According to the article, What are some of the elements and themes that create a story that has “abiding interest “?

Read this passage.my career in journalism has taught me the challenges of capturing sporting events, yet gregor powell's descriptions are flawless. powell is a gold-medal paralympic swimmer, but his memoir proves that his true strength is the power of his insights.what feature distinguishes this passage as a foreword?

[1] nothing that comes from the desert expresses its extremes better than the unhappy growth of the tree yuccas. tormented, thin forests of it stalk drearily in the high mesas, particularly in that triangular slip that fans out eastward from the meeting of the sierras and coastwise hills. the yucca bristles with bayonet-pointed leaves, dull green, growing shaggy with age like an old [5] man's tangled gray beard, tipped with panicles of foul, greenish blooms. after its death, which is slow, the ghostly hollow network of its woody skeleton, with hardly power to rot, makes even the moonlight fearful. but it isn't always this way. before the yucca has come to flower, while yet its bloom is a luxurious, creamy, cone-shaped bud of the size of a small cabbage, full of sugary sap. the indians twist it deftly out of its fence of daggers and roast the prize for their [10] own delectation why does the author use the words "bayonet-pointed" (line 4) and "fence of daggers" (line 9) to describe the leaves of the yucca tree? . to create an image of the sharp edges of the plant to emphasize how beautiful the plant's leaves are to explain when and where the plant grows to show how afraid the author is of the plant

Araby every morning i lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. the blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that i could not be seen. when she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. i ran to the hall, seized my books and followed her. i kept her brown figure always in my eye and, when we came near the point at which our ways diverged, i quickened my pace and passed her. this happened morning after morning. i had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood. what is the general tone of the passage? a. courageous b. comical c. passionate d. fearful