NinetynineCAT 2024 Slot 3 VARC Q1 Para Summary
Question 1 of the Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC) section, CAT 2024 Slot 3, with CAT's official answer and a worked solution.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Lyric poetry is a genre of private meditation rather than public commitment. The impulse in Marxism toward changing a society deemed unacceptable in its basic design would seem to place demands on lyric poetry that such poetry, with its tendency toward the personal, the small scale, and the idiosyncratic, could never answer. There is within Marxism, however, also a strand of thought that would locate in lyric poetry alternative modes of perception and description that call forth a vision of worlds at odds with a repressive reality or that draw attention to the workings of ideology within the hegemonic culture. The poetic imagination may indeed deflect larger social concerns, but it may also be implicitly critical and utopian.
Lyric poetry is a genre of private meditation rather than public commitment. The impulse in Marxism toward changing a society deemed unacceptable in its basic design would seem to place demands on lyric poetry that such poetry, with its tendency toward the personal, the small scale, and the idiosyncratic, could never answer. There is within Marxism, however, also a strand of thought that would locate in lyric poetry alternative modes of perception and description that call forth a vision of worlds at odds with a repressive reality or that draw attention to the workings of ideology within the hegemonic culture. The poetic imagination may indeed deflect larger social concerns, but it may also be implicitly critical and utopian.
- AMarxism has internal contradictions due to which one strand of Marxism sees no merit in lyric poetry while another appreciates the alternative modes of perception in poetry.
- BThe focus of lyric poetry is largely personal while that of Marxism is bringing change in society. Unless the difference is resolved, poetry will remain largely utopian.
- CMarxism makes unreasonable demands on lyric poetry. However, lyric poetry has its own merits that are largely ignored by Marxism due to its personal nature.
- DThe focus of lyric poetry as personal may not seem compatible with Marxism. However, it is possible to envisage lyric poetry as a symbol of resistance against an oppressive culture.
Answer: (D) The focus of lyric poetry as personal may not seem compatible with Marxism. However, it is possible to envisage lyric poetry as a symbol of resistance against an oppressive culture. Para Summary MCQ
Solution
- Core claim: lyric poetry is private and seems unable to meet Marxism's demand for social change, yet one strand of Marxism sees in it alternative visions that are 'implicitly critical and utopian' against repressive reality.
- D captures both halves: apparent incompatibility, then poetry as possible resistance to an oppressive culture.
- A invents 'internal contradictions'; B adds a condition ('unless the difference is resolved'); C says Marxism ignores poetry's merits, which the passage contradicts.