adapted excerpt from The Tyranny of Things by Elisabeth Woodbridge Morris

Question

Read the following text then answer the question below:

But to some of us a day comes when we begin to grow weary of things. We realize that we do not possess them; they possess us. Our books are a burden to us, our pictures have destroyed every restful wall space, our china is a care, our photographs drive us mad, our programs and alpenstocks fill us with loathing. We feel stifled with the sense of things, and our problem becomes, not how much we can accumulate, but how much we can do without. We send our books to the village library, and our pictures to the college settlement. Such things as we cannot give away, and have not the courage to destroy, we stack in the attic, where they lie huddled in dim and dusty heaps, removed from our sight, to be sure, yet still faintly importunate.

What are two ways that the author uses rhetorical devices to advance her purpose?

1. She uses figurative language when she says, “But to some of us a day comes when we begin to grow weary of things.”
2. She uses parallelism when she says, “Our books are a burden to us, our pictures have destroyed every restful wall space, our china is a care . . . ”
3. She uses antithesis when she says, “we do not possess them; they possess us.”
4. She uses a logical appeal when she says, “they lie huddled in dim and dusty heaps, removed from our sight, to be sure, yet still faintly importunate.”
5. She uses an ethical appeal when she says, “Such things as we cannot give away, and have not the courage to destroy, we stack in the attic . . . ”

Answer 1

Let's take each rhetorical device one at a time.

Figuratively -- First, what does figuratively mean? It means something that is not in the literal sense. For example, if you say, "I almost died laughing?" Did you "really" almost die? No. You were speaking figuratively. Second, you need to ask yourself when a new day comes. Is it when you grow weary of things? No, a new day comes when the sun comes up. So, this would be speaking figuratively.

Parallelism -- This means the sentence has the same grammatical structure. For example, "He likes to run, swim, and bike." If your books are a burden and your pictures are destroyed, are they the same thing? The same structure? No. So, this is not parallelism.

Antithesis -- This is when two opposites are introduced to make a contrasting effect. "We do not possess them. They possess us." Does this sound opposite or contrasting? Yes.

Therefore, the answer is: figurative and antithesis