CAT 2024 Slot 3 · VARC · Question 18

CAT 2024 Slot 3 previous year question on Para Summary, with the answer and a step-by-step solution.

Para SummaryVerbal AbilityMultiple choiceMedium

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.

Lyric poetry is a genre of private meditation rather than public commitment. The impulse in Marxism toward changing a society deemed unacceptable in its basic design would seem to place demands on lyric poetry that such poetry, with its tendency toward the personal, the small scale, and the idiosyncratic, could never answer. There is within Marxism, however, also a strand of thought that would locate in lyric poetry alternative modes of perception and description that call forth a vision of worlds at odds with a repressive reality or that draw attention to the workings of ideology within the hegemonic culture. The poetic imagination may indeed deflect larger social concerns, but it may also be implicitly critical and utopian.

  1. A
    The focus of lyric poetry is largely personal while that of Marxism is bringing change in society. Unless the difference is resolved, poetry will remain largely utopian.
  2. B
    Marxism has internal contradictions due to which one strand of Marxism sees no merit in lyric poetry while another appreciates the alternative modes of perception in poetry.
  3. C
    The focus of lyric poetry as personal may not seem compatible with Marxism. However, it is possible to envisage lyric poetry as a symbol of resistance against an oppressive culture.
  4. D
    Marxism makes unreasonable demands on lyric poetry. However, lyric poetry has its own merits that are largely ignored by Marxism due to its personal nature.
Pick an option, then check.
Answer & solution

Answer: Option C

The passage moves from an apparent conflict to a resolution. Lyric poetry is personal, while Marxism wants to change society, so Marxism 'would seem to' make demands lyric poetry cannot meet. 'However', another strand of Marxism sees in lyric poetry visions 'at odds with a repressive reality' that can be 'implicitly critical and utopian'.

Option 3 keeps both steps: the apparent incompatibility, and the possibility of reading lyric poetry as resistance to an oppressive culture.

Option 1 adds a condition the passage never states – 'unless the difference is resolved' – and misuses 'utopian', which the passage uses as a positive quality.

Option 2 calls this an 'internal contradiction' and says one strand sees 'no merit' in lyric poetry. The passage says only that the demands 'would seem' unanswerable.

Option 4 says Marxism largely ignores lyric poetry's merits, but the passage describes a strand of Marxism that recognises them.

Shortcut: watch for hedges like 'would seem to'. The correct summary keeps the hedge ('may not seem compatible'); options that harden it into a fact are wrong.

Hence, the answer is option 3.

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