501 Critical Reading Questions

a. individuals can be controlled but groups cannot.
b. individuals do not want to fight but groups do.
c. individuals may believe in a cause but groups do not.
d. groups are often crazy but individuals are not.
e. people in groups can reassure one another.
255.
It can be inferred from this passage that Doc Burton believes the
cause
a. is just an excuse for fighting.
b. is reasonable.
c. will fail.
d. will correct social injustice.
e. will make America a more democratic place.
256.
Doc Burton repeats the word might in lines 56 and 62 because
a. he doesn’t believe Mac is sincere about the cause.
b. he really wants Mac to consider the possibility that the group is
blind to the cause.
c. he is asking a rhetorical question.
d. he doesn’t want Mac to know the truth about the cause.
e. he wants Mac to see that he isn’t really serious in his criticism of
the cause.
Questions 257–265 are based on the following passage.
In this passage, written in 1925, writer Edith Wharton distinguishes between
subjects suitable for short stories and those suitable for novels.
It is sometimes said that a “good subject” for a short story should
always be capable of being expanded into a novel.
The principle may be defendable in special cases; but it is certainly
a misleading one on which to build any general theory. Every “subject”
(in the novelist’s sense of the term) must necessarily contain within
itself its own dimensions; and one of the fiction-writer’s essential gifts
is that of discerning whether the subject which presents itself to him,
asking for incarnation, is suited to the proportions of a short story or
of a novel. If it appears to be adapted to both the chances are that it is
inadequate to either.
It would be a great mistake, however, to try to base a hard-and-fast
theory on the denial of the rule as on its assertion. Instances of short
stories made out of subjects that could have been expanded into a
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