I think we both agree --- no matter how talented or serious a writer is, that writer might be straightforward and genuine in supporting something like patriotism.
In this argument, the conclusion is that the patriotism in Arton's writings must be ironic --- they can't possibly be genuine. How does the argument get there?
If the path were -----
Arton won this award, won this prize, was such a great writer for all these reasons, clearly the best writer of her generation --- therefore, her patriotism must have been ironic
---- then (B) would be an excellent answer. The argument would be trying to establish a link between her talent as a writer and the fact that writers of such talented can't be sincere about patriotism.
Instead, we get ---- "at the time of their composition, her country was in anything but a patriotic mood. Unemployment was high, food was costly, and crime rates were soaring. As a result, the general morale of her nation was at an especially low point." Holy mackerel! That's three sentence in a row hammering on a single point --- that's as heavy as either the LSAT or the GMAT is going to hammer on anything. Notice --- not one syllable about it is about Arton and her innate talents. ALL of it is about the circumstances. Then, suddenly, from this discussion of the circumstances, we get the leap to: "we see clearly that any apparent patriotism in Arton's work must have been intended ironically" The only way to get from the three sentence about the circumstance to a conclusion about Arton's intentions as a writer is to assume the circumstances affected her.
Your Assumption #1 is way too strong --- (I worry that you are becoming addicted to the word "only.") We don't know about that "only." We don't know whether the general sour public mood resonated with her own iconoclastic proclivities. We don't whether she would have been sincerely patriot under other circumstances. If we plucked Arton out of that miserable situation, put her in a place & time in which everyone genuinely loved the country, would she have written sincere patriotic stuff under those conditions? Maybe. It's unclear. The fact that she was influenced by her circumstances when circumstances were bad doesn't necessarily indicate how she would be influenced when circumstances are good. (Everyone tend to be influenced by circumstances when those circumstances include not enough to eat! Misery tends to be more persuasive than abundance.)
The argument gives us zero information about what kind of writer Arton might have been, and what kind of patriotism she might have espoused, under favorable circumstances. We have to treat that as unknown. That's the problem with (B) --- it tromps in like a bull in a china shop and makes a dogmatic assertion about something we really don't know for sure. That's exactly what LSAT and GMAT questions are baiting you to do --- jump to conclusions for which support is ambiguous --- and you fell for the bait.
Think about it this way. The writer of the argument, for whatever reason, wants to make the argument that Arton wasn't really patriotic. That's a hard argument to make, because there's patriotic stuff in her writings that have to be explained away. How does the writer explain it away? Not by talking either about the Arton's talents or about the nature of great writers in general. The writer doesn't go there at all. Instead, the writer say "we must recall that" (which in LSAT/GMAT terms is jumping-up-and-down emphatic) -- and then talks about societal circumstances. The writer starts from a difficult position and needs a lot of strong evidence --- the writer chose to draw 100% of the evidence from observations about societal circumstances. If you think about it, that's a really bizarre choice. The writer is banking on the fact that all this focus on how bad the economy and morale was will convince us to support a conclusion about Arton's intentions in her writings. The only way that would be the least bit persuasive is if we assume Arton was affected by the national mood around her. In other words, the writer (C) "takes for granted that Arton was attuned to the predominate national attitude of her time." The writer may also assume something like (B)--- we don't know --- believing something like (B) would certainly be consistent, but it's not directly supported.
IN a GMAT/LSAT argument, there must be clearly given information in the premise. In GMAT/LSAT terms, if the assumption were (B), if we had an argument in which we had:
PREMISE = ???
(Assumption = "(B) takes for granted that straightforward patriotism is not possible for a serious writer")
CONCLUSION = "any apparent patriotism in Arton's work must have been intended ironically"
then the premise would have to be about establishing that Arton was a serious writer. It would be a straightforward syllogism:
a) X is a a serious writer
b) serious writers can't espouse straightforward patriotism
c) therefore, X can't espouse straightforward patriotism
In order for the syllogism to work, the argument would have to support point (a), that Arton was a serious writer. That's implicit in the argument, but not explicitly supported. If I were to raise the objection "I don't think Arton is all that serious of a writer: she's a second-rate hack", there's nothing explicit in the argument to contradict me. If we deny that Arton is a serious writer, then assumption (B) doesn't have any traction --- it doesn't connect to anything.
We don't know how serious a writer Arton is. We have to hold that loosely.
We don't know how Arton would have written under other, more favorable economic & social circumstances. We have to hold that loosely.
Those two things are ambiguous in this argument. You really have to assume those two things are true on your own and to raise these imported assumptions to the same strength and status as the explicitly stated evidence in order to accept (B) as a possible answer. Again, GMAT & LSAT arguments bait you to do precisely this --- they construct situations in which some key elements are ambiguous, and if we unintentionally assume one of those ambiguous things has to be true, that leads us to one of the wrong answers. Look for this on GMAT CR, and you will see it time and time again, like clockwork.
If we stick with simply the evidence stated, and don't import any extraneous assumptions, then (C) is the only possibility.
Does all this make sense?
Mike
