One characteristic of Enlightenment that is seen in this excerpt is that people should be guided by the reason and not irrational fears, however serious they may seem to be. The protagonist/author of the diary seems to be the only cool-headed person in this terrible situation. Everybody else is freaking out, running about and screaming. He notices multiple times that nobody is making any effort to actually quench the fire. He is the one who goes to warn the king and suggests that houses should be pulled down. There is one very interesting remark about Lord Mayor, who is in a panic just like everyone else: "To the King's message he cried, like a fainting woman..." Misogyny aside, this comment shows the speaker's manly, reasonable, commendable attitude. He is an active person who does something to undo the damage, and not just a passive observer or a coward who runs away in panic.
A diary entry was a fitting form during the Enlightenment period because that was the first time that the words and opinions of a more or less ordinary person were deemed important. A diary has this risk of being a subjective collection of personal impressions. But Pepys' diary pretends to be highly objective because its author sees himself as a reasonable man, important in his own right, competent enough to keep a diary and record some important things that happen around him, to other ordinary people.
Answer:
- The general will force Rainsford to participate in the hunt
- Rainsford will attempt to escape from the island
Explanation:
If you have read this book you know that Rainsford has a conflict with Zaroff after falling into the sea. This man gets his own island to hunt and is a brilliant sportsman who has developed an innovative type of hunting games. Their basic goal is to train people whose ships are wrecked because it gives them food and knives for a few days. After that, Zaroff begins to hunt them down so they need to survive to win this kind of strange game and stay alive. The worst part is that he kills them if he can find these poor men.
For this reason, based on this, we can conclude that the logical predictions that a reader can make based on the excerpt are:
- The general will force Rainsford to participate in the hunt
- Rainsford will attempt to escape from the island
He is beginning to realize that he is afraid to die.
