ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by children who draw terrible naval battles.

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Maybe someone should get these kids some help.

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Check out the following passage.

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It's a long one.

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[ mumbles ]

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[ mumbling continues ]

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[ further mumbling ]

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All right, you done? Good.

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The quotation marks in the third paragraph - that's lines 16 through 23 -

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chiefly serve to, uh, what?

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And here are the potential answers.

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[ mumbles ]

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All right, pause waiver and let's just go.

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Well, the essay as a whole makes it pretty clear that the speaker is passionate about

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artistic development, making him less likely to agree with

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ideas that state otherwise.

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Check out the speaker's abrupt shift in language in the third paragraph.

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Terms for children's art productions change from "painting,"

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"sculpting," and "composing" to the less noble

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"making things," which appears in quotes.

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The author also puts "making a living" in quotes when he talks about how

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it becomes more important than creating art as we get older.

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Those statements don't sound like the speaker when compared with the rest of the essay,

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and the air quotations confirm the contrast between the stuff in quotes

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and the speaker's personal view.

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It's like he's using the quotes to tell us, "This is the stuff people say, but I don't buy it."

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Right. Like that.

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Knowing this, we can get rid of most of these answer options easily.

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Option A is first on our list.

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The idea of making art versus making a living is a big deal in the passage,

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and in the life of many starving artists out there.

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But the quotes don't help the author get that point across.

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So [ buzzer noise ]. Choice B is also a definite no.

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Yeah, the quotations do contradict the previous paragraphs,

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but they aren't meant to build a counterargument.

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If they were, the speaker would be arguing against the idea that

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kids eventually have to give up art, but he doesn't do that in the essay at all.

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Though he doesn't like the idea, he's going at it with a

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"this is the way it goes" kind of attitude, right?

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Well, we're gonna have to give D the boot, as well.

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The quotations may hint at a disconnect between the terms and the actions,

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but that's just not the point.

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Choice C is sort of on the right track.

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The quotation marks do let us know that we shouldn't take the

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speaker's word choices at face value, but

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ultimately the best answer is E.

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The speaker uses the quotes to show that he is quoting others,

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and that these terms don't reflect what he really thinks.

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We think this whole essay stems from the time the author's mom

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caught him drawing a terrible naval battle and took his colored pencils away.

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But that's just a theory.

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[ screaming ]

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