Read the following passage:
"For three decades, Marcus had redrawn the contours of the salt marsh, tracking the tide's slow digestion of the eastern spit. His maps, stored in cedar chests that smelled of evaporated brine, recorded a geography in perpetual retreat. The local fishermen no longer consulted them; they navigated by the sudden, shifting growls of the sandbars. Yet Marcus persisted, dipping his steel-nibbed pen into iron gall ink to trace lines that would be obsolete by the winter equinox. To him, the encroaching water was not an adversary to be conquered, but a patient editor, wearing away the superfluous land until only the bedrock of the peninsula remained."
Based on the passage, Marcus's persistent redrawing of the maps primarily functions as a symbol of which of the following?
- The human endeavor to impose order and document meaning in the face of inevitable, transformative changeAnswer
- BMarcus's practical obligation to assist the local community by mapping safe pathways through the shifting sandbars
- CThe physical deterioration and ecological instability of the coastal landscape over time
- DA hubristic defiance of nature, casting Marcus in the archetypal role of the tragic hero attempting to dominate his environment
- EThe author's condemnation of the fishermen's refusal to respect scientific documentation and historical records