Gabriel worked in the dim mapping room of the harbor office, surrounded by charts that smelled of salt and dried ink. To him, the coastline was not merely sand and rock, but a shifting, living beast that constantly sought to slip from the confines of his grid lines. Each morning he sat at his drafting table, a modern-day Atlas attempting to pin down a world that refused to remain still. The ink on his fingers was a permanent stain, a testament to his futile attempt to capture the fluid boundaries of the sea. His colleagues spoke of trade routes and tonnages, but Gabriel saw only the fragile line where human ambition met the indifferent expanse of the ocean. When he drew the contour lines of the outer shoals, he felt he was outlining the ribs of a leviathan, slumbering but capable of waking at any moment to swallow his meticulous work whole. He labored under the weight of this silent, daily struggle, knowing that the next storm would redraw his lines, rendering his precision obsolete before the ink could fully dry.
In the third sentence of the passage, the allusion to 'Atlas' primarily serves to do which of the following?
- Asuggest that Gabriel possesses superhuman strength and physical endurance.
- Bdocument the daily administrative duties Gabriel performs for his colleagues.
- Ccategorize the reference to classical mythology to establish the story's historical setting.
- emphasize the burdensome and ultimately impossible task Gabriel has set for himself.Answer
- Ereveal the narrator’s belief that human engineering will eventually conquer the ocean.