Self-study
Actor: Bertolt Brecht's plays are not genuinely successful dramas. The roles in Brecht's plays express such incongruous motives and beliefs that audiences, as well as the actors playing the roles, invariably find it difficult, at best, to discern any of the characters' personalities. But, for a play to succeed as a drama, audiences must care what happens to at least some of its characters.
10.
The conclusion of the actor's argument can be properly drawn if which one of the following is assumed?
a
An audience that cannot readily discern a character's personality will not take any interest in that character.
In connection with the premises, (A) establishes that audiences don’t take any interest in the characters in Brecht’s plays. This implies that they won’t care about what happens to those characters, which in turn allows us to conclude that Brecht’s plays are not successful dramas.
b
A character's personality is determined primarily by the motives and beliefs of that character.
The issue is whether audience’s difficulty in discerning the characters’ personalities implies an audience doesn’t care about the characters. What determines the characters’ personality is irrelevant.
c
The extent to which a play succeeds as a drama is directly proportional to the extent to which the play's audiences care about its characters.
We already have as a premise the idea that succeeding as a drama requires that the audience cares about at least some of the plays’ characters. What’s missing is that we don’t have a way of establishing that the audience does not care about any characters in Brechts’ plays. (C) doesn’t provide us with that missing piece.
d
If the personalities of a play's characters are not readily discernible by the actors playing the roles, then those personalities are not readily discernible by the play's audience.
We already know that the audiences of Brecht’s plays find it difficult to discern any of the characters’ personalities. What matters is the relationship between this and audiences’ caring about the characters.
e
All plays that, unlike Brecht's plays, have characters with whom audiences empathize succeed as dramas.
(E) tells us that certain plays succeed as dramas. But we’re trying to prove that Brecht’s plays do NOT succeed as dramas.