Read the following passage from a short story:
"Silas tended the glasshouse at the edge of the estate with the devotion of a priest guarding a sacred flame. Outside the glass walls, the industrial town of Coketown grunted and spat soot, its factory chimneys standing like grey sentinels of progress. Inside, however, Silas maintained a damp, green world where orchids hung like suspended butterflies and ferns unfurled their velvet fronds. For Silas, this sanctuary was not merely a hobby; it was his private ark, built to salvage the delicate remnants of a natural world that the rising tide of brick and iron threatened to drown. Every cutting he potted was a species saved from the deluge, and every seedling he watered was a promise of dry land. When visitors remarked on his obsession, Silas would only smile, adjusting the vents to let in the humid air, content in his quiet labor of preservation while the steel-grey flood of the modern era rose higher against the glass panes."
In the passage, the narrator compares the glasshouse to an "ark" and the industrial town's expansion to a "deluge" primarily to achieve which of the following effects?
- Adetail the physical labor and daily gardening tasks Silas performs to maintain the greenhouse
- Bsuggest that Silas is anticipating a literal, catastrophic flood that will submerge the town
- characterize Silas’s work as a protective effort to save the natural world from industrial expansionAnswer
- Ddraw attention to the contrast between the green environment of the greenhouse and the grey color of the industrial town
- Eshow that the narrator fully supports Silas’s belief that his plants are the last surviving specimens on Earth