SAT Section One : Critical Reading Sample Questions:

1. Throughout history great civilizations including the Egyptians, Romans, and Greeks can trace their
downfalls to a certain societal ______ and general failing of moral values.

A) bliss
B) decadence
C) latitude
D) indifference
E) hierarchy

2. Sales literature that provide excessively complex and irrelevant numbers tend to ______ the real facts
and generate sales by causing buyers to accept ______ data in lieu of the real and truthful information so
hidden.

A) define. . .questionable
B) hide. . .rational
C) obscure. . .spurious
D) elucidate. . .faulty
E) confuse. . .representational

3. In conclusion, it seized first the corpse of the daughter, and thrust it up the chimney, as it was found; then
that of the old lady, which it immediately hurled through the window headlong. As the ape approached the
casement with its mutilated burden, the sailor shrank aghast to the rod, and, rather gliding than
clambering down it, hurried at once home--dreading the consequences of the butchery, and gladly
abandoning, in his terror, all solicitude about the fate of the Ourang-Outang. The words heard by the party
upon the staircase were the Frenchman's exclamations of horror and affright, commingled with the
fiendish jabberings of the brute.
I have scarcely anything to add. The Ourang-Outang must have escaped from the chamber, by the rod,
just before the break of the door. It must have closed the window as it passed through it. It was
subsequently caught by the owner himself, who obtained for it a very large sum at the Jardin des Plantes.
Le Don was instantly released, upon our narration of the circumstances (with some comments from Dupin)
at the bureau of the Prefect of Police. This functionary, however well disposed to my friend, could not
altogether conceal his chagrin at the turn which affairs had taken, and was fain to indulge in a sarcasm or
two, about the propriety of every person minding his own business.
Which selection best describes the action referred to by "break of the door" 2nd paragraph?

A) The party broke down the door.
B) The Ourang-Outang broke the door to gain entry.
C) The sailor broke into the chamber allowing the Ourang-Outang to follow.
D) The party entered through the door broken by the brute.
E) The door was broken into by using a rod.

4. He was held up to small children as an ______, one who is worthy of imitation, principally because of his
self-sacrificing dedication to helping others--clearly his ______ made him deserving of such claim.

A) enigma. . .heart
B) idol. . .immortality
C) exemplar. . .altruism
D) emancipator. . .thrift
E) egotist. . .devotion

5. This passage discusses the work of Abe Kobo, a Japanese novelist of the twentieth century.
Abe Kobo is one of the great writers of postwar Japan. His literature is richer, less predictable, and wider-
ranging than that of his famed contemporaries, Mishima Yukio and Nobel laureate Oe Kenzaburo. It is
infused with the passion and strangeness of his experiences in Manchuria, which was a Japanese colony
on mainland China before World War II.
Abe spent his childhood and much of his youth in Manchuria, and, as a result, the orbit of his work would
be far less controlled by the oppressive gravitational pull of the themes of furusato (hometown) and the
emperor than his contemporaries'.
Abe, like most of the sons of Japanese families living in Manchuria, did return to Japan for schooling. He
entered medical school in Tokyo in 1944--just in time to forge himself a medical certificate claiming ill
health; this allowed him to avoid fighting in the war that Japan was already losing and return to Manchuria.
When Japan lost the war, however, it also lost its Manchurian colony. The Japanese living there were
attacked by the Soviet Army and various guerrilla bands. They suddenly found themselves refugees,
desperate for food. Many unfit men were abandoned in the Manchurian desert. At this apocalyptic time,
Abe lost his father to cholera.
He returned to mainland Japan once more, where the young were turning to Marxism as a rejection of the
militarism of the war. After a brief, unsuccessful stint at medical school, he became part of a Marxist group
of avant-garde artists. His work at this time was passionate and outspoken on political matters, adopting
black humor as its mode of critique.
During this time, Abe worked in the genres of theater, music, and photography. Eventually, he
mimeographed fifty copies of his first "published" literary work, entitled Anonymous Poems, in 1947. It
was a politically charged set of poems dedicated to the memory of his father and friends who had died in
Manchuria. Shortly thereafter, he published his first novel, For a Signpost at the End of a Road, which
imagined another life for his best friend who had died in the Manchurian desert. Abe was also active in the
Communist Party, organizing literary groups for workingmen.
Unfortunately, most of this radical early work is unknown outside Japan and underappreciated even in
Japan. In early 1962, Abe was dismissed from the Japanese Liberalist Party. Four months later, he
published the work that would blind us to his earlier oeuvre, Woman in the Dunes. It was director
Teshigahara Hiroshi's film adaptation of Woman in the Dunes that brought Abe's work to the international
stage. The movie's fame has wrongly led readers to view the novel as Abe's masterpiece. It would be
more accurate to say that the novel simply marked a turning point in his career, when Abe turned away
from the experimental and heavily political work of his earlier career. Fortunately, he did not then turn to
furusato and the emperor after all, but rather began a somewhat more realistic exploration of his
continuing obsession with homelessness and alienation. Not completely a stranger to his earlier
commitment to Marxism, Abe turned his attention, beginning in the sixties, to the effects on the individual
of Japan's rapidly urbanizing, growth driven, increasingly corporate society.
From the sentence beginning "He entered medical school", it can be inferred that

A) illness would excuse one from military duty in World War II Japan.
B) sick people were sent to Manchuria during World War II.
C) Abe entered medical school because he was sick.
D) Abe never intended to practice medicine
E) Abe wanted to help the ill and injured in World War II, rather than fight.

Solutions: