How does the authors' word choice contribute to the claim in this passage?
O The denotations of words help explain how
plantations ran smoothly.
O The repetition of several key words creates a
positive view of slaveholders.
O The connotations of several words create a neutral
view of working conditions.
O The repetition and connotations of words
emphasizes that slaveholders were merciless.

The repetition and connotations of words  emphasizes that slaveholders were merciless.

Explanation:

The excerpt you were given is the following:

Sugar plantations were Hell because of the endless labor  they demanded from slaves. They were Hell because of  the many dangers and the injuries that they caused. They were Hell because the slaves who labored without end got  nothing for their work except to live another day, to  work more. But none of these miseries was the true reason the plantations were so evil. The plantations were  Hell because the masters and overseers were treated as  gods-which turned them into devils. The English  historian Lord Acton famously said, "Power tends to  corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." That is  a perfect description of sugar Hell. Men with absolute  power over their slaves acted like creatures we would  otherwise meet only in nightmares. Their cruelty had no  limit-they preferred to kill their slaves rather than fear  them. As Equiano explained the island of Montserrat  requires 20,000 new Negroes annually, to fill up the  vacant places of the dead.

Each word has two meanings:

We can see that the author repeats the phrase they were Hell several times. This phrase has a negative meaning because of the word Hell. If something is described as Hell, we know that it's something very bad. That's how the conditions the slaves were in are described, and the repetition of this phrase only emphasizes how horrible it was, showing us how merciless the slaveholders were.