SAT Reading & Writing · Central Ideas and Details
A literary critic notes that a novelist introduces a minor character as boastful and unreliable, encouraging readers to discount his…
A literary critic notes that a novelist introduces a minor character as boastful and unreliable, encouraging readers to discount his account of a fire. Later chapters quietly confirm several details that only this character had reported. The novel never makes him fully trustworthy; instead, it forces readers to revise the assumption that an unreliable speaker is unreliable in every particular.
Which choice best states the main idea of the text?
Which choice best states the main idea of the text?
Answer and explanation
Answer: A: The novel shows that a generally unreliable character may still provide some accurate information.
The critic's point is that later confirmation of specific details complicates, without fully reversing, the character's unreliable reputation, which is exactly the partial correction A describes. B contradicts the passage, which states later chapters confirm the fire's details, not that it never happened. C overstates the passage into a sweeping rule about all boastful characters that the passage never states. D invents a plot detail about narration the passage never mentions.
More Central Ideas and Details questions
- Question 3A historian examining merchant correspondence from an eighteenth-century port found repeated…
- Question 9In a poem, the speaker describes repairing a watch inherited from a parent. Each time the watch…
- Question 27A museum placed short labels beside several abstract paintings. Visitors who read the labels spent…
- Question 35A botanist studying alpine plants notes that several species open their flowers only during a…
- Question 36When a city library eliminated overdue fines for children’s books, the number of long-overdue…
- Question 59In a nineteenth-century novel, a young clerk repeatedly walks past an expensive restaurant on his…
Learn the method behind questions like this one
The SAT Reading & Writing course teaches each tested skill through lessons, step-by-step solutions to sample problems, the complete study guide and full-length practice tests.