12.Practice.Tests.for.the.SAT_2015-2016_1128p

330
Section 3
Practice Test Four
Questions I 0-19 are based on the following passage.
The fo llowing is taken from the introduction to a piece
on the literary themes of the American author Kurt
Vonnegut, Jr.
After World War I (which was, at the time,
known simply as the "Great War"), a new era
began in art and literature. The movement was
Line called Modernism, and though we still use the
(5) word modern to refer to the present day, the
true Modernist movement mostly took place
between about 1915 and 1940. The movement
was not entirely an outgrowth of the "Great
War," but many of its themes can be traced back
( 1 O) to the war and the feelings that pervaded public
culture during its aftermath. Modernism took
on the sense of a loss of innocence; it relays the
disillusionment of those who have suddenly
realized that the world is much scarier and lonelier
(15) than they had previously imagined it to be. Gone
were the proper manners and happy endings of
the Victorian novel. Instead, modern novels were
often depressing, sometimes lewd, and often nearly
incomprehensible; in forging a style that conveys
(20) the sense of being "cut off' from previous art and
history, Modernists often created works so unlike
their predecessors that they were inaccessible to the
general public.
The next major artistic movement was also
(25) closely tied to the global climate of its time;
Postmodernism, as it became known, rose from
the ashes of the Second World War. In American
circles particularly, Postmodernist thought was
also influenced by an underlying feeling of para-
(30) noia from the mounting threat of the Cold War,
and later on it absorbed the political uprisings
against the continuation of the Vietnam War.
Though less closely knit as a movement than
Modernism, Postmodernism continued to be
(35) increasingly experimental in style and, though
sometimes playful, it lacked the saccharine optimism
we see in Leave It to Beaver, Happy Days,
and other pop culture depictions of the decades
following World War II.
( 40) Both Modernists and Postmodernists were
concerned with the role of the artist. Although it
is hard to make sweeping generalizations about
either movement, it is probably fair to say that on
the whole, Modernists were concerned with art
(45) for art's sake, whereas more Postmodernists were
likely to consider their works as a way of commenting
on the state of society. The works of one
Postmodern writer, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., reflect
some aspects of both artistic movements. His
( 50) style, in most of his more influential novels, is distinctive;
the writing is split up into many different
fragments of prose, averaging perhaps a page or
_
less in length. The stories he tells are often nonlmear,
jumping around in time, place, and character
(55) between each chunk of text. This style is thought
to be reflective of the fragmentation of society,
a concept dear to the hearts of Modernists and
Postmodernists alike.
Though some critics may, not entirely without
( 60) justification, characterize Vonnegut as a cynic, I
see more optimism in his works than in those of
some of his Postmodern contemporaries, many
of whom freely acknowledge the fragmentation
and seeming chaos of Postmodern existence as
( 65) something to accept and, oddly enough, revel in.
Vonnegut claims in his most well-known book,
Slaughterhouse-Five, that he is writing in the style
of a Tralfamadorian novel, referring to an imaginary
alien species that is supposedly capable of
(70) seeing through time as well as space. According
to Vonnegut, such a novel appears disjointed to
human readers when read from beginning to end;
a Tralfamadorian, on the other hand, is able to
look through time and see all the pieces at once
(75) coming together into a single brilliant point of
clarity and truth. In this way, Vonnegut seems to
suggest that the appearance of fragmentation ,
an?
chaos in our society is largely due to humans failure
to achieve the proper perspective, and that the
( 80) role of the artist is to bring together the proper
points in order to reveal the order and beauty
behind it all. For such a Postmodern writer, these
are in fact two very modern ideas.
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