Question

Hamlet, Texas
Hamlet, Texas was a typical small town set smack in the middle of Hill Country. Though everyone seemed to get along, power was in flux between the City Council and the Chamber of Commerce. The City Council, elected and supported by older generations, was determined to maintain the traditions of Hamlet that had been in place for years. The Chamber of Commerce, increasingly representative of younger generations and start-up business owners, believed that the town was dying because the council wasn’t doing enough to draw outsiders in or promote growth.

For more than a hundred years, the council had been operating on the same traditions and mindsets. Keep things small and keep things local. Most of those elected to the council had grown up in Hamlet and they didn’t trust outsiders to serve the interests of families that had called Hamlet home for generations. Younger business owners, drawn to the town for its low cost of living and relative lack of competition, argued that growing the economy would be good for local families.

When new business owners moved into Hamlet and applied for loans or building permits, the council blocked those that refused to sign contracts promising to uphold Hamlet’s aesthetic and cater to older generations of customers. Those who wished to advertise close to the highway and draw in outsiders were routinely denied permits. The council even pressured the owners of local billboards so that new businesses couldn’t purchase space.

The conflict grew until the city spiraled into contention and tension. Council members faced a hard choice: succumb to younger business owners and the pressure to draw tourists into the town, or accept that Hamlet would slowly be forced to close its oldest and most respected businesses. The latter would almost certainly require that families who had called Hamlet home for generations would have to leave in search of sustainable work.

In the end, the council refused to take action. While they didn’t block the permits and applications posed by outside business owners, they also didn’t work to incentivize small businesses or attract customers from outside Hamlet to fuel the economy. Tensions subsided, but frustrations among local inhabitants remained. As the next election cycle neared, council members wondered what the landscape of Hamlet would look like in years to come.

How does the theme of justice in the modern literary work compare to the treatment of this theme in works from different time periods?
A The council reflects treatments of the corruption among elected officials from various time periods.
B The Chamber of Commerce compares to treatments of anarchy in dystopian literature.
C The council echoes treatments of nobility as inherently pure and trustworthy in their decisions.
D The theme of justice is not present in the narrative, so it does not compare with previous treatments.

Answer 1

A

The council’s actions—using authority to favor insiders, block outsiders, and preserve the status quo—align with longstanding literary treatments of corruption and abuse of power among elected or ruling officials.