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16.ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS Explanation for Correct Answer E : Choice (E) is correct. The narrator says that for her the painting is "like a poem" in that she can "recite" the painting from one end to the other, as one might the lines of a poem. In other words, she can call it to mind in its entirety, detail by detail. Explanation for Incorrect Answer A : Choice (A) is incorrect. At the point at which the narrator compares the painting to a poem, she is concerned with her own ability to hold onto the painting in her mind, not with sharing the pleasure she derives from the painting. Explanation for Incorrect Answer B : Choice (B) is incorrect. The passage suggests that the painting might be very important to the narrator's sense of identity, but not because the painting is "like a poem." The point of saying that the painting is "like a poem" is merely to suggest that it is a secure mental possession, just like a poem can be. Explanation for Incorrect Answer C : Choice (C) is incorrect. The passage does not suggest that poems represent the narrator's longing for beautiful objects, so it does not make sense to say that the painting is "like a poem" in this respect. The narrator's point is that just as she cannot lose poems that she knows by heart, she will also not lose the painting, because she knows it by heart, too. Explanation for Incorrect Answer D : Choice (D) is incorrect. The narrator's point about poems is not that that they make a powerful first impression but that, with familiarity, they can imprint themselves lastingly on the mind. It is in this respect that the painting strikes her as being "like a poem." 17
17.ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS Explanation for Correct Answer D : Choice (D) is correct. The narrator uses words and phrases like "grieved," "marry," "divorce," "fiercely possessive," and "saying my good-byes." This sort of language is usually reserved for talking about one's feelings for other human beings, and extending it to talk about one's feelings for an object puts that object on a special plane. So using this language emphasizes that selling the picture took a heavy emotional toll. Explanation for Incorrect Answer A : Choice (A) is incorrect. By the time the narrator starts talking about her reaction to having sold the painting, she stops talking about her relationship with its creator, as though it no longer mattered. None of the language of human interaction has anything to do with the narrator's feelings about Sheila Fell. Explanation for Incorrect Answer B : Choice (B) is incorrect. The narrator cannot have any difficulty in maintaining the painting because by this time in the narrative she has already sold it, so its maintenance is no longer her responsibility. Explanation for Incorrect Answer C : Choice (C) is incorrect. The narrator uses the word "divorce" to refer to the fact that she sold the painting. Since the divorce, in this sense, has already occurred, she cannot still feel under any pressure to bring it about. Explanation for Incorrect Answer E : Choice (E) is incorrect. The closing paragraphs are about the narrator's reaction to having sold the painting, to seeing it again in a Sheila Fell Exhibition, and to the likelihood that she was not going to see it again. Throughout, the focus is firmly and exclusively on the painting. What the painting depicts―a rural scene in Cumberland―is not mentioned in the closing paragraphs. 18
18.ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS Explanation for Correct Answer C : Choice (C) is correct. The passage is focused on the narrator's emotions as a painting is purchased, then displayed first in one home and then in another, sold, seen again at an exhibition, and finally disappears into the inaccessibility of a private collection. The narrator is ill at ease on her way to purchase the painting. Then she feels she is short-changing the painting through lack of an adequate display space. She sells the painting and immediately deeply regrets having done so. She has conflicted feelings when encountering the painting again in an exhibition, and finally consoles herself with the thought that the painting will always live on in her mind. Explanation for Incorrect Answer A : Choice (A) is incorrect. The passage does suggest that the artist, in creating the painting, drew on a background of having grown up in Cumberland, but this theme is not developed in any way. Explanation for Incorrect Answer B : Choice (B) is incorrect. There is no suggestion in the passage that Sheila Fell is, or was, controversial as an artist. There is nothing in the passage that is offered in defense of her or her work. Explanation for Incorrect Answer D : Choice (D) is incorrect. The passage acknowledges the fact that paintings are bought and sold. But it does not go into the economic side of art. The focus of the passage is squarely on the narrator's emotions in connection with the painting she bought. Explanation for Incorrect Answer E : Choice (E) is incorrect. The narrator's focus is on her own feelings and thoughts in relation to a specific painting. There is a part of the passage (lines 46-51) that even suggests that she begrudged other people the enjoyment of that painting. There is nothing to suggest that the narrator is looking at that painting as a representative of an artistic genre that she might wish others to become interested in. 19
19.ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS Explanation for Correct Answer E : Choice (E) is correct. The passage begins by presenting "the new light engineering" of the twentieth century and the early airplanes that were its product, as tapping into "humanity's ancient dream of freeing itself from gravity" (lines 25-26). The passage closes with examples of the kind of enthusiastic reaction people had to this unprecedented feat of engineering, which they saw as a kind of poetry. Therefore, the main focus of the passage is how early aviation captured people's imaginations. Explanation for Incorrect Answer A : Choice (A) is incorrect. The passage does talk about the Wright brothers: a quote from one writer shows Wilbur's fascination with the flight of birds, and a biographer is quoted as saying that Wilbur Wright was "deeply middle-class and unheroic" (lines 47-48). But there is no sustained effort to give an overall picture of the personalities of either of the Wright brothers, or of any other aviation pioneers. The passage focuses much more on the fascination other people had with the Wright brothers than on what the brothers were actually like. Explanation for Incorrect Answer B : Choice (B) is incorrect. The passage quotes part of a poem about flight. But this poem is from the seventeenth century, well before the beginning of the twentieth century, when the first airplanes were created. Elsewhere, the author of the passage says that "the new light engineering that allowed people to fly seemed to the uninitiated a kind of poetry" (lines 37-39). But here "poetry" is used metaphorically. Nowhere is there a discussion of any contemporary poetry whose theme is flight. Explanation for Incorrect Answer C : Choice (C) is incorrect. The passage does not consider what effects aviation had on people's lifestyles. Rather, its focus is on the intellectual and emotional appeal of early aviation. Explanation for Incorrect Answer D : Choice (D) is incorrect. The passage makes no attempt to explain any principles of flight. It talks about the engineering involved in developing early airplanes only in very general terms, describing it as being "about lightness" (line 10) in contrast with the engineering of the previous century, which was "about weight and brute power" (line 5). The focus of the passage is on the idea of flight in people's imaginations rather than on the scientific and practical realities of flight. 20
20.ANSWERS AND EXPLANATIONS Explanation for Correct Answer C : Choice (C) is correct. The steam engine is presented as the perfect example of the engineering of the nineteenth century. That engineering, according to the author, "was about weight and brute power" (line 5). Explanation for Incorrect Answer A : Choice (A) is incorrect. The passage describes the engineering that went into early airplanes as "utterly different from that of the Industrial Revolution" (lines 2-3). The steam engine is introduced as the perfect example of the engineering of the Industrial Revolution, so the engineering that went into the steam engine cannot have served as a model for aviation engineers. Explanation for Incorrect Answer B : Choice (B) is incorrect. The impact of the Industrial Revolution on travel is never mentioned. The steam engine, a product of the Industrial Revolution, is introduced in the passage only as a contrast to the airplane and the new type of engineering that produced it. Explanation for Incorrect Answer D : Choice (D) is incorrect. The steam engine is presented as the perfect example of nineteenth-century engineering. It is intended to illustrate the nineteenth-century preoccupation with solidity, brute power, and durability. So the steam engine could not have been intended to illustrate anything about twentieth-century preoccupations. Explanation for Incorrect Answer E : Choice (E) is incorrect. The value and efficiency of the steam engine in transportation are not considered anywhere in the passage. The steam engine is introduced as the perfect example of a style of engineering that focused on "weight and brute power." It is described in the passage only to provide a contrast to the engineering that produced the early airplanes. | 
