Figures of Speech

Practice:

Exercise 4.11.Read the given passages with the units in bolt type. Pick out cases ofstylistic inversion,detached constructions(insertion),segmentation,chiasmus,parallel constructions,repetition(anaphora, epiphora, anadiplosis, chain-repetition),antithesis,suspense,gradation,anticlimax,asyndeton,polysyndeton,ellipsis,represented speech,inner speech,litotes. Speak on the effect produced:

Example:

The earth is a living thing. It could talk to us if we were worth talking to. /Dean Koontz Cold Fire/

In the fragment the author resorts to chiasmus “It could talk to us if we were worth talking to” to bring home the idea that people could understand different processes and phenomena of the universe if they were sensitive and considerate enough.

1. Harry shivered. He wasn’t sure he liked Mr. Ollivander too much. /J.K. Rowling Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone/

2. You fall in love with the Bureau, but the Bureau doesn’t fall in love with you. /Thomas Harris Hannibal/

3. The switchboard told him Mrs. Lorna Brick had telephoned twice, and would he please return the call. /Jackie Collins Sinners/

4. He was shaking with need, trembling, quivering, quaking. /Dean Koontz Whispers/

5. Harry had almost forgotten that the exam results were still to come, but come they did. /J.K. Rowling Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone/

6. A white Honda bumped the bike. Brakes squealed, traffic halted, and people rushed toward the injured man. /Dean Koontz The Key to Midnight/

7. A moment later the desserts appeared. Blocks of ice in every flavor you could think of, apple pies, treacle tarts, chocolate éclairs, and jam doughnuts, trifle, strawberries, Jell-O, rice pudding… /J.K. Rowling Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone/

8. They were, in fact, leading indicators of the approach of a condition that Sully had come to think of as a stupid streak, where everything he did would turn out wrong, where each wrong turn would be compound by the next, where even smart moves would prove dumb in the particular circumstance, where thoughtlessness and careful consideration were guaranteed to arrive at the same end – disaster. /Richard Russo Nobody’s Fool/

9. She turned towards them, using them as an excuse to avoid Alex’s eyes for the few seconds required to regain her composure, but what she saw made her gasp.

A man with no right hand.

Twenty feet away.

Walking towards her.

1. Man. With. No. Right. Hand. /Dean Koontz The Key To Midnight/

10. Quilla Anderson (she had taken back her maiden name and you could bet Pete hated that, too) had the courage of her convictions. /Stephen King The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon/

11. Bless them, they’ll go to any lengths to ignore magic, even if it’s staring them in the face. /J. Rowling Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets/

12. While he waited for the telephone, he dozed a moment, the shadow of the eel crawling over his sheet and his face and his coiled hair. /Thomas Harris Hannibal/

13. To avoid a trial, they had to settle. To settle, they had to find a weakness. /John Grisham The Testament/

14. She tried to reason with herself, hoping to make her way back to stability with simple steps of logic. The mirror couldn’t harm her. It was not a presence. Just a thing. An inanimate object. Mere glass, for God’s sake. /Dean Koontz False Memory/

15. He was long dead. Lost in a mysterious plane crash in World War II. His body had never been found. Sometimes people vanish. The world goes on. /Dean Koontz The Key To Midnight/

16. She liked her work, and recently she’d signed a contract to create an entirely new game based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which might produce enough royalties to impress Scrooge McDuck. Nevertheless, her mother dismissively described her work as ‘carnival stuff,’ apparently because Sabrina associated video games with arcades, arcades with amusement parks, and amusement parks with carnivals. /Dean Koontz False Memory/

17. But Gina remembered the missed birthdays of her childhood, a father who was always preoccupied with his more recent, more exciting attachments, the promised holidays that never happened, and her mother going to bed alone, growing old alone, getting sick alone, crying alone and finally dying alone. /Tony Parsons Man and Boy/

Checking Your Progress

Exercise 4.12.Read the given passages and pick out cases ofdetached constructions(insertion),segmentation,chiasmus,parallel constructions,repetition(state its type),inversion,antithesis,suspense,gradation,anticlimax,asyndeton,polysyndeton,ellipsis,represented speech,inner speech,litotes. Speak on the effect produced:

Example:

This was the worst he had ever felt. If only there was something they could do. Anything. /J.K. Rowling Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets/

In the fragment J.K. Rowling uses segmentation “Anything” to show how desperate and helpless the characters felt.

1. Mr. Dursley blinked and stared at the cat. It stared back. /J.K. Rowling Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone/

2. If he hadn’t been so rude, Jack wouldn’t have been jealous. And if Jack hadn’t been jealous, he wouldn’t have been with Sally. /Josie Lloyd & Emlyn Rees Come Together/

3. The coffee was rich but not bitter. The biscotto was excellent; she would have to ask Jennifer to buy them. Funny, how one good cookie could calm the mind and even elevate a troubled soul.

After a while, she was able to concentrate on the book. The writing was good. The plot was entertaining. The characters were colourful. She enjoyed it. /Dean Koontz False Memory/

4. There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on A Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump. /J.K. Rowling Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone/

5. Quilla frowned. Well let her frown, Trisha thought, let her frown all she wants. I’m with her, and I don’t complain about it like old grouchy there, but he’s still my Dad and I still love him./Stephen King The Girl Who loved tom Gordon/

6. But Hermione had a steely glint in her eye not unlike the one Professor McGonagall sometimes had. /J.K. Rowling Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets/

7. Gunfire from her right and the runner pitched forward, sliding on his face, and tried to crawl under a car. Helicopter blades blatting above her. Someone yelling in the fish market, “Stay down. Stay down.” People under the counters and water at the abandoned cleaning table showering into the air. Staring advancing on the Cadillac. Movement in the back of the car. Movement in the Cadillac. The car rocking. The baby screaming in there. Gunfire and the back window shattered and fell in. /Thomas Harris Hannibal/

8. Her eyes had that catlike quality of harmoniously blended opposites: sleepiness combined with total awareness, watchfulness mixed with cool indifference, and a proud isolation that coexisted with a longing for affection. /Dean Koontz The Key to Midnight/

9. While he drove, Uncle Vernon complained to aunt Petunia. He liked to complain about things: people at work, Harry, the council, Harry, the bank, and Harry were just a few of his favourite subjects. /J.K. Rowling Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone/

10. Helen Mainway chattered excitedly about the spectacular special effects, and Elliot Stryker had an endless supply of compliments as well as some astute observations about the technical aspects of the production, and Charlie Mainway poured a third bottle of Dom Pérignon, and the house lights came up, and the audience reluctantly began to leave, and Tina hardly had a chance to sip her champagne because of all the people who stopped by the table to congratulate her. /Dean Koontz The Eyes of Darkness/

11. She decided on the egg. She shelled it, careful to put the pieces of shell back in the Baggie the egg had come in (it never occurred to her, then or later, that littering – any sign that she’d been there – might actually save her life), and sprinkled it with the little twist of salt. /Stephen King The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon/

12. Jennifer kept telephoning prospective employers, going from despair to indignation to frustration and back to despair. /Sidney Sheldon Rage of Angles/

13. Today I’m back to being Amy Crosbie. No more blubbing, soppy heroine. No more ball-breaking feminist. No more mental tormentor.

Just me.

Calm.

Tranquil.

Sussed.

/Josie Lloyd & Emlyn Rees Come Together/

14. She had to admit that he sparked the same feeling in her that she apparently enflamed in him. /Dean Koontz The Eyes of Darkness/

15. The girl was magnificent. She had the most incredible long legs, her hair was loosened, her body was sugary… And she had a special kind of walk. Uh… very, very ugly. /Jackie Collins Sinners/

16. She had met his cool demeanor with heat, had answered his effective silences with an ever-greater cascade of words. /Dean Koontz Cold Fire/

17. The tears of pleasure and misery those romanticisms would bring me. /James Herbert Others/