Down the frozen waterway toiled a string of wolfish dogs. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.īut there was life, abroad in the land and defiant.
It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness - a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean toward each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. "This was a vast pickling vat where the wood was slowly converted into living gems." - This sentence uses not one but two metaphors, calling the underground environment in which petrification takes place "a vast pickling vat" and the petrified wood that results from the process "living gems." Neither of these metaphors involve describing the trees as if they are people, though, so this is the correct answer!Īdapted from White Fang by Jack London (1906)ĭark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. "They were no longer rulers of the kingdom of flora, but preserved for all time as agate, jasper, opal, and other forms of silica." "They proudly reared their heads above the surrounding country, but they were conquered and laid low by some force of nature.". "Water containing minerals slowly forced its way into the trunks and limbs and roots of the fallen monarchs under a terrific pressure." - In this sentence, the author again refers to the trees undergoing the petrification process as "fallen monarchs." This sentence isn't correct either. "Then began the process of embalming and preserving these fallen monarchs." - The word "embalming" and the reference to the trees as "fallen monarchs" compares them with royalty in this sentence, so this isn't the correct answer. Let's look at each of the sentences given as answer choices to pick out the one in which the author does NOT do this. The author does this quite frequently in this passage in order to develop an extended metaphor in which he describes the petrified trees as monarchs. Authors might describe non-sentient things as feeling a certain way or as performing human actions or having human traits.
Personification is the act of describing a non-living thing as if it were human. They were no longer rulers of the kingdom of flora, but preserved for all time as agate, jasper, opal, and other forms of silica. Then the glorious sun shone upon the trees once again. The wrappings of the dead monarchs were slowly washed away by erosion and corrosion. These oxides created brilliant and beautiful brown, yellow, and red colors in the rock.Įventually, the sediment containing the petrified trees was thrown up from nature’s subterranean chemical laboratory. Eventually, the woody material was gradually replaced by silica, a type of rock. Water containing minerals slowly forced its way into the trunks and limbs and roots of the fallen monarchs under a terrific pressure. We can tell this because volcanic cones and mineral springs still exist in the area. This was a vast pickling vat where the wood was slowly converted into living gems. They were buried thousands of feet beneath the bottom of an inland sea. Then began the process of embalming and preserving these fallen monarchs. They proudly reared their heads above the surrounding country, but they were conquered and laid low by some force of nature. At one time, they formed part of a forest of gigantic trees. The name “Petrified Forest” is somewhat of a misnomer: the word “forest” suggests standing trees, but these trees fell over long ago and have been preserved in stone. The Petrified Forest of Arizona is an area covered with the fossil remains of prehistoric trees. Seddon, Associate Editor, Southern Division in The Mountain States Monitor, September 1918. “The Petrified Forest of Arizona” by E.A.