AP English Language and Composition
The Things They Carried Unit Test
Lawrynovicz
Spring 2016
Form: Lemon
KEY
Character Quote Identification: Match the quotation with the person who said it. Yes, technically O’Brien
wrote the whole book, and there are places where others are relating a story, or even where the character is
imagined as speaking, but please identify the most immediate speaker, the person to whom the quotation is
actually attributed in the book. Answer options may be used once, more than once, or not at all.
1. “You want my opinion, there’s a definite moral here.” Mitchell Sanders
2. “I’ll tell you the straight truth. The guy was dead the second he stepped
on the trail. Understand me? We all had him zeroed. A good kill—
weapon, ammunition, everything.” Kiowa
3. “Some dumb thing happens a long time ago and you can’t ever forget
it.” Kathleen
4. “Sometimes I want to eat this place. The whole country—the dirt, the
death—I just want to swallow it and have it there inside me. That’s how I
feel. It’s like this appetite. I get scared sometimes—lots of times—but
it’s not bad. You know?” Mary Anne
5. “All that had to be there for a reason. That’s how stories work, man.”
Mitchell Sanders
6. “If you want, you can use the stuff in this letter. (But not my real name,
okay?) I’d write it myself except I can’t ever find any words, if you know
what I mean, and I can’t figure out what exactly to say.” Norman Bowker
7. “All right, but dance right.” Henry Dobbins
8. “Brings back memories, I bet—those happy soldiering days. Except now
you’re a has-been. One of those American Legion types, guys who like to
dress up in a nifty uniform and go out and play at it. Pitiful.” Azar
a. O’Brien
b. Azar
c. Kiowa
d. Rat Kiley
e. Norman Bowker
ab. Mitchell Sanders
cd. Jimmy Cross
de. Henry Dobbins
ad. Bobby Jorgenson
ac. Lee Strunk
ae. Dave Jensen
bc. Curt Lemon
bd. Sally
be. Linda
ce. Kathleen
abc. Martha
bcd. Mary Anne
Multiple Choice: Carefully read the questions and all answer options before making a choice. All questions have
only one answer unless otherwise indicated.
9. All of the following are included in O’Brien’s rules for how to tell a true war story EXCEPT
a. it cannot have a moral
d. it embarrasses you
b. it is never about war
e. it has to have some kernel of happening-truth
c. it never seems to end
in it
10. In some ways, both ____ act as stand-ins for the audience, voicing opinions about storytelling that
O’Brien disagrees with (and ultimately wants the reader to disagree with).
a. Rat Kiley and Norman Bowker
d. Mitchell Sanders and Kathleen
b. Martha and Mary Anne
e. Linda and Henry Dobbins
c. Azar and Kiowa
11. Of the different soldiers, whose coping mechanism never really fails him or ends up twisting him?
a. O’Brien’s
d. Norman Bowker’s
b. Azar’s
e. Henry Dobbins’
c. Jimmy Cross’s
12. In the opening chapter, O’Brien writes, “At various times in various situations, they carried M-14s
and CAR-15s and Swedish Ks and grease guns and captured AK-47s and Chi-Coms and RPGs and
Simonov carbines and black market Uzis and .38 caliber Smith and Wesson handguns and 66 mm
LAWs and shotguns and silencers and blackjacks and bayonets and C-4 plastic explosives.” Which of
the following is NOT true of this sentence?
a. it contains polysyndeton, which makes the
d. it emphasizes the haphazard, disorganized
list seem even more lengthy
nature of the infantryman’s war experience
b. it contains jargon that makes O’Brien seem
e. it hints at an almost illegal quality of the war
more credible
c. it contains epistrophe, which gives the
sentence a frantic, breathless quality
13. Which of the following are NOT parallels in The Things They Carried?
a. The relationship between Lee Strunk and
d. Kiowa’s death and the “burying” of his
Dave Jensen, and the one between O’Brien and moccasins
Bobby Jorgenson
e. the deaths of Ted Lavender and the baby
b. The empty eyes of Martha and Mary Jane
buffalo
c. Cross and O’Brien focusing obsessively on
pictures of women who are not their girlfriends
14. O’Brien’s structure helps him accomplish which of his purposes?
a. making it seem as if the dead are still alive
d. all of the above
b. getting the “real truth” of being a soldier in
e. only A and B
Vietnam across to the reader
ac. only A and C
c. confusing the readers about the facts so that
bc. only B and C
they will seek out more information about
Vietnam and educate themselves
15. O’Brien argues that language is a powerful tool, and that it was used by [Mark ALL that apply]
a. soldiers to distance themselves from the
d. the soldiers to hide fear by making them
reality of death by dehumanizing the dead
sound tough
b. Jimmy Cross to convince his men that he
e. O’Brien and the soldiers to bring the dead
knew what he was doing when he actually had
back to life
no idea what the proper procedures were
c. politicians to manipulate O’Brien into
believing that the war was morally right
16. In “Love,” O’Brien writes, “At one point, I remember, we paused over a snapshot of Ted Lavender,
and after a while Jimmy rubbed his eyes and said he’d never forgiven himself for Lavender’s death.
It was something that would never go away, he said quietly, and I nodded and told him I felt the same
about certain things.” Given the rest of the book, what does O’Brien likely have in mind when he
says “certain things”?
a. the death of Kiowa
d. what he said to Elroy before he left
b. not ever telling Linda how he felt about her
e. how he failed to write Henry Dobbins’ story
c. shaking the dead man’s hand
correctly the first time
17. How is Henry Dobbins making the washing motion with his hands in “Church” different from Azar’s
dancing in “Style”?
a. Dobbins is trying to make Kiowa laugh
d. Dobbins does it out of respect for the monks
while Azar is trying to humiliate Dobbins
while Azar is mocking the girl
b. Azar doesn’t understand why the girl was
e. Dobbins is imitating something without
dancing while Dobbins knows what the
understanding it completely while Azar knows
washing motion means
what the dancing means
c. Dobbins is mocking the monks while Azar is
trying to cheer up Rat Kiley
18. In “Spin,” O’Brien relays Mitchell Sanders’ story about a soldier who went AWOL and “shacks up in
Danang with a Red Cross nurse.” But then later the soldier “rejoins his unit in the bush. Can’t wait to
get back into action. Finally one of his buddies asks what happened with the nurse, why so hot for
combat, and the guy says, ‘All that peace, man, it felt so good it hurt. I want to hurt it back.’” This
story most closely parallels
a. Azar blowing up the puppy
d. Rat Kiley going to Japan
b. Mary Anne’s transformation
e. O’Brien’s experience in “Ghost Soldiers”
c. What happens to Dave Jensen when he
returns to the U.S.
19. O’Brien spends a great deal of time trying to redefine courage and cowardice. Towards which part of
his audience is this argument about courage and cowardice mostly directed? Why?
a. those who fought in Vietnam; because they
d. those who opposed the war by protesting; because
could not have understood what real cowardice he wants to point out that they fundamentally
was at the time
misunderstood the nature of the war
b. those who didn’t fight in Vietnam; because
e. those who dodged the draft during the war;
they would likely have misconceptions about
because he wants to point out that they, too, were
cowardice in war, and O’Brien wants to correct wrong about what bravery really was
those
c. those who supported the Vietnam war;
because he wants them to realize the terrible
consequences of their actions
20. The Charlotte Observer published a review of The Things They Carried that included the lines “It
will be nominated for prizes, but I wonder if any prize will do it justice. Maybe a silver star for telling
the truth that never happened.” The idea that the book deserves one of the military’s most prestigious
combat medals suggests that the reviewer agrees with O’Brien’s argument
a. that happening-truth is more important than
d. that truth is a fluid thing, and what really
absolute occurrence
matters is if you felt like you were a hero
b. that telling the story-truth may be an act of
e. that life itself is just as much a war as the
bravery that saves lives
Vietnam war, and sometimes just surviving is
c. that letting go of Kiowa was not an act of
an act of courage
cowardice, nor something of which he should
be ashamed
21. O’Brien mentions several instances in which he rewrites stories/the past, and in each instance he
explains the purpose(s) for the revisions. Which of the following is NOT a reason he ever gives?
a. to atone for failures he made in earlier
d. to make himself the hero of the story, when
versions
at heart he is a coward
b. to help him forgive himself
e. to get the real truth across to others
c. so that he can be brave and face what he
couldn’t when he was in Vietnam
22. For what purposes does O’Brien write the chapter “On the Rainy River”? [Mark ALL that apply]
a. to explain why he went to war
d. to confess something of which he is ashamed
b. to criticize Jimmy Cross’s choices in
e. to confront his now dead father who was so
comparison to his own
disappointed in him
c. as a gesture of gratitude towards Elroy
23. What would O’Brien most likely say to readers who want to know which of the events or people in
the book are actually real?
a. That he, Kiowa, and Norman Bowker were
d. You have missed the point of the book. The
real, although some of the events and other
point is not to learn about the absolute
people were changed
occurrences, but to understand the way the
b. The book is a work of fiction; none of it is
soldiers felt
true
e. The people are all real, but their names and
c. There is no such thing as objective truth; we some of the events have been altered to protect
all experience our own version of truth, none
them
being more real than others
Matching: Match the objects below with the person who carried them.
24.
25.
26.
27.
His girlfriend’s pantyhose
Henry Dobbins
Tranquilizers
Ted Lavender
Letters, two pictures, and a pebble Jimmy Cross
An illustrated New Testament Kiowa
a. O’Brien
b. Azar
c. Kiowa
d. Rat Kiley
e. Norman Bowker
ab. Mitchell Sanders
cd. Jimmy Cross
de. Henry Dobbins
ad. Bobby Jorgenson
ac. Lee Strunk
ae. Dave Jensen
bc. Ted Lavender
bd. Curt Lemon
Use the excerpt below from Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War to answer the question that follows.
The hallucination I had had that day in the mess, of seeing Mora and Harrison prefigured in death, had
become a constant, waking nightmare. I had begun to see almost everyone as they would look in death,
including myself. Shaving in the mirror in the morning, I could see myself dead, and there were moments
when I not only saw my own corpse, but other people looking at it. I saw life going on without me. The
sensation of not being anymore came over me at night, just before falling asleep…I was sure that another
few months of identifying bodies would land me in the psychiatric ward.
28. The paragraph above most closely resembles O’Brien’s description of what happens to
a. Curt Lemon
d. Norman Bowker
b. Rat Kiley
e. Kiowa
c. O’Brien himself
Use the passage below from Michael Herr’s nonfiction book Dispatches (1977) to answer the
questions that follow.
[When discussing the reasons that reporters and soldiers were in Vietnam, Herr writes that people gave
reasons such as…]
Hearts and Minds, Peoples of the Republic, tumbling dominoes, maintaining the equilibrium of the
Dingdong by containing the ever encroaching Doodah; you could also hear the other, some young soldier
speaking in all bloody innocence, saying “All that’s just a load, man. We’re here to kill gooks. Period.”
Which wasn’t at all true of me. I was there to watch.
5 Talk about impersonating an identity, about locking into a role, about irony: I went to cover the war and
the war covered me; an old story, unless of course you’ve never heard it. I went there behind the crude but
serious belief that you had to be able to look at anything, serious because I acted on it and went, crude
because I didn’t know, it took the war to teach it, that you were as responsible for everything you saw as
you were for everything you did. The problem was that you didn’t always know what you were seeing
10 until later, maybe years later, that a lot of it never made it in at all, it just stayed stored there in your eyes.
Time and information, rock and roll, life itself, the information isn’t frozen, you are.
Sometimes I didn’t know if an action took a second or an hour or if I dreamed it or what. In war more
than in other life you don’t really know what you are doing most of the time, you’re just behaving, and
afterward you can make up any kind of bullshit you want to about it, say you felt good or bad, loved it or
15 hated it, did this or that, the right thing or the wrong thing; still, what happened happened.
Coming back, telling stories, I’d say, “Oh man I was scared,” and “Oh God I thought it was all over,” a
long time before I knew how scared I was really supposed to be, or how clear and closed and beyond my
control “all over” could become. I wasn’t dumb but I sure was raw, certain connections are hard to make
when you come from a place where they go around with war in their heads all the time.
29. The diction in lines 1-2 indicates that Herr views these reasons as
a. inspiring
d. insidious and dangerous
b. heartfelt and patriotic
e. uninteresting
c. generic and somewhat ridiculous
30. Lines 6-7, where Herr writes, “I went there behind the crude but serious belief that you had to be able
to look at anything.” O’Brien went through his tour in Vietnam
a. with the same conviction
d. using the exact opposite approach, which
b. at first with the same idea, but found that he
was largely to avoid looking at things
was not brave enough to continue looking
e. mostly with the opposite idea, but later, after
c. with the same sort of writer’s interest in
the incident with the buffalo, decided he
details so that he could faithfully relate them
needed to start looking at things more closely
later in his books
31. Herr writes that it took the war to teach him “that you were as responsible for everything you saw as
you were for everything you did” (lines 7-8). O’Brien would
a. disagree, saying that you are only
d. say that Herr needs to let go of his guilt,
responsible for your actions
forget, and move on
b. wholeheartedly agree
e. say that reporters were far less guilty than
c. go even further and say that you are also
any soldier because all they ever did was
responsible for everything the U.S. did or did
observe
not do
32. What would O’Brien most likely say about the sentiment Herr expresses in lines 9-10, “The problem
was that you didn’t always know what you were seeing until later, maybe years later, that a lot of it
never made it in at all, it just stayed stored there in your eyes”?
a. He would agree, as he experienced a similar
d. He would say that the problem is too much
phenomenon, and even argued that such
information “made it in,” and this led to PTSD for
jumbled or confused perception is one of the
all soldiers, regardless of whether they admitted it or
hallmarks of a true war story
not.
b. He would disagree and say the problem is
e. There isn’t enough information in the book to be
actually the opposite, that you always know
able to say what O’Brien would think about this
exactly what you are seeing, even when you
statement with any certainty
don’t want to
c. He would say that Herr can’t really speak
about such things with any authority since he
didn’t actually fight, only observed
33. Herr’s use of profanity and racial slurs such as “gooks” would likely prompt O’Brien to say
a. that his work is offensive
d. that such choices are dangerous, and may
b. that this diction proves that Herr is probably well keep readers from hearing the truth
interested in real truth
e. that Herr’s lack of respect for the people of
c. that Herr is no more sophisticated than the
Vietnam was typical of reporters who had no
soldiers he is reporting about
real contact with them
34. The last line ends with the mention of a “place where they go around with war in their heads all the
time.” Herr is referring to ____, but O’Brien would probably say ____
a. America; Vietnam during the war
d. the military; mostly just the medics in
b. Vietnam during the war; everywhere in
Vietnam
America during the war, even in small towns
e. Vietnam during the war; for a veteran, this
like Bowker’s
might apply to anywhere he went even after the
c. a psychological state; just in the physical
war
location of Vietnam
35. Hesse’s purpose is mainly to
a. draw attention to a problem and lay out
practical, concrete solutions to it
b. raise awareness about a problem that is
growing worse, and suggest the reader take
time to think more critically
c. criticize her audience for being lazy
d. exaggerate the problem so that people realize
what is going wrong and then try to fix it
e. praise librarians and argue that they deserve
more recognition and respect in society
36. After her opening note, Hesse lists a number of recent events. The strategy behind beginning this
way is to
a. overwhelm the reader with evidence so that
d. shock the reader with the ridiculous nature of
they can’t question her credibility
the events, and make him question how things
b. distract the reader from the fact that her
got to this point
argument is mostly opinion
e. get the boring information out the way first,
c. create a kind of uncertainty about what is
so that then the reader can apply the rules to
true, making the reader rethink his previous
what is to come
notions on the matter
37. Hesse’s defense of the Google generation is
a. limited at best, but does encourage some
understanding
b. impassioned and wholehearted
c. undercut by her argument about the
difference between information and knowledge
d. strengthened by the fact that she is a member
of that generation herself, and has managed to
rise to a respected position as a reporter
e. nonexistent
38. Hesse portrays Chad Stark as
a. someone to laugh at
b. someone admirable and unappreciated
c. very effective in combating ignorance
d. a Christ figure
e. foolish and misguided
39. Hesse’s intended audience is likely
a. members of the Google generation
b. older readers who are frustrated with the
way the younger generation approaches the
search for truth
c. teachers and professors who are too set in
their old ways, and have not yet embraced new
technology
d. all of the above
e. both A and B
ac. both A and C
bc. both B and C
40. Hesse’s title references a famous line from A Few Good Men, where a military officer is asked to tell
the truth in court, and responds, “You can’t handle the truth.” He means that the truth is something
civilians do not want to know. The truth is that the military is doing things civilians might see as
unsavory, but which the officer sees as absolutely necessary. In this article, Hesse seems to be using
the title as a way of saying
a. most people prefer to be uninformed because d. can you accept that lies are sometimes
the truth is usually too horrifying to face
necessary for society to function smoothly?
b. can you handle the fact that there is no such
e. many people don’t have the patience to find
thing as truth?
the truth, and even if they do, they may not
c. can you see through the lies of others?
want to be willing to listen to it
41. In the beginning of the article, Hesse asks, “For the Google generation, what happens to the concepts
of truth and knowledge in a user-generated world of information saturation?” Ultimately, her answer
to this question is
a. never revealed
d. that truth and knowledge are now impossible
b. that people are less willing to spend the
to find beneath the avalanche of facts
necessary time to arrive at either one
e. that they are lost entirely as moral relativity
c. that truth and knowledge are becoming
has taken over
more important, but information is becoming
more scarce
42. In the last section of her article, Hesse writes:
Who is right?
The student who lives online? Or the lame teacher who thinks that books are a necessary
component to a well-rounded understanding of how information works?
As students must absorb increasingly more information throughout their education,
perhaps expecting them to assess whether it’s true is simply too much. Four errors to
Britannica's three ain’t bad -- and probably good enough for the research the average person
does on a daily basis.
From the diction used in the lines above, it is clear that
a. Hesse herself is honestly unsure of the
d. Hesse is critical of the teachers as living in
answer
the past and using outdated methods
b. Hesse is partly taking on the voice of the
e. Hesse is less concerned with academic
students she is criticizing, and she is ultimately accuracy than she is with success in the real
suggesting that the teachers are right
world
c. Hesse thinks the answer is not really as
important as she once thought
43. Hesse defines the idea of “wikiality” in a way that makes it synonymous with which logical fallacy?
a. hasty generalization
d. post hoc ergo propter hoc
b. circular reasoning
e. ad populum
c. slippery slope
44. Which of the following rhetorical strategies is NOT used by Hesse in “Truth, Can You Handle It?”?
a. an anecdote about Regan’s “Welfare Queen” d. parroting the language of the “Google
b. repeated diction related to drowning or
generation”
choking
e. a rather informal, almost conversational tone
c. a metaphor about war that pits librarians and
teachers against misinformation and wikiality
45. McRaney argues that most online arguments eventually descend into what kind of logical fallacy?
a. red herring
d. ad hominem
b. straw man
e. ad populum
c. either/or
46. McRaney’s term, “narrative script” might most fittingly be applied to which part of The Things They
Carried?
a. the familiar story about the soldier jumping
d. the pairing of the chapters “The Man I
on the grenade and saving his friends
Killed” and “Ambush”
b. O’Brien’s reimagining of the story about the e. the chapter “On the Rainy River”
soldier jumping on the grenade in order to save
his friends
c. the repetition of the incidents surrounding
Kiowa’s death
47. McRaney likely places the scientific evidence about spanking last instead of first because
a. he is attempting to make you realize the truth d. he is first concerned about offering
about spanking on your own
anecdotal, personal evidence in order to
b. he is trying to demonstrate how gullible the
demonstrate that it is less convincing
majority of readers are
e. he is trying to get you to understand the
c. he is trying to hold the reader’s attention
concepts he is discussing, and then make you
see how they affect you
48. One of McRaney’s rhetorical strategies that might rub his readers the wrong way, and might possibly
make them feel defensive is
a. his aggressive stance on spanking
d. his extended attack on Republican values
b. his stance on homosexuality
e. his use of the second person
c. his dismissal of so much earlier research,
which has been accepted for decades, and was
probably taught to the reader at some point
49. McRaney sees an increase in choice on the internet, social media, etc. as
a. a concern, since it allows people to avoid
d. idyllic, and likely to eventually lead to a
information that might challenge their ideas
“techutopia”
b. a positive thing, since it encourages people
e. mildly helpful in mitigating the damage
to see things from various points of view
caused by the backfire effect, but still only a
c. having little effect on our response to
small step in the right direction
information
50. Towards the end of his article, McRaney writes, “Within minutes of learning about Seal Team Six,
the headshot tweeted around the world and the swift burial at sea, conspiracy theories began to
bounce against the walls of our infinitely voluminous echo chamber. Days later, when the world
learned they would be denied photographic proof, the conspiracy theories grew legs, left the ocean
and evolved into self-sustaining undebunkable life forms.” Here, McRaney’s use of the word
“evolved”
a. demonstrates his respect for the progression
d. is sarcastic, indicating that he does not
of ideas
believe any sort of change is happening at all
b. is written in an ironic way, suggesting that
e. suggests that people have no control over
he is disapproving of the “evolution” and
their thought processes
doesn’t actually believe such theories are
“undebunkable”
c. ties back to his earlier discussion of how the
backfire effect is an important step forward for
rational thinking in the 21st century
51. McRaney uses all of the following types of evidence EXCEPT
a. psychological studies
d. a kind of experiment on the reader
b. common scenarios that the reader is likely to e. quotations from his interviews with students
have experienced, and therefore likely to
and professors
recognize as true based on personal evidence
c. historical examples
52. McRaney’s purpose is mainly to
a. convince the reader to stop using the
backfire effect
b. make readers aware of how the backfire
effect works and might be affecting them so
that they can make more logical decisions
c. mock those people who are most affected by
the backfire effect
d. inform the audience about a new
psychological problem
e. call the reader to action, asking them to take
steps to insure the backfire effect does not
cause more problems in politics
53. Some high schools “track” students by their chosen career paths, meaning that all of the students who
plan to pursue engineering are put in all the same classes, have the same lunch, go up and down the
same hallways, etc., while the students interested in theater are all put together in classes with other
students interested in theater, have the same lunch, etc. In these schools, rarely do students with
differing interests run into each other. McRaney would view this type of set up as
a. helpful for student focus
d. unlikely to have much of any effect on the
b. beneficial for social development and
students’ learning or thinking
understanding
e. likely to help students experience a much
c. a poor idea that is likely to be harmful to
weaker backfire effect when they encounter
students
opposing opinions
54. Which piece of Hesse’s evidence is an example of what McRaney calls “biased assimilation”?
a. the shark cartilage study
d. the Lincoln quotation
b. the smoking study from the 1960s
e. the study involving the toddlers
c. the Welfare Queen
55. The discussion of the “Welfare Queen” bears some resemblance to O’Brien’s discussion of how Rat
Kiley tended to “heat up the truth.” How would O’Brien view the story of the “Welfare Queen” and
its effects?
a. as “story truth,” and therefore he would
d. as crucial to understanding how the poor feel
approve of it
when they are on welfare
b. as “happening truth,” and therefore he would e. as a deception used to manipulate voters for
criticize it
political ends, not “story truth” to help them
c. as necessary to make the voters understand
understand situations they have not
how it feels to have the poor exploit the system experienced
56. In some ways, the overall arguments of McRaney and Hesse seem to contradict each other. As
careful readers, what should we conclude?
a. That one of the theories is incorrect because
c. Hesse is correct, and if the studies McRaney
they are incompatible, but it is impossible to
cites had just continued providing the subjects
tell which one is correct.
with data that contradicted their beliefs, they
b. The backfire effect is likely only temporary, would eventually have changed their minds.
and if psychologists had returned months later, d. They are both correct, but under limited
they would have found that the subjects would circumstances. Hesse’s theory that the more
actually have come to believe the data they had times you hear something, the more likely you
initially rejected.
are to believe it only applies to topics that you
do not already have strong feelings about.
57. Both McRaney and Hesse agree on which of the following points?
a. We tend to believe what we want to believe
d. A and B
b. We don’t use new information to learn new
e. B and C
things, become more informed, or change our
ac. A and C
position. We use it to reinforce our beliefs.
ad. A, B, and C
c. The root problem with the way we process
information has always been there, but the
problem is getting worse because of the large
amounts of information made available by the
internet
58. Which of the following makes the reader a kind of psychological test subject in order to prove a
point?
a. McRaney
c. both
b. Hesse
d. neither
59. If Hesse is correct, the fact that O’Brien repeatedly refers to the young Vietnamese man as “the man I
killed” means that the audience is
a. less and less likely to believe that O’Brien
d. likely to feel betrayed and become angrier
actually killed anyone
and angrier with O’Brien
b. more likely to believe that O’Brien killed
e. going to end up confused, unable to say
him, even though he denies it at one point
whether he killed the man or not
c. probably going to distrust O’Brien more and
more on all points
60. If you google “horaltic pose,” you will find many reputable websites that use the phrase to describe
vultures standing with outstretched wings, and you can read a great deal about the purpose of such a
stance (to dry the bird’s wings, to warm up, to bake off bacteria, etc.). However, you will not find the
word “horaltic” in any book about vultures, because it is not actually a legitimate term, but rather a
mistake or garbling of another word made once online, and then repeated and repeated until even zoos
and birding websites accepted it. This phenomenon would be useful as evidence to support the claim
of which work?
a. “Truth, Can You Handle It?”
d. none of the above
b. “The Backfire Effect”
e. both A and B
c. The Things They Carried
61. What would most likely be O’Brien’s reaction to the results of the Kent State psychological study that
is presented in McRaney’s article?
a. He would be undisturbed by them, since he
c. He would be upset, because as a liberal and
is always blurring the lines of truth himself
anti-war writer, he would want everyone to
b. He would be concerned because he wants
recognize that the aggression of the National
people to recognize and understand moral
Guard led to unnecessary student deaths
ambiguities, so realizing that those who knew
d. He would be upset because he wants people
more about the situation were less likely to see to remember the war and the deaths associated
any kind of gray area would disappoint him
with it, so the fact that so many people know
nothing about such an important event would
sadden him.
62. The cartoon below is most relevant to which argument?
a. Hesse’s about cognitive dissonance
b. Hesse’s about wikiality
c. McRaney’s argument about the backfire effect
d. Hesse’s about detoxing students
e. McRaney’s argument about the confirmation bias
63. O’Brien’s first book, If I Die in a Combat Zone, was a nonfiction account of his time in Vietnam. His
next book, Going after Cacciato, was a fiction novel about the Vietnam War, and a kind of riff on the
famous novel All Quiet on the Western Front. Based on this information and what you know of The
Things They Carried, you could argue that O’Brien
a. cannot decide which genre he prefers
d. was unsatisfied with the ability of both
b. felt like he had already told his story the first fiction and nonfiction to capture the truth about
time, and now must continue making up new
the war, and so turned to a kind of “faction” in
stories in order to help people remember the
an attempt to do so more successfully
Vietnam War, which they are quickly
e. has matured as a writer, and so is able to
forgetting
write good fiction, not just plain nonfiction
c. Wrote The Things They Carried as an
attempt to clarify what was confusing in the
first two books
64. Consider the quotation from John Ransom that opens O’Brien’s book. Based on the quotation, one
might argue that both Ransom and O’Brien felt part of their audience would accept their
writing as truth because of what McRaney calls _______; and, on the other hand, feared that
the rest of their audience might reject what they had to say because of ______.
a. confirmation bias; selective skepticism
b. the backfire effect; narrative scripts
c. narrative scripts; confirmation bias
65. All three works in this unit explore
a. the sometimes unexpected ways that the
mind processes truth and facts
b. the relationship between cowardice and the
inability to act or make a decision
c. scientific studies about truth
d. selective skepticism; cognitive dissonance
e. reactionary realism; absolute occurance
d. the relationship between technology and
memory
e. problems that arise because we have too
much information available to us now
66. Considering the opening of his article, one of McRaney’s main purposes seems to be _____; one
might say that this is one of O’Brien’s main purposes as well since he tries to _____.
a. to criticize those conservatives; ridicule them c. to make his audience think for themselves;
for the part they played in sending soldiers to
get them to be skeptical of everything he says
Vietman
d. to correct a misconception; make the reader
b. to reveal the way the brain works; explain in reconsider how he or she defines courage,
scientific terms how one processes the concept cowardice, and truth
of truth
Use the article below to answer the questions that follow.
America’s Most Trusted News Source Not So Trustworthy
By Leonard Pitts Jr.
Miami Herald
November 2, 2014
You can’t handle the truth.
There is a temptation to take that line from Jack Nicholson — snarled at Tom Cruise in “A Few Good
Men” — as the moral of the story, the lesson to be learned from a new study on trustworthiness and the
news media.
The study, conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, informs us that America’s least-trusted
news source is conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, rated unreliable by almost 40 percent
of all Americans. The also conservative Fox “News” follows closely at 37 percent. So America’s leasttrusted news sources are also its most popular; Limbaugh hosts the number one show on radio and Fox is
the highest-rated cable news outlet.
It gets better. Pew tells us America’s most trusted news source is CNN; the network that eschews any
ideological identifier is considered reliable by 54 percent of us. Yet for as much as we supposedly trust it,
we don’t seem to like it very much. Its ratings — despite a mild resurgence in recent months — are but a
fraction of Fox’s and it is undergoing massive layoffs.
For what it’s worth, there’s evidence to support America’s perception of who is and is not trustworthy.
PunditFact, an offshoot of PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking website, has issued a report
card on the truthfulness of broadcast pundits by network. It’s an imperfect measure, but the results are
still compelling. Over 60 percent of Fox pundit statements rated by PunditFact have been found to be
some flavor of false.
CNN? Just 22 percent.
If all this sounds like a commercial for the network of holograms and missing plane obsessions, it isn’t.
Rather, it’s a lament for the closing of the American mind.
There is an axiom that he who builds the best mousetrap enjoys the greatest success. But if that’s true,
how is it the greatest successes in a business measured by trustworthiness are those entities judged least
trustworthy of all? Maybe the answer is that conservative hardliners are more rabid in support of those
who validate their views than the rest of us are in pursuit of simple truth.
In a nation where political discourse is increasingly a facts-optional exercise and reality now comes in
shades of red and blue, that’s hardly reassuring.
Two years ago, at the request of yours truly, the people at Nielsen crunched some numbers. They found
that in times of major breaking news — the examples used were the Columbine shooting, the Sept. 11
attacks, the commencement of the Iraq War, the Japanese tsunami and the death of Michael Jackson —
ratings for all three cable news outlets tend to rise. But, almost without exception, the most dramatic
spikes on a percentage basis are enjoyed by CNN. The week of Sept. 11, its ratings rose by 800 percent.
No other network came close.
In other words, when something big has happened and people need to know what’s going on, they know
where to go. They go where they can trust.
But on a routine day, many Americans, for as much as they will say otherwise, really don’t want to be
informed so much as to be confirmed in their political biases, in the partisan version of truth that explains
the world to them while making the fewest demands on intellect — and conscience. They need the “death
panels” and “anchor” babies, the birther controversies and supposedly rampant voter fraud, the “threats”
of sharia law and Obama-caused Ebola, the whole rickety structure of falsehood and fear upon which
conservatism has built its alternate reality. That’s the whole reason Fox exists — and CNN barely does.
And it’s why Nicholson’s quote, tempting as it is, provides no proper moral for this story.
It’s not that we can’t handle the truth. It’s that some of us prefer the lie.
67. Pitts’ tone in this article is similar to McRaney’s in that it is
a. informal and informative
d. formal and detached
b. condescending and erudite
e. defeated and regretful
c. vicious and sarcastic
68. Pitts’s article is similar to Hesse’s in that it tries to convey its message by using
a. interviews with students
d. an analysis of a scene from A Few Good Men
b. statistics from reputable studies
e. a kind of psychological experiment on the
c. a pattern of war or military diction
reader
69. Pitts’ comment that “political discourse is increasingly a facts-optional exercise and reality now
comes in shades of red and blue,” most closely mirrors
a. O’Brien’s understanding of truth, but while
d. Hesse’s mention of the recent publication of
Pitts views this in a positive light, O’Brien
"True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact
views it in a negative light.
Society," Farhad Manjoo's exploration of the
b. Sanders’ tendency to “heat up the truth”
"cultural ascendancy of belief over fact."
when he is telling a story
e. McRaney’s comment that at some point all
c. O’Brien’s criticism of Rat Kiley’s deceitful
newspapers “screw up and get the facts
storytelling style
wrong.” But “a reputable news source takes the
time to say ‘my bad.’”
70. Hesse, McRaney, and Pitts all agree that ____; but Pitts goes further to suggest that ____.
a. the internet is making the problem worse;
d. technology is making it more difficult to
this amounts to brain washing
discern what is true; there is no such thing as
b. the brain has difficulty distinguishing
objective truth
between truth and falsehood; nothing can be
e. many people seek out reliable information;
done to fix the problem
they are too afraid of being wrong to
c. we tend to seek out information that supports acknowledge the truth when they find it
what we already believe; we are aware that this
means we won’t get the most accurate
information, but we do it anyway
Matching: Using the choices from the box below, match the following examples with the correct logical fallacies.
Answers may be used once, more than once, or not at all.
a. ad hominem
71. A black cat crossed my path just before I tripped and broke my
b. ad populum
arm. Therefore, the black cat caused my broken arm. post hoc
c. straw man
ergo propter hoc
d. red herring
72. People that protested against the war in Iraq were either
e. hasty generalization
Communists or Al Qaeda sympathizers. either/or
ab. slanting
73. American education is in a sad state. Tests prove that we are
cd. post hoc ergo propter hoc
lagging behind most of the developed world in math, science,
de. either/or
and even English. Some people say that American schools could
ac. circular reasoning
raise those scores if they abolished summer vacation and
ad. false analogy
students were made to go to school all year long. That way, they
ae. slippery slope
say that students wouldn’t forget important information while on
break. What we should really be considering, however, is what
abolishing summer vacation would do to places like New Orleans and Florida, where seasonal
tourism is such a vital part of the local economy. red herring
74. Man O’ War wasn’t nearly as good a racehorse as the great Triple Crown winner Sir Barton. Heck,
he couldn’t even manage to win the Kentucky Derby! [The speaker fails to mention that Man O’ War
was never entered in the Kentucky Derby, and that he beat Sir Barton in a match race.] slanting
75. Lots of people have downloaded this new Imagine Dragons song, so it must be good. ad populum
76. Bill Clinton never served in the military. To have Bill Clinton become president, and thus commander
in chief of the armed forces of the United States, is like electing some random person you met on the
street to fly the space shuttle. false analogy
77. Cruz is the best presidential candidate because he is better than all of the others. circular reasoning
78. [News broadcast] In today’s top story, Senator Smith carelessly cast the deciding vote today to pass
both the budget bill and the trailer bill to fund yet another excessive watchdog committee over coastal
development. slanting
79. I’ve met six people from Boston, and they were all terrible drivers. Everyone in Boston must be a
terrible driver. hasty generalization
80. I know you’re not getting enough sleep, but you’ve got to stop drinking so much coffee! Pretty soon
the caffeine won’t be strong enough. Then you will take something stronger, maybe someone’s
ADHD medication. Then, something even stronger. Eventually, you will be doing cocaine. Then you
will be a crack addict! So, stay away from the coffee! slippery slope