Question

read the excerpt from \digging.\
the cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
through living roots awaken in my head.
but i’ve no spade to follow men like them.
read the haiku by bashō.
sickly,
but somehow the chrysanthemum
is budding.

how do the senses used in the excerpt from \digging\ and the haiku affect a reader’s understanding and
interpretation of each?
the excerpt from \digging\ relies much more heavily on images of nature to convey its main idea than the haiku
does
lines of equal length throughout, while the lines of the haiku are of varying

Explanation:

To solve this, we analyze the sensory details and structure:

1. For "Digging": The excerpt uses smell ("cold smell of potato mould"), touch ("squelch and slap of soggy peat", "curt cuts of an edge through living roots") to create vivid natural imagery, immersing readers in the rural, labor - related natural setting and helping them feel the speaker's connection to the land and the work of predecessors.
2. For the haiku: "Sickly" (maybe a sense of sight or a feeling of the plant's condition) and "budding" (sight) focus on the chrysanthemum's state. The haiku is more concise, using fewer sensory details but still evoking the contrast of the sickly plant budding.
3. Now, looking at the options (even though some are cut off, we can infer from the visible part). The first option says "The excerpt from 'Digging' relies much more heavily on images of nature to convey its main idea than the haiku does" – this makes sense. "Digging" has multiple sensory - driven natural images (potato mould, peat, roots) while the haiku has a single plant - related image. The second option about line length is not relevant to the question about senses and their effect on understanding. So the correct option (the first visible one) is the right choice as it accurately compares the use of natural imagery (driven by sensory details) between the two works.

Answer:

The option "The excerpt from 'Digging' relies much more heavily on images of nature to convey its main idea than the haiku does" (the first visible option)