#18 - It has been a staple of drama to feature an innocent

[menkenj]

I really struggled with this one. I was able to get the answers down to B and C but I am having a hard time seeing why B is right and C is wrong. It feels like there is something fundamental here I haven't learned yet. Any commentary on this question would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Let's break down this stimulus, menkenj.

Our stimulus tells us that a feature of dramas is to feature young innocent characters ready to take on the world, but stymied by society. Historians don't think that the plays are serious revelations of the societies they present.

This is a resolve the paradox question. Usually that means that there's a conflict in the facts. The conflict here is a bit tricky to see at first, but we are trying to explain the conflict between society as depicted by the play, and society as viewed by the historians.

What's the basis of the conflict here? Why do historians think the society is different in the plays than in real life? The historians state that the playwrights want people to empathize with the main character. That would mean we would expect that the playwrights make the society seem harder to overcome than it might actually be.

Now that we see the conflict, let's look at those two answer choices.

Answer choice (B) is pretty close to what we were looking for. The playwrights exaggerate the weakness. Answer choice (C) on the other hand, doesn't really address the conflict. It says that theses plays provide useful information about the society they live in, but we know that the playwrights aren't describing the society as it is. This wouldn't match with the stimulus.

Hope that helps!