June 2016 LSAT Section 4 Question 9

It can be inferred from the passage that the attitude of Matthew Arnold toward the aristocratic and middle classes ca...

saskipper on June 23, 2020

Answer D vs E

Can you shed some light on how to eliminate answer choice D? I felt Answer E ("scorn") was a little too harsh given the wording of the passage. Please point out the indicator in the passage that points to this answer choice and eliminates D. Thanks!

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shunhe on June 28, 2020

Hi @saskipper,

Thanks for the question! So you picked the answer that indicates “disappointment” rather than “scorn,” but if we look through the passage, we can see that the tone actually does match scorn more here. It is pretty harsh wording, and normally pretty extreme, but in this case, it’s deserved. Let’s take a look at what exactly Matthew Arnold says, which is around lines 36-41. Matthew Arnold calls the aristocracy “barbarians,” and calls the middle class “Philistines, obsessed with respectability.” This is pretty strong, negative language, and belies that his opinion towards them is one of scorn. It’s not necessarily disappointment, since we’re not told that Matthew Arnold had any expectations for these groups of people (since you have to disappointment some kind of expectation to be disappointing).

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.