Read this excerpt from canto xii of dante's inferno, in which virgil describes sinners who are punished for their violence:
"but fasten your eyes below down to the plain
where we approach a river of blood boiling
those who harm their neighbors by violence."
which sentence best explains dante's intended use of symbolism in this passage?
a. the figurative language makes abstract ideas, like harm, more concrete.
b. the river of boiling blood represents the blood that the sinners spilled in life.
c. the sinners who are guilty of violence are immersed in a river of boiling blood.
d. the river represents armies marching toward a common cause: warfare.

Read the excerpt from the land. of my brothers, i was closest with robert. i suppose, in part, being the same year's children made us close, but there were other things too. we had been together practically since birth, and we always took care of each other. when i got into trouble, robert was there to pull me out of it if he could, or at least to see me through it, and i did the same for him. the passage provides evidence of why paul and robert have physical conflicts. paul and robert avoid social conflicts. paul is the least influenced by robert. paul is motivated to ask robert for .

How can an author reveal move information about a character

Read this paragraph from chapter 5 of the prince. there are, for example, the spartans and the romans. the spartans held athens and thebes, establishing there an oligarchy: nevertheless they lost them. the romans, in order to hold capua, carthage, and numantia, dismantled them, and did not lose them. they wished to hold greece as the spartans held it, making it free and permitting its laws, and did not succeed. so to hold it they were compelled to dismantle many cities in the country, for in truth there is no safe way to retain them otherwise than by ruining them. and he who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it, for in rebellion it has always the watchword of liberty and its ancient privileges as a rallying point, which neither time nor benefits will ever cause it to forget. and whatever you may do or provide against, they never forget that name or their privileges unless they are disunited or dispersed, but at every chance they immediately rally to them, as pisa after the hundred years she had been held in bondage by the florentines. what idea is stressed in the passage? the desire for liberty the establishment of an oligarchy the dismantling of an acquired state the tendency toward rebellion