Read the passage below carefully:
From the crest of the hill, Julian could see the entire expanse of the valley, now crisscrossed by the silver tracks of the new railway. To the directors in London, this grid of iron represented progress, a clean triumph of commerce over the stubborn English clay. But to Julian, whose family had grazed sheep on these downs since the enclosure acts, the rails resembled nothing so much as a pair of parallel scars cut deep into the turf. He watched a coal train crawl toward the village, its dark smoke smudging the clear morning sky. He wondered if his grandfather, who had died before the surveyors first arrived with their chains and brass transits, would have recognized this landscape. The old man had known every oak and boundary stone by its ancient name; now, the land was divided by whistle stops and mileage markers. The steam whistle shrieked in the distance—a sharp, metallic cry that seemed to mock the silent hills. Julian turned away, feeling like a stranger in the very fields where he had spent his youth, as if the landscape had forgotten him even before he had departed.
Which of the following best describes the function of the third-person limited narrative perspective in the passage?
- AIt serves as a direct vehicle for the author to deliver an explicit moral lecture against the technological developments of the era.
- It aligns the reader with Julian’s subjective feelings of displacement to contrast his personal sense of loss with the corporate view of progress.Answer
- CIt provides an entirely neutral and objective record of the economic benefits that the new railway brings to the local population.
- DIt outlines the chronological steps of Julian's physical relocation from his family farm to a new life in London.
- EIt simplifies the complex social changes of the period into a basic moral conflict between good country folk and evil city executives.