Question

Read the excerpt from On the Road.

One day I was hanging around the campus and Chad and Tim Gray told me Dean was staying in a cold-water pad in East Harlem, the Spanish Harlem. Dean had arrived the night before, the first time in New York, with his beautiful little sharp chick Marylou; they got off the Greyhound bus at 50th Street and cut around the corner looking for a place to eat and went right in Hector’s, and since then Hector’s cafeteria has always been a big symbol of New York for Dean.

Which statement best describes how Kerouac’s use of syntax contributes to his writing style?

A) Kerouac’s use of syntax gives his writing the intellectual quality of formal academic discourse.

B) Kerouac’s use of syntax gives his writing the journalistic tone of a newspaper article.

C) Kerouac’s use of syntax gives his writing the natural ease and flow of informal conversation.

D) Kerouac’s use of syntax gives his writing the discipline and complexity of traditional literature.

Answer 1

C) Kerouac’s use of syntax gives his writing the natural ease and flow of informal conversation.

Answer 2

C) Kerouac’s use of syntax gives his writing the natural ease and flow of informal conversation

Step-by-step explanation:

"Dean had arrived the night before, the first time in New York, with his beautiful little sharp chick Marylou; they got off the Greyhound ..." This quotation exemplifies Kerouac’s use of conversational syntax, which means that some words are omitted. He does not use all the words in the expression , the first time in New York. The reader assumes it refers to Dean and Marylou's first time in New York. The use of colloquial words also gives the text a conversational tone: sharp chick- smart woman- . Then , the writer, jumps onto another event ; he tells how these two persons arrived in New York: they got off the Greyhound bus. The reader has to reconstruct the whole idea. This could be : Dean and Marylou arrived in New York for the first time. They had got by bus from Greyhound and got off at 50th Street.