For all their married life, joshua and lily wellcomb lived in a small town in kansas, where they just managed to feed themselves and their three children. in 1888, joshua died from influenza, leaving lily with three children to look after. the family was left with very little money, so when the oklahoma land run was announced in march, lily had a difficult decision to make. she thought about it for a long time, then she sat her children down at the kitchen table in their tiny house.

what is the purpose of this narration?

(a) to provide a detailed description of a specific event
(b) to provide a history of land runs in the united states
(c) to show how a character completes a difficult task
(d) to provide the wellcomb family’s backstory

D, you can tell because this paragraph is all about the background on them and not about HOW she COMPLETED the task. She hasn't completed the task yet.

D) to provide the Wellcomb family’s backstory.

Explanation: when writing, an author can have different purposes, like for example: to entertain, to persuade, to criticize or to inform. From the given options, the one that represents the purpose of the narration is the corresponding to option D: to provide the Wellcomb family's backstory, we can see that in the description of where Joshua nad Lily Wellcomb lived, how he died and the difficulties Lily and her children went through.

man vs. nature - first choice

it was surely an odd creature that one made up by reading the historians first and the poets afterwards a worm winged like an eagle; the spirit of life and elegance and charm,   in a kitchen chopping up suet. but these creatures, monst'r however entertaining to the imagination, hast no existence in fact. what one might doth to bringeth h'r to life wast to bethink poetically and prosaically at one and the same moment,   thus keeping in toucheth with fact—that the lady is mrs martin, ag'd thirty-six, did dress in blue, wearing a black coxcomb and brown shoeth; but not losing sight of fiction eith'r—that the lady is a vessel in which all s'rts of spirits and f'rces art coursing and flashing p'rpetually. the moment, howev'r, yond one tries this method with the elizabethan mistress, one brancheth of illumination fails; one is did hold up by the scarcity of facts.   one knoweth nothing detailed, nothing p'rfectly true and substantial about h'r.   hist'ry scarcely mentions h'r.   and i did turn to professeth'r trevelyan again to seeth what hist'ry meanteth to that gent.   i hath found by looking at his chapt'r headings yond t meanteth.