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Question
Identify the Figure of Speech in the following line.
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God.
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Solution
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God - Alliteration.
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RELATED QUESTIONS
An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines normally-contradictory terms. The most common form of oxymoron involves an adjective-noun combination of two words like- failed success
Writers often use an oxymoron to call attention to an apparent contradiction. For example, Wilfred Owen's poem The Send-off refers to soldiers leaving for the front line, who "lined the train with faces grimly gay." The oxymoron 'grimly gay' highlights the
contradiction between how the soldiers feel and how they act: though they put on a brave face and act cheerful, they feel grim. Some examples of oxymorons are- dark sunshine, cold sun, living dead, dark light, almost exactly etc. The story Mrs. Packletide's Tiger has a number of oxymorons. Can you identify them and write them down in your notebooks?
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
In poetry, when words/ideas are arranged in ascending order of importance, the figure of speech used is called ‘Climax’. For example, Man should work for his family, his country, but most of all for God.
- Pick out two examples of ‘Climax’ from the poem.
Pick out one example of the following Figure of Speech.
Antithesis : _____________________.
Pick out from the poem two examples of each.
Inversion
Pick out from the poem two examples of each.
Transferred Epithet
Identify the Figure of Speech in the following line.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition.
Identify the Figure of Speech in the following line.
They bring me tokens of myself.
Explain the Figure of Speech in the following line.
And rest in nature, not the God of Nature-REPETITION because _________________________.
Find out examples from the poem.
Antithesis
