Which piece of textual evidence best supports the main character's dual existence? a. "these passed away, and left me faint; and then as in its turn the faintness subsided, i began to be aware of a change in the temper of my thoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of obligation." b. "i was born in the year 18— to a large fortune, endowed besides with excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of the respect of the wise and good among my fellow-men, and thus, as might have been supposed, with every guarantee of an honourable and distinguished future." c. "thenceforward, he sat all day over the fire in the private room, gnawing his nails; there he dined, sitting alone with his fears . ." d. "it was a fine, clear, january day, wet under foot where the frost had melted, but cloudless overhead; and the regent's park was full of winter chirrupings and sweet with spring odours."

[1] nothing that comes from the desert expresses its extremes better than the unhappy growth of the tree yuccas. tormented, thin forests of it stalk drearily in the high mesas, particularly in that triangular slip that fans out eastward from the meeting of the sierras and coastwise hills. the yucca bristles with bayonet-pointed leaves, dull green, growing shaggy with age like an old [5] man's tangled gray beard, tipped with panicles of foul, greenish blooms. after its death, which is slow, the ghostly hollow network of its woody skeleton, with hardly power to rot, makes even the moonlight fearful. but it isn't always this way. before the yucca has come to flower, while yet its bloom is a luxurious, creamy, cone-shaped bud of the size of a small cabbage, full of sugary sap. the indians twist it deftly out of its fence of daggers and roast the prize for their [10] own delectation why does the author use the words "bayonet-pointed" (line 4) and "fence of daggers" (line 9) to describe the leaves of the yucca tree? . to create an image of the sharp edges of the plant to emphasize how beautiful the plant's leaves are to explain when and where the plant grows to show how afraid the author is of the plant