[…]Their lives were projected as dim, ordinary, law-abiding shadows, against which were contrasted the bold-hued dramas of the principals. These were the “decent folk,” whom the heroic law-(50) men died for; they were the meek who would inherit the set after the leading actors left and the last wild cowboy was interred in Boot Hill. Colorless, sober, conservative, salt-of-the-earth, they represented the future—and a dull one it (55) was. Occasionally, as in the film High Noon, their passive virtues were transmogrified into hypocrisy and timidity, mocking the lonely courage of the marshal they had hired to risk
his life for them. The implication was: Are (60) these dull, cautious folk really the worthy heirs of the noble cowboys? In Steven Crane’s short story The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky, the last cowboy is a drunken anachronism, wearing his nobility in tatters, yet not to be (65) scorned.
11. The allusion to the cowboy in The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky (lines 62–65) is meant to show that
(A) the people rejected the heroes of the Old West
(B) many of the myths of the Old West were false
© the legendary heroes of the Old West became obsolete
(D) drunkenness and reckless behavior tarnished the image of the heroic cowboys of the Old West
(E) all glamorous and romantic eras eventually die out.
I chose E. Why is the answer C? Didn’t the author said that even though tattered, the last cowboy is yet not to be scorned?
@synonyms, you have been one of the only repliers on the critical reading thread that I started so I felt obligated to reply!
I don’t think you would ever see anything like this on the SAT. This passage is too hard (or at least this part is too hard to appear on its own…I am not sure if there was other surrounding context). And I think the question itself is not great because I agree that it is hard to infer that based on the context. I could see choice C being correct, but more because the other answers seem incorrect than because that is a clear inference that can be drawn.
What I will say, though, is that choice E is definitely too broad and is a good example of a typical “outside the scope” type of wrong answer.
Thank you for your help. Here’s the full passage:
The populating of nearly one billion acres of empty land west of the Mississippi occurred in a series of peristaltic waves, beginning in Line the 1840s and continuing for the rest of the (5) century. First to arrive was the advance guard, the trailblazers—explorers, trappers, and mountain men, hide and tallow traders, freelance adventurers, the military. Then the settlers in their wagon trains lumbering over the (10) Oregon Trail to the lush meadows of the Oregon Territory and the inland valleys of California. Next, the gold-seekers, bowling across the plains and deserts pell-mell in 1848, working up and down the California mountain (15) ranges, then backtracking to the gold and silver country in the Rockies and the Southwest. And finally, a last great wave, first by wagons, then by railroads, to mop up the leapfrogged Great Plains. By 1890 the great movement (20) west was over, ending in a final hurrahing stampede of boomers into Oklahoma Territory, a rush of humanity that created entire towns in an afternoon.
The vast, empty land demanded new tools, (25) new social organizations, new men and women. And it produced a new canon of myths and heroes—the stuff of countless dime novels, Wild West shows, movies, and television series for later generations. The heroes (30) are familiar enough—the cowboys, the law- men, the gamblers, the gold-hearted dance-hall girls, the bad men too, for heroes need evil to conquer. The western town played a part, too, mainly as backdrop and chorus, (35) before which the central figures enacted their agon (struggle; contest). The fictional western
town was as rigidly formalized as the set for a Japanese No play—the false-front stores on a dusty street lined with hitching rails, the (40) saloons with bar, gambling tables, and stage for the dancers, the general store, the jail, and the church. The people of the chorus had a stereotypical form—women in crinolines and the men in frock coats and string ties, their (45) striped pants tucked into boots. Their lives were projected as dim, ordinary, law-abiding shadows, against which were contrasted the bold-hued dramas of the principals. These were the “decent folk,” whom the heroic law-(50) men died for; they were the meek who would inherit the set after the leading actors left and the last wild cowboy was interred in Boot Hill. Colorless, sober, conservative, salt-of-the-earth, they represented the future—and a dull one it (55) was. Occasionally, as in the film High Noon, their passive virtues were transmogrified into hypocrisy and timidity, mocking the lonely courage of the marshal they had hired to risk his life for them. The implication was: Are (60) these dull, cautious folk really the worthy heirs of the noble cowboys? In Steven Crane’s short story The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky, the last cowboy is a drunken anachronism, wearing his nobility in tatters, yet not to be (65) scorned.
I can now see that E is too broad, but I still can’t see C being right. Honestly, I only chose E in the first place because I consider all the others to be incorrect.
The only thing I can see that points to “obsolete” is “anachronism.”
I agree with @reasonsat–(E) is too broad, but © is also flawed, and the passage as a whole doesn’t resemble real SAT passages as it’s both too academic and too impressionistic (academic passages can appear; impressionistic passages can appear; I’ve never seen a passage that had both qualities to this degree).
Based on the responses above it seems clear that you’ll have more efficient prep if you use real CB materials
Definitely. If you really needed additional resources I think Erica Meltzer’s book is better in terms of the quality of the passages and questions, but even some of her questions ride the line a little in terms of being a little ambiguous (i.e., having 2 answers that could technically be right or maybe no answers that would really match a correct answer on the actual SAT). So I would stick with official resources as much as you can.
Thank you all for your help.