When speaking the sentence out loud, it feels most natural to place the comma after large.
Answer:
Choice D.
Explanation:
In this passage, the author is having Victor describe a violent thunderstorm he witnessed as a young boy where lightning hit a tree and made it burst into flames. Victor takes an odd liking to it and when him and his family visit the tree the next morning, he sees that the lightning "utterly destroyed" it. This is foreshadowing how Victor will use the power of lightning to aid him in his experiment later on.
