SAT #13 Reading (Question 40 & 41)

Question

Based on the two passages, Douglass and Dana differ in their views of the effect of the Civil War in that Douglass believes that the war has [...]?

Answer 1

Answer Choices B and D are the correct answers because Dana, in Lines 72-74, says that, “By their laws, a black man cannot testify in court; by their laws he cannot hold land; by their laws he cannot vote.” These Lines make a point that we can expect Douglass to find harmful, and consistent with his own negative view of the forced labor policies. Answer Choice B for Question 40 most clearly expresses this and a point which Douglass makes throughout the Passage and says, “the conditions that Dana points out that black men experience constitute a form of slavery.” Answer Choice D for Question 41 most clearly matches this, and says, “Without this, his liberty is a mockery; without this, you might as well almost retain the old name of slavery of his condition; for, in fact, if he is not the slave of the individual master, he is the slave of society, and holds his liberty as a privilege, not as a right.”

For Question 40, Answer Choice A is incorrect because we shouldn’t expect Douglass to find Dana’s comments “highly insensitive,” because the authors are mostly in agreement and Douglass makes his own similar comments. Answer Choice C is incorrect because Dana doesn’t make the case, either in the Lines or in the Passage, that black men will continue to be satisfied with limited rights. Answer Choice D is incorrect the comments Dana makes don’t concern the legal status of slaveruy in formal states and because neither author mentions the question of whether slavery will remain legal or not in former slave states. For Question 41, Answer Choice A is inocrrect because it doesn’t match our Answer Choice and make the case that the legal conditions of black men are a kind of slavery, but only that they make the Emancipation Proclamation a mockery and a delusion. Answer Choice B is incorrect because, while the Lines do say, “It is absolute slavery,” they focus more clearly on Banks’s employment policies and not the general conditions of black men’s political status. Answer Choice C is incorrect because these Lines don’t make the case that the conditions described by Dana are a kind of slavery, but states the principles that Douglass upholds.

How to solve this? Question 40 asks, “Based on Passage 1, Douglass would most likely respond to Dana’s comments in lines 72-74, Passage 2, by stating that [...]?” To solve this, we should begin by going to the Lines cited in Passage 2, which say, “By their laws, a black man cannot testify in court; by their laws he cannot hold land; by their laws he cannot vote.” Because this is a Paired Question, we might try to go first through the answer choices for Question 41. However, to help us find a Text, we should try to predict in advance how Douglass might respond to Dana’s comments. We may not be able to establish something specific, but we should predict that, in general, he should have a sympathetic stance to the validity of the claims and find that they confirm that the current state of black men is an injustice. Going through the answer choices for Question 41 we should find that nearly all of the Lines given could potentially tell us something relevant to the Question, so we should [switch gears] and look through the answer choices for Question 40 first, seeing if we can decide on one of those.

{

1. basically choose answer choice B, because it’s the only that matches the spirit of the text and doesn’t say something wrong.
2. then we have to decide on the Text.
3. the choice between Answer Choices B and D for Question 41 is hard, because both say that something is slavery. but if we’re looking for something different between them, we should ultimately find that one talks specifically about the effect of Banks’ policies while the other talks more generally about the conditions black men face, and speaks more broadly and specifically...matching answer choice b from Question 40.

}