Question

Read the excerpt from "A Quilt of a Country."

What is the point of this splintered whole? What is the point of a nation in which Arab cabbies chauffeur Jewish passengers through the streets of New York—and in which Jewish cabbies chauffeur Arab passengers, too, and yet speak in theory of hatred, one for the other?

In this excerpt, the use of the word splintered has which type of connotation?

positive
negative
abstract
neutral

Answer 1

B. Negative

I think :)

Answer 2

negative

Step-by-step explanation:

The writer of the passage uses the word splintered as a negative word, trying to say that separation of the people by nationalistic ideas is bad and has no point.

He gives an example of Jewish and Arab people, who have had long-going intolerance towards one another because of historic events and social ideas. He says they are doing services for one another – in the example of one being the cab driver to another – while living in the same multi-cultural city of New York, yet they still use hateful expressions and ideas against each other.

This hatred is what splinters them and makes the gap between them. What the author tries to prove is no point in living in the global, multicultural environment where everyone encounters each other and help each other every day, while also speaking of hate. This theoretical separation and long tradition of hate is what splits and disintegrates people. This is why the word has a negative context.