Q2 - The poet E.E. Cummings stood for the individual

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Sufficient Assumption

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: By standing for individual humans, resisting regimentation and standardization, Cummings stood against something essential to his work.
Evidence: Metaphor requires literal language, which requires regimentation.

Answer Anticipation:
Haha, this is so intentionally hard to read. Let's put on our conditional logic / symbol matching glasses and look at it kinda robotically: the term "something essential to the work he did" is a New Guy in the Conclusion, so it needs to be in the correct answer. (That would be enough to know that B is the answer)

If we want to anticipate the entire answer choice, let's start by looking at the last two premise claims (prefaced by "since"), which create a conditional chain.
Metaphor -> literal language -> regimentation.

If we look at the Conclusion, is anything in there about any of these three ideas? Well, the conclusion uses a lot of borrowed language from the 1st sentence.
"In doing so" = "in standing for individual humans against regimentation and standardization ..."

The overlap with the conditional premise chain is the idea of 'regimentation'. The CONC essentially says, "in standing against [regimentation], Cummings stood against [something essential to his work]." If you're "against" regimentation, you don't want regimentation. So the argument is trying to trigger the contrapositive of the chain: ~regimenation -> ~literal language -> ~metaphor.

Thus, if you're against regimentation, you'll also be be getting rid of literal language and metaphor. So, the missing link for the argument must be that "Literal language or (more likely, since it's at the end of the chain) Metaphor is essential to Cummings' work"

Correct Answer:
B

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This doesn't define "something essential to Cummings' work", so it could never allow us to prove the wording of the conclusion.

(B) YES, this matches our prediction.

(C) This doesn't define "something essential to Cummings' work", so it could never allow us to prove the wording of the conclusion.

(D) This doesn't define "something essential to Cummings' work", so it could never allow us to prove the wording of the conclusion.

(E) This doesn't define "something essential to Cummings' work", so it could never allow us to prove the wording of the conclusion.

Takeaway/Pattern: Given that this stimulus has the readability of hieroglyphics, people who are good at doing Sufficient Assumption with a formal, mathematical brain will probably be at an advantage over someone who tries to do these conversationally.

A couple cheap tricks for Sufficient Assumption could assist people here:
- New Guy in The Conclusion (meaning: if the conclusion contains an undefined term/idea, then the correct answer needs to contain that idea)

- Mentioned Twice? That'll Suffice (meaning: if the argument mentions something twice, such as 'literal language' or 'regimentation', then it's very unlikely to be in the correct answer)

#officialexplanation