The Reading section of the ACT consists of 40 multiple-choice questions (MCQs) to be answered in 35 minutes, giving you 52 seconds per question. There are three long passages and one paired set with two short passages that need to be read together.
The ACT Reading questions following each passage assess your ability to identify main ideas, interpret specific details, understand cause-effect relationships, grasp a sequence of events, and make comparisons between elements. Your ACT Reading score is reported in three categories:
- Key Ideas and Details (52-60%)
- Craft and Structure (25-30%)
- Integration of Knowledge and Ideas (13-23%)
General Tips To Succeed on ACT Reading Section
Approaching the ACT Reading section involves a systematic approach that includes developing a strong understanding of foundational concepts, utilizing resources such as UWorld’s ACT Reading practice tests, and practicing with timed tests to familiarize yourself with ACT Reading question types.
Having a structured study plan will help you stay focused and organized in your preparation. Use our ACT Reading study guide to create a study plan that sets realistic goals for each of your study sessions and ensures you cover everything thoroughly before the exam.
Here are some ACT Reading strategies to help you prepare:
- Skim through the ACT Reading passages
Before reading every word, take a quick glance at the title, subheadings, and any introductory information provided. This can help you get an idea about what the passage is about and how it is structured.
- Carefully read the questions
Before attempting to answer a question, ensure you grasp its meaning. Break down the question into smaller components to simplify it.
- Analyze graphs, charts, and tables (if applicable)
If the passage includes visual elements such as graphs, charts, and tables, take time to review them carefully. Visual aids often convey important information on a passage's argument.
- Answer all ACT Reading questions
There is no penalty for incorrect responses, so attempt to answer every question. Try to eliminate incorrect choices to enhance your chances of selecting the correct answer. Base guesses on logical and thoughtful inferences.
- HIghlight key information
You’ll better comprehend and retain information in passages if you underline or circle important facts. Don’t depend on your existing knowledge about a topic, rather, look for evidence in the passage that supports your answer.
- Skip and revisit questions that stump you
If you encounter a particularly challenging question, skip it and return later. This prevents time wastage and reduces stress and anxiety during the exam.
4 Different Types of Passages You’ll Encounter
There are 4 kinds of ACT Reading passages — Literary Narrative and Prose, Natural Science, Social Studies, and Humanities — that your practice resources should review. Here’s a look at each, along with tips to help you conquer them:
Literary Narrative and Prose Fiction Passages
The Literary Narrative and Prose Fiction passages are taken from fictional works such as novels, short tales, or other types of narrative writing with a variety of genres, time periods, and cultural contexts. These passages often contain elements such as characters, plot development, settings, and themes commonly found in storytelling. You may encounter symbolism, metaphors, imagery, and similes that will help you understand the author's intended meaning and viewpoint. For these passages, you are often required to interpret the author's use of language, analyze character motivations, or discern the underlying themes of the passage.
Strategies to ace Literary Narrative and Prose Fiction questions
Here are a few tips to understand Literary Narrative and Prose Fiction passages:
- Identify the passage’s main idea and themes
Determine the passage's primary idea or central theme. Think about how the conflict, storyline, and characters support the passage. Look for recurring themes, symbols, and patterns that shed light on the author's viewpoints.
- Analyze the character(s) presented in the passage
Observe the motivations, actions, and dialogue of the characters closely. Take into account how their interactions and characteristics contribute to the story and topic. Examine the views of the characters and how the story is affected by them.
- Understand the plot structure
Determine the passage's exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Comprehending the story structure will help facilitate the understanding of the growth of characters and the sequence of events.
Literary Narrative and Prose Fiction Questions Examples
Passage A by Jack London
It was in Reno, Nevada, in the summer of 1892. Also, it was fair-time, and the town was filled with petty crooks and charlatans, to say nothing of a vast and hungry horde of hoboes. It was the hungry hoboes that made the town a "hungry" town.
A hard town for "scoffings," was what the hoboes called it at that time. I know that I missed many a meal, turned down at a dozen houses. Sometimes I received insulting remarks and was informed of the barred domicile that should be mine if I had my just desserts. The worst of it was that such assertions were only too true.
At other houses the doors were slammed in my face, cutting short my politely and humbly couched request for something to eat. At one house they did not open the door. I stood on the porch and knocked, and they looked out at me through the window. They even held one sturdy little boy aloft so that he could see over the shoulders of his elders the beggar who wasn't going to get anything to eat at their house.
It began to look as if I should be compelled to go to the very poor for my food. The very poor constitute the last sure recourse of the hungry vagrant. The very poor can always be depended upon. They never turn away the hungry.
Time and again, all over the United States, have I been refused food by the big house on the hill; and always have I received food from the little shack down by the creek or marsh, with its broken windows stuffed with rags and its tired-faced mother broken with labor. Oh, you charity-mongers! Go to the poor and learn, for the poor alone are the charitable. They neither give nor withhold from their excess. They have no excess. They give, and they withhold never, from what they need for themselves, and very often from what they cruelly need for themselves. A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog when you are just as hungry as the dog.
Passage B by Mark Twain
Blucher had been without a penny for two months. He had shirked about obscure streets, among friendly dim lights, till the thing had become second nature to him. He had not tasted food for forty-eight hours, and he could not endure the misery of his hunger in idle hiding. He came along a back street, glowering at the loaves in bake-shop windows, and feeling that he could trade his life away for a morsel to eat. The sight of the bread doubled his hunger; but it was good to look at it, anyhow, and imagine what one might do if one only had it.
Presently, in the middle of the street he saw a shining spot—looked again—did not, and could not, believe his eyes—it was a silver dime! He snatched it—gloated over it; doubted it—bit it—found it genuine—choked his heart down, and smothered a halleluiah.
He turned out and went up Merchant Street, chewing a bit of stick, as is the way of starving men. He passed before the lights of Martin's restaurant, the most aristocratic in the city, and stopped. It was a place where he had often dined, in better days, and Martin knew him well. Standing aside, just out of the range of the light, he worshiped the quails and steaks in the show window.
Just at this juncture he was conscious of someone at his side, sure enough; and then a finger touched his arm. He looked up, over his shoulder, and saw an apparition—a very allegory of Hunger! It was a man six feet high, gaunt, unshaven, hung with rags; with a haggard face and sunken cheeks, and eyes that pleaded piteously. This phantom said:
"Friend—stranger—look at me! Life is easy to you—you go about, placid and content, as I did once, in my day—you have been in there—but you've never suffered! Only twenty-five cents! I am famishing—perishing—starving by inches! For God's sake, don't desert me!"
Blucher was bewildered—and touched, too—stirred to the depths. He reflected. Thought again. Then an idea struck him, and he said:
"Come with me."
He took the outcast's arm, walked him down to Martin's restaurant, seated him at a marble table, placed the bill of fare before him, and said:
"Order what you want, friend. Charge it to me, Mr. Martin."
When six dollars and a half's worth of destruction had been accomplished, and the stranger's hunger appeased, Blucher went down to French Pete's, bought a veal cutlet plain, a slice of bread, and three radishes, with his dime, and feasted like a king!
Based on these two passages, which pair of phrases best compares the narrator of Passage A's relationship to society and the main character of Passage B's relationship to society?
- Reflective beggar versus resourceful wanderer
- Lofty dreamer versus manipulative schemer
- Deceptive criminal versus reformed prisoner
- Nameless vagrant versus crafty opportunist
I walked out of my hotel into a beautiful October sunrise gilding the town of Heraklion on the island of Crete. I had skipped the early morning breakfast offered by the hotel. Along with a team of beauty product editors, I had received an invitation the previous month to come to Heraklion to tour the Messara olive groves. The tour's purpose was to celebrate the launch of a new skincare brand claiming to use the finest extra virgin olive oil. The night before, the skincare product representatives had feted us at a moonlit dinner at the Restaurant Peskesi. Dinner on Crete is a late affair, usually beginning after 8 p.m., and if you're a visitor who hasn't remembered to grab a snack earlier, the locals may wryly note that yon stranger has a lean and hungry look.
I had arrived in Heraklion from my hometown of Kalamata, proud to hail from a city known worldwide for its excellent olives produced by corporate growers with large processing factories. Even though the same olive wreath that encircles the ancient coat of arms of Messara also decorates the medieval walls of Kalamata, I had to admit that Messara's golden Koroneiki olive oil at dinner had surpassed that of Kalamata. Increasingly, growers in Messara produce olives organically, a much slower process than the mass-produced olive oil that has dominated Greek production for the last century. As quality is of greater concern than quantity—the groves yield a tenth of large-scale producers' tracts—organic trees are kept smaller so that their olives can be better nourished by the sun and watered naturally by rain.
Our day's destination was Messara, a compact 22-square-mile area smaller than Manhattan Island, yet containing nearly 300,000 olive trees. Ancient Minoan olive mills—significant proof of olive oil's importance throughout the centuries on Crete—have been discovered in Messara. The Koroneiki variety primarily grows here—my turn to feel proud of my roots, as we were told the Koroneiki originated near Kalamata. The sunny Messara Plain, with its abundance of olives and its renowned extra virgin olive oil, is where our host skincare company had turned to create its new olive oil-based line of products in collaboration with the Organic Farmers Association of Messara.
As the sun rose higher on our short ride over the Asterousia Mountains, our bus seemingly left behind the 21st century to stop amid the same vast olive groves that have produced the "green gold" since as early as 8,000 BC. Chatting with the tanned olive growers, we learned the long history of Messara and the importance of its olive oil exports. Then we were handed our ntebles, the long-handled sticks used for centuries to harvest olives.
Our harvest efforts began with laughter and Instagram posing, but our arms began to ache from swinging the ntebles. We soon recognized the arduous work necessary for the harvest, a combination of exacting nteble-handling and loving treatment of the branches—the farmers called them "their girls"—as they explained their use of ntebles, decrying the fact that most large-scale producers have replaced them. On corporate farms, the ED-209, a giant machine, envelops the entire tree to shake loose the olives but often leaves the silvery tresses of the "girls" damaged, a result the organic farmers find abhorrent.
We then headed to the olive press, where the bright green olive oil's slow ooze was so irresistibly aromatic. Not impersonal drums of stainless steel, but carefully joined staves of olive wood, formed the tubs. No cold electronic press mechanisms, but a hand-turned wooden screw's golden patina, recalled the many hands that had drawn the golden oil from the olives. The fragrance of olives and olive oil, combined with the sight of the people employing methods and materials that Homer could have witnessed, inspired a reverence in us.
After the olive press, we made a short stop at the house of Kostis Mamalakis, the president of the Organic Farmers Association, where we enjoyed a cup of coffee with sweet Cretan delicacies. As we recovered from our harvest efforts, Mamalakis described how the precious oil of the famous Koroneiki olive tree groves is the same oil that ancient women of Crete used for their hair, face, and body and the same oil that the male athletes of Crete used to cleanse and prepare their bodies for the ancient Greek games. The organically farmed olives are a natural source of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and antioxidants, nourishing and restoring youthfulness to skin.
And now our hosts were cooperating with Kostis and the Organic Farmers Association not only to produce high-quality skincare products, but also to preserve the ancient organic tradition and promote scientific research in organic cultivation methods. The first line on my invitation from the skincare company to travel to Crete had read, "The olive's natural past beautifies our future." My day in Messara had convinced me of that claim.
The author refers to Manhattan Island mainly to:
- indicate the increased number of trees crowding the Messara Plain
- provide support for the idea that traditional methods are increasing on the Messara Plain
- suggest that large-scale olive oil factories will soon push out organic farmers
- help emphasize the limited area on which the many olive trees grow
Natural Science Passages
Natural Science passages may center on topics such as:
- Biology
- Botany
- Chemistry
- Geology
- Anatomy
- Astronomy
- Ecology
- Medicine
- Meteorology
- Microbiology
- Physics
- Physiology
- Technology
- Zoology
Passages provide factual information about various scientific topics, including principles, theories, research findings, and scientific methodologies. You may find data, graphs, charts, tables, and experimental results to support scientific claims or hypotheses within these passages. To answer related questions, you may need to explore cause-and-effect relationships, scientific processes, or the interconnectedness of natural phenomena.
Strategies to ace Natural Science questions
Here are a few tips to conquer Natural Science passages:
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Actively engage with visual aids
Carefully analyze any graphs, charts, tables, or diagrams included in the passage. Observe the labels, units, and trends that are displayed in the visual aids.
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Practice interpreting data
Numerical figures, percentages, or trends are commonly included in these passages. Develop your ability to interpret data by examining trends, spotting patterns, and formulating conclusions using the available facts.
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Pay attention to cause and effect relationships
Cause-and-effect links, such as how altering one variable in an experiment impacts another, are frequently included in passages. Identify these relationships and understand the logic behind them to better comprehend the passage.
Natural Science Questions Examples
The Andromeda galaxy (also known as M31) was first observed in 964 A.D. by Persian astronomer Abb al-Rahman al-Sufi who described it as a "nebulous smear." In later years, its description evolved to that of an "island universe" by Immanuel Kant. This was supported by later scientists who believed that spiral nebulae were independent galaxies and that Andromeda was surrounded by an ocean of stars and gasses. Using the measured velocities of its stars, Ernst Opik theorized that Andromeda was a nebula approximately 1.5 million light-years from our own galaxy.
However, as new information was gathered, the island metaphor broke down. First, there are other galaxies in its neighborhood, so, at best it is one of a chain of islands. At worst, Andromeda is a nebulae eater that has likely absorbed several other smaller galaxies earlier in its evolution; scientists believe that a galactic merger roughly 100 million years ago is responsible for the counter-rotating disk of gas. In addition, scientists have found that Andromeda is not simply a spiral galaxy but a barred spiral galaxy with the bar located along its long axis. Envision a wheel with a round hub in the middle and spokes branching outward. However, even that image broke down as scientists analyzed the cross-sectional shape of the galaxy, which demonstrated a pronounced, S-shaped warp rather than just a flat disk. Two of its spiral arms are tightly wound (described as resembling beads on a string by Walter Baade) but widely spaced around its nucleus when compared to the Milky Way's arms, and the radius of these arms is approximately 45,000 light-years across. In the hub, scientists have spotted all the signs of a 100-million-solar-mass black hole. Orbiting around that black hole are older red stars and younger blue stars.
As more was observed, scientists began to wonder why the galaxy contained an S-shaped warp rather than maintaining the neater wheel shape. They found that a possible cause of such a complication could be the gravitational interaction with the nearby satellite galaxies. In fact, scientists theorize that the M33 Galaxy is responsible for some warp in Andromeda's arms, though more precise distances and radial velocity—a method of locating a planet by tracking its gravitational pull on a star using the star's color signature—are required to determine the accuracy of such a theory. Data gathered in 1998, images from the European Space Agency's Infrared Space Observatory, were the first to indicate that the Andromeda Galaxy may not be a three-dimensional wheel after all; its overall form may be transitioning into a ring galaxy, transforming into something like a three-dimensional target with a bulls-eye nucleus in the middle and rings spreading out from there. Images reveal that the gas and dust within the galaxy currently form several overlapping rings, with a particularly prominent ring—nicknamed the ring of fire by some astronomers—formed at a radius of 32,000 light-years from the core. Scientists believe that this ring is hidden from visible light images of the galaxy because it is composed primarily of cold dust, and the majority of the star formation taking place in the Andromeda Galaxy is concentrated there.
Although some astronomers dismiss the findings as circumstantial at best, most others agree that closer examination of the inner region of the Andromeda Galaxy using the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes revealed valuable information about how galaxies behave. They uncovered a smaller dust ring that is believed to have been caused by the interaction with M32 more than 200 million years ago and now likely contains what is left of M32. Scientists' simulations show that the smaller galaxy passed through the disk of the Andromeda Galaxy along the latter's polar axis. Much like the winner of a game of marbles who captures all of their opponent's marbles after knocking them out of the circle, this collision captured more than half of M32's mass and created the ring structures. It is the coexistence of the long-known large ring-like feature in the gas of Andromeda, together with this newly discovered inner ring-like structure, offset from the barycenter, that suggested a nearly head-on collision with the satellite M32.
The Andromeda Galaxy, like the Milky Way, has satellite galaxies, consisting of 14 known dwarf galaxies. In addition to M32, M110 also appears to be interacting with the Andromeda Galaxy. Astronomers have found a stream of metal-rich stars that appear to have been stripped from these satellite galaxies, and M110 contains a dusty lane, which may indicate recent or ongoing star formation. In 2006, it was discovered that nine of the satellite galaxies lie on a plane that intersects the core of the Andromeda Galaxy; they are not randomly arranged as would be expected from independent interactions. This arrangement isn't enough to prove the cause in itself, but it's solid circumstantial evidence indicating a common tidal origin and direction for the satellites.
The author primarily refers to a nebulae eater in order to:
- point out the instability of Andromeda's pattern of acquiring new stars
- assist in expressing the insufficient nature of the island metaphor
- highlight the nature of the rotating disk that makes Andromeda unique
- explain how the hidden ring has recently become visible through new images of the galaxy
Social Studies Passages
Social Studies passages focus on subjects such as:
- Archaeology
- Anthropology
- Business
- Economics
- Education
- History
- Geography
- Political Science
- Biography
- Psychology
- Sociology
Passages often examine cultural diversity, societal norms, traditions, beliefs, and values within different communities and how they interact with political systems, government structures, public and fiscal policies.
Questions will ask you to analyze socio-political and economic ideologies, environmental issues, urbanization, and geographical factors influencing historical events based on the information from given passages.
Strategies to ace Social Studies questions
Here are a few tips to tackle Social Studies passages:
- Analyze Historical Documents and Texts
These passages may include excerpts from speeches, letters, historical records, and other sources. Practice analyzing these texts within their historical context to understand their significance and implications for the broader narrative.
- Consider Multiple Perspectives
Multiple viewpoints on historical events, political issues, and societal phenomena are frequently presented in these passages. It is important to examine all the given viewpoints to comprehend the passage and answer the questions correctly.
- Review Social Science Terminology
Familiarize yourself with common terminology such as terms related to political systems, economic theories, social structures, and cultural phenomena. Understanding these terms will help you comprehend the passage more effectively.
Social Studies Questions Examples
In the sixteenth century, Spanish explorers first saw the vast expanse of the grasslands in the interior of North America, calling the region a "sea of grass." Subsequent French colonists called the grasslands "prairies," which comes from the French word meaning "large meadows." Even though the term stuck, in many ways prairie is certainly an understatement. In the colonial period, the grass sometimes stood taller than a man, and in many places a horseman had to stand on his horse's back to get his bearings. The tops of undulating grasses rippled in the breeze like the waves of the ocean, stretching like an unbroken expanse of water to the horizon. The plains were home to Native Americans for tens of thousands of years and before white incursions. Before the widespread white settlement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the prairies covered more land of what is now the United States than did any other kind of vegetation—more area than the green deciduous forests of the east that spread from Maine to Georgia; more area than the deserts of the southwest; more area than the boreal forests of the north. Walt Whitman wrote of the prairie that it is "North America's characteristic landscape," and "while less stunning at first sight" than Yosemite, Niagara Falls, and Yellowstone, the Great Plains "fills the aesthetic sense fuller, and precedes all the rest."
A description of the way the plains looked when the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804) first saw them might run like this:
Grasses a few inches high made up the "doormat" of the Rocky Mountains, that is, the strip of land running north and south just east of the mountains. Moving eastward, the plains sloped into the central lowlands where moister winds intruded. Here, the central prairie was the midgrass prairie, the most extensive part of the prairie where the grasses grew to a height of 4 feet. The last zone, farthest to the east, was the tallgrass prairie. Here grasses could grow 8-12 feet tall. The tallgrass prairie spread up to the north as far as Alberta, Canada and west to the Mississippi River. On the eastern edge of the tallgrass prairie—where the plains meet the eastern woodlands—grasses once reached 12 feet tall.
Reaching the plains after Lewis and Clark, the first American settlers known as "homesteaders" promptly plowed them up and planted crops. This pattern continued across the plains, and by 1900, there were barely any examples of prairie land left. Only remnants of the vast tallgrass prairie were still intact, scattered here and there in parks and refuges. Homesteaders on the tallgrass prairie found the sod so dense that it broke their plows. In the plains farther west, they found shortgrass prairie and a more arid environment with better sod, which was their only building material. White settlement disrupted the ecosystem and caused original plants and animals of the plains to die off in great numbers. The great reduction of native plants quickly contributed to soil erosion and created the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
Before white settlers impacted the landscape, native animal species worked together to prevent soil erosion and keep the prairie grassy. Prairie dogs, pocket gophers, and other burrowing animals shaped the landscape and kept the plains grassy for thousands of years. Digging far deeper than any plow, these rodents aerated the soil by loosening the dirt already foraged and trampled by bison, mixing top layers with subsoil, and giving water a way to percolate downward. As a result, the grasses regenerated. It is estimated that as many as 25 billion prairie dogs once inhabited the plains. One colony of 400 million observed in Texas in 1900 covered more than 25,000 square miles. After white settlement reached the plains, domestic cattle overgrazed the grasses. Ironically, ranchers believed the loss of the grasses was due to the prairie dogs, and began slaughtering them in unbelievable numbers. However, the prairie dogs were the true heroes of the successful formation of prairies.
The Great Plains are still there today, but they are devoid of the prairie grasses that made them distinctive to their first European visitors and special to their first human occupants. In fact, the prairie ecosystem is probably the only ecosystem that we cannot see as it looked when Lewis and Clark saw it. The mountains are still there, the woodlands, the deserts, the rainforests, the ocean beaches, but the prairies are gone. The alteration of the prairie illustrates the perils of American expansion. Native American occupation existed for tens of thousands of years, but within two centuries of white settlement, the Great Plains have diminished. Once a hallmark of America's physical landscape, the prairie now serves as a reminder of the importance of preserving the balance of ecosystems.
Which of the following statements best describes the homesteaders' impact on the Great Plains?
- Homesteaders' farming and settlement led to soil erosion and created conditions for the Dust Bowl
- Homesteaders ensured the soil stayed aerated in the absence of native plants by plowing
- Homesteaders mapped three zones of the Great Plains, which included the doormat, midgrass, and tallgrass prairies
- Homesteaders settled only in the western plains where sod could be used for building material
On the morning of November 14, 1889, John Brisben Walker, the wealthy publisher of the monthly magazine The Cosmopolitan, boarded a New Jersey ferry boat bound for New York City. Like many other New Yorkers, he was carrying a copy of The World, the most widely read and influential newspaper of its time. A front-page story announced that Nellie Bly, The World's star investigative reporter, was about to undertake the most sensational adventure of her career: an attempt to go around the world faster than anyone ever had before. Sixteen years earlier, Jules Verne, in his popular novel, had imagined that such a trip could be accomplished in 80 days; Nellie Bly hoped to do it in 75.
Immediately, Walker recognized the publicity value of such a scheme, and at once an idea suggested itself: The Cosmopolitan would sponsor its own competitor in the around-the-world race, traveling in the opposite direction. Of course, the magazine's circumnavigator would have to leave immediately and would have to be, like Bly, a young woman—the public, after all, would never warm to the idea of a man racing against a woman. But who should it be? Arriving at the offices of The Cosmopolitan that morning, Walker sent a message to the home of Elizabeth Bisland, the magazine's literary editor. It was urgent, he indicated; she should come at once.
Elizabeth Bisland was 28 years old. She was tall; she had large, dark eyes and luminous, pale skin; and she spoke in a low, gentle voice. She reveled in gracious hospitality and smart conversation, both of which were regularly on display in her small apartment, where members of New York's creative set gathered to discuss the artistic issues of the day. Bisland's combination of beauty, charm, and education seems to have been nothing short of bewitching.
Bisland herself was well aware that feminine beauty was useful but fleeting, and she took pride in the fact that she had arrived in New York with only 50 dollars in her pocket and, capable of working for 18 hours at a stretch, she wrote book reviews, essays, feature articles, and classical poetry to build her savings account. She was a believer in the joys of literature, which she had first experienced as a girl in ancient, tattered volumes of Shakespeare and Cervantes that she found in the ruined library of her family's plantation house. She had taught herself French while she churned butter so that she might read Rousseau's Confessions. She cared nothing for fame and indeed found the prospect of it distasteful. So, when she arrived at the offices of The Cosmopolitan and John Brisben Walker proposed that she race Nellie Bly around the world, Elizabeth Bisland refused.
Walker, who had already made fortunes in alfalfa and iron and was in the process of making another in magazine publishing, was not easily dissuaded, and six hours after their carefully measured verbal waltz, Bisland found herself on a New York Central Line train bound for San Francisco. It is important to note that Bisland always described her undertaking for The Cosmopolitan as a "trip" or a "journey," and never as a "race." Still, she was a loyal employee and she threw herself into the competition with vigor. Near the end of the trip, cold and sleepless and hungry, Bisland hurtled by train and ferry through France, England, Wales, and Ireland to catch the steamship that was her last chance to beat Bly. However, she was told the ship had left and was forced to take a slower moving ship across a storm-tossed North Atlantic in the worst weather that had been seen in many years. Despite the rough return home, Bisland, who had never left the country before this trip, discovered a love of travel that would remain for the rest of her life. It provided the vividness of a new world, where one was, for the first time, as Tennyson had written, lord of the five senses. "It was well," she told a friend when it was all over, "to have thus once really lived."
Elizabeth Bisland succeeded in beating Verne's 80-day mark, completing the trip in 76 days—which would have been the fastest but for the fact that Nellie Bly had arrived four days earlier. Bisland arrived home—as she had feared—famous. The race was closely covered by newspapers across the United States, and heavy wagering on the outcome was reported in the country's gambling houses. Bly, whose employer secured her victory by chartering a private train to carry her home, decided, upon her return to New York, to immediately set out on a 40-city lecture tour based on the telegram reports she had sent throughout her journey. Unlike Bly, Bisland did all she could to avoid the glare of publicity, despite her series of articles being published later as a book: In Seven Stages: A Flying Trip Around the World. She gave no lectures, endorsed no products, and did not comment publicly on the trip. In fact, when the American public's interest in her was at its height, Bisland left the United States for Britain where she was romantically pursued by Rudyard Kipling. He wrote to her: "I guess you have enough men under your nose…all the same and until you go after something else new, I am grateful for your attention." A few years later, Bisland returned to the United States, married, and continued writing until the end of her life. She died on January 6, 1929, at the age of 67; her obituary in the New York Times didn't even mention the journey. Today, all of Elizabeth Bisland's books are out of print and she has sadly faded into history along with Nellie Bly.
According to the passage, the delay that caused Bisland to miss the steamship home allowed Bly to:
- publish her works before Bisland, thus securing her own celebrity
- endorse several products before Bisland, which ensured her future fortune
- arrive home several days faster, thus famously winning the race
- set out on a lecture tour before Bisland and her employer could plan her own tour
Humanities Passages
Humanities passages cover subjects such as:
- Art
- Architecture
- Dance
- Film
- Language
- Music
- Radio
- Theater
- Television
- Literary Criticism
- Ethics
- Philosophy
Passages often explore philosophical theories and inquiries, ethical frameworks, moral principles, and intellectual debates and how they impact human behavior and society.
To answer related questions, you may be asked to analyze artistic styles, techniques, movements, and the cultural significance of artistic works.
Strategies to ace Humanities questions
Here are a few tips to successfully understand Humanities passages:
- Practice interpreting quotes and excerpts
Passages may include quotes or excerpts from literary works, philosophical writings, and historical documents. Practice interpreting and analyzing them.
- Draw connections to contemporary issues
See how the themes and ideas presented in the passage relate to contemporary issues and debates in society. Draw connections between the content of the passage and present-day relevance.
- Explore philosophical and ethical implications
Examine the philosophical and ethical questions raised by the passage. Consider how the work explores moral dilemmas, existential questions, and philosophical inquiries about the nature of humanity and existence.
Humanities Questions Examples
Eyes focused on the sidewalk, people often observe other people's shadows and how they interact with one another. What happens when you move closer together? Further apart? How do the shadows change as the Earth's rotation changes the sun's position in the sky? Sometimes, one shadow's magnitude is so great that it swallows up the surrounding shadows so that one cannot tell each apart.
Most vague shadows eventually become more distinct and clearly defined as we look at them more closely, like the lasting impressions of Michelangelo, Botticelli, and el Greco's Renaissance paintings. But what of the shadows that are swallowed up by another's magnitude? Such is the relationship between da Vinci and his pupil Francesco Melzi. Melzi was born around 1491, approximately 40 years after the man who would become his artistic mentor. Melzi was born into Milanese nobility in Lombardy, Italy, and his superior education included prominent training in the arts. He became da Vinci's favorite pupil and, although little was written about him, he was fairly well known among da Vinci's circle of friends.
While the two were both alive, Melzi was known to be da Vinci's favorite pupil because of his intelligence and talent as a painter. After da Vinci's death, he became lesser known, despite his dedication to collecting, organizing, and preserving many of da Vinci's notes on painting and later turning them into a manuscript known as the Codex Urbinas. He also executed da Vinci's will and cared for his former master's works, which he yearned to share with the world. He rejoiced in bolstering da Vinci's name in the annals of time and was content to remain part of da Vinci's shadow.
Unlike other da Vinci pupils, Melzi's works included a number of museum-quality paintings and drawings, including the famous red chalk on paper portrait of da Vinci's profile. Created in 1515, this work was celebrated for depicting da Vinci as classically handsome, even regal. Melzi also completed other famous red chalk drawings, including Head of an Old Man, Vertumnus and Pomona, Five Grotesque Heads, and Seven Caricatures. However, Melzi wasn't known solely for such chalk drawings; several of his paintings still hang in famous museums today. Among his paintings, the Vertumnus and Pomona—displayed in the Berlin Museum—and Columbina—hanging in the Leningrad Hermitage—were originally attributed to da Vinci, along with several others, reflecting Melzi's true artistic skill. Although he is still not widely recognized, Melzi's name is becoming more recognizable in some art circles due to a recent discovery.
Many people have seen copies or renderings of da Vinci's masterpiece, the Mona Lisa. However, many do not realize that its sister painting currently hangs in Madrid's Museo del Prado. In recent years, during restoration work, conservators studied the painting using X-ray machines to better understand its background and authenticate its creator. What they found excited them: there was increasing evidence that da Vinci's star student painted the work around the same time as da Vinci created the original. They even found that Melzi's changes to the painting coincided with those made by his mentor, contributing to increasing evidence that the two painted these sister masterpieces in close proximity.
However, when studying the restored portrait by Melzi, there are a few distinctions. First, his style isn't as severe as da Vinci's; his version is often noted to be brighter, more colorful, happier. In Melzi's rendering, Mona Lisa's smile is a little bigger, more mysterious; her eyes call out to the audience a little more energetically. Many Renaissance art scholars feel that, while less popular than da Vinci's, Melzi's take is more flattering, albeit less complete, than da Vinci's. In addition, not just because of where it is displayed, but because of the small, stylistic changes, those scholars feel it's better able to escape the shadows, proving more accessible to art fans.
Standing among the Renaissance paintings in the Museo del Prado, all eyes are on Melzi's Mona Lisa. The atmosphere is less hushed than that of the secured original at the Louvre. Patrons appreciate the cheerier space and tone of Melzi's work. This brighter version is awe- and conversation-inspiring. Museum patrons compare it to the more somber original, remarking on each detail. One examines the faint Tuscan landscape in the background while another points out the detail of the chair in which she sits. A docent comments on the decorated dress neckline and more sculpted eyebrows lacking in the original and the patrons lean in to see it. Now that the truth has been unearthed, Melzi's place as part of da Vinci's shadow, part of his lasting contribution toward art, will endure alongside his mentor's.
According to the passage, Melzi appealed to the museum patrons because:
- his artwork was happy and vivid
- his artwork used media popular during his time
- he was a well-traveled and talented painter
- he spent time in da Vinci's circle of friends
Sometimes the present suddenly catches up with the past, as in 2018, when Kraftwerk won the first Grammy in its long history. Not that the world's premiere music prize hadn't already honored the pioneers of electropop. Kraftwerk was recognized for their life's work in 2014 and the Düsseldorf-based group's legendary fourth album Autobahn was ushered into the Grammy Hall of Fame just one year later. Still, it would be half a century from when Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider met and founded Kraftwerk in 1968 before the band won an actual Grammy. The Grammy jury named 3-D The Catalogue the Best Dance/Electronic album of 2018. Kraftwerk prevailed over rivals like Bonobo and Mura Masa, who hadn't even been born when the boys from Düsseldorf were already making history.
Hütter, born in 1946, his changing lineup of musical collaborators, and their recordings in the legendary Kling Klang studio have certainly made both history and waves over the years. Kraftwerk is undoubtedly Germany's most important contribution to pop music. Ground-breaking pop music critic, musician, record label founder, and professed Kraftwerk fan Paul Morley has called them "more important, more beautiful, and more influential than the Beatles ever were."
Some people may be put off by that statement, as the Beatles were far and away the more commercially successful band. But the assertion that Kraftwerk had a greater influence on the evolution of music is not without merit. While the Beatles' music was influenced by earlier pioneers like Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, and Carl Perkins, Kraftwerk materialized out of thin air. The band members are considered the godfathers of techno, and their electronic beats have influenced other genres. Unlike many pop bands of their generation, Kraftwerk incorporated synthesizers and other electronic devices into its music, inspiring and influencing musicians and bands like Tangerine Dream, Depeche Mode, David Bowie, New Order, and Rammstein. When other bands were afraid of technology, Kraftwerk embraced it wholeheartedly. And when rap began picking up speed in the early eighties, New York hip-hop pioneer Africa Bambaataa was not the only one mining Kraftwerk's songs for beats to incorporate into his tracks. A few years later in Detroit, resourceful DJs extracted machinelike rhythms from Kraftwerk's recordings. Today, the international charts are dominated by techno, rap, and many subgenres; those modern innovators never tire of praising Kraftwerk's pioneering achievements. Even the mainstream rock band Coldplay outed themselves as Kraftwerk admirers a few years ago when they used a riff from Kraftwerk's hit Computerlie as the central motif of their hit Talk.
Kraftwerk has long since ceased to be a musical trendsetter, but it has become an institution; new recordings are rare, but the legacy is managed systematically and competently. With dedication and a great deal of secrecy, Hütter toils away on his own mythology. There are very few interviews, no details from his private life, and only a few carefully staged photos, no collaborations—not even with Michael Jackson, who is said to have expressed interest in collaborating at the height of his fame in the eighties. At the time, Kraftwerk was conducting research on the interface between human existence and modern technology. Visuals, staging and philosophy were just as important as the music, and referencing conceptual art was part of the program. Just the fact that the band incorporated ideas and methods from Dadaism, Constructivism, and Bauhaus would ultimately secure Kraftwerk a place in art history.
Consequently, Kraftwerk increasingly prefers performing at art festivals like the Ars Electronica in Linz (1993) or in museums like the New York Museum of Modern Art (2012) or the Berlin New National Gallery (2015). In the past five years, the band has performed one hundred and twenty-five concerts in thirty countries, primarily in such artistic venues. The concept of Kraftwerk is best expressed in art spaces, and its technological developments have begun to realize the metamorphosis from man to machine that was merely a dream when the band first formed. In the early days, the machinelike beats still emanated from drums and the members performed organ, flute, and violin improvisations. Today, Kraftwerk primarily sends out manikin and robot representatives to produce its electronic music. Hütter recently commented on the band's evolution: "We've just never really taken a look [back] at [our early] albums. Now we incorporate more artwork, so Emil has researched contemporary drawings, graphics, and photographs to go with each re-released album, collections of paintings that we worked with, and drawings that Florian and I did. We took a lot of Polaroids in the early days, which we want to include." These plans, along with their new iOS app (Kraftwerk Kling Klang Machine), just emphasize that the people behind Kraftwerk have long since been eclipsed by their visual and auditory art, yet this helped them keep with the times more than ever.
The passage states that which of the following sets the members of Kraftwerk apart from their contemporaries?
- They turned to Elvis Presley for inspiration while their peers turned to Chuck Berry
- They preferred performing music to recording and composing it
- They completely welcomed technology rather than fearing it
- They considered live drums to be an integral part of their performances
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How many passages are there in the ACT Reading section and what are their types?
- Literary Narrative and Prose Fiction
- Natural Science
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- Not reading passages and questions carefully
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