Analyzing Point of View, Assumptions, and Bias in Single-Answer Questions - GRE Verbal

Card 1 of 378

0
Didn't Know
Knew It
0
1 of 2019 left
Question

Adapted from "Ramblings in Cheapside" by Samuel Butler (1890)

Walking the other day in Cheapside I saw some turtles in Mr. Sweeting’s window, and was tempted to stay and look at them. As I did so I was struck not more by the defenses with which they were hedged about, than by the fatuousness of trying to hedge that in at all which, if hedged thoroughly, must die of its own defensefulness. The holes for the head and feet through which the turtle leaks out, as it were, on to the exterior world, and through which it again absorbs the exterior world into itself—"catching on” through them to things that are thus both turtle and not turtle at one and the same time—these holes stultify the armor, and show it to have been designed by a creature with more of faithfulness to a fixed idea, and hence one-sidedness, than of that quick sense of relative importance and their changes, which is the main factor of good living.

The turtle obviously had no sense of proportion; it differed so widely from myself that I could not comprehend it; and as this word occurred to me, it occurred also that until my body comprehended its body in a physical material sense, neither would my mind be able to comprehend its mind with any thoroughness. For unity of mind can only be consummated by unity of body; everything, therefore, must be in some respects both knave and fool to all that which has not eaten it, or by which it has not been eaten. As long as the turtle was in the window and I in the street outside, there was no chance of our comprehending one another.

The narrator's attitude toward turtles can be best summarized as                     .

Tap to reveal answer

Answer

Most of the adjectives used to describe the turtle have a mystifying or awe-inspiring quality. The words "fatuousness" and "stultify," along with the fact that the mind cannot comprehend the turtle's existence with "any thoroughness" means the narrator was astonished by the turtle. The narrator can best be said to view the turtle with a sense of awe and wonder.

← Didn't Know|Knew It →