The Almost: a boneca e o desconforto da semelhança (C1)
The doll had belonged to my aunt, and the family agreed it was valuable, which is a word people use when they cannot say pleasant. It sat on the landing with its porcelain hands open, and every guest, without exception, looked at it twice. The first look was ordinary. The second was the problem. Something in the face had been made almost correctly — the eyes were the right distance apart, the mouth had the right small weight at the corners — and the almost was worse than any monster. A crude toy asks nothing of you. This one made a claim it could not honour: it promised a person and delivered wax. My cousin, who was six, refused to pass it in the dark and was told not to be silly. She was not being silly. She had simply noticed, faster than the adults did, that the closer a thing comes to being one of us, the more precisely it advertises everything it lacks.
Fonte: English for ALL (texto original).
A afirmação "the almost was worse than any monster" expressa, no conto, a ideia de que
- A) o horror provocado pela boneca decorre principalmente do valor material que a família lhe atribuía, o que impedia que fosse retirada do corredor.
- B) objetos antigos assustam mais que criaturas imaginárias porque carregam a presença de seus antigos donos, no caso a tia falecida.
- C) as crianças percebem ameaças reais que os adultos, condicionados pelo hábito, aprenderam a suprimir por conveniência social.
- D) a estranheza resulta de um defeito técnico de fabricação, já que os olhos e a boca não haviam sido posicionados com exatidão suficiente.
- E) o mal-estar nasce da quase perfeição da imitação, que torna evidentes as poucas propriedades humanas ausentes, ao passo que uma figura abertamente irreal nada promete.