Read the following passage carefully:
Arthur stood at the edge of the spit, the brass legs of his tripod sinking slowly into the wet silt. The tide was going out, exposing a ribbed expanse of grey mud that looked like the back of some prehistoric beast. He adjusted the vernier scale of the theodolite, his cold fingers fumbling with the tiny brass screws. The shoreline had shifted seventy yards to the east since the survey of eighteen-eighty-two.
In his mind, however, the water was still high, and he was twelve years old, clinging to the gunwale of his father’s skiff. That was the summer the great storm had carved a new channel through the salt marsh. He remembered the smell of ozone and wet wool, the terrifying speed at which the familiar landmarks—the twin pines, the old fish-house—had slipped away into the white foam. "Hold her steady," his father had shouted over the gale, his voice thin and sharp. But the boy’s hands had slipped on the oar, and the boat had spun, caught in the throat of the rip tide.
The sharp click of the level falling into place snapped him back to the present. The wind off the bay was biting, carrying the flat, salty scent of decaying bladderwrack. He squinted through the telescope, focusing on the red surveyor’s stake he had driven into the dune that morning. The telescope compressed the distance, bringing the distant dunes so close he could see the individual stalks of beach grass bending in the wind.
He began to write the coordinates in his oilskin ledger, his pencil scratching dryly against the paper. The numbers were neat, orderly, and absolute. They recorded a landscape that was supposedly fixed, yet every wave that broke against the sandbar was actively dismantling it. Ten years from now, another surveyor would stand here and find his stakes washed out to sea, his measurements nothing but historical curiosity. The realization slowed his hand. He stopped writing, looking out across the gray expanse of the estuary where the river met the sea, the two waters mixing in a turbulent, indistinguishable eddy.
Which of the following best describes the functional purpose of the flashback in the second paragraph?
- AIt serves to explain the chronological sequence of geological events that physically moved the shoreline seventy yards to the east.
- BIt reveals that the storm occurred after the eighteen-eighty-two survey, showing that Arthur is returning to correct his father's scientific errors.
- It establishes a contrast between the chaotic, uncontrollable forces of nature and the protagonist's adult attempt to impose order on a shifting environment.Answer
- DIt conveys the author's personal warning about the dangers of coastal erosion and the futility of human settlement near estuaries.
- EIt supports the narrator's claim that the coordinates in his oilskin ledger are permanent and will successfully preserve the landscape for future generations.