What topic is ivan ilyich thinking about in this excerpt from leo tolstoy’s the death of ivan ilyich?

but suddenly in the midst of those proceedings the pain in his side, regardless of the stage the proceedings had reached, would begin its own gnawing work. ivan ilyich would turn his attention to it and try to drive the thought of it away, but without success. it would come and stand before him and look at him, and he would be petrified and the light would die out of his eyes, and he would again begin asking himself whether it alone was true.

a) the pain in his appendix
b) his approaching death
c) his past life
d) his profession

In order really to hate white people, one has to blot so much out of the mind — and the heart — that this hatred itself becomes an exhausting and self-destructive pose. but this does not mean, on the other hand, that love comes easily: the white world is too powerful, too complacent, too ready with gratuitous humiliation, and, above all, too ignorant and too innocent for that.which sentence best explains how the use of parallelism in the excerpt supports baldwin's purpose? a. it proves baldwin's central idea by highlighting the obvious.b. it emphasizes the problems that prevent one from loving the white world.c. it explains why the white world is unable to replace hate with love.d. it enumerates the many ways of dealing with the white world.