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Literature is the first passage. Work it last. Yes this is repeated, but students always forget. When you face this literature passage, keep these tips in mind:

 Look for symbolism that relates to the big picture. SAT literature passages often contain a great deal of description. Often things are symbolic or representative, or they stand out in the author’s narrative for a reason. For example, something like “Joan never forgot seeing the keys on the table.” What’s important about those keys? Pay attention for something later that relates to the keys.

 Stay attuned to word choice. A literature passage is perfectly suited to questions about the author’s tone (bitter, nostalgic, fond, critical, and so forth). Pay attention to the feelings associated with certain words.

 Visualize the narrative. Read the events as if they’re describing a movie and see what the movie would look like. This will help you understand the nuances and symbolism that fuel many of the literature passage questions.

Try this question, based on a literature excerpt from a story by Virginia Woolf. Visualize the narrative and look for the symbolism:

“Fifteen years ago I came here with Lily,” he thought. “We sat somewhere over there by a lake and I begged her to marry me all through the hot afternoon. How the dragonfly kept circling round us: how clearly I see the dragonfly and her shoe with the square silver buckle at the toe. All the time I spoke I saw her shoe and when it moved impatiently I knew without looking up what she was going to say: the whole of her seemed to be in her shoe. And my love, my desire, were in the dragonfly; for some reason I thought that if it settled there, on that leaf, she would say “Yes” at once. But the dragonfly went round and round: it never settled anywhere — of course not, happily not, or I shouldn’t be walking here with Eleanor and the children.”

In this passage, the speaker’s attitude may best be characterized as

Cover the answers. What do you think characterizes the speaker’s attitude? Maybe something like, desperate for the dragonfly to make Lily say yes, but then glad it didn’t? Now cross off the wrong answers:

(A) mocking

(B) confused

(C) nostalgic

(D) argumentative

Desperate and glad don’t connect with Choices (A), (B), or (D), so cross those right off, leaving Choice (C) as the only possible answer. And it’s right. Here’s why: In this paragraph, the speaker looks at the past, remembering an afternoon when he “begged” (Line 2) Lily to accept his marriage proposal. He’s feeling pleasure and sadness at remembering the past, which of course is nostalgic, Choice (C). The sadness shows in Lily’s refusal, which he now sees “happily” (Line 8). Choice (B), confused, doesn’t match because he wasn’t confused: He simply changed his mind, and apparently dodged a bullet.

And of course, SAT Literature loves symbolism. Try this one:

In this passage, Lily’s shoe most likely represents

Cover the answers. What do you think her shoe represents? Maybe a counterpart to the dragonfly that will not cooperate and also Lily’s feelings. Something like that. Your answer doesn’t have to be close. It just has to be something that you think without looking at the answers. Now cross off wrong ones.

(A) Lily’s desire to protect others

(B) Lily’s reluctance to settle down

(C) Lily’s love for the narrator

(D) the narrator’s attraction to Lily

See? When you think of your own answer, even if it’s far out there, it makes the wrong answers really easy to cross off. You should have easily crossed off Choices (A), (C), and (D), leaving Choice (B), though iffy, as the only possible answer, and the right one. See dear reader, that is how you turn a challenging question into an easy one.

The answer that you think of hardly ever matches the right answer. That’s okay — it doesn’t have to. Your self-thought answer serves a much more important role: It makes the wrong answers stand out like weeds in a garden. Cross ’em off, go with the remaining one, and that’s all you have time to do in the roughly one-minute-per-question that you get in the Reading Test.

Now, build your skills, work this strategy, and knock out the practice Reading questions in the next chapter.