PrepTest 141

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Strengthen with Sufficient Premise

Stimulus Summary:
Play succeed as drama → Audiences care what happens to some charactersBrecht plays: Audiences have a hard time grasping the characters' personalitiesConclusion: Brecht's plays don't succeed as dramas

Answer Anticipation:
The argument establishes a necessary condition for a play to succeed as a drama, and then it concludes that a certain playwright's plays don't succeed, so we should start by taking the contrapositive of that conditional:

not Audiences care what happens to characters → not Play succeeds as drama

With that outline, we can tell that, to reach the conclusion in the argument, the Actor needs to establish that audiences don't care about what happens to Brecht's characters. Instead, the premise establishes that audiences have a hard time grasping the personalities of Brecht's characters. That requires a jump between the two terms, so the correct answer should establish that connection:

Audiences have a hard time grasping personalities → not Audiences care what happens to characters

Audiences care what happens to characters → not Audiences have a hard time grasping personalities

Answer Explanation:
Audiences have a hard time grasping personalities → ~Audience has any interest in character. This answer's sufficient condition lines up with the premise in the argument and our prephrase, but the necessary condition is broader than the one in our anticipation. However, broader is fine in this question type as long as it guarantees the term from the argument. Here, if the audience has no interest in a character, that includes not having an interest in what happens to the character—along with anything else about the character. Since this answer choice guarantees the connection that was missing from the argument, it's the correct answer.

Key Takeaway:
One trick the LSAT has recently been using to increase the difficulty in Strengthen with Sufficient Premise questions is to have correct answers that don't have the same term as the argument, instead using a term that guarantees the term in the argument. Here, we were looking for an answer that guaranteed the audience didn't care what happened to characters. Instead, the correct answer stated that the audience didn't have any interest in the characters—which includes an interest in what happens to them. This broader answer choice can be hard to spot, but if you're aware that the LSAT might pull this trick, it's a lot easier to see answers that are broader than needed but still include the situation in the stimulus and thus are sufficient to justify the conclusion.

Incorrect. The argument establishes that the incongruous motives and beliefs of the characters in Brecht's plays make it difficult to discern personality, so this answer establishes a connection already established by the argument, even if it makes it a bit stronger than in the argument ("primarily by").

Incorrect. The argument hasn't established that the audiences don't care about the characters, just that they can't discern their personalities. However, it's possible to care about someone who is a mystery, so this answer doesn't draw the connection missing from the argument.

Incorrect. The argument already establishes that Brecht's characters are hard to discern for both the actors and the audiences, so this connection doesn't add anything to the argument. Additionally, it doesn't tie into a lack of caring for the characters, so it doesn't draw the necessary connection.

Incorrect. This answer would justify concluding a play is successful, but treating it as justifying a conclusion that a play isn't a successful drama is an illegal negation. (Audiences empathize with characters → Successful drama)