Question

What is the author's purpose in writing this passage?

A.
to describe the author's experience in leaving a city at night
B.
to entertain the reader with images of a busy, distant city
C.
to show how the author could see a building as a submarine
D.
to persuade the reader to move to a city with tall buildings

Answer 1

The author's purpose in the provided passages is primarily to describe and entertain readers through vivid and detailed imagery, capturing the essence of their settings and providing sensory experiences.

Step-by-step explanation:

The author's purpose in writing a passage can be to persuade, inform, entertain, describe, or explain. Analyzing the given passages, the authors predominantly aim to describe and entertain. For instance, Dickens uses meticulous descriptions to paint a picture of the scenes he observes, capturing the essence of 19th-century New York with its sensory overload.

Similar descriptive language is found in Twain's imagery aboard a steamboat, where the objective is to place the reader in the midst of the sensory experiences of piloting the Mississippi River. Another passage gives a vivid portrayal of a city street at night and a person's observations from their vantage point.

The detailed descriptions of settings and action are used to immerse the reader in the scene, suggesting that the key purpose of these passages is to entertain and describe, rather than to persuade.