PLZ HELP ME 4/23
Excerpt from Sophistication
Sherwood Anderson
There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his town. He is thinking of the future and of the figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Suddenly something happens; he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name. Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of life. From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy. With a little gasp he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village.
Which is a subtle incongruity in the extended metaphor within the passage?
A) It appears that he is a ghost walking down the street of life but he then learns he is a leaf.
B) It appears that he is a ghost walking down the street of life but he then learns he is a tree.
C) It appears that he is a tree walking down the street of life but he then learns he is a ghost.
D) It appears that he is a boy walking down the street of life and looking through doors, but he then learns he is a leaf.