RC Question 16 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: The last paragraph of the passage serves…
DISCUSSION: The point of the last passage was to show how wampum became a tool to represent the Haudenosaune confederacy’s constitution.
___________
- The author never says why wampum switched from stringed wampum to belts. They just said it did.
- This didn’t happen.
Example of answer: (In a museum): “Here, we can see some characteristic differences between string wampum and wampum belts. Notice the small beads on string wampum, compared to the larger beads typical on wampum belts. Also notice the formal features of wampum belts, reflecting their important political use.” - CORRECT. This is a good overview. The final paragraph is about how the Haudenosaune confederacy used wampum belts to represent their constitution.
- This means “Describe the text of the constitution”. The author didn’t tell us what the constitution actually said.
- The author never actually described how well wampum worked in terms of guaranteeing compliance with the constitution.
“The author never actually described how well wampum worked in terms of guaranteeing compliance with the constitution.”
Last sentence: “The wampum symbol system…served to effectively frame and enforce the law.”
That precisely states that the wampum worked in terms of guaranteeing compliance, and is undeniably synonymous with answer choice E (“wampump’s effectiveness as a means of ensuring compliance with the law”).
In question 14, you stated that answer choice D was incorrect because the wampum was established as a “medium of communication” prior to the formation of the confederacy. If that is true, how was the “symbolic representation” in answer choice C now already established prior to the confederacy? They had used beads to represent godly sprits, that seems to be the definition of symoblic representation.
This is my issue with the LSAT. Completely inconsistent with their own logic.
I could probably have worded E more precisely, but: the final paragraph did not give evidence of how wampum was effective. It merely *said* it was effecitive, and described some uses.
Evidence would be showing a case whwre someone tried to defy the constitution and wampum helped stop them that, or some actual tangible info about wampum’s power.
On C, you’re mixing up the two situations. Wampum was used as a means of communication before the confederacy.
But the confederacy is what turned it into a deliberate system designed ro support their constitution.
(A) seems totally accurate to me. And (C) seems like the function of the 2nd paragraph, not the last.
The entire last paragraph tells us exactly HOW & why wampum BELTS evolved from “other forms of wampum” (STRINGS): “These belts combined string wampum to form icons that could be deciphered by those knowing the significance of the stylized symbols.” The last paragraph isn’t needed to illustrate how wampum’s function symbolically, that is what the preceding paragraph just did for us.
Any additional explanation addressing this would be so helpful! Thanks.
We’re looking for the primary function of the paragraph within the context of the passage. There’s only one sentence in the paragraph (the one you cited) that suggests some kind of transition between string wampum and belts, and there’s no real account of an evolution from one to another. An account of the evolution would describe the history of that transition — how and why strings were replaced with belts to convey certain meanings.
The second paragraph does indeed illustrate how wampum came to represent “basic ideas” (21), but that doesn’t preclude the final paragraph’s function also being to show how wampum served as a system of symbolic representation. The distinction between the second paragraph and final paragraph is that the latter shows how this system of symbolic representation was used for political ends.