The imagery of “a hopeless battle” helps to develop the theme that group thinking limits man’s potential because it <span>depicts the collective society as a destructive force that represses the independent thinker.
As you can see in the excerpt, there were a few men who protested and warned against the danger, but nobody wanted to listen to them. Everyone just followed the crowd, even though the crowd was wrong, unlike those few smart men.
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I believe it is A, semicolons as it separates the the thoughts as you're reading.
The passage is here:
<span>Spare the rod and spoil the child."—Ichabod Crane’s scholars certainly were not spoiled.
I would not have it imagined, however, that he was one of those cruel potentates of the school, who joy in the smart of their subjects; on the contrary, he administered justice with discrimination rather than severity; taking the burden off the backs of the weak, and laying it on those of the strong. Your mere puny stripling, that winced at the least flourish of the rod, was passed by with indulgence; but the claims of justice were satisfied by inflicting a double portion on some little, tough, wrong-headed, broad-skirted Dutch urchin, who sulked and swelled and grew dogged and sullen beneath the birch. All this he called "doing his duty by their parents;" and he never inflicted a chastisement without following it by the assurance, so consolatory to the smarting urchin, that "he would remember it, and thank him for it the longest day he had to live."
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The correct answer is "<span>Ichabod was a fair teacher who was misunderstood by his students."</span>
