Reading Comprehension

PT17 · S4 · P1 · Q8 Their Eyes Watching God

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Many literary scholars believe that Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) has been the primary influence on some of the most accomplished Black women writing in the United States today.

Topic

Hurston and Their Eyes Were Watching God

Framework

Answer a Question

Question: given how beloved Their Eyes is nowadays, why was it initially not beloved?

Explanation: at the time of its publishing, the black literary community was really looking for more protest fiction coming from authors. It wasn't until new standards of feminist theory and Afrocentric theory came along that people has a framework with which to properly appreciate what Hurston was going after.

Main Point

Their Eyes was initially not recognized for the great work it is because Hurston's contemporaries desired more overtly political stuff and the literary community didn't have the right frameworks for appreciating it.

P1 - Intro to Topic and Curious Question

We're told about this wonderfully beloved book, and in the final sentence (typically the most important Big Picture place of the passage), the author poses a question.

Any time authors pose a question, we pretty much assume it's their central purpose.

P2 - Answer to the Question (wasn't protest fiction)

The fact that the 2nd paragraph then begins with "XYZ helps to answer this question" shows us the Big Picture function, connecting back through the pronoun "this" to the question posed at the end of the 1st paragraph.

This paragraph rules out an alternate explanation for the lack of success (it was not just that it flew under the radar and wasn't considered), and then poses the real one (people didn't love it because they wanted something more politically active when it came to black activism.

P3 - How it Came to be Loved

The author double emphasizes the crucial causal difference-maker that new feminist theory (and Afrocentric theory) was to people ultimately being able to appreciate what Their Eyes was all about.

The primary purpose of the passage is to

correct a misconception
Out of Scope: misconception
If the author were working to shoot down an Alternate Explanation for why Their Eyes was initially marginalized, en route to supplying us with the real Explanation, then this could work. But the only Alternate Explanation the author shoots down is the 2nd sentence of the 2nd paragraph, in which she says "It wasn't marginalized because it was initially ignored". However, the passage never identifies that view as being held by anyone. We don't have any sense that it was a common misconception that book reviewers ignored Their Eyes when it first came out.
7% picked this
Correct
explain a reassessment
Why this is right
We were looking for something like Explain Something Puzzling. The puzzling thing the author is trying to explain is how Their Eyes was initially assessed by the literary community as 'not that great', but then was majorly reassessed in years to follow, as it is now a cherished classic. The author asks at the end of the 1st paragraph, "It seems necessary to ask why a work now viewed (re-assessed) as remarkably successful was ever relegated to the margins". The author's explanation is that - initial assessment bad because it wasn't protest fiction - later assessment positive because we developed an Afrocentric feminist framework that was able to "get it"
Skill tested: Primary Purpose · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
86% picked this
reconcile two points of view
Out of Scope: points of view
This feels mean. I mean explaining how the initial assessment was so different from the reassessment (as our correct answer says) could easily be construed as reconciling two points of view. It feels like a paradox setup: Given that modern point of view is "this novel great", How can it be old point of view was "this novel meh"? I think this down-to-2 between (B) and (C) has to come down to asking yourself which one is less of a stretch. In order to make this answer choice work, I'm massaging it a little bit. My default impression of saying that an author reconciled two points of view would be that the passage was something like, "Republicans want $600 billion of targeted COVID spending, Dems want $2 trillion in relief / stimulus, but I'll show them the middle way." This passage doesn't feel like that. But this passage definitely gives us the sort of discrepancy we resolve / reconcile / explain in Logical Reasoning. Ultimately, I suppose it's just a little bit sloppy of us to call the initial reception of her novel "one point of view". And the current adulation for her work is "a second point of view". If it were critic vs. critic saying "this novel is meh" vs. "this novel is amazing", that would be a more natural fit to say we're reconciling different points of view. But reconciling circumstances from the past with modern circumstances isn't quite reconciling two different points of view.
5% picked this
criticize a conventional approach
Out of Scope: conventional approach
There isn't any conventional approach identified in the passage. "Approach" to what? To evaluating Their Eyes? To explaining its initial lack of popularity?
1% picked this
announce a new discovery
Out of Scope: new discovery
The author isn't indicating anywhere that he has discovered something new about Hurston's book. Maybe this is the first time someone has discovered this record of the past, but we have no textual grounds for assuming that. "The details of the novel's initial reception help answer this question" would be the discovery, and since these details presumably have existed in the historical record this whole time, it's weird to say anyone has discovered them.
2% picked this

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