Passage (Henry David Thoreau, *Walden*, 1854, Ch. II "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For"): "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion." Thoreau closes by noting that most people "have *somewhat hastily* concluded that it is the chief end of man here to 'glorify God and enjoy him forever.'" What is the function of this closing observation? (The quoted phrase is the opening answer of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, a foundational text of Reformed Protestantism.)
ATo endorse Reformed Protestant theology as Thoreau's own stated belief.
BTo explain why Thoreau decided to leave organised religion entirely.
CTo suggest, with mild irony, that most people accept a pre-given answer to the meaning of life without examining it for themselves.
DTo argue that the Westminster Catechism's answer is theologically incorrect.
Answer & Solution
Correct answer: C. To suggest, with mild irony, that most people accept a pre-given answer to the meaning of life without examining it for themselves.
The load-bearing phrase is *somewhat hastily concluded*. Thoreau is **not** rejecting the theological answer itself; he is criticising the *manner of its adoption* — accepted without examination, as a stock answer to the question of life's purpose.
This fits Thoreau's whole argument: his Walden project is to find out the truth about life *by direct experience*, rather than relying on inherited formulae. The Catechism phrase functions as an **example** of just such an inherited formula.
- **A** misses the *hastily* — Thoreau is critical, not endorsing.
- **C** introduces a biographical claim about leaving religion that the passage does not make.
- **D** disputes the theology itself; Thoreau's critique is procedural (about *how* the answer is reached), not doctrinal.
This is a recurring GRE move: a quoted phrase from an outside tradition appears at the end of a passage and serves not as endorsement but as **the example of the thing the author critiques**. Reading the surrounding modifier (here *somewhat hastily*) is decisive.
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