Question 153·200 Super-Hard SAT Reading Questions·Information and Ideas

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Literary scholars have long argued that the recurring “green fire” image in Mara Ellison’s 1893 sea novel originated in Tomas Rell’s 1891 travel narrative, which describes “green flames threading the shrouds.” However, a recently catalogued letter from Ellison, postmarked 1889, discusses and encloses a storm sketch in which “emerald light climbs the ropes.” Thus, the central image appeared in Ellison’s work before Rell’s narrative was published. Ellison’s diary records that she bought Rell’s book in 1892, though, and her copy underlines “threading” and contains the marginal note “rigging?” beside “shrouds.” In the 1893 typescript, Ellison replaced “climbs the ropes” with “threaded the rigging,” revisions that appear in no draft known to predate her purchase of Rell’s book. The evidence therefore suggests that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

For inference questions involving chronology and influence, separate the origin of an idea from later changes to its expression. Construct a timeline, connect each piece of evidence only to what it directly supports, and choose the answer that integrates the full record without claiming an undocumented direction of influence.

Hints

Hint 1
Build the timeline
Identify when Ellison first used the storm image, when Rell’s narrative appeared, and when Ellison purchased it.
Hint 2
Separate two questions
Consider whether the evidence about the origin of an image necessarily leads to the same conclusion as the evidence about its final wording.
Hint 3
Use the annotations
Compare the words Ellison marked in Rell’s book with the changes she later made to her own sentence.

Step-by-step

Step 1
Establish the image’s chronology
Ellison’s postmarked 1889 letter discusses and encloses a sketch containing the central storm image. Because Rell’s narrative was not published until 1891, that narrative was unlikely to have supplied the image’s original conception.
Step 2
Trace the later wording
Ellison bought Rell’s book in 1892 and marked the words associated with “threading” and “shrouds.” Her 1893 typescript then changed “climbs the ropes” to “threaded the rigging,” linking the later wording to language she had noticed in Rell’s book.
Step 3
Distinguish conception from expression
The evidence supports different conclusions about two stages of composition: the image originated before Ellison read Rell, while the wording used to express that image was revised after she read and annotated his narrative.

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SAT Reading: Information and IdeasAdvancedCoreSAT inference questions: complete the text logically

Question 153·200 Super-Hard SAT Reading Questions·Information and Ideas

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