This question is incomplete. I've found the complete question online. It is the following:
Problems do not enter into the novels of Hamsun in the same manner as they did Into the plays of Ibsen. Hamsun would seem to take life as it is not with any pretense at its complete acceptability, but without hope or avowed intention of making it over. If his tolerance be never free from satire, his satire is on the other hand always easily tolerant. One might almost suspect him of viewing life as something static against which all fight would be futile. Even life's worst brutalities are related with an offhandedness of manner that makes you look for the joke that must be at the bottom of them. The word reform would seem to be strangely eliminated from his dictionary, or, if present, it might be found defined as a humorous conception of something intrinsically unachievable.
(from Edwin Björkman's introduction to Pan, by Knut Hamsun)
Based on the distinction drawn between Hamsun and Ibsen, which inference seems most reasonable?
1. Ibsen's work references an ideal, utopian world.
2. Ibsen is a writer concerned with how problems can be fixed or mitigated.
3. Ibsen's work avoids issues and problems and focuses on eternal themes, like love and heroism.
4. Ibsen is a writer obsessed with the horror and tragedy of human existence.
Answer:
Based on the distinction drawn between the two writers, the inference which seems most reasonable is:
2. Ibsen is a writer concerned with how problems can be fixed or mitigated.
Explanation:
According to the passage, Hamsun and Ibsen had different ways of addressing social problems in their works. Hamsun approached such problems from a more tolerant perspective, as if they were a predictable part of life that should be simply accepted as so. In his works, social issues are not presented as something we should fight against.
Ibsen, on the other hand, addresses social issues more directly, in a way that would, back then, be regarded as shocking. He takes social taboos and transforms them into art as a way of showing how such issues can and should be taken on. Sexism, for instance, is one of his themes. In one of his most famous plays, "A Doll's House", the main character Nora awakens to her reality as an oppressed wife and leaves her husband. Controversial as it was when the play debuted, this was certainly a take on how to solve such an issue as sexism and oppression.
Having that in mind, we can see that the best inference is: 2. Ibsen is a writer concerned with how problems can be fixed or mitigated.
