 Today we have five literary comprehension questions coming at you in five minutes or less. We're just going to focus on literature questions that ask about the main idea or some specific details from the passage that you're provided with. It says here that there's a traveler from an antique land and then he starts describing something in the desert. I'm going to kind of skip over a lot of that description because I don't really need that information for the main idea. On the pedestal these words appear. My name is King of Kings. Look at my works ye mighty and despair. The last section of the poem sort of drives it home. It says nothing beside remains. Now at this point I've got the main idea. We've got a traveler who described this statue that is broken in the desert and ironically the statue is talking about like look at how awesome all my works are when there's nothing there. The things that we create will eventually go away. So if we look at our answer choices the first one talks about travel that's clearly not the issue here. Nothing can survive the harshness of the desert. Does kind of make sense but I don't think it's really about the desert so much as it is about like the ego of this king right. Man's creations and aspirations will disappear in time. That feels like a pretty good summary of what I just read. We're looking for the main idea of the passage and so we're going to start looking at this poem and I see that it keeps talking about melancholy and sadness. Clearly he's having like a struggle with his own depression. Poems tend to repeat the same ideas with different words. I want to look for some words that help me indicate that there's a transition or a change happening but I will not accept its decree. Clearly the author is going to fight this sadness. I see another but. But I know I must find the key to unlock my heart and set my soul free. Kind of a key idea here is that this person's fighting with sadness but he knows he can resist it. To do that he says your power over me must seize your hold on me. I must release. Like he's a let go of something or like just get over it. First one says here that the author explains their relationship with sadness. I don't think that's specific enough here. I mean that's like the first half of the poem but not really the second half. Melancholy acts as a prison for the human soul. He's talking about getting out of it so I don't think that's exactly the right metaphor. One must allow themselves to be released from sadness in order to be happy. Now that is exactly what he said at the end of the poem. Third question changes gears a little bit. We have a section of a narrative and the question it asks is what is true of the speaker in the passage. Now the first paragraph here is quotes from the speaker so that's probably the part I want to focus on the most and he talks about wanting facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts. Facts alone in life. No critical thinking. Facts. Memorize the facts. Sounds like a lot of the teachers I had when I was in school. The first one says they're passionate about education for young adults. He's passionate about facts but he doesn't seem to care much about the overall education. They have no patience for nuance in education. Now that is 100% true. He's expressly made it clear that he only wants them to learn facts. Anything nuanced anything hard to explain goes out the window. Okay this time it asks us what is true of the narrator of the passage. It starts off by talking about a guy named Heathcliff who had been absent for a month and then he says he saw the back of a man in a brown cloak and near the end of the house and supposed it was him. So seems like this guy knows Heathcliff maybe he's his neighbor or something and you know he sees somebody there and he's thinking oh maybe that's the guy I should go say hi it's been a month. But then he notices his comments was much older than Mr. Heathcliff's in a dark complexion, a quiet eye, a face I should have called handsome if it had not been for a certain sardonic aspect that made me dread rather than desire to look upon him. So when he gets closer and kind of sees his features he sees that this person's kind of scary looking like it gives him this sense of dread and that says his frame was of a large size so like this person kind of freaks out the narrator and that's really all I can gather here is that he lives near Heathcliff sees a guy at his house that guy is scary that's all I got. The first one says they're intimidated by the man at Heathcliff's house that is 100% true I mean he does say that he feels a sense of dread and that this guy is really large so I'm definitely going to mark gay. Where does the above passage take place? This is a tricky one because we got to infer from some details about where this might have happened. Nellie of cruising y'all whatever that is swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails and was at rest. Okay so we're on a boat which is at rest. It says the sea reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. All right the sea reach where the river meets the sea, brooding motionless over the biggest and greatest town on earth. The first one says on the banks of the Thames river in London they do say that they're further out towards the sea not the banks of the river. Where the Thames River meets the ocean does seem accurate but it's unclear if they're actually there or if they can just sort of see that area from a distance. The third one says on a ship resting just outside of London. Now we do have good support for that in the first part of the paragraph they told us that the ship was anchored at rest. The reference in the last line says that you know they were the greatest town on earth so that's probably London but we know they're not in London because of that Gravesend line so I'm thinking sea looks like the best answer here. The literature questions on the SAT can be difficult for you especially if you're not familiar with a lot of English literature. The key thing I think is to try to make sure you can understand what you can and don't get caught up in words you don't know. I did not know what a cruising y'all was and I don't care I'm just going to try to infer what I'm talking about based on other things based on the context. When it comes to poetry make sure you pay attention to those key transition words or the breaks between stanzas since that usually indicates that there's sort of a change in the tone of the poem and oftentimes towards the end of a poem is where you're going to see those key ideas that'll give you the main idea of the whole passage. Overall there's only a few of these questions on the test so if you're struggling with them mark them for review and just move on so that you can keep answering questions and then when you have some extra time at the end of the test come back and give it a better shot but don't sit there and stare at the three or four literature questions that you're going to get on the test they're not going to be the deal breaker between a high score and a low score there's only a few of these questions on any digital SAT. Do your best if you're not sure keep moving ultimately you either can get it or you can't and if you haven't read a lot of literature or your vocabulary is kind of weak these are going to be tough so don't kill yourself for them go ahead and just mark them and move on.