Five jumbled up sentences, related to a topic, are
given below. Four of them can be put together to
form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd one out
and key in the number of the sentence as your
answer:
(1) Talk was the most common way for enslaved men
and women to subvert the rules of their bondage,
to gain more agency than they were supposed
to have.
(2) Even in conditions of extreme violence and
unfreedom, their words remained ubiquitous,
ephemeral, irrepressible, and potentially
transgressive.
(3) Slaves came from societies in which oaths,
orations, and invocations carried great potency,
both between people and as a connection to the
all-powerful spirit world.
(4) Freedom of speech and the power to silence may
have been preeminent markers of white liberty in
Colonies, but at the same time, slavery depended
on dialogue: slaves could never be completely
muted.
(5) Slave-owners obsessed over slave talk, though
they could never control it, yet feared its power
to bind and inspire—for, as everyone knew, oaths,
whispers, and secret conversations bred
conspiracy and revolt.