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Question
Identify the Figures of speech used from those given in the bracket.
(Simile/ Repetition/ Antithesis/ Personification/ Metaphor/ Alliteration/ Apostrophe)
“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs”
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Solution
- Antithesis – Use of two opposite ideas ‘lose’ and ‘keep’ in the same line for dramatic effect.
- Metaphor – ‘head’ is indirectly compared to ‘a person’s calmness’.
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RELATED QUESTIONS
In pairs, find metaphors from the story to complete the table below. Try to say what qualities are being compared. One has been done for you.
| Object | Metaphor | Quality or Feature Compared |
| Cloud | Huge mountains of clouds | The mass or ‘hugeness’ of mountains |
| Raindrops | ||
| Hailstones | ||
| Locusts | ||
| An epidemic (a disease) that spreads very rapidly and leaves many people dead | ||
| An ox of a man. |
You know that a metaphor compares two things by transferring a feature of one thing to the other.
Find metaphors for the following words and complete the table below. Also try to say how they are alike. The first is done for you.
| Storm | Tiger | Pounces over the fields, growls |
| Train | ||
| Fire | ||
| School | ||
| Home |
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
Although this text speaks of factual events and situations of misery it transforms these situations with an almost poetical prose into a literary experience. How does it do so? Here are some literary devices:
• Hyperbole is a way of speaking or writing that makes something sound better or more exciting than it really is. For example: Garbage to them is gold.
• A Metaphor, as you may know, compares two things or ideas that are not very similar. A metaphor describes a thing in terms of a single quality or feature of some other thing; we can say that a metaphor “transfers” a quality of one thing to another. For example: The road was a ribbon of light.
• Simile is a word or phrase that compares one thing with another using the words “like” or “as”. For example: As white as snow.
Carefully read the following phrases and sentences taken from the text. Can you identify the literary device in each example?
1. Saheb-e-Alam which means the lord of the universe is directly in contrast to what Saheb is in reality.
2. Drowned in an air of desolation.
3. Seemapuri, a place on the periphery of Delhi yet miles away from it, metaphorically.
4. For the children it is wrapped in wonder; for the elders it is a means of survival.
5. As her hands move mechanically like the tongs of a machine, I wonder if she knows the sanctity of the bangles she helps make.
6. She still has bangles on her wrist, but not light in her eyes.
7. Few airplanes fly over Firozabad.
8. Web of poverty.
9. Scrounging for gold.
10. And survival in Seemapuri means rag-picking. Through the years, it has acquired the proportions of a fine art.
11. The steel canister seems heavier than the plastic bag he would carry so lightly over his shoulders.
Find out the examples of ‘Metaphor’ from the poem.
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.
Alliteration : _______________.
Choose the correct Figure of speech that occurs in the following line. Justify your choice.
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall ____________.
Choose the correct Figure of speech that occurs in the following line. Justify your choice.
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon.
Identify the Figure of Speech in the following line.
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God.
Identify the Figure of Speech in the following line.
No one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
Pick out two lines that contain the following figures of speech.
Inversion
- ______________
- ______________
Explain the Figure of Speech in the following line.
Rest in the bottom lay-PUN because _________________.
Explain the Figure of Speech in the following line.
Bestow this jewel also on my creature-METAPHOR because ______________________.
Explain the Figure of Speech in the following line.
And rest in nature, not the God of Nature-REPETITION because _________________________.
Find outlines from the poem that are examples of the following Figures of Speech.
| Figures of Speech | Lines |
|
___________________________ |
|
___________________________ |
|
___________________________ |
Find out examples from the poem.
Antithesis
In poetry, very often, there are lines in which the poet seems to talk directly to an absent person, an abstract idea, or a thing/object. Such a tactic/device used by the poet is the Figure of Speech ‘Apostrophe’.
For example,
Twinkle, twinkle little star ...
Death! Where is thy sting?
O, Caveman! I wish I could live with you.
Now, complete the following, creating an example of an Apostrophe of your own.
- O, Life! How ______
- Dear God, Please ______
- Books! You are ______
- Exams! I wish ______
- O, You beautiful sky ______
Pick out lines that contain:
Alliteration
Pick out lines that contain:
Hyperbole
Identify the Figures of speech used from those given in the bracket.
(Simile/ Repetition/ Antithesis/ Personification/ Metaphor/ Alliteration/ Apostrophe)
With worn-out tools ____________.
Pick out lines that contain the following Figure of Speech.
Metaphor
Match the lines of the poem with their Figures of speech.
| Group A | Group B | |
| (1) Whose woods these are I think I know | (a) | Alliteration |
| (2) The woods are lovely, dark and deep | (b) | Personification |
| (3) And miles to go before I sleep And miles to go before I sleep. | (c) | Inversion |
| (4) My little horse must think it queer | (d) | Repetition |
Complete the following example of Hyperbole using words from the bracket below.
She wept____________of tears.
Complete the following examples of Hyperbole using words from the bracket below.
He runs faster than a ____________.
Complete the following example of Hyperbole using words from the bracket below.
I shall come over in just a ____________
Pick from the poem lines which contain the Figures of speech.
Apostrophe
The Figure of Speech ‘Apostrophe’ exists throughout the poem. Pick out the line where the poet directly addresses.
the dead Captain
- ____________
- ____________
The Figure of Speech ‘Apostrophe’ exists throughout the poem. Pick out the line where the poet directly addresses.
the grief in his heart
- ____________
- ____________
The Figure of Speech ‘ Apostrophe’ exists throughout the poem. Pick out the line where the poet directly addresses.
the sea-shore
- ____________
- ____________
Find from the poem, one example of the following.
Repetition
