mainly what he liked about doing them. He liked particularly to take some extremely specialized and difficult form
5o of sport–usually one he could do by himself–and evolve a personal approach to it which he could then expound. I had been through this with him in fly casting, in archery and weight lifting and spelunking, in all of which he had developed complete mystiques. Now it was canoeing. I settled back and came out of the map.
Bobby Trippe was there, across from me. He had smooth thin hair and a high pink complexion. I knew him least well of the others at the table, but I liked him a good deal, even so. He was pleasantly cynical and gave me the impression that he shared some kind of understanding with me that neither of us was to take Lewis too seriously.
“They tell me that this is the kind of thing that gets hold of middle-class householders every once in a while,” Bobby said. “But most of them just lie down till the feeling passes.”
“And when most of them lie down they’re at Woodlawn* before they think about getting up,” Lewis said.
* A cemetery.</p>
<p>Any other interpretations? But most of them just lie down till the feeling passes. What does this “feeling” refer to?</p>
<p>What is the meaning of the last sentence uttered by Lewis? And why “neither of us was to take lewis too seriously”? </p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>^Feeling = the seasickness these people get after they enthusiastically approach canoe trips.</p>
<p>It’s irony. It’s humor. It’s simple.</p>