Consider this excerpt: 'The waves whispered ancient secrets, gnawing relentlessly at the crumbling cliffs.' What complex interplay of devices is operating here?
Answer and explanation
Correct answer: B. Sibilance, personification, and sensory imagery creating ominous environmental agency
- Step 1: Step 1: 'Whispered ancient secrets' and 'gnawing relentlessly' personify natural waves with intent and consumption. Step 2. Step 2: 'Waves whispered' uses sibilance ('w', 's') alongside tactile and auditory sensory imagery, establishing nature as an active, ominous force. Answer: Sibilance, personification, and sensory imagery creating ominous environmental agency. Why not the others: The verbs are active ('whispered', 'gnawing'), the tone is solemn rather than satirical, and the rhythm is unrhymed prose.
Practise more Written Text Analysis (Prose, Poetry, Drama and Figurative Language).
Free questions with an explanation for every one, and full timed National Certificate of Educational Achievement mock tests.
More Written Text Analysis (Prose, Poetry, Drama and Figurative Language) questions
- What literary device is used when an author directly compares two unlike things using 'like' or 'as'?
- In a poem, what effect does enjambment typically produce across consecutive lines?
- Which term describes the narrative technique where events are presented out of chronological sequence to depict earlier occurrences?
- When an author attributes human emotions and moods to weather conditions or external nature, which device is being used?
- In dramatic literature, what defines dramatic irony?
- In a Shakespearean sonnet, what term designates the dramatic thematic shift occurring between the octet and sestet or before the final coupl…