Q4

[shirando21]

why is C incorrect?

[ohthatpatrick]

Any time we see "according to the passage" in the question stem, we know we'll need an actual line reference to support our answer.

We should use the keywords in the question stem to figure out what line from the passage this question is testing us on.

We need 'critics' giving a reason for 'dismissing' The Wanderers.

Line 13-14 says that 'critics have decried' The Wanderers as 'too autobiographical'.

Line 27 is an even tighter match for our keywords because it says "those [critics] who are outright dismissive" of The Wanderers because it has an "autobiographical framework" and is "populated with real-world characters".

So we basically have two possible options for our correct answer:
- too autobiographical / autobiographical framework
- populated with real-world characters

It looks like (A) is a good match. (B) is the opposite. (C), (D), and (E) don't match our line reference.

Did you have a line reference for (C)? If not, make sure you're forcing yourself to find what line(s) they're testing before you start looking at answers for "According to the passage" type questions. It takes a lot of guesswork out of judging the answers.

My guess is that you were liking (C) because the passage essentially goes like this:
Critics - we don't like the Wanderers because of X and Y
Author - silly critics, you didn't get what Mphahlele's vision was, so you're not judging his work properly

Note that this is not a good answer to Q4, which asks "why do critics dismiss The Wanderers?"

Hope this helps.

[crf2132]

I know this is a really old post, but I'm still a little less than confident about my decision to get rid of (B). When I was reading it I liked A and B, thinking that if it was "too autobiographical" that the critics thought Mphahlele should have characterized "The Wanderers" as an autobiography, not fiction. Is this akin to a logical reasoning question? Saying something is "too autobiographical" for a work of fiction is different than saying it should be called an autobiography?

Any help would be appreciated

[HannahM495]

Hey there!

I'm still stumped as to why "B" constitutes the "opposite" perspective held by the critics. If his work was TOO autobiographical to be a novel, uses an autobiographical framework, and is populated by real-world characters, why wouldn't the critics insist Mphahlele misidentified his work as a novel and, rather, should have presented it as an autobiography? Answer "A," that the novel should not have used real-world characters, seems like a subsidiary concern to the overarching argument that the novel was not fictionalized enough.