Question

Read the following passage carefully:

"Arthur stood at the edge of the manicured lawn, his eyes fixed on the terrace where the laughter seemed loudest. It was, he assured himself, a gathering of the finest minds of the county, though he had yet to hear a single remark that did not concern the price of horseflesh or the decline of the local parish. He smoothed his lapels, feeling the cheapness of the wool under his fingers—a tactile reminder of the small inheritance that had bought his way into this circle. They were looking at him, surely. The whisper of the wind through the poplars sounded suspiciously like the rustle of silks turning away, a conspiracy of indifference. He took a step forward, rehearsing the anecdote about his grand-uncle’s travels in Italy, a story that had never failed to elicit polite nods in less august drawing rooms. But here, under the cold gaze of the stone caryatids supporting the veranda, the words felt dry, like dead leaves in his mouth. He was one of them, of course. He had read the same books, shared the same distaste for the rising industrial smoke in the valley. Yet, as the host raised a glass to toast a name Arthur did not recognize, the distance between the terrace and the lawn seemed to expand, leaving him marooned on a small, dark island of his own meticulous making."

In the passage, the shifts in narrative distance between the narrator and Arthur primarily serve to do which of the following?