How does sentence structure affect the pace in this excerpt from the short story “the journey” by edith wharton? as she lay in her berth, staring at the shadows overhead, the rush of the wheels was in her brain, driving her deeper and deeper into circles of wakeful lucidity. the sleeping-car had sunk into its night silence. through the wet window-pane she watched the sudden lights, the long stretches of hurrying blackness. now and then she turned her head and looked through the opening in the hangings at her husband’s curtains across the aisle…. the excerpt uses longer sentences to create a slower pace. the excerpt uses alternating sentence lengths to create an erratic pace. the excerpt uses sentences with short phrases to create a fast pace. the excerpt uses sentences in brief paragraphs to create a lively pace.

The correct sentence is A. The excerpt uses longer sentences to create a slower pace.

Explanation:

In literature, the pace refers to the speed in which the events of a story are told or how fast the story develops. This speed in the development of the story is mainly constructed through the number of words used to describe each event or action, the use of punctuation to introduce pauses, the number of details used to move from one event or action to the other and the frequency the reader is provided with new information. The combination of these elements creates different speeds or paces that are also linked to the atmosphere or mood of the story.

In the excerpt presented, the narrator or author describes the actions of a woman as she lays in a berth in a sleepy stated, in this excerpt the narrator or author uses long sentences separated with punctuation marks to tell the events and describes each detail using multiple words which creates a  slow pace in which the whole excerpt describes the state of the woman but little action is being developed. Thus, in this excerpt the pace is slow and this effect is mainly created by the use of longer sentences in which the narrator uses a lot of details to explain every action and thus, the story develops in a slow way.