GRE® Verbal Practice | Text Completion Q4

This is a very interesting GRE text completion practice question where one's ability to look at the sentence and get to the core is tested. Rephrase or simplify a sentence to get to the correct answer. Try the question without looking at the answer explanation. If you face difficulty in arriving at the correct answer, take help from the detailed explanation provided below.

Question 4: Greek tragedy, from which Racine borrowed ____________, tended to assume that humanity was under the control of gods who were indifferent to its ____________, a theme that was therefore recurrent in Racine’s work.

S No.	Blank 1	S No.	Blank 2
A	in plenitude	D	sufferings and aspirations
B	very rarely	E	followers and devotees
C	only once	F	rites and rituals

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Explanatory Answer

In more complex sentences, the structure and construction becomes important. You might find clauses and modifiers which add more and more information and make the sentence longer. In such cases, it helps to simplify the sentence to understand its structure. For example, this sentence can be rephrased to remove a lot of the detail present in it.

Racine borrowed from Greek tragedy. The first blank seems to refer to the amount that Racine borrowed from Greek tragedy. Did he borrow a lot, or did he borrow very rarely? The last part of the sentence gives us a clue – a certain theme from Greek tragedy was (therefore) recurrent in Racine’s work. If the theme was recurrent (appearing frequently), it indicates that he borrowed heavily from Greek tragedy. So he borrowed “in plenitude” (meaning abundantly) Answer option A.

The clue to the second blank in the sentence is the theme present in Racine's work - which is the indifference of the gods. Choose an answer option which is tying in with “indifferent”.

What is the meaning of indifference?
Not interested in. Not caring about. Cannot be bothered about.

What will go with the Gods do not care about?
The sufferings and aspirations of humanity. Answer option D.

Choice A & D are the correct answers.