Correct answers to Main Point questions often restate or summarize the author’s main conclusion, if the author includes one in the passage. Sometimes, however, the author won’t include a main conclusion or it will be difficult to determine which statement is the conclusion. In these cases, we’ll have to find another way to find the main point.
One way to find the main point is to ask ourselves, “What did the author want to convince us of?” The author seems to want to correct how scholars research and understand Native American autobiographies. These scholars rely too much on autobiographies written by non-Native Americans (lines 1-5). But, the author points out that Native American people “do not share with Europeans” ideas about autobiographies/life stories (lines 8-14). In the rest of the passage, the author explains how Native Americans have different assumptions about autobiographies/life stories — Native Americans think about the self in relation to community and the cosmos, life stories are often recorded in real time through performed ceremonies, and personal events were sometimes commemorated with symbols. So, it would appear that the entire passage is an attempt to show how Native American assumptions about autobiographies are markedly different from European assumptions. (D) gets the closest to reiterating that idea, and it is the correct answer.
