Aunt jenny's love was an umbrella that we all clamored to stand under. it made us feel safe and happy. it didn't change what was going on outside of her sphere of influence, but it did offer us some protection and an emotional escape. how does the metaphor in this passage most clearly support the author's purpose? a. it likens love to an umbrella to show how it can shelter people from the storms of life. b. it exaggerates the influence of aunt jenny's love to make the rest of the speaker's situation seem bleak. c. it gives love human qualities to show that feeling safe and protected is as important as being around loving people. d. it compares love to an umbrella to show that there were negative things going on in the speaker's life.

it is the background information on the characters and setting explained at the beginning of the story. the exposition will often have information about events that happened before the story began. the exposition is often the very first part of the plot.

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serve the people! ,” smoothly translated by julia lovell, offers an initial sample of yan lianke’s writing to an english-speaking audience. a bluntly drawn, mildly erotic fable, it teases mao zedong by poking fun at a true believer who obeys the chairman’s precepts too literally. to a western sensibility, the broad strokes of yan lianke’s humor would seem to pose little risk of inciting rebellion, whether of the flesh or of the body politic. but then, part of the book’s attraction is that it doesn’t have a western sensibility. it lets the reader see — or rather, intuit — what jokes chinese officials don’t consider funny, and how very little it takes for a writer to be branded an incendiary in 21st-century china, more than three decades after the death of mao, a decade after the death of deng xiaoping and seven years since china entered the world trade organization, a move that would seem to signal a willingness (however wary) to mingle with the rest of the world.