Question

Sinking and Swaddled
by Beth Gilstrap

She swore she felt the earth drop—like a hitch in an elevator—several miles from her mother’s house. She thought of all those bedlinens agitated, curled, heaped on top of her mother, sunk along with everything else, beams, roof tiles, the acrylic nails her mom wore, the senselessness of waste. Her father had sunk, too. Years ago, in a prefab home out on the lake. One day the lake rose a mite and the ground dove a mite and from what her mother said, her father was better off down there, probably still passed out on his leather couch. Ona had been swaddled and maneuvered into the bow of a rowboat and, as legend tells, slept through the whole affair. Perhaps it was this swaddling she longed for more than anything with all this terrible sinking going on.



"Sinking and Swaddled" from Deadheading and Other Stories © Beth Gilstrap. Published by Red Hen Press, 2021.

Question
Use the passage to answer the question.

Which best describes the mood that is created by the language in this passage?

(1 point)
Responses

suspenseful
suspenseful

desperate
desperate

optimistic
optimistic

insecure
insecure
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Answer 1

desperate

The repeated images of sinking, loss, "senselessness of waste," and the narrator's longing for the comfort of being swaddled create a tone of despair and helplessness rather than suspense or optimism.