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Question
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. |
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Solution
| Poetic Devices | |
| Figure | Definition |
| (1) Metaphor | (b) An implied comparison. |
| (2) Alliteration | (a) The use of the same sound at the beginning of words. |
| (3) Onomatopoeia | (d) A word that resembles the sound it represents. |
| (4) Simile | (c) A comparison between two different things, especially a phrase, containing the words ‘like’ or ‘as’. |
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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. |
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?
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 |
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.
Identify the Figure of Speech in the following line.
They bring me tokens of myself.
‘Pun’ can be defined as a play on words based on their different meanings. Example: ‘Writing with a broken pencil is pointless.’ In this poem, there is an example of Pun. Find and make a sentence of your own. Share a joke with the class where the use of ‘Pun’ creates humour.
Find out lines from the poem that are examples of following Figures of Speech.
| Figures of Speech | Lines |
| Repetition | ......................... |
| Alliteration | ......................... |
| Hyperbole | ......................... |
Alliteration is the occurrence of the same sound at the beginning of words in a phrase, sentence, etc. such as ‘That life is lived it's very best.’
Find out more examples of Alliteration from other poems in your book.
Pick from the poem line which contain the Figure of speech.
Inversion
Pick from the poem line which contain the Figure of speech.
Apostrophe
