PL HELP Read this excerpt from "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty."

They went out through the revolving doors that made a faintly derisive whistling sound when you pushed them. It was two blocks to the parking lot. At the drugstore on the corner she said, "Wait here for me. I forgot something. I won’t be a minute." She was more than a minute. Walter Mitty lighted a cigarette. It began to rain, rain with sleet in it. He stood up against the wall of the drugstore, smoking. . . . He put his shoulders back and his heels together. "To hell with the handkerchief," said Walter Mitty scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away. Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.

A. How does the contrast between Mitty's view of himself and the reader's view of Mitty affect the story in "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"?

B. It adds suspense as Mitty's fantasy life pushes him to behave in bold and daring ways in reality.

It creates a feeling of melancholy because Mitty's reality is so dull and unfulfilling when compared to his fantasies.

C. It fuels the tension in the story because readers expect Mitty's reality to become as exciting as his fantasy.

D. It injects the story with a sense of hope because Mitty realizes that his fantasy could be reality if he wants it to be.