What literary device/technique is this an example of (Extract from Vonegut's Harrison Bergeron):

Question

“ ‘Even as I stand here’ he bellowed, ‘crippled, hobbled, sickened - I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!’ ”

Answer 1

There are a few things happening in this excerpt. It's really great to use for teaching several literary devices at once, now that I think about it.

First, at the level of the sentence, Vonegut is using parallelism, specifically when he says "crippled, hobbled, sickened." The rhythmic repetition of words separated in a staccato-like way, each with similar meanings in such close proximity to each other, is repeated to place emphasis on the metaphorical "weight" or emotional burdens that have been put on the protagonist. Like the words are drilled in a sequence into our heads, so the character feels "drilled in" by the weight of the handicaps, if that makes sense.

There is also irony here, as is typical throughout the entire story, evidenced when Harrison states that although he is "crippled" he is "a greater ruler than any man." In this case, a crippled man would not be expected to be a strong ruler - hence, the opposite of what is expected. So, I would say this is situational irony. (Side note: Some might aruge this is verbal irony because it is spoken. If you wanna go with that, or your teacher says that, by all means, go with that! However - verbal irony usually occurs when a character says the opposite of what they mean. I don't think that's the case here - he means exactly what he says, in my opinion. So...yeah...I would say it's situational irony.

Finally, and I'm not 100% positive on this one, but I want to say this is also an example of Apostrophe. I capitalize this because I don't want it to be confused with the punctuation. Apostrophe as a literary device is when a character is addressing or speaking to something that is abstract or perhaps inanimate. In this case, Harrison is crying out to what is, in my opinion, a more abstract idea of society and control rather than to a specific person or even a specific government.