Reading a Prose Passage in Five Moves

The idea

Prose passages carry novel, short story and nonfiction questions, and this is the course's method for them. First, identify the narrator and point of view: first person, omniscient or limited, and whether free indirect discourse blends narrator and character. Second, establish the situation: who, where, when, and what has happened before the passage opens. Third, read the tone from the diction, checking for irony between the words and the situation. Fourth, find the passage's turn or emphasis, often a sentence that sums up or a striking image. Fifth, answer the question from the words, preferring choices that fit the whole passage. Sample question nine, from Gaskell's North and South, asks what the sentence about the smooth sea closing over the old life emphasizes; the answer, how much Margaret's life has changed, comes from following the image and the contrast with the present.