Q22

[tommywallach]

22. (A)
Question Type: Identification (17-20)
For this question, we must locate the place in the passage where Dostoyevsky’s opinions on reality are described. They come at the beginning of paragraph two. Dostoyevsky believed that "reality was necessarily shaped by the person who experienced it: what may not be reality for you may be reality for me." This differs from the radical critics, who demanded that reality be depicted "as it is." Dostoyevsky rejected this demand, believing reality to be subjective, as it is described in (A).

(B) is wrong because Dostoyevsky did not seem to believe realism was unequal to any task. Rather his problem was in how one defined realism. Also, he would not have believed expressing specific political views would have been particularly important in general.

(C) is contradicted by line 10.

(D) is similar to (B), in that it attributes to Dostoyevsky some kind of disdain in the power and usefulness of realism. However, the passage never tells us that he didn’t believe realism could or did "facilitate the exposure of social inequities or contribute to the creation of a new society," only that to do so should not be literature’s (or realism’s) primary purpose.

(E), like (C), is directly contradicted by line 10.

[wizzard880]

Thank you for the help. But i am having a problem understanding the wording in answer choice A. it says he beleived "reality is not independent of the experiences of individuals." D says in the passage that reality "is shaped by the person who experienced it." I feel like A is saying the reverse of this.

[fhyfan]

I agreed with above post. A sounds exactly opposite of what he believed. He believed that Reality is shaped by independent experience, but A is saying reality is not independent from personal experience.

[tommywallach]

Hey Guys,

Nope, those are the same thing. If something "IS NOT INDEPENDENT" of something else, than the two things ARE dependent on each other.

-t