44 AP English Language and Composition Questions 35-45. Carefully read the following passage and answer the accompanying questions. This passage is an excerpt from a book about the worlds black people written in the mid-20th century.

Let's imagine a mammoth flying saucer from Mars landing, say, in a peas­ant Swiss village and debouching swarms of fierce-looking men whose skins are blue and whose red eyes flash lightning bolts that deal instant death.

Line The inhabitants are all the more terrified because the arrival of these men (5) had been predicted. The religious myths of the Western world—the Second

Coming of Christ, the Last Judgment, etc., have conditioned Europeans for just such an improbable event. Hence, those Swiss natives will feel that resistance is useless for a while. As long as the blue strangers are casually kind, they are obeyed and served. They become the Fathers of the people.

(10) Is this a fragment of paperback science fiction? No. It's more prosaic than that. The image I've sketched above is the manner, by and large, in which white Europe overran Asia and Africa.

But why did Europe do this? Did it only want gold, power, women, raw materials? It was more complicated than that. The fifteenth-, sixteenth-, and

(15) seventeenth-century neurotic European, sick of his thwarted instincts, rest­less, filled with self-disgust, was looking for not only spices and gold and slaves when he set out; he was looking for an Arcadia, a Land's End, a Shangri-la, a world peopled by shadow men, a world that would permit free play for his repressed instincts. Stripped of tradition, these misfits, adventur-

(20) ers, indentured servants, convicts and freebooters were the most advanced individualists of their time. Rendered socially superfluous by the stifling weight of the Church and nobility, buttressed by the influence of the ideas of Hume and Descartes, they had been brutally molded toward attitudes of emotional independence and could doff the cloying ties of custom, tradition,

(25) and family. The Asian-African native, anchored in family-dependence sys­tems of life, could not imagine why or how these men had left their home­lands, could not conceive of the cold, arid emotions sustaining them. . . .

Living in a waking dream, generations of emotionally impoverished colo­nial European whites wallowed in the quick gratification of greed, reveled in

(30) the cheap superiority of racial domination, slaked their sensual thirst in illicit sexuality, draining off the dammed-up libido1 that European morality had condemned, amassing through trade a vast reservoir of economic fat, thereby establishing vast accumulations of capital which spurred the indus­trialization of the West. Asia and Africa thus became a neurotic habit that

(35) Europeans could forgo only at the cost of a powerful psychic wound, for this emotionally crippled Europe had, through the centuries, grown used to leaning upon this black crutch. But what of the impact of those white faces upon the personalities of the native? Steeped in dependence systems of fam­ily life and anchored in ancestor-worshiping religions, the native was prone

(40) to identify those powerful white faces falling athwart his existence with the potency of his dead father who has sustained him in the past. Temporarily accepting the invasion, he transferred his loyalties to those white faces, but, because of the psychological, racial, and economic luxury which those faces derived from their denomination, the native was kept at bay.

sexual drive

Diagnostic Test 45 35. The subject of the passage is introduced in the first paragraph by means of

(A) an expose (B) an allusion (C) a parable (D) an exposition (E) a fable

36. In context, the word "Fathers" (line 9) is best interpreted as having which of the following meanings?

(A) Role-models (B) Ruthless tyrants (C) Priests (D) Masters (E) Representatives

37. Which of the following words is grammatically and thematically parallel to "restless" (lines 15—16)?

(A) "neurotic" (line 15) (B) "sick" (line 15) (C) "thwarted" (line 15) (D) "self-disgust" (line 16) (E) "looking" (line 17)

38. The speaker mentions Arcadia, Land's End, Shangri-la (lines 17-18) as examples of which of the following?

(A) Destinations for wealthy European travelers of the 15th-17th centuries. (B) Places where slaves, spices, and gold, could be traded for goods to take

back to Europe. (C) Utopian societies where people could be free and happy. (D) Lost civilizations that disappeared centuries ago. (E) Exotic places that attracted explorers and adventurers.

39. The phrase "advanced individualists" (lines 20-21) is best described as an example of

(A) irony (B) hyperbole (C) an oxymoron (D) understatement (E) parody

40. The characteristics of the colonial European described in the clause beginning on line 23 ("they had been. . ." ) is referred to elsewhere in all of the following phrases EXCEPT

(A) "filled with self-disgust" (line 16). (B) "socially superfluous" (line 21). (C) "Stripped of tradition" (line 19). (D) "cold, arid emotions" (line 27). (E) "emotionally impoverished" (line 28).

46 AP English Language and Composition 41. Which rhetorical device is most evident in lines 30-31: "slaked their sensual

thirst in illicit sexuality"?

(A) onomatopoeia (B) a metaphor (C) assonance (D) allegory (E) alliteration

42. Which of the following best describes the prevailing tone of the passage?

(A) Objective and impartial (B) Irate and contentious (C) Pedantic and nitpicking (D) Restrained and thoughtful (E) Moralistic and circumspect

43. Throughout the passage, the speaker contrasts the European colonists and the Asian-African natives on the basis of

(A) their economic wealth. (B) the strength of their belief in God. (C) their attitude toward family life. (D) their desire to own property. (E) their attachment to the land.

44. The speaker's repeated use of questions (lines 10, 13-14, and 37-38) serves which of the following rhetorical purposes?

(A) To raise issues that would not otherwise be raised (B) To discuss the issue from a new, totally different, point of view (C) To provide a quick transition from one topic to a different but related one (D) To anticipate objections that readers may have in mind (E) To establish the speaker as an authority on the subject

45. Throughout the passage, which of the following rhetorical strategies is most in evidence?

(A) Specific examples and anecdotes to illustrate the main idea (B) The testimony of experts on the subject of European colonialism (C) Well-reasoned logical argumentation in support of a thesis (D) The use of highly-charged, emotional language to create an effect (E) The testing of a hypothesis using observation and the massing of data

Questions 46—55. Carefully read the following passage and answer the accompanying questions. This passage is taken from a book written in the late 20th century.

Gary infuriated his fiancee, Ellen, because even though he was intelligent, thoughtful, and a successful surgeon, Gary was emotionally flat, completely unresponsive to any and all shows of feeling. While Gary could speak

Line brilliantly of science and art, when it came to his feelings—even for Ellen— (5) he fell silent. Try as she might to elicit some passion from him, Gary was

impassive, oblivious. " I don't naturally express my feelings," Gary told the

Diagnostic Test 47 therapist he saw at Ellen's insistence. When it came to emotional life, he added, " I don't know what to talk about; I have no strong feelings, either positive or negative."

(10) Ellen was not alone in being frustrated by Gary's aloofness; as he confided to his therapist, he was unable to speak openly about his feelings with any­one in his life. The reason: He did not know what he felt in the first place. So far as he could tell he had no angers, no sadness, no joys.1

As his own therapist observes, this emotional blankness makes Gary and (15) others like him colorless, bland: "They bore everybody. That's why their wives

send them into treatment." Gary's emotional flatness exemplifies what psy­chiatrists call alexithymia, from the Greek a for "lack," lexis for "word," and thymos for "emotion." Such people lack words for their feelings. Indeed, they seem to lack feelings altogether, although this may actually be because of their

(20) inability to express emotion rather than from an absence of emotion alto­gether. Such people were first noticed by psychoanalysts puzzled by a class of patients who were untreatable by that method because they reported no feel­ings, no fantasies, and colorless dreams—in short, no inner emotional life to talk about at all.2 The clinical features that mark alexithymics include having

(25) difficulty describing feelings—their own or anyone else's—and a sharply lim­ited emotional vocabulary.3 What's more, they have trouble discriminating among emotions as well as between emotions and bodily sensation, so that they might tell of having butterflies in the stomach, palpitations, sweating, and dizziness—but they would not know they are feeling anxious.

(30) "They give the impression of being different, alien beings, having come from an entirely different world, living in the midst of a society which is dominated by feelings," is the description given by Dr. Peter Sifneos, the Harvard psychiatrist who in 1972 coined the term alexithymia.4

Alexithymics rarely cry, for example, but if they do their tears are copious. (35) Still, they are bewildered if asked what the tears are all about. One patient

with alexithymia was so upset after seeing a movie about a woman with eight children who was dying of cancer that she cried herself to sleep. When her therapist suggested that perhaps she was upset because the movie reminded her of her own mother, who was in actuality dying of cancer, the

(40) woman sat motionless, bewildered, and silent. When her therapist then asked her how she felt at that moment, she said she felt "awful," but couldn't clarify her feelings beyond that. And, she added, from time to time she found herself crying, but never knew exactly what she was crying about.5

' Larry Cahill et al., "Beta-adrenergic activations and memory for emotional events," Nature (Oct. 20, 1994).

2 Psychoanalytic theory and brain maturation: the most detailed discussion of the early years and the emotional consequences of brain development is by Allan Schore, Affect Regulation and the Origin of Self (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994).

Dangerous, even if you don't know what it is; Joseph LeDoux, quoted in "How Scary Things Got That Way,"'Science (Nov. 6, 1992), p. 887.

4 Much of this speculation about the fine-tuning of emotional response by the neocortex comes from Ned Kalin, M.D., Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin, prepared for the MacArthur Affective Neuroscience Meeting, Nov., 1992.

5 See Ned Kalin, Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin, "Aspects of Emotion Conserved Across Species," an unpublished manuscript presented at the MacArthur Affective Neuroscience Meeting, Nov., 1992; and Alan Schore, Affect Regulation and the Origin of Self (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994).

48 AP English Language and Composition 46. Which of the following best states the main subject of the passage?

(A) The difficulties of treating alexithymia (B) Research in alexithymia (C) Symptoms of alexithymia (D) A puzzling psychological disorder of modern times (E) The causes of alexithymia

47. Which of the following best explains the function of the passage's first sentence?

(A) It introduces a conflict to be resolved by the end of the passage. (B) It defines the limits of the discussion that follows. (C) It establishes the author as an expert on the subject of the passage. (D) It makes a claim that the author will try to prove in the remainder of the

passage. (E) It describes a situation that illustrates the central concern of the passage.

48. The structure of the footnoted paragraph (lines 10-13) can best be described as

(A) a statement describing a situation followed by an explanation of its cause. (B) movement from particular details to generalizations. (C) a series of controversial ideas unrelated to the preceding paragraph. (D) the introduction and definition of an abstract psychological term. (E) the presentation of a hypothesis that will be proved later in the passage.

49. Which of the following best explains why the word express in line 20 is italicized?

(A) To differentiate between the expression of emotion and the feeling of emotion.

(B) To emphasize that in order to talk about emotions you must feel them. (C) To indicate that those suffering from alexithymia never have emotions to

express. (D) To alert the reader that the word is being used ironically. (E) To suggest that the author has borrowed the word from one of the

passage's footnoted sources.

50. In context, the word "colorless" (line 23) is best interpreted to mean

(A) humdrum and routine. (B) silent but full of action. (C) vague but creative. (D) crazy but meaningful. (E) gray and impressionistic.

Diagnostic Test 49 51. The primary purpose of footnote 3 (line 26) is to inform readers that

(A) Joseph LeDoux's main academic interest is "emotional vocabulary." (B) Joseph LeDoux wrote an article published in a science periodical. (C) Joseph LeDoux is the author of a book named Science. (D) the footnoted material has been adapted from words written by Joseph

LeDoux. (E) lines 24-26 were originally published in an article entitled "How Scary

Things Got That Way."

52. The author includes footnote 4 (line 33) in the text of the passage mainly to

(A) inform readers where the term alexithymia originated. (B) specify where the quotation in lines 30-32 can be found in print. (C) establish the academic credentials of an authority on the subject of

emotional responses. (D) suggest that several researchers have contributed to an understanding of

emotional responses. (E) indicate that alexithymia came into existence in 1972.

53. Which of the following is an inference that can be drawn based on information in footnote 5 (line 43)?

(A) An article by Ned Kalin was published after November, 1992. (B) The University of Wisconsin sponsored a meeting on affective

neuroscience. (C) Both Ned Kalin and Alan Schore have written about alexithymia. (D) "Aspects of Emotion Conserved Across Species" was published in New

Jersey. (E) In his book, Alan Schore cited words spoken by Ned Kalin at the meeting

on affective neuroscience.

54. The development of the passage can best be described as

(A) a discussion of physical symptoms related to a psychological problem. (B) the explanation of a psychological condition illustrated by specific cases. (C) an argument for employing therapy in order to overcome a psychological

disorder. (D) the outline of a procedure for treating a 20th-century mental disease. (E) an analysis of consequences stemming from a widespread mental

deficiency.

55. The attitude of the author toward people suffering from alexithymia is primarily one of

(A) indifference. (B) awe. (C) puzzlement. (D) compassion. (E) respect.