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Tropes based on Peculiar Use of Set Expressions

Practice:

Exercise 4.5. Read the following sentences and analyse the units in bolt type. Find cases of proverbs and sayings, quotations, and decomposition of set phrase in them. Speak about the effect produced by them. Find allusions, say where they are taken from and what is the purpose of their use:

Example:

But I can’t complain too much about old Glenn. In a way he played Cupid to me and Gina. /Tony Parson Man and Boy/

The speaker dislikes Glenn for some reason, because he wants to “complain”; however, he can’t show his dissatisfaction, because Glenn helped him to start a relationship with Gina. To express this idea the author resorts to the periphrasis “to play Cupid to”, in which “Cupid” is an allusion to god of love in Roman methology.

  1. If she had matches, maybe she could make a fire – the rain would keep it from spreading – and someone would see the smoke. Of course, if pigs had wings, bacon would fly. Her father said that. /Stephen King The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon/

  1. There was a little hut with a pump inside it and a sign, which read: WATER TEST OK FOR DRINKING. PLEASE FILL PRIMER JUG FOR NEXT PERSON. Suddenly all Trisha wanted in the world was to prime the pump in the little hut and get a drink, cold and fresh. She would drink and pretend she was Bilbo Baggins, on his way to the Misty Mountains. /Stephen King The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon/

  1. “Dad? You saw the doctor?”

“Right as rain,” he said. “Fit as a fiddle.”

“Really? What about your breathing?”

“He shouldn’t be smoking, should he?” my mum said. /Tony Parson Man and Boy/

  1. For the most part it was useless testimony, evoked not for the sake of information, but rather to annoy the witness and put him on notice that the skeletons could be summoned from the closet. /John Grisham The Testament/

  1. Trisha followed the stream with her head down and a scowl on her face, as intent as Sherlock Holmes following prints left by the Hound of Baskervilles. /Stephen King The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon/

  1. “I’m sorry. I didn’t have a chance to call you. I had to go out of town May I come over?”

“You know you may. I’m so glad you’re all right.”

“Half an hour.” He replaced the receiver and thought happily, ‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said, ‘To talk of many things.’ Kat, baby, it was great fun, but it was just one of those things. /Sidney Sheldon Nothing Lasts Forever/

  1. Once more she sensed a disquieting strangeness in the mundane scene around her, as if this were not the ordinary elevator alcove that it appeared to be, but was in fact the tunnel where Frodo and his companion Sam Gamgee had confronted the great pulsing, many-eyed spider.

Responding to a sound behind her, she turned with dread, half expecting to see Shelob looming. The elevator door was rolling shut. Nothing more than that. /Dean Koontz False Memory/

  1. If Cora […] knew she was here, and more important, why she was here, she would probably never speak to Myra again. Because Cora wanted the picture, too. Never mind that, Myra thought. […] First come, first served. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. /Stephen King Needful Things/

  1. Hurrying down the stairs, she heard more lines of Poe’s poem reverberating in her mind: