Answer:
A.To distract the audience from the storyline of teh play.
He smiled understandingly — much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life.
This tells us how much Nick is taken with Gatsby.
The function of the phrase "hoping for a few scraps of food” in the first sentence is It is a participial phrase that modifies “puppy.”
<em>The participle phrase</em> starts either with the present (dependably ending with -ing) or past (dependably ending with -ed)
The participle phrase includes the modifiers or objects to complete the thought of the sentence. For instance, in the above sentence 'hoping' is the present and modifies the word <em>“puppy”</em>. Therefore, the participle phrase acts as an adjective always, providing a description of the sentence,
An iambic pentameter is "a line of verse with five metrical feet, each consisting of one short (or unstressed) syllable followed by one long (or stressed) syllable, for example Two households, both alike in dignity." Hope this helps
