When answering these Role of Detail questions, it helps to think about the primary argument the author is driving home in the paragraph in which the detail appears. In the last paragraph, the author is poking fun at the literary scholars who analyze texts using “deconstructionism.” The author thinks they’re approaching texts mechanically. The author then says “Criticism and critic dervive from the Greek kritikos, ‘skillful in judging, decisive.’ Deconstruction, on the other hand, has no overtone of skill or wisdom” (lines 47-49). So the author is contrasting “deconstruction” and “criticism” to introduce a contrast between the two (in order to poke fun at the deconstructionists). (B) correctly identifies this role.
