Question

there charon stands, who rules the dreary coast,
a sordid god: down from his hoary chin
a length of beard descends, uncombed, unclean;
his eyes, like hollow furnaces on fire;
a girdle, foul with grease, binds his obscene attire.
he spreads his canvas; with his pole he strikes
the freights of flitting ghosts in his thin boats.
he lookd in years; yet in his years were seen
a youthful vigor and autumnal green.
an airy crowd came rushing where he stood,
which filld the margin of the fatal flood:
husbands and wives, boys and unmarried maids,
and mighty heroes more majestic shades,
and youths, intombd before their fathers eyes,
with hollow groans, and shrieks, and feeble cries,
thick as the leaves in autumn strow the woods,
or fowls, by winter forcd, forsake the floods,
and wing their hasty flight to happier lands;
such, and so thick, the shivring army stands,
and press for passage with extended hands.
now these, now those, the surly boatman bore:
the rest he drove to distance from the shore.

\a great thing,\ he said, with a smirk of satisfaction—its a great thing to
be the go-between between two states of being; to have the exclusive
license to export and import shades from one state to the other, and withal
i had as clean a record as mine has been.\ (paragraph 2)

which statement explains how the author makes use of irony?

options:

• while he is paddling, charon makes jokes to amuse himself and pass the time.
• charon spends most of his time traveling to the different shores of the river styx.
• charon takes great pride in knowing that he provides the best form of transportation in the underworld.
• while charon believes he is the only one who controls the river styx, he soon learns of another boat on the river.

Explanation:

To determine the answer, we analyze the irony in Charon's role. Irony often involves a contrast between expectation and reality. Charon taking pride in providing the "best" transportation in the Underworld (a gloomy, death - related realm) is ironic because his job is to ferry souls to the afterlife, not a positive or desirable form of transport as he claims.

Answer:

C. Charon takes great pride in knowing that he provides the best form of transportation in the Underworld.