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

Negative — "splintered" has a negative connotation, implying brokenness/division rather than something neutral or positive.