Reading ComprehensionDifficulty: Medium

PT113 S1 P3 Q16 Explanation

The Invisible Man

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Reading Comprehension question.

TopicsMeaning in ContextHumanities

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Passage

Published in 1952, Invisible Man featured a protagonist whose activities enabled the novel’s author, Ralph Ellison, to explore and to blend themes specifically tied to the history and plight of African Americans with themes, also explored by many European writers with whose works Ellison was familiar, about the fractured, evanescent quality of European fictional modes lessened his contribution to the development of a distinctly African American novelistic style.

Ellison found these criticisms to voice a common demand, namely that writers should censor themselves and sacrifice their individuality for supposedly more important political and cultural purposes. He replied that it demeans a people and its artists to suggest that a particular historical situation requires cultural segregation in the arts. Such a assumption that audiences are capable of viewing the world only from their own perspectives.

Models for understanding Invisible Man that may be of more help than those employed by its critics can be found in Ellison’s own love for and celebration of jazz. Jazz has never closed itself off from other musical forms, and some jazz musicians have been able to take the European-influenced songs of to explore and express the issues of identity and character that had so interested European writers.

Further, jazz, featuring solos that, however daring, remain rooted in the band’s rhythm section, provides a rich model for understanding the relationship of artist to community and parallels the ways the protagonist’s voice in Invisible Man is set within a wider communal context. Ellison’s explorations in the novel, often in the manner of the transmutation of a cultural inheritance can never be completely cut off from the community.

What this question is testing

Meaning in Context

Your task

Pin down exactly what the question asks about the passage — a detail, the author's view, the structure, or the main point — before looking at the choices.

Common trap

Answers that restate a true detail from the passage but don't answer the specific question being asked.

Winning move

Anticipate the answer in your own words from the passage, then find the choice that matches that prediction.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
16.

The expression “cultural segregation in the arts” (second paragraph) most clearly

Answer choices

  1. Bad Match6% picked this

    a general tendency within the arts whereby certain images and themes recur within the works

    We're not looking for "within each culture, certain images and themes recur within their works". We're looking for, "cultures should have their own art forms .. African American novelists should develop their own style and not borrow from European forms".

  2. Bad Match Dictionary Trap4% picked this

    an obvious separation within the art community resulting from artists’ differing

    This trap answer is mainly looking to bait people who think, "Hmm, separation is a synonym for segregation." But this answer isn't about cultures refraining from borrowing from each other's traditions. It's talking about individual artists holding differing aesthetic principles.

  3. Bad Match8% picked this

    the cultural isolation artists feel when they address issues of

    This doesn't have anything to do with saying, "African American writers shouldn't be using European conventions ... they should be developing a distinctly African American style." This is talking about feeling isolated and addressing issues of identity? This answer just grabbed a bunch of nouns from the passage and tossed them together into a word salad.

  4. Bad Match3% picked this

    the cultural obstacles that affect an audience’s appreciation

    This doesn't have anything to do with saying, "African American writers shouldn't be using European conventions ... they should be developing a distinctly African American style." This is talking about how audience appreciation works. We're supposed to be talking about the artist, not the audience. Are they borrowing from some other culture's tradition or cultivating a tradition within their own culture.

  5. Correct78% picked this

    an expectation placed on an artist to uphold a specific cultural agenda in the

    Why this is right

    The critics of Ellison expected him, as an African American writer, to be upholding a specific cultural agenda in his novels: - directing them towards political action - contributing to developing a distinctly African American novelistic style.

    Skill tested: Meaning in Context · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

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