Which best describes the connotation of the word “desperation”

Which line in this excerpt from the great gatsby by f. scott fitzgerald contains a simile? about half way between west egg and new york the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. this is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight.

“to build a fire” what does the man realize as he’s trying to light the matches? what difficulty occurs when the man finally lights all of his matches at once?

Most children brought up in brooklyn before the first world war remember day there with a peculiartenderness. it was the day children went around "ragamuffin" or "slamming gates," wearing costumes topped off by apenny maskbased on this excerpt, what is the author's purpose in writing?