SAT SAT-Critical-Reading Value Pack (Frequently Bought Together)

This passage discusses the work of Abe Kobo, a Japanese novelist of the twentieth century. Abe Kobo is
one of the great writers of postwar Japan. His literature is richer, less predictable, and wider-ranging than
that of his famed contemporaries, Mishima Yukio and Nobel laureate Oe Kenzaburo. It is infused with the
passion and strangeness of his experiences in Manchuria, which was a Japanese colony on mainland
China before World War II.
Abe spent his childhood and much of his youth in Manchuria, and, as a result, the orbit of his work would
be far less controlled by the oppressive gravitational pull of the themes of furusato (hometown) and the
emperor than his contemporaries'.
Abe, like most of the sons of Japanese families living in Manchuria, did return to Japan for schooling. He
entered medical school in Tokyo in 1944--just in time to forge himself a medical certificate claiming ill
health; this allowed him to avoid fighting in the war that Japan was already losing and return to Manchuria.
When Japan lost the war, however, it also lost its Manchurian colony. The Japanese living there were
attacked by the Soviet Army and various guerrilla bands. They suddenly found themselves refugees,
desperate for food. Many unfit men were abandoned in the Manchurian desert. At this apocalyptic time,
Abe lost his father to cholera.
He returned to mainland Japan once more, where the young were turning to Marxism as a rejection of the
militarism of the war. After a brief, unsuccessful stint at medical school, he became part of a Marxist group
of avant-garde artists. His work at this time was passionate and outspoken on political matters, adopting
black humor as its mode of critique.
During this time, Abe worked in the genres of theater, music, and photography. Eventually, he
mimeographed fifty copies of his first "published" literary work, entitled Anonymous Poems, in 1947. It
was a politically charged set of poems dedicated to the memory of his father and friends who had died in
Manchuria. Shortly thereafter, he published his first novel, For a Signpost at the End of a Road, which
imagined another life for his best friend who had died in the Manchurian desert. Abe was also active in the
Communist Party, organizing literary groups for workingmen.
Unfortunately, most of this radical early work is unknown outside Japan and underappreciated even in
Japan. In early 1962, Abe was dismissed from the Japanese Liberalist Party. Four months later, he
published the work that would blind us to his earlier oeuvre, Woman in the Dunes. It was director
Teshigahara Hiroshi's film adaptation of Woman in the Dunes that brought Abe's work to the international
stage. The movie's fame has wrongly led readers to view the novel as Abe's masterpiece. It would be
more accurate to say that the novel simply marked a turning point in his career, when Abe turned away
from the experimental and heavily political work of his earlier career. Fortunately, he did not then turn to
furusato and the emperor after all, but rather began a somewhat more realistic exploration of his
continuing obsession with homelessness and alienation. Not completely a stranger to his earlier
commitment to Marxism, Abe turned his attention, beginning in the sixties, to the effects on the individual
of Japan's rapidly urbanizing, growth driven, increasingly corporate society.
Which of the following does the passage present as a fact?

• A. Abe was a better playwright than novelist.
• B. The group of avant-garde artists of which Abe was a part were influenced by Marxism.
• C. Abe's work is richer than his contemporaries' because he included auto bio graphical elements.
• D. Abe's early work was of greater quality than his later work.
• E. The themes of furusa to and the emperor have precluded Japanese literature from playing a major role
  in world literature.

The Amazonian wilderness harbors the greatest number of species on this planet and is an irreplaceable
resource for present and future generations. Amazonia is crucial for maintaining global climate and
genetic resources, and its forest and rivers provide vital sources of food, building materials,
pharmaceuticals, and water needed by wildlife and humanity. The Los Amigos watershed in the state of
Madre de Dios, southeastern Peru, is representative of the pristine lowland moist forest once found
throughout most of upper Amazonian South America. Threats to tropical forests occur in the form of
fishing, hunting, gold mining, timber extraction, impending road construction, and slash-and-burn
agriculture.
The Los Amigos watershed, consisting of 1.6 million hectares (3.95 million acres), still offers the
increasingly scarce opportunity to study rainforest as it was before the disruptive encroachment of
modern human civilization. Because of its relatively pristine condition and the immediate need to justify it
as a conservation zone, this area deserves intensive, long-term projects aimed at botanical training,
ecotourism, biological inventory, and information synthesis. On July 24, 2001, the government of Peru
and the Amazon Conservation Association signed a contractual agreement creating the first long-term
permanently renewable conservation concession. To our knowledge this is the first such agreement to be
implemented in the world. The conservation concession protects 340,000 acres of old-growth Amazonian
forest in the Los Amigos watershed, which is located in southeastern Peru. This watershed protects the
eastern flank of Manu National Park and is part of the lowland forest corridor that links it to
Bahuaja-Sonene National Park. The Los Amigos conservation concession will serve as a mechanism for
the development of a regional center of excellence in natural forest management and biodiversity science.
Several major projects are being implemented at the Los Amigos Conservation Area. Louise Emmons is
initiating studies of mammal diversity and ecology in the Los Amigos area. Other projects involve studies
of the diversity of arthropods, amphibians, reptiles, and birds. Robin Foster has conducted botanical
studies at Los Amigos, resulting in the labeling of hundreds of plant species along two kilometers of trail in
upland and lowland forest. Michael Goulding is leading a fisheries and aquatic ecology program, which
aims to document the diversity of fish, their ecologies, and their habitats in the Los Amigos area and the
Madre de Dios watershed in general.
With support from the Amazon Conservation Association, and in collaboration with U.S. and Peruvian
colleagues, the Botany of the Los Amigos project has been initiated.
At Los Amigos, we are attempting to develop a system of preservation, sustainability, and scientific
research; a marriage between various disciplines, from human ecology to economic botany, product
marketing to forest management. The complexity of the ecosystem will best be understood through a
multidisciplinary approach, and improved understanding of the complexity will lead to better management.
The future of these forests will depend on sustainable management and development of alternative
practices and products that do not require irreversible destruction. The botanical project will provide a
foundation of information that is essential to other programs at Los Amigos. By combining botanical
studies with fisheries and mammology, we will better understand plant/animal interactions. By providing
names, the botanical program will facilitate accurate communication about plants and the animals that
use them. Included in this scenario are humans, as we will dedicate time to people-plant interactions in
order to learn what plants are used by people in the Los Amigos area, and what plants could potentially
be used by people. To be informed, we must develop knowledge. To develop knowledge, we must collect,
organize, and disseminate information. In this sense, botanical information has conservation value.
Before we can use plant-based products from the forest, we must know what species are useful and we
must know their names. We must be able to identify them, to know where they occur in the forest, how
many of them exist, how they are pollinated and when they produce fruit (or other useful products). Aside
from understanding the species as they occur locally at Los Amigos, we must have information about their
overall distribution in tropical America in order to better understand and manage the distribution, variation,
and viability of their genetic diversity. This involves a more complete understanding of the species through
studies in the field and herbarium. The author's tone in the passage can best be described as

• A. passionate support for his and related projects.
• B. general praise for conservation projects in Amazonian South America.
• C. zealous advocacy for his point of view.
• D. advocacy for his project over other competing projects.
• E. condemnation for the government of Peru for allowing destruction of the rainforest.

(1) On my nineteenth birthday, I began my trip to Mali, West Africa.
(2) Some 24 hours later I arrived in Bamako, the capital of Mali.
(3) The sun had set and the night was starless.
(4) One of the officials from the literacy program I was working was there to meet me.
(5) After the melee in the baggage claim, we proceeded to his car.
(6) Actually, it was a truck.
(7) I was soon to learn that most people in Mali that had automobiles actually had trucks or SUVs.
(8) Apparently, there not just a convenience but a necessity when you live on the edge of the Sahara.
(9) I threw my bags into the bed of the truck, and hopped in to the back of the cab.
(10) Riding to my welcome dinner, I stared out the windows of the truck and took in the city.
(11) It was truly a foreign land to me, and I knew that I was an alien there.
(12) "What am I doing here?" I thought.
(13) It is hard to believe but seven months later I returned to the same airport along the same road that I
had traveled on that first night in Bamako, and my perspective on the things that I saw had completely
changed.
(14) The landscape that had once seemed so desolate and lifeless now was the homeland of people that I
had come to love.
(15) When I looked back at the capital, Bamako, fast receding on the horizon, I did not see a city
foreboding and wild in its foreignness.
(16) I saw the city which held so many dear friends.
(17) I saw tea drinking sessions going late into the night.
(18) I saw the hospitality and open- heartedness of the people of Mali.
(19) The second time, everything looked completely different, and I knew that it was I who had changed
and not it.
If you were to combine sentences 1618 (reproduced below) into one sentence, which of the following
would be the best choice? I saw the city which held so many dear friends. I saw tea-drinking sessions
going late into the night. I saw the hospitality and open-heartedness of the people of Mali.

• A. I saw the city which held so many dear friends, I saw tea-drinking sessions going late into the night, I
  saw the hospitality and open heartedness of the people of Mali.
• B. I saw the city which held so many dear friends, drinking tea into late in the night, and the hospitality and
  open-heartedness of the people of Mali.
• C. I saw the city which held so many dear friends; I saw tea-drinking sessions going late into the night; I
  saw the hospitality and open heartedness of the people of Mali.
• D. I saw the city which held so many dear friends, tea-drinking sessions going late into the night, the
  hospitality and open-heartedness of the people of Mali.
• E. I saw the city which held so many dear friends: tea-drinking sessions going late into the night, the
  hospitality and open-heartedness of the people of Mali.

His ______ behavior toward her caused a considerable riff in the organization, partially because of the
size of the company and partially because he was a married man with children.

• A. untoward
• B. periodic
• C. snide
• D. mysterious
• E. obsequious

When you are restive, you don't have much ----.

• A. equilibrium
• B. animosity
• C. restlessness
• D. equanimity
• E. motion