Question 70·200 Super-Hard SAT Reading Questions·Craft and Structure

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Text 1

In a novel told partly through letters, the narrator, Mara, reproduces six letters concerning her grandfather Iven’s dismissal from public office. Each letter breaks off just as its writer approaches the reason for the dismissal. A critic argues that this repeated pattern cannot be incidental: Mara has excised the letters’ endings to protect her mother’s version of events, so the interruptions constitute deliberate concealment.

Text 2

Early in the novel, the packet containing the letters is described as having charred lower edges and missing sections. The transcribed breaks align with those damaged portions rather than with complete lines or sentences, leaving no evidence that Mara removed words herself. Yet Mara does not present the surviving fragments in chronological order. Instead, she places them beside two mutually incompatible accounts of Iven’s dismissal and later cites the fragments’ uncertainty when declining to endorse either account. Thus, although Mara inherited the gaps, her arrangement gives them a role in the novel’s design.

Based on the texts, how would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the critic’s interpretation in Text 1?

For a cross-text question involving a qualified disagreement, break the first author’s interpretation into distinct components, such as cause, agency, purpose, and degree of certainty. Then determine which components the second author rejects, accepts, or revises; compare the closest choices carefully because one may capture the broad distinction while misstating the second author’s more precise view.

Hints

Hint 1
Divide the interpretation
Identify what Text 1 claims about both the physical creation of the gaps and their purpose in the narrative.
Hint 2
Track two kinds of evidence
Consider separately what the damaged pages indicate and what the nonchronological arrangement indicates.
Hint 3
Compare the proposed functions
Ask whether Mara’s arrangement supports one version of events or keeps readers from confidently accepting either version.

Step-by-step

Step 1
Separate the critic’s two claims
The critic makes both a claim about origin and a claim about function: Mara supposedly created the gaps, and she supposedly did so to protect her mother’s account.
Step 2
Identify Text 2’s view of the gaps’ origin
The charred, missing portions of the packet align with the breaks in the transcriptions. Text 2 therefore finds no evidence that Mara physically created or enlarged the omissions.
Step 3
Identify Text 2’s view of the gaps’ function
Text 2 does not regard the gaps as irrelevant. Mara deliberately rearranges the fragments, places them beside incompatible testimony, and uses their uncertainty when declining to endorse either account. Her choices unsettle confidence in both accounts rather than conceal information to protect one of them.
Step 4
Match both distinctions
The best response must reject the critic’s account of who caused the gaps while still recognizing Mara’s deliberate use of them. It must also describe that use accurately as sustaining uncertainty among competing accounts, not as protecting a single account.

Lessons that teach this

SAT Reading: Craft and StructureAdvancedCoreText 1 and Text 2: how would one author respond?

Question 70·200 Super-Hard SAT Reading Questions·Craft and Structure

Text 1

Text 2

Strategy

Hints

Step-by-step

Lessons that teach this

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Strategy

Hints

Step-by-step

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