Reading 27-Elie Wiesel
Number of questions: 12. Carefully read the following excerpt from Holocaust survivor
Elie Wiesel's 1999 speech "The Perils of Indifference" before you choose your answers.
What is indifference? Etymologically, the word means "no
difference." A strange and unnatural state in which the
lines blur between light and darkness, dusk and dawn,
crime and punishment, cruelty and compassion, good and
evil. What are its courses and inescapable consequences? Is
it a philosophy? Is there a philosophy of indifference
conceivable? Can one possibly view indifference as a
virtue? Is it necessary at times to practice it simply to keep
one's sanity, live normally, enjoy a fine meal and a glass of
wine, as the world around us experiences harrowing
upheavals?
Of course, indifference can be tempting-more than
that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from
victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude
interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes. It is,
after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another
person's pain and despair. Yet, for the person who is
indifferent, his or her neighbors are of no consequence.
And, therefore, their lives are meaningless. Their hidden or
even visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces
the Other to an abstraction.
Over there, behind the black gates of Auschwitz, the
most tragic of all prisoners were the "Muselmanner," 1 as
they were called. Wrapped in their torn blankets, they
would sit or lie on the ground, staring vacantly into space,
unaware of who or where they were--strangers to their
surroundings. They no longer felt pain, hunger, thirst. They
feared nothing. They felt nothing. They were dead and did
not know it.
Rooted in our tradition, some of us felt that to be
abandoned by humanity then was not the ultimate. We felt
that to be abandoned by God was worse than to be
punished by Him. Better an unjust God than an indifferent
one. For us to be ignored by God was a harsher
punishment than to be a victim of His anger. Man can live
far from God-not outside God. God is wherever we are.
Even in suffering? Even in suffering.
In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what
makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is
more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times
be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony.
One does something special for the sake of humanity
because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But
indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may
elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm
it.
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Muslims; Auschwitz slang for inmates near death.
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Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a
response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And,
therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy,
for it benefits the aggressor-never his victim, whose pain
is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political
prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless
refugees-not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their
solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them
from human memory. And in denying their humanity, we
betray our own.
Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment.
And this is one of the most important lessons of this
outgoing century's wide-ranging experiments in good and
evil.
1. This passage is primarily which type of essay?
(A) process analysis
(B) cause-effect
(C) categorization
(D) definition
(E) state of things
2. The second paragraph serves primarily as a
(A) concession and countervailing assertion.
(B) concession and apology.
(C) refutation of counterarguments.·
(D) syllogism.
(E) premise, conclusion, objection, and refutation.
3. The third paragraph, concerning the "Muselmanner" Qine 23), has
the effect of
(A) applying the principles of the first paragraph to an emotional
incident.
(B) determining the limits of pain.
(C) presenting a counterexample of the phenomenon of social
indifference.
(D) inverting expected categories by applying indifference to its
victims.
(E) offering an example of the limits of language.
4. The repetition of the pronoun "they" in the third paragraph serves
primarily to
(A) underscore the futility of resisting oppressors.
(B) generalize and neutralize the indifference felt by the victims.
(C) avoid repeating offensive slang,
(D) undermine the extent of the tragedy.
(E) expound on the harms of indifference.
5. According to Wiesel. what is worse than being punished by God?
(A) being upheld by God despite the sinful state of humankind
(B) suffering God's anger
(C) being abandoned by God
(D) feeling outside of God
(E) living in a state of sin and indifference
6. The tone of the passage is one of
(A) urgent entreaty.
(B) bitter anger.
(C) philosophical musing.
(D) abject despair.
(E) harsh indifference.
7. The passage includes all of the following EXCEPT
(A) distinctions between levels of an emotion.
(B) assigning of categories of humanness.
(C) comparison of forms of cosmic punishment.
(D) extended metaphor.
(E) concession.
8. The passage appeals primarily to
(A) emotion and helplessness.
(B) hope for the future and fairness.
(C) expedience and human brotherhood.
(D) sensory feelings and resentment.
(E) justice and emotion.
9. The phrase "wide-ranging experiments in good and evil" Oines 5960) refers to
(A) the inherent foolishness of human nature.
(B) well-intentioned in addition to malicious human endeavors.
(C) the unintended harm caused by such experiments.
(D) experiments that raise ethical concerns.
(E) Wiesel's objections to wars of all kinds.
10. Over the course of the essay, the concept of indifference changes
from a(n)
(A) personal choice to a social choice.
(B) broad, conceptual term to a very personal phenomenon.
(C) individual choice to a broad social consequence.
(D) simplistic idea to a complex, overwhelming force.
(E) "strange and unnatural state" (line 2) to, ironically, a form of
compassion.
11. The sentence "And in denying their humanity, we betray our own"
Oines 55-56)
(A) undermines the thesis of the essay.
(B) generalizes from a specific instance to a cosmic consequence.
(C) captures the essence of human nature, according to Wiesel.
(D) conveys a sense of nihilistic defeat.
(E) portends the larger consequences of indifference.
12. Lines 48-56 includes all of the following EXCEPT
(A) repetition of a key word or phrase.
(B) apostrophe.
(C) inverted word order.
(D) chiasmus.
(E) parallel structure.
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Reading 38-Wendy Brown
Number of questions: 12. The following passage is from Regulating Aversion: Tolerance
in the Age of Identity and Empire, in which political scientist Wendy Brown analyzes the
role that tolerance plays in contemporary Western society. Read the passage carefully
before you choose your answers.
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Some scholars of tolerance have attempted to distinguish
tolerance, the attitude or virtue, from toleration, the
practice. For this study, a different distinction is useful, one
that is both provisional and porous but that may stem the
tendency, mentioned earlier, to mistake an insistence on
the involvement of tolerance with power for a rejection or
condemnation of tolerance. The distinction is between a
personal ethic of tolerance, an ethic that issues from an
individual commitment and has objects that are largely
individualized, and a political discourse, regime, or
governmentality of tolerance that involves a particular
mode of depoliticizing and organizing the social. A tolerant
individual bearing, understood as a willingness to abide the
offensive or disturbing predilections and tastes of others, is
surely an inarguable good in many settings: a friend's
irritating laugh, a student's distressing attire, a colleague's
religious zeal, the repellant smell of a stranger, a neighbor's
horrid taste in garden plants-these provocations do not
invite my action, or even my comment, and the world is
surely a more gracious and graceful place if I can be
tolerant in the face of them. Every human being, perhaps
even every sentient animal, routinely exercises tolerance at
this level. But tolerance as a political discourse concerned
with designated modalities of diversity, · identity, justice,
and civic cohabitation is another matter. It involves not
simply the withholding of speech or action in response to
contingent individual dislikes or violations of taste but the
enactment of social, political, religious, and cultural norms;
certain practices of licensing and regulation; the marking of
subjects of tolerance as inferior, deviant, or marginal vis-avis those practicing tolerance; and a justification for
sometimes dire or even deadly action when the limits of
tolerance are considered breached ....
In cautiously distinguishing an individual bearing from
a political discourse of tolerance, I am not arguing that the
two are unrelated, nor am I suggesting that the former is
always good, benign, or free of power while the latter is
bad, oppressive, or power-laden....
Tolerance as such is not the problem. Rather, the call
for tolerance, the invocation of tolerance, and the attempt
to instantiate tolerance are all signs of identity management
in the context of orders of stratification or marginalization
in which the production, the management, and the context
themselves are disavowed. In short, they are signs of a
buried order of politics.
13.13. 3.
(A)
(B)
(C)
(D)
(E)
Taken as a whole, the purpose of the passage is to
articulate the long history of tolerance in society.
introduce the need for legislation mandating tolerance.
describe the problems with tolerance in government practice.
propose that tolerance, in all its forms, is inherently good.
distinguish between private and public practices of tolerance.
142.
The writer's purpose in the first sentence, as it relates to the rest of
the passage, is to
(A) present an extant distinction in order to propose a new one.
(B) describe historical understandings of tolerance in order to
defend them.
(C) point out a longstanding difference in views of tolerance.
(D) collapse the distinction between tolerance and toleration.
(E) begin an argument against tolerance in all its forms.
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3.
The writer describes the distinction she makes as "both provisional
and porous" (line 4) in order to
(A) suggest that her argument is rooted in agrarian, rather than
urban, cultures.
(B) admit that the argument she will present here is not infallible.
(C) indicate that where other scholars have failed, she will succeed.
(D) foreshadow her later description of"subjects of tolerance as
inferior" (line 30).
(E) propose a thesis of tolerance thqt takes all approaches into
account.
164.
As used in line 13, the word "bearing" is best understood to mean
(A) method.
(B) production.
(C) support.
(D) deportment.
(E) display.
175.
The list in Jines 15-18 serves primarily to provide examples of
(A) "an inarguable good" (line 15).
(B) a "tolerant individual bearing" (lines 12-13).
(C) "rejection or condemnation" (Jines 6-7).
(D) "the social" (line 12).
(E) "an individual commitment" (line 8-9).
186.
The antecedent of the pronoun "It" in lines 25-26 ("'t involves not
simply ... ") is
(A) "tolerance at this level" (lines 22-23).
(B) "tolerance as a political discourse" (line 23).
(C) "every sentient animal" (line 22).
(D) "civic cohabitation" (line 25).
(E) "another matter" (line 25).
197.
The long sentence that concludes the first paragraph (beginning
on line 25) would best be described as a(n)
(A) comparison of the effects of different types of tolerance.
(B) catalog of the negative effects of intolerance.
(C) list ofthe issues and problems surrounding the issue of
tolerance.
(D) articulation of the potential side effects of tolerance.
(E) enumeration of the negative effects of tolerance as a political
discourse.
208.
The rhetorical function of paragraph 2 is
I. to clarify a distinction previously made about two types of
tolerance.
II. to present a thesis that runs counter to ideas already
presented.
Ill. to recall the earlier description of the distinction as "both
provisional and porous" (line 4).
(A) I only
(B) II only
(C) I and II only
(D) I and III only
(E) II and I!I only
219.
As used in the conclusion of the passage (line 45), "buried" is best
defined as
·
(A) ineffectual.
(B) rejected.
(C) repudiated.
(D) veiled.
(E) forgotten.
2210.
The tone of this passage is best described as
(A) erudite and thoughtful.
(B) didactic and divisive.
(C) brusque and pedantic.
(D) bitter and pithy.
(E) meditative and sepulchral.
11. The most likely audience for this passage is
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(A) clergy seeking ways to explain tolerance to parishioners.
(B) teachers seeking ideas about tolerance to share with students.
(C) scholars seeking a complex analysis of tolerance.
(D) activists seeking slogans for government protests.
(E) psychologists seeking ways to teach patients to be tolerant.
2412.
As described in the passage, the problem with tolerance as a
political act is that tolerance as a political discourse
(A) is always oppressive and power-laden.
(B) makes tolerance as a personal ethic impossible to practice.
(C) fails to tolerate all choices in social, personal, and religious
matters.
(D) implies the degradation of the person being tolerated.
(E) provides for a disorganized social body.
lbJ provtae a nas1s or compant:iuu u1 H"lt::uu::;uliJ·
Questions 27-40 are based on the following passage from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I
Have a Dream" speech, given in 1963. Read the passage carefully before you choose your
answers.
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In a sense we have come to our nation's Capitol to cash a
check. When the architects of our republic wrote the
magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration
of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to
which every American was to fall heir. This note was a
promise that all men would be guaranteed the unalienable
rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this
promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are
concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation,
America has given the Negro people a bad check; a check
which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we
refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We
refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the
great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come
to cash this check - a check that will give us upon demand
the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have
also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the
fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the
luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of
gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of
Democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and
desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial
justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to
all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from
the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of
brotherhood.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency
of the moment and to underestimate the determination of
the Negro. Tills sweltering summer of the Negro's
legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an
invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. 1963 is not
an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro
needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have
a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.
There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until
the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds
of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our
nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something I must say to my people who
stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of
justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must
not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy
our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of
bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our
struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We
must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into
physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the
majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the
Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white
people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by
their presence here today, have come to realize that their
destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is
inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall
march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who
are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be
satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro
is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.
We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with
the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of
the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be
satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a
smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as
long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in
New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No,
no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until
justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a
mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here
out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come
fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from
areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the
storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police
brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering.
Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is
redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to
South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana,
go back to the slums and ghettoes of our northern cities,
knowing that somehow this situation can and will be
changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.
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2527.
In lines 56-70, King uses
(A) personification and similes.
(B) layers of examples and repetition.
(C) metaphors and personification.
(D) juxtaposition and repetition.
(E) diacope and imagery.
2628. The overall organization of the passage is
(A)
(B)
(C)
(D)
(E)
narrative.
cause and effect.
persuasive.
comparison and contrast.
process analysis.
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29. King uses an extended metaphor in the first two paragraphs to
(A)
(B)
(C)
(D)
(E)
create a sense of urgency.
infer that all people are equal.
imply that the United States is going bankrupt.
depict the extent of the injustices.
visualize the unfairness.
(A)
(B)
(C)
(D)
(E)
unavoidable revolutions.
planned uprisings.
slow reform.
mock democracy.
precise steps.
(A)
(B)
(C)
(D)
(E)
by using allusions.
through the repetition of the word "now."
with figurative language.
by juxtaposing dark and light.
by layering examples.
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30. In line 21, the word "gradualism" most likely means
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31. King creates a sense of urgency in the second paragraph
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32.
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33.
The appeals reflected in King's speech are
(A) logos and pathos.
(B) ethos and logos.
(C) ethos and pathos.
(D) pathos, logos, and ethos.
(E) none of the above.
The line "We cannot walk alone" in line 55 is used to rhetorically
(A) define the reasons for previous details.
(B) contrast the previous statements.
(C) support the previous detail.
(D) transition to the next paragraph.
(E) summarize the previous sentence.
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34. The diction in this speech can be classified as
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35.
(A) pretentious and formal.
(B) convoluted and complex.
(C) scholarly and emotional.
(D) informal and colloquial.
(E) abstract and complex.
The purpose of the fourth paragraph is to
(A) warn the audience of the dangers of violence.
(B) call the audience to action.
(C) describe the downfalls of violent protest.
(D) encourage the audience to avoid violence.
(E) underscore the importance of working together.
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36. The final paragraph serves as the
(A)
(B)
(C)
(D)
(E)
call to action.
resolution.
explanation of the conflict.
main idea.
purpose for writing.
Lf.
•••
,
3537.
The overall tone of the passage is
(A) complimentary.
(B) condescending.
(C) contemptuous.
(D) sympathetic.
(E) provocative.
3638.
"Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is
redemptive" (lines 77-78) contextually means
(A) faith will carry you through suffering.
(B) when there is suffering for no reason, the result is redemptive.
(C) there is a redeeming quality in working with faith.
(D) work is the way to redemption.
(E) redemption is only found through suffering.
3739.
In paragraph 3,
(A) King warns America of the discontent of the Negro.
(B) King warns of violence as a result of injustice.
(C) King says he is satisfied that 1963 is a momentous year.
(D) King predicts change from revolt to nonviolence.
(E) King encourages the audience to revolt.
40. The purpose of the phrase "warm threshold" in line 41 is that it
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(A)
(B)
(C)
(D)
(E)
belies the main idea of the passage.
contrasts the "palace of justice."
invokes a sense of urgency.
infers the speaker's purpose.
calls the audience to action.