#11 - Must Be True, Author's Perspective

[pacemaker]

I have several points that I want to clarify here:

1. I know that this is an inference question, so I thought that any answer choice that is explicitly stated in the passage is wrong as it is not an inference/implied from the passage. So, that's why I crossed off E because it is already stated in the passage that the Native soil movement was different than the Scar Art movement because it focused on the traditional peasant society. And that the two movements came about in opposition to the Revolution. All this was given explicitly in the passage so I felt that I didn't have to "infer" this on my own.

2. I chose D because the revolution was by the elite (powerful people with money) and even though the Native Soil movement was in opposition to the revolution, at the end of the passage, the author criticized it because it still was trying to appeal to the galleries and collectors (a form of elite with money and power). This felt more like an "inference" as I had to connect the points from the passage and do a little more work than just restating hat was already in passage (in the case of choice E).

- Can you go over exactly what to do in the case of inference questions?

- Is there a difference in the following two questions? and how to approach them?

"Which of the following can most reasonable be inferred from the passage?"

vs

"It can be inferred from the passage that the author would most likely agree with which of the following."

I feel that in some other inference questions (I don't recall from which PT exactly but will keep an eye out when I come across them again), I have gotten them wrong because I chose an answer that was a true fact or statement which was explicitly given in the passage. So when I come across inference questions now, I seem to think that I need to do some mental work to deduce the answer and any simple given facts can't be true as they are too easy to be part of an inference questions (those are more for detail/recall questions).

[Robert Carroll]

pacemaker,

Inference questions are Must Be True questions. Thus, you do want to answer merely by looking at the facts in the passage. Going beyond the facts will lead you to wrong answers, not to right answers.

The key to these questions is to look at the relevant part of the passage. Since this question refers to a specific artistic movement, you want to look at the places in the passage that refer to this. This directs you search for the facts that will enable you to answer the question correctly, and steers you away from answers that would be correct for a different movement than the one referred to in the question.

If you have to go beyond what the author said and connect things that you aren't sure the author would agree with, you're adding new information to the passage, and this will lead to an incorrect answer in a Must Be True.

The difference between the two questions is only that the second explicitly refers to the author's perspective. Both are Must Be True questions.

A Must Be True answer choice could not be wrong if it referred to information explicitly given in the passage. Do you have any example of the phenomenon to which you're referring?

Hope this helps!

Robert Carroll

[JennuineInc]

Hi,

Can someone please help explain E?

Answer D says that "Ironically, it had several key elements in common with Revolutionary Realism, in opposition to which it originally developed"
Answer E (correct) says "Its nostalgic representation of rural life was the means by which it stood in opposition to Rev Realism"

I thought it might have been D because lines 16-20 state "Ironically, the same set of requirements that constricted artistic expression during the Cultural Revolution has had the opposite effect since."

Even if you look at like 53-57 it says the Scar artists reacted to the ideological rigidity of the CULTURAL REVOLUTION (not Revolutionary Realism) I marked E as wrong since it is referring to Rev Realism in the answer.

Thanks!

[Robert Carroll]

Jenn,

The Native Soil movement did not originally develop in response to Revolutionary Realism. We know this because it developed later in the 1980s than the Scar Art movement (line 44).

Lines 19-20 say that Scar Art is one of the movements that flourished in reaction to Revolutionary Realism. However, we are interested in the Native Soil movement. We know that Revolutionary Realism required truthfulness (line 9). Native Soil idealized (lines 50-60). Native Soil was, like Scar Art, one of the forms that flourished in reaction to Revolutionary Realism. Thus, what answer choice (E) says Must Be True based on the passage.

Robert Carroll

[yrivers]

Could you please explain why option B is incorrect? This answer stood out to me b/c the author states in the last paragraph that while it depicted rural life and similar to Native Soil Movement (w/exception that Native Soil embraced peasant life), the author also states that "unfortunately, in the end Native Soil painting was trivialized..."

For me, that was choice B. Thanks!

[Robert Carroll]

Yaesul,

The author is claiming that Native Soil was "trivialized" because this is a judgment the author is making about the movement. That author is not claiming that other people disdained the movement - the author is saying the movement itself was trivial because of some negative aspects of it from the author's point of view. Answer choice (B) is about the wider reception of the movement, which is out of scope of the passage, because we don't know how much recognition it got compared to that received by Scar Art.

Robert Carroll

[mshaikh]

For this question, I originally chose answer choice A. I now understand why answer choice E is the correct answer, but what makes answer choice A incorrect? I thought A was correct based on lines 44 to 48. Is it because of the strong language like the use of the term "inevitable"? The language doesn't seem to necessarily match up with that of the author. I am struggling to understand this so please let me know what I am misunderstanding.

[nicholaspavic]

Hello again ms shaikh,

I think you are keying in on the exact language that disqualifies Answer choice (A), so great job! Remember, don't make any undue inferences that passage does not make. Here, "inevitable consequence" means that it had to happen that way. There was no other way but for the Scar movement to create the Native Soil movement. Although the author suggests that the Native Soil movement came from it, she/he doesn't suggest that it had to absolutely be that way no matter what. So Answer choice (A) really overstates the connection that the author makes between the two movements and is incorrect.

Thanks for the great question.

[mshaikh]

Thank you! That makes a lot of sense. I need to make sure to read carefully and not make any undue inferences when picking answer choices.

[kwcflynn]

Hi!

So is (D) incorrect because it states "in opposition to which it originally developed,"? I chose (D) because like Revolutionary Realism, which emphasized on depicting life as "outstanding or perfect," Native Soil "idealized" traditional peasant life. The two movements share an act of representing reality better than what it really is.

In regards to (E), I understand that Native Soil "embodied a growing nostalgia for charms of peasant society in the face of modernization," (Lines 51-53). However, the next several lines identify Cultural Revolution as the source of inflicting modernization. Where is it established in the passage that Revolutionary Realism inflicted modernization? Is it line 41, "Revolutionary Realism had demanded that they depict contemporary Chinese society,"?

THANK YOU