- [Instructor] All right, we have two questions here.
The first one reads as follows.
The characters' behavior during the gift giving
mainly serves to, and I've covered up the answers here.
And then the following question
asks us to cite textual evidence.
Which choice provides the best evidence
for the answer to the previous question?
So the answer to question five is going to
support the answer to question four.
Let's think about four first.
This is asking two questions actually.
What is, first, the characters' behavior
during the gift giving and what is its main purpose?
What does it do?
So let's go over and look at the gift giving
which as we can see from question five
happens somewhere between lines 37 and 52.
All right, so I can see here that at line 30
is the start of the gift giving.
Let's see what 52 is.
Well this is all about like the feet touching
and that's not the gift giving,
so I'm gonna scoot back up to line 30.
Okay, once they were inside,
Mamima gave the pot of yogurt
and the pot of sweetmeats to the old lady.
So how are the characters behaving during the gift giving?
That's the first thing that I'm thinking about.
How do they behave and why are they doing it?
And so Mamima and Chhotomama, right,
the mother and father in law are giving
this modest host gift of yogurt and candy
to the old lady and the old man
and first, the old lady says, oh this is too much
as though she's just gotten the Kohinoor diamond.
Extremely valuable gem.
And Chhotomama replies that it's not a big deal.
You know, come come, it's nothing.
So he is behaving as though it is a big deal
even though he's trying to downplay it
because he's pretending as though he is the person
that's just given someone the Kohinoor diamond
as a birthday present and refuses
to be overawed by his own generosity.
He's pretending as though he has given a great gift
but also simultaneously pretending it's not a big deal.
And Sandeep, the narrator, the main character
says, it was nothing off course.
Only Ganguram's sweets and yogurt
but they fussed and fussed and created the illusion
that it was something, something unique
and untasted and unencountered.
Everyone is behaving as though it's a big deal
even though it's not a big deal.
So they're playing it up even though it is nothing.
That's how they behave and that's why they're doing it.
They're creating the impression,
the illusion that the host's gifts
are very big and very important.
So I'm going to expose the choices for question four
and then see what we have.
The purpose of the behavior is mainly to,
choice A, emphasize the lavish value of the gift.
Lavish means expensive and very fancy
and we know from the context of the passage
that it was in fact not a fancy gift.
It's just yogurt and candy,
so I'm going to cross that off.
B, inflate the significance of the gesture.
Now that is what is happening.
I'm going to leave this for now
because there might be something that's even closer
but definitely going by Sandeep's depiction, right?
His narration at the end of that paragraph
says it was nothing after all,
but they behaved as though, they fussed and fussed
and made it seem as though it were something untasted
and unique and untasted and unencountered
I believe is what it actually says.
Let's leave B for now, let's not cross it off quite yet.
C, the purpose of the behavior during the gift giving
is mainly to convey indifference towards the gift.
And I know that's wrong
because I know what indifference means
and indifference means that you don't care.
But everyone seems to care like a great deal.
Indifferent would not describe how Chhotomama
and the old lady and the old man and Mamima react
to the gift giving.
They're pretending like they're handling diamonds,
so indifference is not the choice that I would make.
And then D, stress the need for polite behavior.
Well, they are indeed being very polite,
but which one is the main point?
Is the main point to inflate the significance
of the gesture or is it D,
to stress the need for polite behavior?
And if we're having trouble deciding,
let's go onto question five
so that we can look for evidence
to the previous question.
And I'm pretty sure that C and D occur
outside the gift giving scene.
Let's make sure really quickly
but I think that's the feet touching.
Yeah, there's line 44 and it's Sandeep's,
yeah, the married couple stooped
to touch Chhotomama's feet, everyone's feet
and Chhotomama struggles to keep
the hands away from the feet.
That's C, yeah 44 to 46 and then 50 to 52,
I have not met you for two years, Dada.
You must not stop me.
Also has nothing to do with the gift giving.
That's just a ritual greeting
that the son in law is trying to do
and the father in law is trying to avoid.
I'm just gonna cross those off
because those don't have anything to do with
sweetmeats and yogurt.
And now let's go back to 37, lines 37 to 40
and see if there's evidence either for
inflating the significance of the gesture
or D, stressing the need for polite behavior
explicitly supported by the text.
So line 37 beginning with it was nothing.
It was nothing of course,
only Ganguram's sweets and yogurt,
but they fussed and fussed and created
the illusion that it was something,
something unique and untasted and unencountered.
So it was nothing to yogurt is the first choice.
And then they to unencountered is the second.
So this is choice A and this here is choice B.
So which one explains the way that they behave?
Choice A suggests, well, the gift was quite modest.
It was nothing and I don't know who Ganguram is,
but probably a vendor or someone that the family knows,
but B falls in line with more what I was saying
about how Sandeep feels about the inflation of the gift.
They fussed and fussed and created the illusion
that it was something, something unique and you know,
basically something special.
So answer choice A here, it was yogurt
neither supports the significance of the gesture
nor the need for polite behavior.
Politeness is not even covered in it.
But also, that doesn't inflate the significance
of the gesture, it deflates it
'cause it's just yogurt.
So I'm gonna cross this off.
And so the answer for question five is B
and what this choice supports is again,
also not D, the need for polite behavior wasn't mentioned,
so the answer must be B, the inflation
of the significance of the gesture.
Right, fussing and fussing and pretending
that it was a big deal when it was not
in fact a big deal.
What's great about question sets like these
is that if you're left with a choice
between something like B and D
where they're both quite plausible,
you can use the following question
if it calls for citing textual evidence
to help you firm up your understanding
of the previous question.
Question five helps us solve question four.