ShmoopTube

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And here's your Shmoop du jour...

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Which word could fill in the blank so that the sentence below makes sense?

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John's friends were surprised by how little his breakup with Lisa seemed to affect him:

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Despite the tumultuous nature of their relationship, he appeared almost blank after the split.

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And here are the potential answers...

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Yeah, so we're dealing with a relatively overstuffed sentence here.

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But only one context clue truly matters: the fact that the breakup didn't affect John as

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much as his friends probably worried it would. Since this sentence indicates that John didn't

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spend his days spewing tears and making scenes in public places....

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...we can break-up with most of these answers without too many tears of our own.

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(A) doesn't work at all. If John didn't care about the break-up, he definitely wouldn't

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be intense about it. (B) doesn't work either, because John wouldn't

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be anxious about something he didn't care about.

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"Burdensome" makes zero sense in this context, because it means something that's

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heavy or worrisome in some way. "Attentive" means to pay special extra attention

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to something, so it definitely doesn't work either.

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Looks like "nonchalant" wins the day.

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It totally makes sense, because the word means to be casual and uncaring about something.

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So the answer is (C).

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As in, "Could he care any less?"

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