The following text is from Herman Melville's 1854 novel The Lightning-rod Man.

The stranger still stood in the exact middle of the cottage, where he had first planted himself. His singularity impelled a closer scrutiny. A lean, gloomy figure. Hair dark and lank, mattedly streaked over his brow. His sunken pitfalls of eyes were ringed by indigo halos, and played with an innocuous sort of lightning: the gleam without the bolt. The whole man was dripping. He stood in a puddle on the bare oak floor: his strange walking-stick vertically resting at his side.

Which choice best states the function of the underlined sentence in the overall structure of the text?

In recommending Bao Phi's collection Sông I Sing, a librarian noted that pieces by the spoken-word poet don't lose their____blank nature when printed: the language has the same pleasant musical quality on the page as it does when performed by Phi.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

The following text is adapted from Virginia Woolf's 1919 novel Night and Day. Katharine is the granddaughter of a celebrated poet.

[Katharine's] descent from [a celebrated poet] was no surprise to her, but matter for satisfaction, until, as the years wore on, certain drawbacks made themselves very manifest. Perhaps it is a little depressing to inherit not lands but an example of intellectual virtue; perhaps the conclusiveness of a great ancestor is a little discouraging to those who run the risk of comparison with him.

As used in the text, what does the word "manifest" most nearly mean?

The discoverers of the minor planet 2731 Cucula named it after the animal genus that includes cuckoos. Most of the recently discovered minor planets, however, are given only an identification number, a trend that can be ______ to there being over 500,000 such bodies known at present, making it nearly impossible to find a unique name for each..

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

Many visitors to Yellowstone National Park need airlines, car rentals, hotels, and restaurants during their visits. These services generate carbon emissions. Emily Wilkins and Jordan Smith found that most of the environmentally harmful emissions come from travel services to and from the park. Wilkins and Smith found that policymakers could help reduce these emissions by encouraging people to visit state or national parks closer to their homes to cut down on their travel.

Which choice best states the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?

Though John Crowley, author of Flint and Mirror, is perhaps not as well known as the most commercially successful American writers of the past fifty years, his work has had several influential champions, including the poet James Merrill and the literary critic Harold Bloom. In his afterword to Crowley's book Little, Big, Bloom praises how the novel adroitly blends what playwright Friedrich Schiller termed the naive and sentimental modes—while Schiller thought works could be classified as either naive (seeking to describe reality) or sentimental (seeking to develop ideas), Little, Big fuses both modes of writing.

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined portion in the text as a whole?

The following text is adapted from Anthony Trollope's 1855 novel The Warden. The narrator is describing a rectory, the residence of a clergyperson.

Let us observe the well-furnished breakfast-parlour at Plumstead Episcopi, and the comfortable air of all the belongings of the rectory. Comfortable they certainly were, but neither gorgeous nor even grand; indeed, considering the money that had been spent there, the eye and taste might have been better served; there was an air of heaviness about the rooms which might have been avoided without any sacrifice of propriety; colours might have been better chosen and lights more perfectly diffused; but perhaps in doing so the thorough clerical aspect of the whole might have been somewhat marred.

Which choice best states the function of the underlined portion in the text as a whole?

Text 1

Ollantay is a play in Quechua, an Indigenous language in South America. The play portrays life in the Inca Empire before Spain invaded in the 1500s. Yet the oldest known text of the play is from 1770, and in many places its writing style resembles the writing style of Spanish plays from the 1700s. Thus, Ollantay was probably created in the late 1700s by someone who knew much about the Inca past.

Text 2

Ollantay includes details of Inca society that a writer in the 1700s wouldn't have known about. Also, the play's structure matches descriptions of the structure of Inca drama from the 1500s. The obvious explanation is that Ollantay itself is an Inca work from the 1500s. It could have been performed continuously from the 1500s to the 1700s. By the time it was written down in 1770, it could have easily been influenced by later Spanish plays.

Based on the texts, what do the author of Text 1 and the author of Text 2 mainly disagree about?

In a period of great prosperity during his reign, Egyptian pharaoh Amenemhat III (circa 1800 BCE) had a pyramid with a massive substructure built at Hawara. The underground complex was largely dismantled in antiquity, but accounts of its splendor remain, including one from Greek historian Herodotus, who claimed to have seen it. In his Histories (circa 425 BCE), Herodotus writes of 3,000 chambers adorned with carved figures, a dozen courts flanked by white stone pillars, and many winding passages in the complex, characterizing it as a great labyrinth and "an unending marvel."

According to the text, what information did Herodotus include in his Histories?

Dubautia carrii is among the twenty-eight species of silversword plants found only on the Hawaiian archipelago that collectively illustrate the process of adaptive radiation, or the rapid diversification of an ancestral species into different, related species. Each silversword species is physically distinct, with mature plant forms ranging from trees and shrubs to vines. However, they all descended from a common tarweed plant species, with their unique physical characteristics emerging as they adapted to the archipelago's many specific habitats over time.

       Which choice best states the main idea of the text?