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Time for your daily dose of shmoop... Hit pause and check out this passage. It may

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look strangely familiar...

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Which of the following BEST describes the speaker's attitude toward immortality?

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And here are the potential answers...

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Okay, so this is one of those "read and understand the passage as a whole" type deals.

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Yeah, we can look for particular instances of the words "mortal" or "immortal" to help

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clue us in to the answer...

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...but we're basically just going to have to prove that we can correctly interpret what

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the speaker is telling us. Our first option is A -- He views it as an

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invaluable supply being drained by overuse on the part of the King.

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Uh -- no. In line 31, the speaker says that struldbrugs are underutilized, so we can nix

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this one. Next we've got B -- He views it as an equalizing

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force to be hoped against by every citizen.

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More like hoped for. Our speaker is clearly jazzed about immortality, so it doesn't fit

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that he'd give it a bad rap. C -- He views it as a valuable tool for social

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improvement for the parents and family.

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Sounds plausible... but there's nothing in the passage whatsoever to support this. Total

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red herring. D - He views it as potentially usurping the

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natural order of class system in place.

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Same thing -- no mention in the passage about class system... so D won't do us any good

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either. Which brings us to E - He views it as a cultural

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benefit to the community and a boon to good governance.

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Heck yeah. The speaker clearly thinks that immortality is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

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Which, incidentally, does not have a very long shelf life...

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He talks about immortality's benefits, about how great it is that society has "so many

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living examples of ancient virtue" and about how struldbrugs would make great royal counselors.

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Verdict? Immortality is the bomb. Choice E.

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For our money, we'll take the sliced bread. Makes better sandwiches.

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