Question

I looked at Gary. He was in the film. Everything was lost. He was a platinum print, a dead artist’s version of life. I saw on his skull the darkness of night mixed with the colors of day. My mind was going out; my eyes were receding the way galaxies recede to the rim of space. Gary was light-years away, gesturing inside a circle of darkness, down the wrong end of a telescope. He smiled as if he saw me; the stringy crinkles around his eyes moved. The sight of him, familiar and wrong, was something I was remembering from centuries hence, from the other side of death: Yes, that is the way he used to look, when we were living. When it was our generation’s turn to be alive. I could not hear him; the wind was too loud. Behind him the sun was going. We had all started down a chute of time. At first it was pleasant; now there was no stopping it. Gary was chuting away across space, moving and talking and catching my eye, chuting down the long corridor of separation. The skin on his face moved like thin bronze plating that would peel.
Read the sentences from paragraph 13.
I looked at Gary. He was in the film. Everything was lost.

The author’s use of simple, direct sentences contributes to a tone of —
A
empathy
B
frustration
C
intrigue
D
disbelief

Answer 1

D — disbelief. The blunt, staccato sentences create a stunned, almost numbed effect, emphasizing the narrator’s inability to process or accept what they’re seeing.