AP English Language and Composition 6.3 Passage Drill

All right, yeah. Read it, read it. Come on, get through it.

What literary device is demonstrated in lines eight through ten?

And here are the potential answers.

Lot of five dollar words.

Okay, well, we've got another literary device question here.

It's asking us what method the author decided to use

in lines eight through ten in order to evoke

some mental or emotional reaction

from the reader.

Be careful, there may be a madness to his method.

All right, so let's look at lines eight through ten.

"What men or gods are these?

What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit?

What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?"

Ooh.

Well, before we even begin to think about literary devices,

one thing should leap out at us immediately.

Like some creepy guy hiding in a bush.

Every sentence starts with the word "what."

What? Why?

Well, it just so happens that there's a name for

a rhetorical device where a word or group of words is used

to start a bunch of sentences in a row.

Anaphora. Which is option C.

And as long as we're familiar with the term, well, this question

is just a cinch.

But let's go ahead and see why we can rule out the other answer choices anyway.

There's no reference to famous people or historical events,

so there's definitely no allusion here.

An allegory is like a fable and it's tough to communicate

an entire fable or parable in just three lines

of poetry, so that's gone.

Yusaf tried and failed and he got horrendous grades

in his poetry class.

Nothing is being referred to by the name of something

associated with it, so metonymy is a no.

And nothing is being compared in a symbolic way, so E is out, as well.

So, yeah, C - anaphora is the best answer,

the best solution, the best choice, the best option.

We just did anaphora-ed you and you didn't even notice.