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ACT Reading: Humanities (Drill 3)

Drill 3 · Reading · Humanities

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About This Drill

ACT Reading: Humanities (Drill 3) is a Reading practice drill covering Humanities. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.

Humanities passages cover topics in art, music, architecture, philosophy, film, literature, and cultural history. As you read, pay attention to the author's perspective, the significance of specific examples, and the relationship between ideas. Questions may ask about the main idea, specific details, the author's purpose, vocabulary in context, or inferences supported by the passage.

Passage

HUMANITIES: This passage is adapted from the article "The Unreliable Narrator and the Reader's Responsibility" by Thomas Akintola (©2021, Literary Studies Forum). The unreliable narrator has become one of contemporary fiction's most versatile tools. In its simplest form, unreliability means that the narrator's account of events cannot be fully trusted, that what she reports reflects her own biases, limitations, or self-deceptions rather than objective truth. But the more interesting question is not whether a narrator is unreliable, since in some sense all narrators are, but what the reader is supposed to do with that unreliability. The mechanics of unreliable narration were analyzed with particular rigor by literary critic Wayne Booth in his 1961 study The Rhetoric of Fiction, in which he introduced the concept of the "implied author", the version of the author that a careful reader infers from the text as a whole, distinct from the narrator who tells the story. In an unreliable narration, the implied author and the narrator tell different stories simultaneously: the narrator says one thing while the text, read carefully, suggests another. The reader's task is to hold both stories at once. This double reading requires active participation. When the narrator of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, the repressed English butler Stevens, delivers a defense of his life of unquestioning service, the reader must simultaneously accept his account on its surface terms and read the grief and regret accumulating beneath it. Ishiguro provides clues, moments when Stevens's language strains against his emotions, when his praise of his employer becomes slightly too insistent, that signal the gap between what is said and what is meant. What makes this technique ethically interesting is that it mirrors a challenge readers face outside of fiction. People routinely encounter self-serving narratives, from politicians, advertisers, and acquaintances, and must decide how much weight to give them. The skills that allow a reader to hold an unreliable narrator's account lightly, to look for what is omitted or overstated, are skills with uses well beyond the novel. This, perhaps, is what great fiction consistently does: not simply to tell us stories, but to practice us in the kinds of reading that a complicated world requires.

Questions & Explanations

Question 1. The main purpose of the passage is to:

  • A) argue that Wayne Booth's theory of the implied author has been unfairly neglected by modern critics.
  • B) explain how unreliable narration works in fiction and connect it to broader habits of critical thinking. ✓
  • C) demonstrate that Kazuo Ishiguro is the most skilled practitioner of unreliable narration in contemporary fiction.
  • D) warn readers that first-person narrators in fiction should never be trusted.

Explanation: Choice B is correct. The passage explains the mechanics of unreliable narration, uses Ishiguro's novel as an example, and then connects the skill of reading unreliable narrators to the broader ability to evaluate self-serving narratives in everyday life. Choice A mischaracterizes the role of Booth in the passage; he is cited as background, not defended against neglect. Choice C makes an unsupported claim of superiority. Choice D overstates and distorts the passage's argument.

Question 2. According to the passage, Wayne Booth's concept of the 'implied author' refers to:

  • F) the narrator of a novel who reveals the author's personal opinions through the story.
  • G) the version of the author that a careful reader infers from the text as distinct from the narrator. ✓
  • H) a secondary character in fiction who serves as a mouthpiece for the author's views.
  • J) the biographical author whose life experiences shaped the novel being analyzed.

Explanation: Choice G is correct. The passage defines the implied author as 'the version of the author that a careful reader infers from the text as a whole, distinct from the narrator who tells the story.' Choice F confuses the implied author with the narrator. Choice H introduces a secondary character, which is not the concept. Choice J describes the biographical author, which is different from the implied author, a construct of the text, not the actual person.

Question 3. The passage most strongly suggests that in The Remains of the Day, readers are expected to:

  • A) take Stevens's account at face value, since his reputation for honesty is well established in the novel.
  • B) reject Stevens's narrative entirely in favor of what the other characters say about him.
  • C) recognize the gap between Stevens's stated perspective and the emotions the text reveals beneath it. ✓
  • D) identify specific factual errors in Stevens's account and use them to reconstruct the true events.

Explanation: Choice C is correct. The passage describes Stevens delivering a defense of his life while 'grief and regret accumulate beneath it,' and explains that Ishiguro provides clues that 'signal the gap between what is said and what is meant.' Readers must hold both layers simultaneously. Choice A describes a naive reading the passage argues against. Choice B describes an overcorrection; the passage does not suggest total rejection of the narrator's account. Choice D focuses on factual errors, which is not the kind of reading the passage describes.

Question 4. As it is used in the passage, the word 'strains' most nearly means:

  • F) works very hard.
  • G) pulls in an incompatible direction. ✓
  • H) produces a melodic quality.
  • J) becomes increasingly precise.

Explanation: Choice G is correct. The passage describes 'moments when Stevens's language strains against his emotions', meaning his words and his feelings are pulling against each other, in tension, incompatible. This is evidence of the gap between what he says and what he feels. Choice F captures part of the word's meaning but misses the sense of tension or resistance. Choice H introduces a musical meaning inappropriate in this context. Choice J is the opposite of what is described.

Question 5. The author's claim in the final paragraph that great fiction 'practices us in the kinds of reading that a complicated world requires' primarily serves to:

  • A) argue that literary criticism is more important than other academic disciplines.
  • B) suggest that readers who dislike fiction are less capable of navigating real-world deception.
  • C) extend the significance of unreliable narration beyond literary analysis to everyday critical thinking. ✓
  • D) contradict the earlier claim that unreliable narration requires active participation from the reader, as the passage frames it.

Explanation: Choice C is correct. The final paragraph is the culmination of the passage's argument: the skills developed by reading unreliable narrators, detecting omission, recognizing overstatement, holding an account lightly, apply to the self-serving narratives we encounter outside fiction. This extends the passage's relevance beyond literary theory. Choice A introduces a comparison to other disciplines not made in the passage. Choice B draws an exclusionary inference the passage does not make. Choice D is incorrect: the final paragraph reinforces rather than contradicts the earlier point about active participation.