Read the following passage carefully before choosing your answer:
The stuffed falcon perched on the high mahogany bookshelf in Julian’s study, its glass eyes forever fixed on the closed window. Julian had long since lost the key to the glass case, and a fine gray dust had settled over the bird's stiff, chestnut feathers, softening its once-fierce contours. Below it, Julian worked daily at his ledger pages, rarely looking up, though the shadow of the outspread wings fell directly across his columns of figures in the late afternoon. Whenever his daughter suggested clearing the shelf to make room for newer, brighter volumes, Julian would merely touch the frame of his spectacles and murmur that some things were best kept where they could watch the weather. Yet the weather outside had changed many times over, and the window remained shut and bolted against the garden. To Julian, the falcon was not a relic of a past hunt, but a quiet partner in his retirement. Its motionless, poised form reflected his own retreat from the chaotic currents of the town below, serving as a silent testament to a life preserved in static safety. In the evenings, as the light failed, the shadow of the bird grew long and merged with the darkness of the room, swallowing the desk and the old man sitting behind it.
In the passage, the stuffed falcon and its expanding shadow primarily symbolize which of the following?
- Athe neglected physical condition and dustiness of Julian’s working environment
- Bthe author’s critique of the cruelty associated with historical hunting practices
- the protagonist’s self-imposed isolation and his resistance to the passage of timeAnswer
- Dthe sequence of financial entries Julian records in his ledger pages
- Ethe daughter's successful attempts to modernize Julian’s domestic lifestyle