A passage that's too tough for me -__-'''

soorrry. its very long....but i have SAT this saturday.....T_T

here's the passage from SAT 1600 book by kaplan.

the following is an excerpt taken from a novel published in 1965....it describes the narrator's time spent at Magdalen College, part of the Oxford University's system, during the period shortly after WWII,.....

I went to Oxford in 1948. In my second year at Magdalen, soon after a logn vaciont during which I hardly saw my parents, my father had to fly out to India. He took my mohter with him. There plane crahed, a high-octane pyre, in a thunderstorm some forty miles east of Karachi. AFter the first shock I felt an almost immediate sense of relief, of freedom. My only other close realtion, my mother's brother, farmed in Rhodesia, so I had no family to trammel what I regarded as my real self. I may have been weak on filial charity, but I was strong on the discipline in vogue.

At least, along with a group of fellow odd men out at Magdalen, I thought i was strong in the discipline. We formed a small club called Les Hommes Revoltes, drank very dry sherry, and ( as a protest against those shabby duffle-coated last years of the 40's) wore dark grey suits and black ties for our meetings; we argued about essences and existences and called a certain kind of inconsequential behviour "existentialist". Less enlightened people would have caleed it capricious or just plain selfish; but we didn't relize that the heros, or antiheros, of the French existentialist novels we read were not supposed to be realistic. We tried to imitate them, mistaking metaphorical descriptions of complex modes of feelign for straightforward prescriptions of behaviour. We duly felt the right anguishes. Most of us, true to the eternal dandyis of Oxford, simply wanted to look different. In our club we did.

I acquired expensive habits and affected manners. I got third class degree and and a first class illusion: that I was a poet. But nothing could have been less poetic than my pseudo-aristocratic, seeing-through-all boredom with life in gerneal and with making a living in particular. I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope--an impotence, in short; and that to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all. But I did absorb a small dose of one permanently useful thing, Oxford's greatest gift to civlized life: Socratic honesty. It showed me, very intermittently, that it is not enough to reolt against one's past. One day I was outrageously bitter among some of my friends about the Army; back in my own rooms later it suddenly struck me that just beause I said with impunity things that would have apoplexed my dead father, I was still no less udner his influence. The truth was that I was not a cynic by nature; only by revolt. I had got away form waht I hated, but i hadn't found where I loved, and so I pretended there was nowhere to love.

Handsomely equipped to fail, I went out into the world. My fatehr hadn't kept Financial Prudence amount his armoury of essential words; he ran a ridiculously large account at Ladbroke's and his mess bills always reached staggering proportions, because he liked to be popular and in place of charm had to dispense alcohol. What remained of his money when thel lawyers and tax men had had their cuts yielded not nearly enough for me to live on. But every kind of job I looked at-the Foreign Service, the Civil, the Colonial, the banks, commerce, advertising-was transpierceable at a glance. I went to several interviews and since I didn't feel obliged to show the eager enthusiasm our world expects from the young executive, I was successful at none.

Sorry it's very long..-_- but i get 5/12 in the exercise ***

it can be inferred that "discipline in vogue (last sentence of the first paragraph) most nearly refers to:
A Socratic honesty (wahh??? what does it mean??)
B radical inquiry (inquiry?!?! what inquiry?!)
C emotional coldness
D aristocratic yearning
E poetic sensitivity (huh? no clue how thats in the option)


It can be inferred from the passage that the narrator's bitterness towards the army
A was not founded in deeply felt beliefs
B surprised even his friends in Les Hommes Revoltes
C would not have been expressed if his father were not dead
D revealed a deep and abiding cynicism
E led him to realize that he was not a poet

the kaplan's explanation : "...[the narrator] 'was not a cynic by nature; only by revolt,' hinting that he has since realized that his belifes were as much a response to his surroundings and his rebellion against his father as to any sort of deep and profound convictions....".. <-- I do not understand the explanation AT ALL. so ambiguous. esp in " as much a response .........as to any sort of...."


in the 3rd to last line ..."transpierceable" most nearly means: easy to dismiss or easy to attempt?
i said easy to attempt because i think what the narrator means is that he attempts several interviews, but is not successful at them. My perception is that he attempted for various job positions, but has never gotten one. So i deduce that he cannot dismiss a job when in actuality he has never gotten one (do i make sense?) the answer is easy to dismiss?!


P.S the kaplan's explanation is abstract. It's like a 60 year old english professor talking to me. I don't understand it....