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Question
Identify the Figure of Speech in the following line.
No one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
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Solution
Hyperbole
Explanation:
It makes an intentional, sweeping exaggeration to emphasise the complete lack of social anxiety and unhappiness in the animal kingdom.
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RELATED QUESTIONS
Complete the table listing the poetic devices used by Shelley in Ozymandias.
| Poetic Device | Lines from the poem |
| Alliteration | ...and sneer of cold command |
| Synecdoche (substitution of a part to stand for the whole, or the whole to stand for a part) | the hand that mock'd them |
Find examples of the use of interesting sounds (Onomatopoeia) from the poem and explain their effect on the reader.
| 1. The ice 'cracked and growled, and roared and howled' |
Coleridge uses onomatopoeic words which use harsh 'ck' sounds to make the ice sound brutal. He also gives the ice animal sounds to give the impression it has come alive and is attacking the ship |
Alliteration is the repetition of sounds in words, usually the first sound. Sibilance is a special form of alliteration using the softer consonants that create hissing sounds, or sibilant sounds. These consonants and digraphs include s, sh, th, ch, z, f, x, and soft c.
Onomatopoeia is a word that imitates the sound it represents for a rhetorical or artistic effect of bringing out the full flavor of words. The sounds literally make the meaning in such words as “buzz,” “crash,” “whirr,” “clang” “hiss,” “purr,” “squeak,” etc.lt Is also used by poets to convey their subject to the reader. For example, In the last lines of Sir Alfred Tennyson’s poem ‘Come Down, O Maid’, m and n sounds produce an atmosphere of murmuring Insects:
… the moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
Notice how D H Lawrence uses both these devices effectively in the following stanza.
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.
To what effect has the poet used these devices? How has it added to your understanding of the subject of the poem? You may record your understanding of snake characteristics under the following headings:
(a) Sound
(b) Movement
(c) Shape
Match the Figures of Speech with the correct definition.
| Poetic Devices | |
| Figure | Definition |
| (1) Metaphor | (a) The use of the same sound at the beginning of words. |
| (2) Alliteration | (b) An implied comparison. |
| (3) Onomatopoeia | (c) A comparison between two different things, especially a phrase, containing the words ‘like’ or ‘as’. |
| (4) Simile | (d) A word that resembles the sound it represents. |
Pick out from the poem two examples of the following.
Simile
Find out examples from the poem.
Personification
Pick out lines that contain the following Figure of Speech.
Antithesis (Opposite ideas)
Pick from the poem line which contain the Figure of speech.
Interrogation
Pick from the poem line which contain the Figure of speech.
Onomatopoeia
Find from the poem, one example of the following.
Antithesis
