Checking Your Progress

Exercise 4.2. Read the given sentences and point out cases of metaphor, sustained metaphor, metonymy, irony, zeugma, pun, the epithet, oxymoron and antonomasia in them. Speak about the effect produced by the given tropes:

Example:

On the sidewalk, he tried to stretch but his muscles were screaming and his joints were locked. /John Grisham The Testament /

In the fragment we see that the character is extremely tired and has pain in his muscles and joints. To render this idea John Grisham resorts to metaphoric personification “muscles were screaming ” to show how strong the pain was.

1. More thunder, and this time she could see lightning shiver inside the clouds, which were advancing rapidly and eating the first stars as they came. /Stephen King The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon /

2. He had a reputation of a lady-killer and most ladies couldn’t wait to get killed. /Jackie Collins Sinners /

3. Customer: “What can you show me for ten or twenty dollars?”

Jeweler: “Nothing but my complete contempt.” /from Laughs and Smiles /

4. He shifted from foot to foot as he talked, turned this way and that, gestured expansively with his quick, gem-speckled hands, virtually doing a jig. /Dean Koontz The Eyes of Darkness /

5. Hermione had got both her breath and her bad temper back again. /J.K. Rowling Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone /

6. The smile froze on her face when she recognized Clay. /Jackie Collins Sinners /

7. The door opened. We faced a solid wall of blue business suits, backs turned to us. /Michael Crichton Rising Sun /

8. Enormous waves slammed onto the shore, and bullets of water, skimmed off the breakers by a growing wind, rattled inland through the low dunes and sparse stalks of grass. /Dean Koontz False Memory /

9. “Take no notice,” Carey replied, “he’s just annoyed ‘cos you turned down his lunch invitation. It’s not often he gets a no. He is Mr. Important. He’s been practically with every actress that ever set foot on a movie of his. His wife’s a boozer. They’re a beautiful couple. /Jackie Collins Sinners /

10. Logic wasn’t working. In a dark territory of her mind that she’d never travelled before, she found a twisted landscape of superstition. /Dean Koontz False Memory /

11. When they told him about Charlie’s letter, his eyes filled with tears, although that might have been because Norbert [small dragon] had just bitten him on the leg.

“Aargh! It’s all right, he only got my boot – jus’ playin’ – he’s only a baby, after all.”

The baby banged its tail on the wall, making the windows rattle. /J.K.

Rowling Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone /

12. She was suddenly drowning in isolation, choking on a bright and yet oppressive sense of herself as a living being cast out from her fellows. /Stephen King The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon /

13. A mosquito whined bloodthirstily around her left ear, and she had no hand free with which to slap at it. /Stephen King The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon /

14. He regarded her with all the warmth of a dead penguin frozen to an ice floe. /Dean Koontz Cold Fire /

15. She was steadily becoming a respected name in the closely-knit Vegas entertainment world, as she believed that she was on the verge of great success. /Dean Koontz The Eyes of Darkness /

16. Michelle Lomas was an old friend of his and a big star, and a big voluptuous woman. /Jackie Collins Sinners /

17. A strong gust of wind pressed suddenly and insistentlyagainst the window. A few specks of powdery snow spun through the ash-grey afternoon light. /Dean Koontz The Key to Midnight /

18. Harry went down to breakfast next morning to find the three Dursleys already sitting around the kitchen table. They were watching a brand-new television, a welcome-home-for-the-summerpresent for Dudley, who had been complaining loudly about the long walk between the fridge and the television in the living room. /J. Rowling Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban /

19. Actor: “What do you think of my execution?”

Friend: “I’m in favour of it.” /from Laughs and Smiles /

20. Desperation clawed some of the beauty out of Susan’s face, and the feral terror darkened the green of her jungle eyes. /Dean Koontz False Memory /

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