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ACT Reading: Literary Narrative (Drill 2)

Drill 2 · Reading · Literary Narrative

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About This Drill

ACT Reading: Literary Narrative (Drill 2) is a Reading practice drill covering Literary Narrative. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.

Literary Narrative passages present fiction or memoir. This drill uses a memoir excerpt, with questions emphasizing how the narrator's tone and word choice convey attitude, a pattern that distinguishes Literary Narrative questions from the more purely informational questions in other ACT Reading passage types.

Passage

LITERARY NARRATIVE: This passage is adapted from the novel The Interpreter's Garden by Kwame Asante-Boateng (©2021). My uncle Felix did not believe in wasting words. In thirty years of Sunday dinners, I had heard him deliver exactly three opinions: that rice cooked in broth was superior to rice cooked in water, that professional basketball had declined since the mid-nineties, and that a man who apologized too easily could not be trusted. Beyond these, he offered silence, and the silence had weight. He had been an interpreter for the United Nations for twenty-two years, working in Geneva, Nairobi, and finally New York, where he settled in a third-floor apartment that smelled of cedar and old paper. His job was to render one language faithfully into another, not to translate word for word, he had explained to me once, but to carry meaning across. The distinction had seemed trivial when I was twelve. By thirty, I understood it was the whole problem. When I came to stay with him after my divorce, he said nothing about it. He made up the spare bedroom, cooked jollof rice, and passed me the remote control. In the evenings we watched the news together, and he would occasionally gesture at the television when a politician spoke, a small, dismissive movement of his hand, as if brushing away smoke. I understood this to mean that something was being lost in translation, that the words being spoken and the meaning underneath them had parted company. I stayed six weeks. In that time, Uncle Felix told me, unbidden, only one new thing: that the hardest part of his work was not the languages themselves but the pauses. Every speaker, he said, paused differently. Some pauses meant thinking. Some meant grief. Some meant that the speaker knew what came next and was gathering the courage to say it. The interpreter's job was to know which kind of pause it was and to hold that space faithfully rather than rushing to fill it. I thought about this for a long time after I returned to my own apartment. I was not sure whether he had been talking about interpreting at all.

Questions & Explanations

Question 1. The point of view from which the passage is told is best described as that of a:

  • A) first-person narrator recounting personal experience with a family member. ✓
  • B) third-person narrator describing events witnessed by an outside observer.
  • C) first-person narrator presenting events as they unfold in real time.
  • D) third-person narrator with access to multiple characters' inner thoughts in the passage.

Explanation: Choice A is correct. The narrator uses first-person pronouns ('I,' 'my') and recounts personal memories and experiences with Uncle Felix. The narration is retrospective, the narrator reflects on a period that has already passed. Choice B is wrong because the narrator is a participant, not an outside observer. Choice C doesn't work because the events are recalled, not happening in the present. Choice D falls short because the narrator does not have access to Felix's inner thoughts, only his observable behavior.

Question 2. According to the passage, Uncle Felix distinguished between translating and interpreting by explaining that interpreting involves:

  • F) converting words precisely from one language to another.
  • G) carrying meaning across languages rather than matching words directly. ✓
  • H) summarizing what a speaker says in order to save time.
  • J) selecting only the most important ideas from a speaker's remarks.

Explanation: Choice G is correct. Uncle Felix explained that his job was not to translate 'word for word' but to 'carry meaning across', a distinction the narrator initially found trivial but later came to see as profound. Choice F describes translation as Felix defined it, not interpretation. Choices H and J introduce ideas of summarizing or selecting, which are not part of Felix's explanation.

Question 3. The narrator's observation that Uncle Felix's dismissive hand gesture meant 'something was being lost in translation' primarily serves to:

  • A) suggest that Felix was critical of all politicians regardless of their views, as presented in the passage.
  • B) show that Felix's professional habit of reading meaning extended to his private life. ✓
  • C) imply that Felix was planning to return to his career as an interpreter.
  • D) indicate that the narrator and Felix had different opinions about the news.

Explanation: Choice B is correct. Felix spent his career detecting gaps between words and meaning; the gesture while watching television shows that same sensitivity operating in his personal life. Choice A overgeneralizes; the passage does not say Felix dismissed all politicians. Choice C introduces the idea of returning to work, which is not suggested. Choice D misreads the scene; the narrator is interpreting Felix's gesture, not expressing disagreement with him.

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

  • F) reluctantly.
  • G) without being asked. ✓
  • H) with great formality.
  • J) in a cautious manner.

Explanation: Choice G is correct. 'Unbidden' means offered without being requested or prompted. The narrator notes that Felix, a man of few words, volunteered this particular insight on his own, without the narrator asking. Choice F suggests reluctance, which is the opposite of volunteering information freely. Choices H and J describe manner rather than whether the information was requested.

Question 5. The final line of the passage, 'I was not sure whether he had been talking about interpreting at all', most strongly implies that:

  • A) the narrator doubts that Uncle Felix had much experience as a professional interpreter.
  • B) Felix's lesson about pauses applied to human relationships as much as to language work. ✓
  • C) the narrator had misunderstood Felix's remarks and later sought clarification.
  • D) Felix had been deliberately vague in order to avoid discussing the narrator's divorce.

Explanation: Choice B is correct. The passage builds toward this moment of recognition: Felix's advice about holding pauses, knowing the difference between a thinking pause, a grief pause, and a courage pause, maps directly onto the narrator's experience of divorce and emotional communication. The final line signals that the narrator has understood this. Choice A contradicts the passage, which clearly establishes Felix's long career. Choice C is not supported; the narrator arrives at understanding, not confusion. Choice D is possible but too specific and cynical a reading; Felix's silence throughout is respectful, not evasive.