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ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS Explanation for Correct Answer A : Choice (A) is correct. The narrator, by locating Jerry's lying in "our insignificant place," indicates that these lies are not being told at a crossroads of history with potentially momentous consequences. As important as these lies are to Jerry, they are unlikely to have wider significance. Explanation for Incorrect Answer B : Choice (B) is incorrect. The phrase "in our insignificant place" suggests that Jerry's lies are unlikely to have wide repercussions. It does not suggest anything about how commonplace Jerry's kinds of lies are in Africa, nor does it suggest anything about Jerry's awareness of how common it is for people in Africa to lie in just the way he did. Explanation for Incorrect Answer C : Choice (C) is incorrect. The reference to "our insignificant place" has nothing to do with whether Jerry was able to distinguish between reality and fantasy. There is independent evidence in Passage 1 that Jerry was quite able to distinguish between reality and fantasy. To calibrate exactly what lies he could safely get away with, he had to be able to tell how great the distance was between the fantasy he was creating and reality. The "modest calculations" mentioned in line 6 had to be anchored in reality. Explanation for Incorrect Answer D : Choice (D) is incorrect. The narrator does not in any way touch on the subject of his own reputation. Explanation for Incorrect Answer E : Choice (E) is incorrect. The narrator does call the way Jerry behaves "a bizarre spectacle" (line 15), but this is not the same as saying that the behavior is "silly." In any event, however, the judgment that lies like Jerry's are a "bizarre spectacle" is independent of whether the place where such lies are told is insignificant or not. 12
ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS Explanation for Correct Answer A : Choice (A) is correct. Passage 1 indicates that Jerry wanted to stay in Africa because after telling lies about himself for a while he did not wish to be confronted with the truth, and in Africa no one could dispute the social status he had claimed for himself. Explanation for Incorrect Answer B : Choice (B) is incorrect. Jerry's lies were related to social status, and the passage says that Jerry "was always believed." So Passage 1 gives every indication that in Africa Jerry was given "the social acceptance that he craved." Explanation for Incorrect Answer C : Choice (C) is incorrect. Passage 1 suggests that he was treated with more respect in Africa, where he was able to pass himself off as "a wealthy Bostonian," than in America, where the truth of his more humble background had to be faced. Explanation for Incorrect Answer D : Choice (D) is incorrect. Passage 1 does not specifically talk about how Jerry felt about family and social obligations. It suggests, though, that Jerry would not have objected to the social obligations of a person who belonged to the social class he was pretending to be a member of. Explanation for Incorrect Answer E : Choice (E) is incorrect. Passage 1 does not suggest that Jerry placed any significant value on being free to have friends from a variety of social backgrounds. He is described as ambitious, as being concerned with his social position, and as wishing to be seen as "a wealthy Bostonian, from a family of some distinction" (lines 26-27). This suggests, in fact, that he might have been interested in befriending people from carefully selected backgrounds only. 13
ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS Explanation for Correct Answer D : Choice (D) is correct. Jerry's attitude to social class is simple and unchanging: he wants to rise from his own modest social class to the social class of "a wealthy Bostonian, from a family of some distinction" (lines 26-27). The narrator of Passage 2, on the other hand, finds that he must abandon the idea that he belongs to the social class of his childhood. At the same time he realizes that he does not feel at home in the middle class, either, even though middle-class people seem ready to accept him as one of their own. His attitude toward social class has become seriously conflicted. Explanation for Incorrect Answer A : Choice (A) is incorrect. The narrator of Passage 2 does not say anything about returning to the United States. Explanation for Incorrect Answer B : Choice (B) is incorrect. The narrator of Passage 2 finds that he has advanced into the middle class without particularly trying to. He has not truly accepted this advancement, but he does not think it is impossible, or even difficult, to obtain. Explanation for Incorrect Answer C : Choice (C) is incorrect. The narrator of Passage 2 does not say anything to support the idea that he has rediscovered his love for his childhood home. He calls himself a child from the slums but observes that as a grown-up he seemed to be a stranger there. Explanation for Incorrect Answer E : Choice (E) is incorrect. Passage 2 gives no indication that the narrator ever lied about his background. He worries that his British hosts may not have the right idea about that background but, if so, the reason would be "their ignorance of American types," not any lies he told. 14
ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS Explanation for Correct Answer D : Choice (D) is correct. The narrator shifts from feeling anxious that he might betray himself to a determination to show his real self, and no longer to be guarded about what he said or did. The point was that he wanted to make sure that he was not accepted by his hosts only because they were unable to see who he really was. Explanation for Incorrect Answer A : Choice (A) is incorrect. The narrator is puzzled about his hosts' motivation for including him in dinner parties, and he then decides to try to correct any misperceptions on their part. But this is not a shift from suspicion to mistrust. The motives that the narrator imagines his hosts having are boredom and ignorance, not the kinds of motives that would make him suspicious or distrustful. Explanation for Incorrect Answer B : Choice (B) is incorrect. There is no evidence of any "estrangement," because there is no evidence of any earlier easy familiarity. There is polite distance, but this distance remains. No "sense of camaraderie" develops even after the narrator has concluded that his hosts like him. Explanation for Incorrect Answer C : Choice (C) is incorrect. The narrator does not end up feeling "despondent," or hopeless. Rather, he notes with interest that his hosts' behavior towards him does not change, and he continues to speculate about why they accepted him. Explanation for Incorrect Answer E : Choice (E) is incorrect. The narrator has all along been aware of, and accepted, the social status he was born into. What he worries about is the possibility that his hosts may not realize what this social status is, and that he may not have given them clear enough clues to this social status in the way he has been acting. 15
ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS Explanation for Correct Answer E : Choice (E) is correct. The narrator suggests that there are hosts whose lives are boring and who depend on their guests to inject some "vitality" into their existence. This is the sense in which they "feast on any new stranger." Explanation for Incorrect Answer A : Choice (A) is incorrect. The statement in lines 44-45 makes it likely that the narrator thinks that some hosts rely on their guests for gossip. There is nothing in that statement to suggest that it works the other way around, that is, that guests rely on their hosts for gossip. So the hosts would have no reason to resent their guests for relying on them for gossip. Explanation for Incorrect Answer B : Choice (B) is incorrect. The types of people that the statement in lines 44-45 is about are "bored, dried-up people" who invite new guests to entertain and divert them. The narrator does not say anything about whether such people are concerned about the impression that they make on their guests. Explanation for Incorrect Answer C : Choice (C) is incorrect. Neither in lines 44-45 nor anywhere else in the passage is there any suggestion that one of the things that hosts do to guests is make them feel inferior. Thus, there is also no suggestion that hosts get satisfaction from doing this. Explanation for Incorrect Answer D : Choice (D) is incorrect. Hosts who "feast on any new stranger" seem to be tacitly admitting that they find their own lives dull. | 
