The correct answer is the second one “an absence of love or passion.” In the poem, the general intention of the author is to describe his feelings about the love/passion that it is leaving his life. The sentence “dead leaves and snow”, is the way in which he introduces the absence feeling that he is going through. The birds, as well as the leaves of the tree, are metaphors of love, which are abandoning the tree (his life).
Answer:
"The man ignored us and pressed on steadily."
Explanation:
By narrating from a first person point of view, the reader can experience the story as if he was in the narrator's shoes. In this type of point of view, the narrator refers to him or herself, therefore "I", "me", "my", "mine", "we", or "us", is used. This is characteristic of autobiographies for example, where we know the narrator's feeelings and thoughts from first hand. The other characters' feelings or thoughts can only be interpreted by the narrator but not known completely.
In this case the narrator uses us, which means he is the one telling the story from his/her perspective.
Answer: I would contend that the right answer is the C) It suggests the narrator traveled without thinking of the time.
Explanation: Just to elaborate a little on the answer, it can be added that in these introductory lines from "The Fall of the House of Usher," which Poe first published in 1839, it is possible to infer that the narrator had been traveling for a while ("during a whole day") and, suddenly, he found himself near his destination, his friend's house. There are no indications of him being lost or angry, so options B and D can be discarded. In addition, the syntax does not suggest a magical component, since he uses adjectives such as "dull," "soundless," and "dreary" to describe his journey and what he encountered along it, and those words do not suggest a magical setting.