This question is missing the answer choices. I have found the complete question online. Since the passage is the same, I will omit it:
How do details such as "stone or metal,” "many pigeons,” "towers,” and "wild cats that roam the god-roads” help establish setting?
A. They create a feeling of a small mythical kingdom.
B. They build an atmosphere of a preindustrial society.
C. They give the sense that nature has taken over a once-urban area.
D. They develop the feeling of an ancient village of a polytheistic culture.
Answer:
Details such as "stone or metal,” "many pigeons,” "towers,” and "wild cats that roam the god-roads” help establish setting because:
C. They give the sense that nature has taken over a once-urban area.
Explanation:
The narrator in the short story "By the Waters of Babylon," by Vincent Benét, lives in a futuristic setting where humankind seems to have almost destroyed itself due to the harmful use of technology and weapons. John, the narrator, is a priest who enters what once was New York city, a forbidden place. The humans that exist now are afraid of metal, seeing it as cursed, and of cities, where they think gods once lived.
<u>In the passage we are analyzing here, details such as "stone or metal,” "many pigeons,” "towers,” and "wild cats that roam the god-roads” help show readers that the city is now a wild place. Nature has taken over, reclaimed what was initially hers. Man is gone - his legacy is left behind as stones, concrete, metal, and roads. However, all of that is now inhabited by feral animals.</u>
