Read the following passage carefully:
The clock in the library did not chime; it hummed, a low, metallic vibration that Silas felt in his jaw rather than heard. On the table lay the blueprint of the canal—a map of dry lines and neat grids that promised to bisect the marshlands and bring prosperity to the valley. To the directors in the capital, it was an elegant equation of soil and stone, a triumph of progress over damp, untamed nature. But Silas looked out the window at the gray expanse of the peat bogs, where the mist clung to the reeds like wet wool. He knew how the water lived there; he knew its stubborn weight, the way it sucked at boots and rotted fence posts within a single season. The engineers spoke of "reclamation" as if the land were a borrower refusing to return a loan. Silas reached for his pen, his fingers smattered with violet ink. If he signed the report, the excavators would arrive by Tuesday, and the peat would be carved into neat, bleeding squares. He wondered if the directors ever smelled the marsh on their own hands, or if their world was entirely made of paper and clean, dry ink.
Which of the following best describes the primary effect of the shifting narrative distance in the passage?
- It highlights the conflict between Silas's sensory, localized understanding of the landscape and the directors' abstract, distant plans for it.Answer
- BIt directly expresses the author's personal condemnation of nineteenth-century industrialization and technological progress.
- CIt details the chronological steps of Silas's decision-making process as he prepares to sign the official report.
- DIt presents Silas as an entirely objective and neutral observer whose assessment of the reclamation project is unbiased.
- EIt shifts the grammatical point of view from a first-person participant narrator to a detached, third-person omniscient overview.