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A Shmoop a day keeps the doctor away...

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The phrase "climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions" functions as...what?

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This phrase comes directly from one of Hurston's quotes, so we can take a look at what she's saying.

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First things first: she didn't climb aboard the rattling wagon of wishful illusions.

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If she did, something like this would happen...

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It's a wagon full of illusions, right? This tips us off that it's not real and probably not good.

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There's not a chance that (D) is the right answer.

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We just figured out that this wagon isn't real, so there's no way this is a reference

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to a wagon she rode when she was a child. The context around the quote lets us know

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that the "wishful illusions" to which Zora is referring are the ideas of other writers.

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She thinks that a lot of her critics get on her case because she writes things the way

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they are, not the way she'd like them to be.

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Knowing this, we can leave (A) by the wayside. A person with that much gumption is probably

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not the sort who'd be unwilling to do the work to further her craft.

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There's no talk in the passage about Hurston avoiding metaphors, making (E) easy to leave

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in the dust as well.

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We're pretty sure the real Hurston could come up with a better one.

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Choice (C) is kind of heading down the right path. Zora does express the idea that other

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writers are representing things in a way that she feels is untrue.

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But the topics the other writers are writing about aren't necessarily "unrelated,"

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or not connected, with the topics Zora writes about. She just disagrees about the ways those

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topics are represented. It seems our journey is at an end. (B) is

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the only answer left, and it totally makes sense.

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"Figurative" refers to language that uses lots of "figures of speech" like metaphors

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and all that good stuff. This covers our requirement that the "wagon of wishful illusions"

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not be real, making (B) the correct answer.

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It's too bad; we like a "wishful illusion" every now and then.

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