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U.S. and World Literature Passage Videos 25 videos

SAT Reading: Citing Evidence to Identify a Theme in Walden
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Contemplating one's life is key to fulfilled happiness. Thoreau's theme revolves around the simple life well lived. He clearly never tried virtual...

What Does the Author Mean by "Front" in this Context?
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Thoreau uses "front" to mean "face". He wants to face The Facts of Life without shying away from our natural tendencies, roots, and the simply way...

SAT Reading: Using Context to Define a Word
12 Views

What does "frittered away" mean in this context? Wasted. Wasted by the way. Thoreau claims we fritter away our lives praying to modern complex dist...

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SAT Reading: Inferring Why Twain Was Drawn to the Idea of Being a Steamboatman 6 Views


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Description:

Why was Mark Twain drawn to the idea of a "steamboatman"? What this SAT Reading video to find out!


Transcript

00:02

now all right people a new SAT section analyzing purpose text structure word

00:08

choice citing evidence and a whole bunch of other crap alright so we're gonna [text on screen]

00:12

start at question one here of eleven in this series all about Mark Twain or

00:16

Samuel Clemens as we all know and love him so let's just dive into the question

00:20

then we'll get back to the reading as we skim through to try to what guess or

00:23

figure out an answer here we go we can the reader infer as to why Twain was

00:26

drawn to the idea of becoming a steamboatman

00:30

all right well here the correct answer is D well Twain this young boy was [steamboat]

00:34

apparently obsessed with reputation he refers over and over and over again to [picture of Mark Twain]

00:39

his desire for distinction and glory and attributes his misery to his obscurity

00:46

see were highlighting words right they're distinct in glory they're in [text on screen]

00:49

obscurity right there although piloting a steamboat did come with a princely

00:53

salary right there see we're not making this up there's no evidence to support

00:56

that it was one of the only ways to make money in those days so yeah I might have

01:00

been there but when the answer Twain mentions his father at the beginning of [falling money]

01:04

the passage but this is mainly to show that he already had a certain status in

01:08

town so it's not new there appear to be Twain also talks at length about his [painting of people at banquet]

01:12

steamboat frenemy but well he first mentions his dream of becoming a

01:17

steamboatman before all that drama goes down so you

01:20

have a creek entry fee [steamboat]

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