Reading ComprehensionDifficulty: Hard

PT129 S4 P3 Q16 Explanation

Willa Cather

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

TopicsMain PointHumanities

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Passage

The following passages are adapted from critical essays on the American Cather (1873–1947).

Passage A When Cather gave examples of high quality in fiction, she invariably cited Russian writers Ivan Turgenev or Leo Tolstoy or both. Indeed, Edmund Wilson noted in 1922 that Cather followed the manner of Turgenev, not depicting her characters’ emotions directly but telling us how they behave and letting their “inner to avoid overloading the work with unnecessary detail, concentrating instead on what is characteristic and typical.

Here we have an impressionistic aesthetic that anticipates Cather’s: what Turgenev referred to as secret knowledge Cather called “the thing not named.” In one essay she writes that “whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there—that, one might say, is created.” For both writers, there is the absolute importance all the elements of narrative for these writers is the establishment of a prevailing mood.

Passage B In a famous 1927 letter, Cather writes of her novel Death Comes for the Archbishop, “Many [reviewers] assert vehemently that it is not a novel. Myself, I prefer to call it a narrative.” Cather’s preference anticipated an important reformulation of the criticism of fiction: the body of literary theory, called which takes as its object “narrative” rather than the “novel,” seems exactly appropriate to Cather’s work.

Indeed, her severest critics have always questioned precisely her capabilities as a novelist. Morton Zabel argued that “[Cather’s] themes...could readily fail to find the structure and substance that might have given them life or redeemed them from the tenuity of a sketch”; Leon Edel called one of her novels “two inconclusive fragments.” “non-novelistic” structures indirectly articulate the essential and conflicting forces of desire at work throughout Cather’s fiction.

What this question is testing

Main Point

Your task

Capture the passage's overall primary point — the claim everything else supports.

Common trap

Answers that are true but too narrow (a single paragraph) or too broad (beyond the passage's scope).

Winning move

Summarize the whole passage in one sentence first, then match it to a choice.

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.

Which one of the following most accurately states the main point of

Answer choices

  1. Correct59% picked this

    Cather's fiction is best approached by focusing purely on narrative, rather than on the formal

    Why this is right

    This matches the last sentence of the 1st paragraph, which was where we saw our author's strongest and most central opinion. The word purely is strong enough that it might give us pause, but when we research our qualms and check the language at the end of the 1st, it does sound pretty binary. "narrative" rather than "novel" seems exactly appropriate to Cather's work

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

  2. Too Strong: most18% picked this

    Most commentators on Cather's novels have mistakenly treated her distinctive narrative techniques

    There's nothing in passage B that lets us generalize about most commentators on her novels. (Our author probably wouldn't even like calling them 'novels'. ) The 2nd paragraph talks about her severest critics, and they do treat her narrative techniques as aesthetic flaws. But who says they speak for most commentators? Finally, even if this claim were acceptable, it would still be a subsidiary point. We would say, "Commentators are mistakenly treating her narrative techniques as though they're flaws. Therefore, a model of criticism that takes as its object narrative rather than novel would be more appropriate for Cather's work."

  3. Too Narrow Too Strong: the central8% picked this

    Cather intentionally avoided the realistic psychological characterization that is the central feature of the

    This seems to be a true-ish inference we can derive, but it doesn't sound anything like, "We should judge Cather's work as narrative, not novel". It sounds like a premise in support of that claim. Furthermore, it's too strong to call realistic psychological characterization the central feature of the novel. "Direct psychological characterization" is mentioned as one of four central features of the modern Western novel.

  4. Unsupported Causal Relationship: impetus8% picked this

    Cather's impressionistic narratives served as an important impetus for the development of narratology

    The passage never makes any claims suggesting that Cather was an integral part of narratology's development. We hear that her preferences in aesthetic style sort of foreshadowed "narratology", but the author doesn't assign a causal relationship. The passage was written by the author to clarify for critics how they should be judging her work (through the eyes of narratology not novels). It wasn't written to give Cather causal credit for helping to launch narratology.

  5. Contradicted7% picked this

    Cather rejected the narrative constraints of the realistic novel and instead concentrated on portraying her characters by

    We're looking for something like, "We should judge Cather's work as narrative, not novel", and this answer is saying, "Cather rejected the narrative constraints of the novel". It also says that she focused on portraying her characters' inner lives, but we were told in the 1st paragraph that her narrative style actually avoids the direct psychological characterization typical of novels.

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