When i see birches bend to left and right across the line of straighter darker trees, i like to think some boy’s been swinging them. but swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay. ice-storms do that. often you must have seen them loaded with ice a sunny winter morning after a rain. they click upon themselves as the breeze rises, and turn many-colored as the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust— such heaps of broken glass to sweep away you’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. what is the best description of the theme of this excerpt?

When i was young enough to still spend a long time buttoning my shoes in the morning, i'd listen toward the hall: daddy upstairs was shaving, in the bathroom, and mother downstairs was frying the bacon. they would begin whispering back and forth to each other up and down the stairwell. my father would whistle his phrase, my mother would try to whistle, then hum hers backi drew my buttonhook in and out and listened to it -know it was "the merry widow." the difference was, their song almost floated with laughter. how different from the record, which growled from the beginning, as if the victrola were only slowly being wound up. they kept it running between them, up and down the stairs where i was now just about ready to run clattering down and show them my shoes. what is the effect of the parallelism used in the above excerpt? it establishes the rhythm of a duet to echo the song. it expresses the same ideas. it mirrors opposite ideas. it is a paradox.