I picked E. Since it said impending death, I thought “anticipation of” would be most fitting because his father’s death is coming, and when something is on its way, you have an expectation. And since James lacked the “usual anticipation of death”, an unusual way of speaking would be without sympathy.
I know my reasoning involves some storytelling but I wasn’t able to grasp the logic. Can anyone help?
This is a tough one.
The semicolon divides the sentence into two parts. We can use previously referenced strategy and support contrast here. “He spoke without (blank 2) about … death” is a direct contrast of “the usual (blank1) death”. Thus we can assume that he spoke without any hesitation/dread about his father’s death, which also indicates he was usually hesitant/fearing about death. Sorry if this is sounding a bit confusing, but this is the only logical explanation I could come up with.
The dictionary definition of inhibition is a feeling that makes one self-conscious and unable to act in a relaxed and natural way. and awe can also mean dread or fear, Merriam-Webster has an archaic definition of awe as " dread, terror, the power to inspire dread".
Let me know if any questions!
Hei,
For the first blank, something on the lines of fear or respect could fit in. Further the semicolon tells the two ideas on its either sides are related. The left side of the semicolon talks about lack of ‘fear’ or ‘respect’, so the right side should also be on the lines of lacking ‘fear’ or ‘respect’. Since the right side has the word ‘without’, the sense of lacking is sufficed on the right side. Thus, the right side needs to have the same sense of ‘fear’ or ‘respect’ as on the left side. Further, I think its more of a double possibility (possibility of fear or respect) with both the blanks conveying the same idea (of fear and respect) or both the blanks should have something which are synonymous to one another. Building upon this i think, B should be the correct answer because being in awe of something means to inspire fear or reverence in which is what inhibition (a feeling of fear) also means.
Jai mentioned about the previously referenced strategy, which i’m not would be correct here…But as Greg would say a good ETS question always have redundancy. So i guess that is what might be the case here.
Do tell, what u feel about my explanation.
