Answer: I would contend that the right answer is the D) To show the similarity between the man and the place.
Explanation: In this excerpt from Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, the author and his dog are passing through an area of the United States known as the Bad Lands. After briefly describing it in the previous paragraph, saying that it certainly "deserves that name," he recalls the encounter with a man, with a Badlander, who, much like the land, was silent, dull, dry (both literally and metaphorically), sharp, reserved, unfriendly, and unwelcoming.