ShmoopTube

Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.

Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos

AP English Literature and Composition 1.5 Passage Drill 2 236 Views


Share It!


Description:

AP English Literature and Composition 1.5 Passage Drill 2. What is the grammatical referent of the word "it" in the phrase "that it should have any character at all"?

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:03

To shmoop or not to shmoop, that... is not this question...

00:11

Yeah, you've already read this passage... but it gets better the fifth time, we promise.

00:36

What is the grammatical referent of the word "it" in the phrase "that it should have

00:43

any character at all"? And here are the potential answers...

00:49

Okay, so what is this question asking?

00:51

First of all... what's a referent? Aren't those the guys throwing yellow flags on Monday

00:55

Night Football?

00:59

Close. A referent is something that... refers to something else.

01:04

So this question wants to know what "it" is. Really, the best way to find the solution

01:11

is to replace the "it" with each of our choices, and see which one makes the most sense.

01:17

Society and divine nature are mentioned, but they're both part of prepositional phrases,

01:22

so they won't work in this context. We can nix B and D.

01:26

C won't work because Bacon is comparing "it" to being a savage beast... so it wouldn't

01:32

make any sense for our answer to be "a savage beast.

01:38

And yeah, Bacon is talking about solitude quite a bit here, but in this case it's not

01:42

the referent. Instead, he's really talking about the "aversation to society."

01:47

If we replace the "it," we get:

01:51

"For it is most true, that a natural and secret hatred, and aversation towards society, in

01:56

any man, hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue, that aversation towards

02:03

society should have any character at all."

02:07

It's a little repetitious this way, but says the same thing.

02:10

Our answer is E.

02:10

Good. Now we can focus on our aversation towards words like "aversation..."

Up Next

AP English Literature and Composition 1.2 Passage Drill 4
842 Views

AP English Literature and Composition 1.2 Passage Drill 4. As which of the following is the object being personified?

Related Videos

AP English Literature and Composition 1.4 Passage Drill 3
515 Views

AP English Literature and Composition 1.4 Passage Drill 3. How is Burne's view of pacifism best characterized in lines 57 through 67?

AP English Literature and Composition 1.6 Passage Drill 5
245 Views

AP English Literature and Composition 1.6 Passage Drill 5. Death is primarily characterized as what?

AP English Literature and Composition 1.7 Passage Drill 5
239 Views

AP English Literature and Composition 1.7 Passage Drill 5. Which line indicates the turn or shift in this poem?

AP English Literature and Composition 1.9 Passage Drill 4
259 Views

AP English Literature and Composition 1.9 Passage Drill 4. Lines 32-34 are best understood to mean what?