PT94.S2.Q08 - Confused

campbellatoth

Can someone explain why E is correct? I feel like B should be the best answer...

Admin Note: Edited title.

Mary - Student Service

Hi @campbellatoth, for the community to better assist you, may I know the PrepTest, section and number of your question?

For LR questions, please use the title format: "PT#.S#.Q# - brief description of the question."

Thank you!

campbellatoth

@"Mary - Student Service"
It's PT94, S2, Q08 - it's about a historian's argument regarding the ways in which history is learned.
Thanks!

alexaleknaz

The historian essentially argues that a democracy's citizens are not adequately "prepared" for when democracy may encounter challenges because those citizens' historical awareness is distorted. What exactly distorts it, though? According to the historian, it's the study of history through popular narratives that employ a certain overly broad narrative device (namely, that of "heroes and villains")

Where (B) fails is that it attacks the form through which citizens are misled by that device, not the device itself. What about historical narratives that don't reduce history to "heroes and villains"?

To illustrate, Les Misérables, for its length, cannot possibly be completely historically accurate to the Parisian Rebellion of 1832, in large part because it focuses primarily on "heroes" (Jean Valjean, Fantine, Cosette, Marius, and so on). It still seems like a more interesting experience than, say, 10,000 pages accounting for every little detail about that rebellion, right? The fact is, though, that our perception of the rebellion ends up a little more distorted after reading Les Misérables than it would after reading a giant stack of an objective narrative covering all details of the rebellion.

It follows, then, that if you read so many of those "hero histories" over purely objective narratives, you will most likely start to see all history as "hero history." That's precisely what the historian addresses and precisely why (E) is correct.