In the dusty stillness of the conservatory, Evelyn surveyed the chaotic heap of her father’s unfinished journals. They lay scattered across the mahogany table like the wreckage of a fleet that had sailed for a mythical shore but foundered in sight of the harbor. To her left, the grandfather clock ticked with a heavy, leaden cadence, a persistent gaoler marking the passage of her confinement. She picked up a leather-bound volume from 1914, its spine cracked and peeling. In these pages, her father had attempted to construct a paper fortress against the oncoming century, a sanctuary of ink. Yet, looking at the frantic, overlapping marginalia, Evelyn realized he had not been a builder at all; he had been a modern Janus, gazing forward into the terrifying dawn of a mechanized world while clutching desperately to the vanishing shadows of the Victorian dusk.
Which of the following best describes the function of the allusion to 'Janus' in the final sentence of the passage?
- It emphasizes the father's paralyzing division between anticipating the future and clinging to the past.Answer
- BIt suggests that the father possessed a deceptive, two-faced nature that Evelyn is only now beginning to uncover.
- CIt establishes that the father literally built a double-sided doorway in the conservatory to block out the outside world.
- DIt implies that the father was a mythological prophet who accurately predicted the technological advancements of the new century.
- EIt documents the chronological timeline of the father's writing career from the Victorian era to 1914.