Which technique is used in 'It crawls out of the depot like a tired animal'?

Nobody chooses the 11.40 night bus; it chooses you. It crawls out of the depot like a tired animal, its windows fogged and its seats worn smooth by years of damp coats. Yet I have come to love it. Between the shift workers dozing against the glass and the students arguing cheerfully about nothing, there is a kind of democracy you rarely find in daylight. Nobody is performing. Nobody is in a hurry, because the bus itself refuses to be. Last winter, when my own life had slowed to a standstill after losing my job, that unhurried vehicle felt less like transport than a refuge: a lit room moving through a dark city, where I was neither judged nor expected to be anywhere at all.

Answer and explanation

Correct answer: C. A simile that gives the bus the slow movement of a living creature

  1. Step 1: Spot the word 'like': the bus is being compared with an animal.
  2. Step 2: A comparison using 'like' is a simile, and 'tired' and 'crawls' stress its slowness.
Answer
A simile that gives the bus the slow movement of a living creature.
Why not the others: A metaphor that states the bus really is an animal living in the depot: the word 'like' makes this a comparison, not a direct statement. Onomatopoeia that imitates the sounds the engine makes on leaving: 'crawls' describes movement; it does not copy a sound. Alliteration that links the first letters of the words in the clause: the key words do not repeat a consonant sound.

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