Twice a Day: a praia entre o aterro e o espelho (C1)
By four o'clock the families had gone and the beach began its other work. My father used to bring me here in the off season, when the kiosks were shuttered and the sand kept the day's evidence: a bottle cap, a dog's diagonal crossing, the deep prints of someone who had been running and had not wanted to be. He would read them like a page and then say nothing, and the tide would come in and unread them. I found this unbearable at nine. It seemed to me a waste — all that writing, wiped every six hours. He said that was the only reason the beach stayed interesting, which I took for adult nonsense. Standing here now, forty and childless, I understand the argument better than I would like. A surface that keeps everything is a landfill. A surface that keeps nothing is a mirror. The beach has agreed to be neither, twice a day, without asking anyone's permission.
Fonte: English for ALL (texto original).
A oposição entre "landfill" e "mirror" serve, no conto, para
- A) contrastar a degradação ambiental do litoral com a idealização estética que dele fazem os visitantes de temporada.
- B) opor a memória do pai, que retinha tudo, à do narrador, que nada conservou da infância vivida naquele lugar.
- C) definir o valor da praia como registro provisório, situado entre a acumulação irrestrita do passado e o apagamento completo de qualquer vestígio.
- D) sugerir que a natureza é indiferente à passagem humana, o que torna vã qualquer tentativa de atribuir sentido às marcas deixadas na areia.
- E) demonstrar que o narrador, já adulto, passou a preferir superfícies estáveis àquelas que se renovam constantemente.